Memo to self:

Having random sex with an old flame will probably not make you happy.

Having random sex with an old flame could lead to them thinking you want a relationship with them, and cause them to keep texting you wanting to meet up.

Having random sex with an old flame is therefore NOT a good idea.

(I keep intending to post some kind of proper update one day - although I realise that having been absent from blogging for so long, there's probably no longer anybody reading...)

Drunk

I shouldn't be allowed near alcohol. Tonight, the following things happened:

- I found out Eco Guy has a new boyfriend - who, incidentally, I think I know his ex - and I might meet him at a party next week.

- I think I've licked two different straight guys' nipples tonight when I was in a nightclub. How exactly is that appropriate? One of them isn't even that attractive!

- I was eating chips at 4AM in a McDonalds when I made friends with some random guys and shared a taxi home with them. How random is that?

I'm drunk and I need sleep...

It's been a while...

Wow. Almost 6 months since I last posted. And you want to know what I've done with those last 6 months? Fuck all. I've been to work, and I've gone out most weekends and got drunk. But that's about it.

I started trying to knock together a new post a while ago. I can't remember all that I began to say, but my point was that I was sick of going round and round in circles. My blog was largely whiney. Ignoring the period from March to July 2008, I seemed to spend most of my time complaining about not having a love life, but refusing to do anything to change that. I could talk about past events and analyse my current feelings ad infinitum, but as much as it might have helped to organise some of my thoughts, it ultimately didn't change anything. I decided that until I was willing to make the necessary changes to my life, and stop simply complaining about it, I wasn't going to blog any more. So I didn't.

The only remotely significant thing that's happened in the meantime is that I've moved into a new flat with G, just the two of us. In some respects, being friends with G kind of takes away some of the need that I once had for the blog. As I've mentioned before, she knows I'm gay and is totally fine with it, and she's pretty much the first straight friend of mine who I can very openly talk about hot guys with, or other things like that that I would talk about on here prior to meeting her.

I still keep in touch with The Boy - we exchange the odd message on Facebook every now and then. I still have my slightly ridiculous crush on Eco Guy. I've spoken to him a couple of times though, and also got a bit too drunk at a party a little while ago where I might have groped his thigh... But it's fine because he was just as hammered as me. Two of his housemates know that I think he's cute, so I figure at least one of them has probably mentioned it to him. If he was interested then he's got no reason not to do something about it. I don't think I really want to pursue it myself. I'd like to get to know him better actually, try and find out if we have anything in common. He does seem to be very different to me, but I realise that shouldn't necessarily be a barrier. I guess I just think it would be awkward because our friendship circles overlap quite a lot. More so than that, he's surprsingly open with one of his male (straight) housemates about all these dates he goes on and all the guys he's shagging, and I'm quite good friends with that guy so there's the potential for it being more than a bit weird.

I actually came online just now to read the post that I wrote at the same time last year. I could almost just post that again, because I'm feeling exactly the same way. The only difference is that I'm writing this on Christmas Day, a day earlier than last year, and so without the help of a crystal ball I'm unable to see a few hours into the future to find out if my mum ends up in tears again at the dining table like she did last year. I've already had to tolerate their bickering earlier, they're like a pair of bloody petulant children sometimes. Thankfully they've gone out for a couple of hours, and so I've got some nice quiet time to myself. I've been giving some serious consideration as to whether or not I'm even going to bother coming back next Christmas. I've been back nearly a week, and I have to admit, they've actually been alright up until today. There's just something about Christmas Day that seems to cause them to fall out. Actually, who am I kidding with being so vague, I know exactly what it is that makes them fall out, but I'm not going to talk about it on here. What I can tell you, though, is that it's fucking ridiculous. But anyway...

Erm, so my parents arguing isn't the only similarity to the post I wrote last Boxing Day. I talked last year about trying to implement 'Operation Pro-Active', and I was going to start saying what a joke that idea turned out to be, but to be fair, I think I did manage to make it work for the first half of the year. I spoke about trying to shift my working hours to a bit earlier in the day so that I could go to the gym etc., and about joining Gaydar with a view to trying to meet someone - and across the first 6 months of the year, I did pretty much manage to do that. In fact, the period between January-June 2008 was a pretty good one. I was either going to the gym or going out running a few times a week, I was eating healthily, I joined Gaydar and had fun getting to know The Boy... So clearly I'm not completely incapable of making changes to my life. The problem, obviously, was maintaining it for more than half the year. As I'm sure I've discussed before, everything just seemed to collapse around the same time. The Boy left NC, I injured my ankle which meant I haven't been out running since early summer time, and I've gradually fallen into eating crap food, doing no exercise, and turning up for work as late as lunchtime. Not good.

* * *

I've always thought too much about the future, and not enough about the present. That way of thinking worked really well for me at school when I was like 12. My school was a shit hole, most of the people there were idiots, and I was one of the few people there who actually had a chance of achieving something. I wouldn't say I was ever exactly 'bullied' as such, but there were a few dickheads around, and I always told myself that I'd have the last laugh, because when we all left school, they'd be the ones in dead end jobs and with no prospects, and I'd be the one that would end up earning a load of money or whatever. And similarly, after properly accepting the fact that I was gay, I would again think about the future, settling down with a man who I love, pair of nice sports cars sitting on the drive, exotic holidays - and I thought, that's not the life of someone who just goes out and sleeps around, that's the life of the man who has stable relationships during his 20s, and who knows exactly what he wants when he comes to settle down in his 30s. Thinking about the future is great, and I hope that I end up getting what I want to have. But unfortunately, I've spent far less time thinking thinking about how to get from A to B. And even more unfortunate is that in my case, B is quite a distance away from A, and the journey is currently uncharted. Hindsight is such a wonderful thing to have, yet I just can't believe I had such a naive attitude to things when I was 19. Ugh that sounds so long ago as well, it's nearly 4 years since I first properly told anyone I was gay. I think it's quite pitiful that I have so little to show for it. I suppose I should consider the fact that some people never come out at all, or do so much later in their lives when they don't necessarily have the same opportunities in front of them as I have. But thinking about that just makes me feel even worse about the fact that as every year passes by me, I'm just throwing those opportunities away.

* * *

I find it very difficult to break the cycle. I know I can't be the only one. Can't be the only one who sits there with Gaydar search results in front of them and can't find the bottle to just send someone a message because their self confidence is somewhere on the floor beneath their chair. I was talking about this with a friend of mine who I haven't seen for a while now but who I sometimes chat to online. He can't seem to understand it, he told me he thinks I'm fit and that he'd have sex with me given the chance, and I know he's not just saying it to make me feel better. I told him that it wasn't an issue of how attractive somebody might find me, and ended up telling him that I'm quite embarassed by the fact that I'm quite inexperienced for my age. He said all the right things, told me it's not something to be embarassed about, and that he reckoned some guys would even find it quite hot... Which I wasn't quite so sure about, but anyway. And then I spoke to another good friend of mine on the phone last night who thinks that I'm just being ridiculous and that I need to 'grow a pair' and just get on with it... My sentiments entirely. He's got himself a new boyfriend now, quite a good catch actually by the sounds of it. He even offered to try and set me up with a friend of his boyfriend, but he lives quite far away so I politely declined the offer.

The problem with having confidence issues is that no one can do anything about them but yourself. And it's far more difficult than it sounds. When I was dating The Boy earlier this year, once I got over my initial self doubt, things were great, and it was a real boost to my self esteem. I think what I'm feeling, though, is the effect of going from such a massive high in my confidence and then falling to a massive low shortly after he left NC.

* * *

I wrote most of this post while I was at home on Christmas Day, but I'm back in NC now on my own computer and I've actually found the blog post I mentioned earlier that I'd started writing but never got round to posting. I could almost laugh really, because it completely underlines the point I've been trying to make. I must have written it in about August/September time, and yet my situation is exactly the same 4 months on. I wrote about my current situation, and what I need to do in order to move on with my life, but have I done anything about it? Have I fuck. My life is such a joke. If you want a good laugh, I'll copy and paste it below this:

* * *

I haven’t updated the blog for over two months now. For the most part, it’s because my social life/love life have been pretty much dead for that period of time. It’s been a bit shit really. Particularly after all the activity of the spring. More so than that, though, I just constantly found that I was repeating myself on here time after time after time. I complain about being single, and I complain about my lack of experience, and yet I do nothing about it. Some of my posts from when I started the blog read almost identically to some of my more recent posts, the same complaints, the same stories, the same excuses. It’s just become cyclical, boring, and I’m sick of not knowing what to do. I log on to Gaydar most days, but I’ve not had a message from anybody for months now. I look at who’s joined in the last 24 hours and cringe at some of the profiles of guys who sum themselves up with a picture of their arse and a single badly-spelt line about ‘lukin 4 ladz wiv big cocks to fill me in’. I know that I need to be more proactive and send people messages, but I somehow can’t bring myself to do it because my self-confidence in that area of my life is just ridiculously low. I know that the only way to gain more confidence in anything in life is to jump in their and do it, and yet it’s just not enough. I’d probably even be up for going out to a gay bar, having a few drinks and just seeing what happens, because at least that’s slightly more natural than doing things via websites like Gaydar. But I can’t even do that because I have no gay friends here – just the odd gay acquaintances who I see once in a blue moon.

I’ve come to see that my attitude towards sex and relationships up until recently has probably been somewhat naïve. When I was growing up, I was always one of those people who thought their ‘first time’ would be in the context of a relationship with someone they really felt something for. And even realising/accepting that I’m gay had never done anything to change that. If anything, it might even have reinforced the idea, because I’m quite aware that for a lot of gay guys, and particularly those who lose their virginity quite early on, they were probably being taken advantage of by a guy maybe a few years older than them, and I never really wanted to end up in that situation. Certainly during my time as undergraduate, I shunned the LGBT society after hearing how ‘incestuous’ it was, and I was really struck by the comment that I should watch out the first time I went to one of their social events because I would be viewed simply as ‘fresh meat’… Nice. However, through pursuing friendships with my more ‘normal’ gay friends who weren’t just on a constant lookout for where their next shag was going to come from, I really thought I would eventually meet someone nice in a more natural sort of environment. There’s really no need for me to repeat some of the stories I’ve told on here countless times before about the couple of guys I very vaguely ‘dated’ at university; suffice to say that my game plan never really worked out as I had hoped. All the while, of course, I was getting older. I started uni at the age of 18 and left when I was 21… And I can’t help but feel that then hitting 22 and still having had so little experience with guys has just been such a regrettable mistake. It would be acceptable to start dating someone, and for them to perhaps pick up on the fact that you don’t have much experience if you’re still only 21 or younger. But at 22, I think you’re really expected to know exactly what you’re doing – to know what you want, and be able to go out and get it. You lose all hope, at this age, that even if some of your nerves started to become obvious, then the guy you’re with would be patient and understanding with your situation. If you’re 21 and still a virgin, then you’re just a bit of a late starter in life. If you’re 22 or over, then what the fuck have you been doing with your life up until now? What’s wrong with you? Maybe you thought you were straight, and you’ve had relationships with girls during your teenage years, and so you’re only starting to experiment with gay sex in your early- to mid-20s. That’s acceptable, there’s a reason for your being in that situation. What’s my excuse? The irony is that I’d really like to be in a relationship right now, particularly after having that brief taste of it with The Boy back in the spring time. But I feel as though the things I’ve just been talking about present me with a bit of a problem, as I’m worried about basically making a complete arse out of myself if me and some guy I’m dating end up taking things to the bedroom and my lack of experience starts to become obvious. I mean, seriously, how humiliating would that be? It’s bad enough if you’re a straight teenager, but a 22 year old gay guy…? Which then brings me round to the alternative: use a website like Gaydar to find some random blokes to have sex with, gain a bit more experience in the bedroom, and then end up feeling less worried if I were to start dating more guys who I’m not just viewing as hook-ups. The problem is, I really don’t want to do that. Casual sex with random strangers has never really held any appeal to me, and it’s been one of the stereotypes that people make about gay men that I resent the most. Interestingly, I feel as though the past year or two has really taught me a lot about why so many gay men do spend most of their 20s pursuing casual relationships. Asides from the fact that most guys in their 20s simply seem to have a rampant libido, and that gay sex is so easily available, I can also see how these short term relationships that are free from any genuine emotional attachment can be so attractive for all these men who, unlike their straight peers, never really had the chance to start dating and get into relationships during their teenage years, and feel uncomfortable trying to learn the rules so much later than the majority of straight guys. And so despite the fact that I’m really not that interested in going down that route, I almost feel as though it would make me feel much more ‘normal’ if every week or two I could find some random guy on Gaydar and just go though the motions with them. I’d be like a proper gay bloke then, out there, doing it, and not be the fraud I feel like at the moment.

My academic supervisor back when I was an undergraduate used to often give me the same piece of advice when I was talking to him about a problem I might be having, or a difficult decision that I had to make. He used to tell me that sometimes you just have to put yourself outside of your comfort zone in order to move on in life. When he’s said that to me, I’ve always thought about the particular situation long and hard, and ultimately decided that yes, maybe he’s right, and I just need to take a bit of a leap of faith. And in those situations, his advice has usually resulted in me taking the right course of action. So if I apply that little mantra to my situation now, I think I know what I have to do. Maybe I need to remember that we all have to do things that we don’t want to do from time to time in order to eventually get what we want. I just know that I’m going to feel enormously uncomfortable propositioning some stranger on Gaydar for sex; I’m going to feel weird going to that stranger’s house for sex; and I’m probably going to feel a bit… disgusted… with myself afterwards. But maybe it’s what I have to do?

Maybe I’ll just become a monk. That’d be much easier than thinking about all this.

* * *

Sigh.

So my next post will either be in 12 months time when another year's gone by and I've done nothing to bring about change in my life, or - and I hope this will be the case - rather sooner than that to say that I've started dating some new guy...

Reflections on The Boy; Work; Eco Guy; and a Gaydar Update

Before I start typing anything else, I just want to acknowledge the fact that I'm a seriously slack blogger, and as I think I've said before, if you haven't done so already then I'd recommend adding my RSS thingy either to your feed reader (like Google Reader or whatever), or if you're using IE7 (and I'm assuming Firefox has something similar) then if you click the little orange square thing in the top right of the window then you can subscribe to RSS/Atom feeds using that. Then it'll just tell you when I've updated without having to visit the blog.

I've been meaning to update for a few days now but haven't got round to it - it's mostly just been little things I wanted to write about rather than anything majorly significant. I guess the main thing that's been on my mind has been my response to The Boy's departure from NC, and how surprisingly fine I've felt about it. Whilst I am a bit gutted that he's left (obviously), when I think about him, or look at his Facebook, or get a message from him, I just have happy feelings rather than feeling cut up about him leaving. So like my News Feed on Facebook tells me that he's uploaded new pictures or whatever, and I look at them and just smile, thinking 'Awww, lil ___ - he looks cute in that pic'. I think that it's all just a product of how our 'relationship' (for want of a better word - I realise it wasn't exactly a relationship per se) turned out - like for the first week or two of the hiatus after we'd been seeing each other for about a month, I was actually kind of pining for him a bit. I'd lie in bed on a night thinking about him; my bus ride into work would take me near his house and I'd think about him - and during that time I did feel quite sad about it all. Then before I knew it a month had gone by, and I got to see him again for a couple of hours, and after that it was another 6 weeks til I saw him almost a fortnight ago, and so before I had to say goodbye, I'd already had a couple of months to 'get over him'. I went into that final evening with absolutely no expectations, and just generally feeling very comfortable with this situation as 'friends' - or so I thought until things progressed later in the evening... And as a result of that lack of expectations, it just meant that I enjoyed it for what it was, without there being too much of an emotional attachment. I mean of course, it was lovely the next morning being able to lie there with him in my arms, and it's those sort of moments that I think lead you to feeling closer or more attached to someone, but I was aware and totally accepting of the fact that he was leaving NC the next day and so I think that's why it wasn't really that painful seeing him go. One thing I didn't write about in detail two weeks ago was the exchange we had just before I left his house that day. I'm not thinking too much of it, but I was a bit confused by what he meant at the time. I wrote two weeks ago that I "tell him that whoever he might meet in the future, that he doesn't ever have to settle for second best", which isn't a direct quote - what I actually said missed off the first bit, although I felt that it was implied because I was treating it as the final goodbye - so far as I was concerned, that might have been the last time I'd ever see him, and I was talking about the future in general. But in response he said something like "Yeah but I don't think I'm going to meet anyone while I'm in ________" - which made me wonder if he had any intention of restarting things once he gets back to the UK. I didn't ask him what he meant by it, I just assumed that he'd misunderstood me. As I've said before, I don't think we really got far enough to be able to try and do things 'long distance', because his home town is a couple of hundred miles away from NC - but the way he responded to what I said just kind of suggested that that was what he was thinking. I think what's really struck me as well has been some of the hints I picked up on that he perhaps did really like me. I mean obviously he must have liked me to have even dated me in the first place, but I'm really crap at working out what people are thinking, and so I never really had any idea quite what he felt for me. But looking closely at that Thursday night two weeks ago, most of what happened was a result of his leg work. So far as I was concerned, we were going for dinner, as friends, and then I was going to go home, alone. It was him that suggested I go out with him and his mate later. It was him who instigated the playful touching while we were watching the football. It was him who kept hugging me on the dancefloor in the club. And then obviously the other stuff followed later on. Even the next day, he had loads to do, and kept saying he should go get a shower and pack up more of his stuff, but then he carried on lying in my arms into the late afternoon, when he could have just made an excuse to kick me out. We've been in touch a couple of times since he's left, which has been nice, and so yeah, at the moment I'm just feeling quite happy about the whole situation really.

Work's been a bit of a nightmare recently, it's been really doing my head in. To be clear, science is not a career for people who can't cope with almost constant failure. Every time you make some headway you just get knocked back down again when something fucks up. But I've made my bed, and for at least the next 3 years I guess I've just got to lie in it. After that, I'll have my doctorate under my belt and I can escape from academia and get a real job!

I need to make a quick mention about this guy, and also assign him a name for use on this blog. I think I'll call him Eco Guy. As a short recap, I met him during my first week in NC, then came across him again in January, and then he messaged me on Gaydar but I ignored him. Basically, he used to have this skanky long hair that looked awful, and I didn't fancy him at all, but then, as I think I may have mentioned on here a while ago, he had it cut really short and all of a sudden he became HOT. Like really cute. Bizarre how a haircut can make such a huge difference! Now what's interesting about Eco Guy is that I found out that he's friends with someone else I know - and this friend of mine (let's call him Daniel) had a house party a month or two ago which I went to with G, and Eco Guy was there. Daniel introduced him to me and G, and he pretty much ignored me and just talked to G for ages. However, I then found out that Eco Guy is going to be moving in with Daniel, and so it seems that they're pretty good mates. So anyways, I've generally just been crushing on this guy for like the past month, even though I've never really spoken to him - until last Friday, when we were at the pub after work, and I spotted Daniel and Eco Guy sat a couple of tables away. I should also add, and this makes things funnier, that my housemate G really fancies Daniel and has been secretly hoping for a while that he'll ask her out for a drink some time. So anyway, I says "Have you seen Daniel over there? Have you been to talk to him yet?" and she said no, so I dragged her over so we could talk to him and I could subtly stare at Eco Guy for a while, and so we chatted for a bit and Eco Guy was facing the other way and talking to the other people they were with, but then he turned round and started talking to us as well. So I was chuffed because it meant I'd finally spoken to him, but then it got even better on Sunday because I went to the gym and saw him as I was going in and he was just leaving. I said hi to him and we chatted a bit, and afterwards I hoped it wasn't too obvious that I'd spent half of the conversation staring at his arms... He'd just been in the gym doing some weights and was wearing a sleeveless top, and the veins across his shoulders were all popping up and so I couldn't help but look at them. He's not huge or anything - I mean certainly in height terms he's quite a lot shorter than me (but then I am a bit of a giant), but basically he does a lot of climbing and outdoorsy stuff and so he's pretty well toned. I'd love to see his torso and see if his abs are as toned as his arms... Mmm. Sadly, I've already decided that it can never happen. He's just going to be one of those people who I look at and yearn after but never do anything about - we all have such people in our lives, I'm sure. G reckons he's not out of my league, and if I'm not being too self-depracating then I'd be inclined to agree, and I'm almost laughing at myself at the moment because what I want to say is almost exactly the same as what I said here about The Boy, and obviously things ended up going places with him despite my initial doubts, and so just because somebody appears to be "more popular, more interesting, more fun, more well-travelled, and more attractive" than me doesn't necessarily mean I can't get with them. But he's also a few years older than me, and so it's not only his good looks that intimidate me slightly, but also his extra experience with sex/relationships and all that stuff. Ok so that's a rubbish argument because most guys around my age are more experienced than me, but whatever. I also think it would be weird going out with him given that we're both goods mates with Daniel... I don't know why, it just would. So it's not up for discussion, because it's not going to happen. I can look, but I can't touch. And I will instead find someone who's maybe slightly below my league so that I won't have to feel so self-conscious about these things. My ex-housemates a bit like that actually, I don't think she realises that she's quite a good look girl, and I reckon she's way out of the league of her past two boyfriends - but that's by the by.

Finally, after exchanging quite a few messages with this bloke off Gaydar (I'll give him a suitable pseudonym if and when I ever meet him in real life), he's left NC and gone home for a month and either doesn't have internet access, or doesn't want to go on Gaydar on his parents computer (understandably) - and so he'd left his mobile number with me, and I sent him a message yesterday but haven't heard back from him. Maybe I'll try him again in a few days in case the last one just didn't get through. I don't know what I'll make of him in real life, but he seems like a nice guy and has the potential to be alright looking based on his main Gaydar profile pic.

(By the way, this stuff is amazing, you've gotta try it if you can find it in the supermarket - sounds wrong, but tastes so right.)

24 Hours with The Boy: The Final Farewell

So, The Boy's final week of living in NC ends tomorrow morning, when he packs everything into his car and drives back to his home city, before jetting off half way around the world for a few months. We arranged to go out for dinner last night, and that's all I thought was going to happen, but then I ended up spending the best part of 24 hours with him, finally saying goodbye to him about an hour ago.

Originally I thought I was just going to go round to his house with a bottle of wine, and just spend the evening chatting, maybe watch a bit of TV or a movie or something. Then yesterday afternoon he said that he was seeing some other friends in the evening, and asked if we could go get dinner somewhere earlier in the evening so he could go out with his mates later on. That was fine with me, although at the same time I didn't really want our final goodbye to be in this cheap but cheerful cafe-restaurant just down the road from where I live.

It's 18:00. He's arrived early; it was really nice walking in and seeing him there, and watching him smile at me when he saw me come in. We have a good catch up on what he's been doing since I'd last seen him (woah, I actually hadn't realised that it had been 6 weeks, that's crazy), and he tells me all about his holiday and stuff. He gets a couple of calls/text messages while we're eating, and one of them's from one of his best mates, the cute gay guy who I mentioned here. He says that they were going to go back to The Boy's house after we've had dinner, watch the football, have some drinks, and head to the gay club in town - and suggests that I go with them. I was supposed to be at work today, so my sensible side instantly thinks that this is a bad idea, but then it would be nice to spend some more time with The Boy, so I decide to compromise, and go to his for football/drinks and then go home afterwards, meaning that I should be home maybe by 23:00 at the latest. Then, I start thinking that I could go to the club with them, but that I would just leave early, maybe 01:00, so I'd still be able to get some sleep and make it into work at a sensible time.

It's 20:00. We settle the bill, and start walking to his house in the rain. We continue chatting; I'm feeling quite relaxed with the situation; it's nice that we can spend time together like this, as friends, and just talk rubbish like we used to do before. We get to his house, go up to his room, and start watching the football. After a while, he decides to make himself more comfortable, laying a pillow across my legs and laying down with his head resting upon it. He's a fairly tactile guy, he's friendly, and he's comfortable being with me - and so I think nothing of this. He starts prodding my foot, and I respond by prodding his shoulders and back. It's 2 or 3 months since we were really dating; we're just friends now; I think nothing of it. He decides that he wants a proper back massage; I'm happy to oblige; he enjoys it - and as we get closer, I start to wonder what the situation really is.

It's 22:00. His mate rings to say he's on his way into town, and so we have to get ourselves ready, have some more alcohol, and head out to the bus stop. We get into town and go meet up with The Boy's friend, and we go to the club. The next 3 or 4 hours is spent drinking and dancing, interspersed with lots of hugs from The Boy. I take them at face value, and assume that if he wanted anything else then he has no reason not to just kiss me - we're in a gay club after all, so there's nothing really stoppng him.

It's 03:00. We're in a taxi, and I don't know whether I'm getting out at The Boy's place, or staying in there with his mate to get dropped off at my place instead. I decide to go back with The Boy. We go up to his room, put the TV on, he gets ready to go to bed, and falls asleep while I'm sat on the end of his bed drinking a glass of water.

It's 04:00. The Boy's still asleep; I take off my jeans and T-shirt; I'm tired, and so I slide into bed next to him with the intention of going to sleep. I've accidentally woken him up. Hands start to wander... I realise that I'd be stupid not to keep this going. We're naked. One thing leads to another, and after all this time, after feeling that I've pretty much wasted the past few years of my life, I'm in bed, naked, with this great guy who I really like and I'm sucking him off. And he's leaving NC in just over 24 hours - oh, the bitter-sweet irony of it all. I'm suddenly glad for all the porn that I've watched, and hope that I look like I know what I'm doing... I get the desired result, so I figure I can't have been too bad.

It's the period between 05:00 and 12:00. I can't sleep. At all. There's light coming through the curtains, every slightest noise sounds really loud, I'm feeling thirsty, and I just can't seem to get comfortable in The Boy's small double bed. His dad rings him on his mobile, and it makes me smile because his dad clearly has no idea that while he's talking to his son, he's in bed with another guy, with one hand holding the phone and the other hand stroking that guy's bum.

It's 13:00. We're still in bed cuddling and watching the tennis on TV. I try really hard to capture the image as a mental photograph, with The Boy curled up on me, resting his head on my lap. He goes out to buy cigarettes, gets some cereal, and ends up lying in my arms again. I realise that I'm quite clearly not going to make it into work today.

It's 16:00. He needs to get a shower and finish packing his stuff, and I need to get back home as well. I get dressed; we hug; I tell him to have fun in ________ and that he'd better keep in touch with me. I tell him that whoever he might meet in the future, that he doesn't ever have to settle for second best. He tells me that he's glad there are guys out there like me who retain a degree of innocence having not yet been corrupted by the gay scene. I secretly ponder whether or not I should take that as a compliment... We go downstairs, and he unlocks his front door. We hug, we kiss, and I leave. I turn around and see that smile of his for one last time. I wave goodbye and walk up the street, very briefly verging on shedding a tear, but rapidly coming round to a feeling of emotional nothingness. I knew this was going to happen from the very beginning, and so my sadness is balanced out by the happiness of having spent a fun and enjoyable 24 hours in his company before he leaves NC for good...

22/06/2008

Are men just generally a bit stupid or something? I've exchanged a couple of messages with this guy on Gaydar who sounds fairly normal and who looks alright in one of his pictures (although not so much in the others... But I'm willing to believe that the good picture is the most accurate portrayal of how he looks in real life), and because he's a student I was asking what he's doing this summer, and he said that he's off home for a month at the end of June... So err, why are you messaging me right before you're about to leave? If we were to meet up for a drink, say, this week, then it's going to be a bit random if I then didn't seem him for a month (remind you of anything?). Alternatively, I have to go to the effort of messaging him over the internet for another 5 weeks until I actually get to meet up with him. So why didn't he just message me when he gets back after the summer? Sigh.

On another note, I take back what I said about The Boy in my last couples of posts, because he's since made contact with me, and so hopefully I'll get to see him one last time before he disappears forever...

Why am I still thinking about him two months on?

Hmm, well reading my 06:00 post pack again, it seems fairly evident that I swear quite a lot when I'm drunk. Oh well. I went to bed and slept for about an hour, and then I sort of woke up feeling really strange, and was just lying there with really laboured breathing for quite a while and I tried to drink some more water. Then I slept for another hour, got up to pee, went back to bed and then had quite a good sleep right through til about 14:00. Oddly, despite feeling rough as fuck at about 07:30, I've woken up now feeling fine pretty much. Well, fine apart from the fact that I had a dream involving 'The Boy'. I can't get my head around quite what the situation was, except that there seemed to be a large crowd of people all leaving some building, and he was there, and he stopped and sat down and he was looking really sad. I went over to him and he was crying a bit and begging me not to leave the city and that I should stay here with him instead. Even though I know it was only a dream, it was sort of quite powerful 'seeing' him that upset. And obviously it's fucking ironic given that he's the one that's leaving NC. Also, just to repeat/clarify something I mentioned last night - yes, he did specifically ask if he'd see me again when he got back from his holiday. Not the other way around, I didn't ask to see him, it was him asking if he'd see me. Obviously I said yes, and so as such I've left it down to him to get in touch if he really does want to see me. These are his last two weeks in NC, and so I know that there are plenty more people that he wants to see before he leaves, and that in the grand scheme of things I'm basically just 'some guy' that he met at the end of his third year and so probably don't really matter all that much. I guess it just makes me doubt slightly how much he liked me in the first place, and therefore if he was simply trying to be polite in asking if he'd see me before he leaves NC. This is so stupid, it was back in like March/April time when we were dating and yet he still has some effect on me now - I thought I'd got him completely out of my system, and yet here I am still thinking about him. I'm going to have to meet a pretty special guy for me to get this one out of my head I think.

Tonight's random clubbing

Ahhh, yet another 'just got in from a big night out' post. It's 6:00AM, and I've had a random but really fun night. Basically just went out for a mate's birthday, but there was a load of drama when someone pretty much refused to come to the club that we wanted to go to. It ended up just being me, my mate, and her friend, but then my mate fucked off somewhere so it was just me and her friend dancing the night away... Had a surprisingly good night though, was a good laugh. Talked to this other girl quite a lot as well, we kept going out for cigarettes (well, not me, but I went out while she smoked) and we talked about loads of random stuff, and we both ended up telling each other about our respective man troubles... Fucking men. Twats. Fucking 'The Boy' was all like 'so will I see you when I get back from Europe?' before he went on holiday, and so obviously I said that of course he would, but has he got in touch with me? Has he fuck. I know he's been busy having a social life and everything, and in some respects I don't even want to see him again because I know it'll only make me want him more. But after that period when we were seeing each other, and I was really into him and I thought the feeling was mututal, I just thought he might make the effort to see me one more time before he leaves NC. Even if it's only as friends, because that's all I think I could cope with anyway, it'd just be nice to see him again before he leaves my life forever, and hopefully like agree to keep in touch or something, because I'd really like to stay in contact with him when he leaves. I'm fucking stupid as well because I keep looking at his Facebook page - and to be fair, it isn't helped when all his picture tags appear in my bloody News Feed because I can't help but click on them. There's a few from his holiday where he's looking OK, not all that hot really, but then there's another one that's just gone up today and he looks so cute in it... It still makes me feel quite sad to think that I won't get to see that cute smile looking at me again. Fucking stupid cute little bastard. And I'm fucking stupid to keep torturing myself like this, I think I should just ban myself from looking at his profile or something. I know that there's nothing that can be done about this, and he's going to be 1000s of miles away fairly soon, but I still wish that we'd met each other sooner and been able to give things a proper go. Rubbish. I think I want to message him one last time before he leaves, either text message or on Facebook, although I'm not quite sure what I want to say. I might just be very sensible and emotionally detached and tell him to have a good time in ________ or I might say that I really enjoyed getting to know him and the time that we spent together and that I'd like to stay in touch. I don't really know.

Anyway, I'm really fucking tired now, I really need to go to bed. I've been crap at updating this month, I know. I've been really busy with work and haven't really had that much going on that's been blogworthy. Will hopefully get back into the swing of things shortly.

Scans see 'gay brain differences'

Just seen this on BBC News - might be worth a click if you're interested in theories regarding the biological basis of homosexuality...

"The brains of gay men and women look like those found in heterosexual people of the opposite sex, research suggests. The Swedish study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal, compared the size of the brain's halves in 90 adults. Gay men and heterosexual women had halves of a similar size, while the right side was bigger in lesbian women and heterosexual men".

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7456588.stm

Running, the gym, and random nights out

I've just realised that I've completely forgotten to post anything for nearly a fortnight now, oops. So, what have I been up to since I last blogged? Well, not an awful lot to be honest, just the usual stuff like going running, going to the gym, going out drinking... The running's been really improving recently, although as a result of running increasingly long distances, I think I'm putting a lot more stress on my knees and ankles, and so they're sometimes a bit sore the day after a long run. I'm quite obsessive about trying to ensure my running technique is correct, I've read / watched quite a few things about running biomechanics, so I'm hoping that the soreness isn't a result of poor technique. I just worry that if any parts of my legs aren't feeling 100% right then I don't really want to go out running again and risk making anything worse - so like at the moment my left knee feels a bit dodgy if I put a lot of strain on it, so I've only been running once this week - might go out for a short run tomorrow and see how it feels.

I started doing weights at the gym again about a month ago as part of my renewed determination to improve the way my body looks. I used to do some weights when I was at uni before, but I never really had any idea of exactly what exercises I should be doing and mostly just went round the weights machines in my old gym. The other main problem was that every year I'd join after the New Year in like January / February time, go for a few months, and then during the summer time when I was away from uni I'd get completely out of going until I joined the following year, so I'd have like 6 months of going followed by 6 months of not going, and never really made much improvement. However, as I don't have lengthy summer holidays any more, I have no excuse not to just go to the gym all year round, and really make a go at putting some muscle on. As I think I've mentioned before, I'm really tall / slim, which is good, but just generally lacking in muscle around my upper body. My legs aren't too bad actually, I think I've got quite strong thighs, and the running is starting to give me some more definition in my calves, but in terms of arms, chest and abs... Yeah, I really need to put on some muscle there. So I've been trying to go like 3 times week, very loosely following a plan that I found here. It's been going alright so far, although I keep having to remind myself that this is going to be very much a long term project, and that I can't expect to see much of a difference in the short term. If nothing else though, it's nice when you spend however long using a certain weight, and then you realise after a while that you can increase the weight, so even if you can't exactly see the difference in the way your body looks, you know your strength must be improving if you can start lifting weights that are heavier.

Had quite a random night out last week with a bunch of people who I hardly knew... Actually, I'd never met most of them, and only vaguely knew one of them through somebody else who's only really an acquaintance. Basically, I was out clubbing like a month ago at this big dance night, and bumped into this girl who I'd met in the first week when I started here in NC. I had no idea she was into dance music, and I was quite surprised to see her there, so I messaged her later on that week saying how I only knew like one or two people here who are into clubbing, and she suggested that I go out with her and her friends. Only problem was that she was going to be away from NC for a couple of months, but she just told me to get in touch with this other friend of hers and that I should go out with them next time they went clubbing. So I actually didn't bother getting in touch with this friend, because I just thought it would be a bit weird messaging her out of the blue basically saying 'Hi, I know [mutual friend], can I come clubbing with you?' - but then I bumped into this girl on a course a couple of weeks ago and got talking to her, and she invited me out with them last week. Had quite a good night as well, and it was also quite random when I was at her house beforehand and there was this conversation to do with going to this gay night at one of the more indie type venues here, and so it got me wondering if she was a lesbian (and I'm not being harsh here, but she did look like she could be one), although then later on she made some reference to an old boyfriend of hers... I dunno, maybe she's bi or something. But the main point I'm getting round to is that she said she goes there with this other guy who I met that night who seemed like a nice guy, and I was also getting gay vibes off her fairly attractive male housemate that night as well... So I think I need to try and maintain this random new friendship, and maybe try to get to know this housemate of hers a bit better. We chatted a bit that night although he didn't come out clubbing with us, and he seemed really nice, and like I said before he was pretty good looking as well... Although he's also a smoker which is a bit of a turn off for me. There again, The Boy is a smoker as well and I still like(d) him, so yeah.

Speaking of The Boy, I had a message from him earlier for the first time in ages, which was nice I guess. Not a lot to say about it, it was just a 'how are you; what've you been up to?' sort of message. I replied a while ago but haven't heard back again, so I don't know if he might suggest meeting up before he goes on holiday or anything.

Then finally, bringing things right up to date, I had another late night out last night, didn't go to bed until some ridiculous hour for the second week in a row. Two of my housemates had some friends up, so we went out in town, ended up in this cool place that we've been to a few times now and danced for most of the night. I wasn't too drunk actually, although the same couldn't be said for most of the other people I was there with. My housemate G was hammered, and my other housemates' friends who'd come up were wrecked as well - I think one of them had to get taken home early because she was being sick, and as for the other one... Well basically, we were just dancing, and I think it was only the two of us for a while because the others had gone off somewhere briefly, and just totally out of the blue she asked me if I was gay. So I said yes, and then she was like 'yeah I didn't think you were straight', and I joked if it was due to me living with three girls. Then she starts asking if I've got a boyfriend, and then she comes out with that classic line used by all of those really irritating straight people when they're trying to sound all modern and liberal and cosmopolitan, 'yeah, it's cool though because I've got loads of gay friends' - as if I really needed that validation that she think it's fine for me to be gay because she has 'loads' of gay friends. How fucking patronising! And it's none of her fucking business anyway, she was basically a complete stranger, so I don't quite see a) why she cared, and b) why she thought it was appropriate to ask me. I mean I don't particularly take offence at these things, but in light of the fact that I'd barely spoken to her during the evening up until that point, I wasn't quite sure on what basis she was making her judgement on my sexuality. Was it because I live with three girls? Was it because I was sat drinking a glass of rosé earlier on in the evening? I have no idea, but anyways, she started talking to me later on, and she must have told B (who's frend she is) what she'd said, and B had informed her that, yes, it is quite rude to randomly ask a complete stranger if they're gay and so she made some half-assed apology and I just told her not to worry about it. She was pretty hammered, to be fair. But then the other odd thing involving her was when she pinched my ass a bit later on during the evening, and I just couldn't help but wonder if she's one of those pathetic, lonely, single, straight City girls who's so desperate for some male attention that she'd even go round pinching the ass of some guy who she knows is gay... Weird.