Whatever - when I am alone on business trips, or on a week like this week when she is gone to YW camp, I get all angsty inside. I want to burst open and explore my gay side. I become more anxious and pre-occupied with the physical, and with the flesh and I crave male affection. At the time, it may be refreshing, revealing, and enlivening, but still, in the end, I feel empty, guilty, lonely.
Tuesday night was my anniversary night, and I was alone and couldn't sleep. Instead of finding my journal and reflecting on my marriage, I went down to t
he computer and clicked on YouTube and watched "Shelter" and "Mulligans", two gay movies. I had seen Shelter before and really enjoy the coming-to-terms-with-being-gay reality story that if offers in a beautiful way. I had not seen Mulligans before. I probably shouldn't have watched it. It isn't great cinema (Shelter is much better as a piece of cinematography), but it isn't bad either, and is tastefully done. But the message for gay married men in the closet coming to terms with being gay, is one that hits very close to home. The pain caused by the married middle-aged father fooling around with his son's best friend and discovering an expression of his hidden gayness and an outsource for these closeted emotions, seems all too real and within the realm of possibilities for me. I don't want to ruin the ending for anyone caring to see it. And it makes me pause - what in the world am I doing?N
OTE: I moderately recommend it to married MOHOs - though the non-married crowd might think it's impossible and improbable that a married gay guy could live his life like this and hold out for so long and keep his family and marriage together and then all of a sudden lose it all when the right young guy comes to visit for the summer. Believe me when I say that this is more real than you non-married guys can even imagine. It is possible and probable - and therefore all the scarier. I think I read something from a gay film reviewer that thought the story was a joke and couldn't be taken seriously - "how could a gay guy that hot stay in the closet that long?" - etc.I was driving around on errands yesterday, with lots of gay angst going on, and desiring so much to be held by JAF (my MOHO "just a friend"). I wanted him to hold me, but I knew in this mood I was in, it wouldn't have been a good thing. I had conjured up a way that we could rendezvous in the canyon where we could just walk, and talk, and be alone and...
Well, I was sane enough to text him instead, and tell him I was in this crazy mood and couldn't see him... and I kept driving and I returned home.
I can't seem to concentrate on work. I'm blogging when I should be working. I'm melancholy and out-of-sorts. I can't focus on anything but what I can't and shouldn't desire.
Anyway, I hate me when I get in these moods... :(
I hate this life...
ARRGGHHH!!!
I hope for a better holiday weekend!
20 comments:
May your gay pon farr end quietly and quickly.
This one seems to be lingering longer than usual, and seems to be much louder and obnoxious than usual. I'm still out of sorts today and feel like running into the mountains and stripping naked.
But, I know you understand.
I find it helps me most to change my focus for a week or three. That helps the pon farr subside.
I completely understand what you mean by it being worse when your wife is gone. It eliminates the focus and an object of affection, and hopefully a source of affection.
One of my biggest problems in my marriage right now is having no source of affection. Needless to say, I feel it badly.
I suppose it also has something to do with obstacles being temporarily removed.
Stripping in the mountains sounds fun, just not when its raining.
KENGO: How do you change focus? How do you get past it when all you want to do is focus more on it?
JOE: So, seeing you're worse off than me, and seeing you're not opposed to strippin' naked in the mountains, when do you want to go?
Does anyone else want to go? Maybe we could go for a naked hike up my mountain! Any takers?
Maybe we could go for a naked hike up my mountain!
Just think of the headline:
Aging MoHo Hikers Arrested for Baring with the Bears!
ABE: You laugh but in this mood I'm in, I'm dead serious. I think it would be fun.
***
On another note, has anyone else seen the movie "Mulligans"? I am interested in what review comments or impressions anyone had on this movie. I found it on YouTube. It is divided into multi-sections, but the entire movie is there.
I'd be particularly interested in any comments from the married MOHOs verses the non-married MOHOs on this movie.
Any feedback?
Beck, I totally relate the feelings expressed in your post. I am not my best self without my wife. I suppose that is why God designed a plan for us to be helpmates for each other.
Stay out of the woods. I hear they shoot bears these days :)
I was also feeling angtsy yesterday. My lunch plans fell through and ate at my desk alone. Then came a moment of serendipity (yes, Sarah, I always think of you now when that word comes to mind.)
I needed someone physically strong to help me with a routine task, but the associate I would usually ask wasn't around. So I asked someone else that I could easily crush on. He not only helped me, but smiled, did so gladly, and talked with me for a couple of minutes. Three times he said if you need something else I'm happy to help. Three times. It made my day. It reduced my angst.
So, Beck, I wonder this: The next time your pon farr is flaring up, maybe asking for help isn't such a bad idea. Could it be that our pon farr is our soul's need to connect, not necessarily sexually, but in a genuine, satisfying way?
Ha ha. You know, I have gone hiking naked up in the mountains with Tobi. (No joke.) It is fun and very healing. Naked camping is fun, too. (But you do have to watch out for mosquitoes.)
Laugh, live and love. It's all good.
BRAVONE: Yes, there is something to the helpmate concept: "... it is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help-meet for him." (Genesis 2:18).
I am open to the concept that this does not have to be exclusively a "wife", but a help-meet may be a need that we all have, whether married or not - someone to lean on, to cuddle and love, to be our best around, and to be our best for. I know for me, that is the case.
I think if I accept these cycles of "gay pon farr" as Abelard likes to call them as being fairly regular (as they seem they are), and if I plotted them on a calendar, I wouldn't be surprised to find that they coincide with my being away from home, or my wife away from home. Could that be one of the triggering devices? Do I get into these moods because I need that connection constantly in my life, and if I don't have it with my wife, then I'll naturally crave it and since I naturally crave male connections then that is where I gravitate?
NED: You're right! I should have just reached out to "just a friend" and allowed him to help me through this moment. And who knows if he needed my help as well.
Did I rob him of an experience he needed? Was I selfish in keeping to myself while in this mood instead of engaging him as a friend should? Am I afraid to allow friends to help me? Am I embarrassed for being needy and requiring reinforcement? Aren't I supposed to be strong? What about all the caution bells and sirens going off? Aren't I supposed to pay attention to them?
All these questions go through my mind. I promise myself, however, that next time it happens (and it will happen again - experience tells me) where I feel weak and desire male affection beyond the norm, I will reach out to JAF and seek confirmation and strength from him. This is a promise!
MOHOH: When I first came out to myself five summers ago, I'll admit I stripped naked, climbed to the top of a mountain and screamed at the top of my lungs to the universe that I was gay! It was very healing.
I haven't done it since, but I feel the need to do so again.
Now, naked camping is something I haven't done since Scout camp in the Uintahs - but that's another story. But, in this mood, I think naked camping sounds fun, too.
Maybe some naked sunbathing on the Great Salt Lake?
I stripped naked, climbed to the top of a mountain and screamed at the top of my lungs to the universe that I was gay! It was very healing.
Maybe that's my problem - Dang! we don't have any mountains around here - the highest point is the top of a freeway overpass :(
I think that climbing naked to the top of a freeway overpass might give people the wrong idea...
ABE: I know of a few pretty high overpasses at the DFW airport that you could try! :)
a few times over a number of years, finding myself in deserted areas, i have stripped (except shoes of course) and run nude. there is a sense of freedom and impowerment, but then i think, what if someone saw me, my wife learns of it, my life unravels...
I had no idea there were so many closeted naturists here in the queerosphere.
Beck,
So I went up in the mountains today--fully clothed. Was thinking all the bugs might be quite an annoyance if naked. Shoes also would be a necessity...
I think it is time for this community to organize the 1st annual MOHO "nature hike"! Seeing the comments posted here, are there any takers?
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