a moment, a love, a dream, a laugh, a kiss, a cry, our rights, & our wrongs.
Scene from Imaginary Heroes about love.
Son: "People are so stupid I can't bare to live around them anymore."
Mom: "And they only get worse. You just have to find the one quality that makes them bearable--Like me--I'm your mother so you have to like me."
Mom: "The truth is you won't ever understand how good for you I am until I'm dead."
Son: "Sometimes I feel like I don't fit into this family."
Mom: "You're too much like me, people like us--we don't fit in everywhere."
*clears throat*
*tap tap tap*
Is this thing on? Do you remember me? Will you remember me? Did you think I died? I did die, a couple of times but I came back. I was also injured a few times: emotionally and physically--you know me so well. You're probably laughing or rolling your eyes (or plotting my downfall like old times). I could ramble about what and where I've been for the last three years but I'll just start with what I did tonight and go from there? I missed you. I have so much to tell you!
Oh wait I should start with that little movie scene above. I turned on my Live Journal after four years and it asked me if I wanted to continue with the draft I'd already started (years earlier) I thought it was apropos considering what I'm going to write about. It's a scene from one of my favorite films: Imaginary Heroes. You know how I love to watch a movie to death because there is something about it I want to feel, or I did feel, or I want to relive and/or understand. Then I make everyone I love at the time watch it. I totally judge them by the way they react to the film. If they love it--I still love them as much as I did--if they didn't I die a little. When they really love it, I think to myself: "I knew I was right about this person. They get it. They get me! I love them. I want to cry. I want to love them." Wow I'm so emotional tonight that little bit of free association actually brought a real tear to my eye!
*cracks open a Mikes (light) Hard Cranberry Lemonade (only 3 carbs per bottle)*
Ya look at me, drinking the hard stuff now. Remember when I wouldn't drink anything harder than a White Russian? Okay we need some music and the soundtrack to my new favorite film just finished downloading. You know I love the film scores, gosh I have over 700 of them now but this is the soundtrack. The music so perfectly fit the film--it's one of the few times I thought a film could have been disserviced by a score instead of a soundtrack. Cruel Intentions is another film where I feel glad they ditched John Ottman's score and went with the soundtrack they went with. Would any other piece of musical accompaniment in the universe have worked as much as "Bittersweet Symphony" by The Verve in that final scene where Katherine is exposed as a liar and a fraud? Powerful stuff. But that's not the film I want to talk about tonight. The film--the reason I'm here! Yes I'll get to that lemme fire up the iTunes.
*puts The Temper Traps "Sweet Disposition" on repeat*
"sweet disposition
never too soon
oh reckless abandon
like no one's
watching you"
Okay, so I just saw the film 500 Days of Summer and it sorta inspired me to start writing again. I guess I probably stopped for all the wrong reasons that felt right at the time. It was probably over a guy, okay why am I saying probably, I know it was over a guy, well two guys, a bunch of guys really but mostly one guy that I thought I loved, then I never came back because of guy that I did love. But I continued to stay away for all the guys who tried to tear me down for their own personal reasons that probably had nothing to do with me.
Lemme say I swore if I came back I would be totally 100% honest like I used to be. I wouldn't filter my thoughts because I thought someone was reading them. That's when my passion for writing ended when I was censoring myself to please others. I don't want it to be like before. And when I say before I mean I let the fact that: No one wanted to date GaryJr drive me away. No one wanted to be GaryJr's boyfriend and have their life put in front of the world to be judged by a boy who once took photos of himself naked next to a cake he pretended to eat while pretending he had an eating disorder. Well the eating disorder he was mocking in the photos. Because we all know I have Body Dysmorphic disorder. I know I'm not perfect I think that's why you identify with me. I fuck up Big, I mistake Big, I try to have a good time, I try to be introspective to the point of no return. Sometimes I learn from it, mostly I repeat the same cycle endlessly but sometimes magic happens. I have grown some--as you'll learn if you are still out there. I see from my friends list a lot of my favorites are gone. Gosh I'm trailing. Okay focus, so I left because the guy I was dating didn't like it, he didn't like the attention it generated for me or our relationship. Then there were the constant haters--people who liked to anonymously bombard me with hate. I'm not sure what drives these people to say and do terrible things to someone they don't know, and if they did know me, how they could get much joy from trying to hurt me with their words and not taking the credit and being a man about it. You know? Like Mama Sweet used to say, "If you put good into the world, you will get it back." Okay, that sounds cliched and universal but it doesn't really mean anything to you unless someone you really loved unconditionally and you felt returned that love in that moment says it to you. So haters be damned, I'm back--go ahead make fun. Tease me, hurt me, try and break me, I don't care anymore. I'm not as weak anymore, I'm stronger and heck you'll get yours in some for or another. It doesn't have to be from me. Life is too short to sweat stuff like that. I've been hit by enough buses, cars and trucks to know--it could all end tomorrow. Wow I'm really rolling with the cliches tonight. I guess they wouldn't be cliches if they weren't true though right?
"just stay there
cause i'll be comin over
and while our bloods still young
it's so young
it runs
and we won't stop til it's over
won't stop to surrender"
So where was I? Yes, after things ended with the boy I thought I loved I met the boy I did love. He never knew GaryJr. He'd never heard of me. He'd never seen the endless parade of workout progress photos. He'd never seen my website, my webzine and he'd certainly never seen me cry in a photograph. He'd never seen me go off in a journal entry. He'd never seen me get real with the world my inner most thoughts and emotions. He didn't know anything about my previous lost loves, my dysfunctional family or my fractured friendships. He just knew me as the boy who wanted to have children since he left home and realized he didn't want to keep trying to kill himself. He wanted to live. And he wanted to have a family and he wanted to live happily ever after like they do in the movies and in soap operas. The boy who watched too much TV, threw his heart into the people he loved. He even pinned his hopes on humanity on them. He wore his heart on his sleeve and he always meant well. He was a super dork. He collected vintage metal lunchboxes, he liked film scores, he would go to any lengths to get a laugh even at his expense. He chased a dream about a white picket fence, and a husband and a family of his very own. When I first told him I wanted a family, and children over the phone because we met online and hadn't yet met in person, he actually cried. His voice cracked and I heard it. In that moment, I was in love with someone I'd never met in person. We'd shared a tender moment from one human being to another. I'd reached him on a level I haven't reached anyone in a long long long time. I was always the one reacting to situations. I was never the one to create a reaction. Certainly never a positive gesture as tears of joy. He told me he felt stupid but that he never thought he'd find another guy who'd want a family. He felt so lucky to have found me. Me?! Lil' old fractured me! I had him at "family".
"a moment, a love
a dream, a laugh
a moment, a love
a dream, a laugh"
I flew to Minnesota and spent a week with him. He came to the airport in his beat up truck with a rose. I was afraid to look at him. I didn't want him to see how ugly I thought I was. He later told me, he was so in love with me and I was everything he'd hoped I would be. It was an amazing week. I didn't want to leave. We eventually flew back and forth and it was hard but I never thought I'd find love again after Jeff. I thought it was over for me. I'd gone back into my cave until this spelunking Greek Olympiad Cheerleader came knocking at my cave-door. After a few months on a visit to Boston, he jumped out of bed and rustled through his bag and got on his knees at the side of my bed and proposed to me. I was stunned. I'm always the one who rushes head long into love without thinking and he was now the one doing it. I blurted out, "of course!" without thinking. He was so happy and apologized and hoped the ring he bought would fit. He bought a pair for both of us to wear. We were very happy, beyond happy but part of my mind, my intuition was nagging at me, telling me I shouldn't tell people. They'd judge us. They try to spoil our love. Or was it because I was afraid it would end and I didn't want to look foolish? Who knows? I started with the people I work with. They were so happy because they hadn't seen me this happy in a very long time. It did come out accidentally with my best friend Joel--he was crushed when he realized no one knew. I feel our relationship took a large hit at that point in time. I eventually told my family,we were getting married and they couldn't have been more supportive. He never told anyone in his own family about me. He only partially acknowledged he was gay before they threatened to kick him out their lives forever. They lived far away in Texas so I guess we were going to cross that bridge when we came to it.
"songs of desperation
I played them for you
a moment, a love
a dream, a laugh
a kiss, a cry"
Eventually, the most optimistic, happy-go-lucky guy I'd ever met who hung on my every word, who laughed at every stupid joke I cracked started to turn dark, and defeatist, his glass was suddenly always half empty if not broken (by me even when I wasn't around to possibly be guilty). Oh I should say that this movie I just saw, 500 Days of Summer captured these moments perfectly. You know those moments in a relationship when you see small tiny signs that things are coming undone but not by any specific occurrence. You reach for their hand and they pull away casually. Some bit that used to make them laugh, only makes them give you that fake half smile. Suddenly they're sick of "your music". They suddenly stop making plans for the future. They don't always call when they say they will. Your heart starts to panic and analyze and judge but nothing substantial has really occurred. If you think about it too long you have a shortness of breath because you think this person is the one and you can't possibly lose them. It would be a tragedy of Titanic proportions. And the smallest things turn into daggers in your heart. But you soldier on because you don't want to rock the boat. You try to avoid ice burg topics. You put your big fucking Paris Hilton blinders on and you don't want to have that conversation and get dumped. You can't go through that again.
So I clearly wasn't getting the point, so he started exploding on me for stupid things like the fact that I didn't like meat. How could he marry someone who didn't like meat, what would we do if he wanted to go for a steak he asked? I said, "I'd get the fish?? Why are we fighting about this?" We argued for over a half hour about this until he hung up on me. I. kid. you. not. He hung up. Now on the surface right now you're probably thinking: something was not right with him. But I was so caught up in it and things began to unravel so fast I couldn't keep up with the arguments enough to react to how I was being treated. I just did everything I could to save "us". I was battening down the hatches, saving the women and children and I was determined to not go down with this ship without the fight of a lifetime.
Soon, the fights would get worse and more direct, "I don't think I could live in Boston, it rains too much. It's not warm enough. Your place is too small." How far could he push me before I would just put us out of our misery. How about, "You're starting to get a little chunky?" *not so subtle pokes at my belly* Seriously, me, I'm 150lbs soaking wet. He suddenly hated my haircut. Why did I "always wear it like this", am I "trying to look younger than I am". Well, "No it's just the only haircut that looks good on me." I'm not sure it had anything to do with his friends all in their early 20's thinking I was younger than him when he was only 24. It's probably the impish/shy way I carry myself in conversation when I don't know people. I'm a wall flower. I'm a shrinking violet when I don't know you. It's like that old line, well it's an old line for me anyway, when I meet new people online: "I can't believe you don't have a boyfriend! Are the guys in Boston, blind or stupid?" Me: "I don't know, I get ignored every day of my life. Maybe I should walk around with my shirt off because that's the only difference between my interweb life and my real life." Well that and I'm not afraid to speak my mind online an project all the confidence of a professional wrestler because I don't think anyone actually reads this shit. I have no walls or reason to get shy. I'm alone in my condo. Oh that was another problem, "I'm not outgoing enough for him." Then it was, "I'm tired of being on the bottom." Even though I said I was saving 'that' for marriage and he said he could live with that. Then it was, "I don't think I want to have children for a long time" knowing I don't want to be 50 with a 10 year old. Suddenly it was I've put in for internships in other parts of the country instead of Boston. "But I live in Boston?" I thought with great despair.
Slowly, I began to hate myself for loving him and not having the balls to tell him to go to fucking hell: I wasn't fat, I wasn't trying to be young, just who I was, I was always going to be shy and warm up to people on my own terms, and I would get the fucking fish or chicken and he could get whatever the fuck he wanted because I wasn't going to be by his side--I'd be in another restaurant across the country far the fuck away from him. Oh and I also grew to hate him for never telling me he didn't love me anymore. Instead thought of crueler and crueler ways to show me like threwing himself at his new best friend in front of me. He would tell me I should be more like him. I should be butcher like him. He would call him at night when we were on vacation together. He'd spend his entire birthday party by his side and only came to my side when someone saw I had gone to the rooftop to cry. I even caught them wrestling in their underwear when I was in the shower and he berated me when I had a problem with that. God did I hate myself for not telling him to drop dead. Eventually we broke up for the first time when I flew out to MN to drive cross country with him to Arizona for his first internship. He barely kissed me when I arrived, he had his roommate pick me up and he was yelling at me from the start, I couldn't do anything right. I was packing stuff wrong. I was too slow, "just do something he'd yell!?" But what I thought. I. couldn't. do. anything. right. I was paralyzed.
The trip was long. At one point I was so tired, I started to get real. I was tired of the throw away comments, the derogatory remarks. We got into an explosive argument where I was throwing out all the shit I could so he would know how much he's hurt me but he was so good at turning things around on me. I would get so flustered because I don't like putting negative explosive things out there. I stutter, I get confused and I forget what it is I'm trying to say. At the same time I felt empowered, enraged, and devastated as we were racing down a mountain road in the middle of nowhere in the dark. I could feel my hand creeping up on the handle of the door. I was catching my breath and he was launching into me with a verbal attack. My heart was racing, I felt my hand gripping the handle harder still. I was exploding from the inside physically, I could feel my body shaking. I wanted him to feel something, I wanted him to suffer the way he'd made me suffer. Suddenly I was 12 years old again, I wanted him to hurt like I thought all the kids, and my Mom and Dad would suffer if I'd killed myself. They all made me suffer so I wanted them to suffer and I thought by dying they would somehow suffer. I was squeezing that door handle, staring out into the mountainside--no where to go but down if I didn't hit a tree and decapitate myself first. I looked back at him, he was railing against me in the most hateful tone. I thought to myself this is crazy. I verbalized it. I screamed out, "What have I ever done to you to deserve all the hate, the posturing about what a failure I am as a person. I've done nothing but love and support you, and fly all over the country to be with you. I've taken your abuse and for what. TELL ME WHAT I HAVE EVER DONE TO YOU. WHY DO YOU SUDDENLY HATE ME? I'm the same person I've always been. Why do you have to say white if I should black!" I was this close to a panic attack, my heart was literally pounding in my chest-I could see it. I wanted to pull that handle so bad. I wanted to die only to make him feel something because he just looked back at me and laughed, like I was insignificant. I meant nothing to him. I was someone he could abuse because he could. He was a bipolar monster who lived to love and destroy people, I'd seen him do it to people he'd called friends and I would be his latest victim. He's lucky I wasn't driving because I was so engulfed in rage and despair I would have driven us both off that mountainside to our deaths. Put simply I had finally seen myself and him clearly--I didn't recognize the pathetic person who was putting up with the worst shit imaginable from another human being. Who was this tool? Certainly not me. The love was dead then and I fell into robot coping mode.
Most times when we'd have an explosive argument over stupid things, he'd apologize up and down and blame himself, "he's stressed and taking it out on the one thing that means the most to him." I fell for that again and again. I was a living walking Lifetime movie. My friends thought I was nuts. Gary he's not right. Something is emotionally wrong with him. It was disgusting. Eventually, we broke up and got back together so much in the final days I wasn't sure what our status was until he broke up with me over the phone with his roommate in the car. He "couldn't really talk freely" but was practically breaking up with me in code. I was stunned. I screamed a blood curdling scream. If a human voice could break glass this surely would have been one of those screams. I could feel the poison leaving my body. I ran around the condo grabbing anything that reminded me of him, a photo, a card, a letter, a fortune cookie fortune, luggage tags, little sketches he'd made for me, candy hearts, postcards--EVERYTHING he'd ever given me, the menu from our first date, the rose from the day he picked me up, THE RING...I took it all, and I locked it in the box I bought him for Christmas before I'd even met him. It was a large antique writing box with a hidden bottom and it still had the working key. When I met him, I was so convinced I would marry him that I wore the key around my neck and I gave it to him before I left and told him, never to take it off and that some day he'd know what it was for and it would change his life. You see I had hoped to plan on asking him to marry me some day. I'd found my lobster and we were going to live happily ever after. I was going to fill the box with memories of our life up to that point and in the hidden bottom, I'd place the ring. It sounded so romantic in my head. This box (and the key I'd secretly taken back from him on my last trip back because I knew it was over) was now going to house all these haunted memories, mementos of a destructive relationship that nearly rotten my soul to death with enough toxicity to kill a third world country. I threw the ring he gave me in the secret compartment and sealed it. I locked that box and it's been sealed since October 2007 when we broke up.
He eventually called, and texted, and tried to apologize in several phone calls months and months later. He did take an internship in Boston and called me en route, he called me downstairs from my condo, he rang the buzzer and called several times after that. I never answered. He's called or texted me on every major holiday and birthday since. I have never responded to any of it. I've also never really put my heart into another man again. I've gone on a few failed one dates and even tried to turn a friendship into something more but quickly realized that I had inadvertently locked my heart in that box in October of 2007 as well. And it's been locked up every since.
"our rights, our wrongs (won't stop til it's over)
a moment, a love
a dream, a laugh
a moment, a love
a moment, a love (won't stop to surrender)"
So I saw this movie tonight, and it hadn't really hit me until I saw this boy, living my life up on the big screen, living the moments I lived that I realized I was in this movie. The good, the bad, the ugly, it was me. I was the boy who lived for fate, chance meetings, the circle of life to find me, love--it was out there and I just had to be in the right place at the right time. And when you have your heart trampled not once but twice, and you're so badly beaten you just quit. The dream died. You become a shell in a routine for a while but like a man who loses an arm you begin to function like you never lost it to begin with. By looking at you, you'd think you had it all together. And while my heart was so damaged and dismantled and cut from my body like an autopsy corpse and locked in a box, my body eventually began to function again, not realizes my heart was gone. I was a functioning member of planet Earth--I was just missing a heart. A heart that until this week was locked in a box in my bedroom with all those other painful mementos and memories.
I opened that box this week. I owed my friend money which I forgot about and I just got a new ATM card and I didn't know the pin. I had to pay him that night and I happen to keep some emergency money in that bottom of that box as well that I obviously haven't needed to touch in the last two years. I put the box on the table and thought, "Gary this is stupid, it's just a box full of stupid shit. You need to pay Joel. Open the box." I sat there, thinking "Open the box". For good juju I went and got the Wiccan pentacle Mama Sweet made me when she said I was a natural witch, she said it would protect me, I'd never thought I needed protection from the bad juju of a failed romance until now so I figured it couldn't hurt. I sat down in front of the box again thinking "open the box. open. the. box." The key was still around my neck. I wear it sometimes as a symbol of strength more than anything else. I quickly grabbed the money, and slammed the box closed. I noticed a stray bag on the table and opened the box again and dumped everything in the bag. Assorted things spilled onto the floor, memories were flooding back. I grabbed them as fast as I could, threw them in the bag and hurled it into the corner of my room. I was overcome for a moment but quickly grabbed a stack of 20's and ran out the door to Joel's. That bag is still in the corner where I threw it. I'm not quite sure where to put it or what to do with it. I've ignored it all week.
Back to the movie, I don't want to ruin it for you because I want you to see it, it's a film 95% of the population can identify with. It's about human relationships, specifically love and more specifically for people who believe in fate and happy endings and have had their hopes dashed. As expected there is an ending that I can say will leave you satisfied and it wasn't thankfully the Hollywood ending I was hoping wouldn't occur. I can say it leaves you with hope (without totally ruining the movie for you because lets face it--could it end any other way? This is Hollywood after all). I realized as the credits came up that I didn't just lock my heart away in that box but my hope as well. I had given up that I would ever find love. I'd accepted it and soldiered on. I'd given up that I'd ever have a family. I'd given up that I'd meet someone who wasn't bipolar, or paralyzed by jealousy, someone who didn't think he was too damaged to be with me, someone who wasn't in it for what I could do for him, but someone who wanted to love me because he loved me because I made him feel like no one else could make him feel--like he made me feel.
So I decided, tonight, to start doing things for me--to stop protecting myself from myself. To share, to dream aloud, to cry, to laugh and mean it, to write--to get it all out and stop ignoring it. To have hope, that some days all the things I've dreamt about will come into being for me. I want to start taking chances again, even if that means I stumble and fall. I mean if I can ride head long into a moving truck, or get hit by a bus, or slide into a homeless person on a bench all going upwards of 20 mph on my bike and walk away with only a few scrapes I can certainly afford to be less careful with a heart that hasn't seen the light of day in about 2 years. I need to stop shutting people off when they do things that hurt me and face them head on--and move forward with or without them and know it's for the best. In the end I believe God or Goddess “repays a man for what he has done; he brings upon him what his conduct deserves.” and if I follow those rules of the universe I hope things will work out for me in the end. Phew. Glad I got that off my chest. Welcome back, new old me, it's nice to see you; it's been a long time!
Well I hope I didn't bore you to death with this explosion of introspection. Feel free to ignore it but big props to you if you read the whole damn thing. If you're close to me it was probably hard to read, it was hard to make these realizations about myself as sometimes these things are but thanks for pushing through.
Scene from The Notebook about love.
Noah: "I am nothing special; just a common man with common thoughts, and I've led a common life. There are no monuments dedicated to me and my name will soon be forgotten. But in one respect I have succeeded as gloriously as anyone who's ever lived: I've loved another with all my heart and soul; and to me, this has always been enough."
Son: "People are so stupid I can't bare to live around them anymore."
Mom: "And they only get worse. You just have to find the one quality that makes them bearable--Like me--I'm your mother so you have to like me."
Mom: "The truth is you won't ever understand how good for you I am until I'm dead."
Son: "Sometimes I feel like I don't fit into this family."
Mom: "You're too much like me, people like us--we don't fit in everywhere."
*clears throat*
*tap tap tap*
Is this thing on? Do you remember me? Will you remember me? Did you think I died? I did die, a couple of times but I came back. I was also injured a few times: emotionally and physically--you know me so well. You're probably laughing or rolling your eyes (or plotting my downfall like old times). I could ramble about what and where I've been for the last three years but I'll just start with what I did tonight and go from there? I missed you. I have so much to tell you!
Oh wait I should start with that little movie scene above. I turned on my Live Journal after four years and it asked me if I wanted to continue with the draft I'd already started (years earlier) I thought it was apropos considering what I'm going to write about. It's a scene from one of my favorite films: Imaginary Heroes. You know how I love to watch a movie to death because there is something about it I want to feel, or I did feel, or I want to relive and/or understand. Then I make everyone I love at the time watch it. I totally judge them by the way they react to the film. If they love it--I still love them as much as I did--if they didn't I die a little. When they really love it, I think to myself: "I knew I was right about this person. They get it. They get me! I love them. I want to cry. I want to love them." Wow I'm so emotional tonight that little bit of free association actually brought a real tear to my eye!
*cracks open a Mikes (light) Hard Cranberry Lemonade (only 3 carbs per bottle)*
Ya look at me, drinking the hard stuff now. Remember when I wouldn't drink anything harder than a White Russian? Okay we need some music and the soundtrack to my new favorite film just finished downloading. You know I love the film scores, gosh I have over 700 of them now but this is the soundtrack. The music so perfectly fit the film--it's one of the few times I thought a film could have been disserviced by a score instead of a soundtrack. Cruel Intentions is another film where I feel glad they ditched John Ottman's score and went with the soundtrack they went with. Would any other piece of musical accompaniment in the universe have worked as much as "Bittersweet Symphony" by The Verve in that final scene where Katherine is exposed as a liar and a fraud? Powerful stuff. But that's not the film I want to talk about tonight. The film--the reason I'm here! Yes I'll get to that lemme fire up the iTunes.
*puts The Temper Traps "Sweet Disposition" on repeat*
"sweet disposition
never too soon
oh reckless abandon
like no one's
watching you"
Okay, so I just saw the film 500 Days of Summer and it sorta inspired me to start writing again. I guess I probably stopped for all the wrong reasons that felt right at the time. It was probably over a guy, okay why am I saying probably, I know it was over a guy, well two guys, a bunch of guys really but mostly one guy that I thought I loved, then I never came back because of guy that I did love. But I continued to stay away for all the guys who tried to tear me down for their own personal reasons that probably had nothing to do with me.
Lemme say I swore if I came back I would be totally 100% honest like I used to be. I wouldn't filter my thoughts because I thought someone was reading them. That's when my passion for writing ended when I was censoring myself to please others. I don't want it to be like before. And when I say before I mean I let the fact that: No one wanted to date GaryJr drive me away. No one wanted to be GaryJr's boyfriend and have their life put in front of the world to be judged by a boy who once took photos of himself naked next to a cake he pretended to eat while pretending he had an eating disorder. Well the eating disorder he was mocking in the photos. Because we all know I have Body Dysmorphic disorder. I know I'm not perfect I think that's why you identify with me. I fuck up Big, I mistake Big, I try to have a good time, I try to be introspective to the point of no return. Sometimes I learn from it, mostly I repeat the same cycle endlessly but sometimes magic happens. I have grown some--as you'll learn if you are still out there. I see from my friends list a lot of my favorites are gone. Gosh I'm trailing. Okay focus, so I left because the guy I was dating didn't like it, he didn't like the attention it generated for me or our relationship. Then there were the constant haters--people who liked to anonymously bombard me with hate. I'm not sure what drives these people to say and do terrible things to someone they don't know, and if they did know me, how they could get much joy from trying to hurt me with their words and not taking the credit and being a man about it. You know? Like Mama Sweet used to say, "If you put good into the world, you will get it back." Okay, that sounds cliched and universal but it doesn't really mean anything to you unless someone you really loved unconditionally and you felt returned that love in that moment says it to you. So haters be damned, I'm back--go ahead make fun. Tease me, hurt me, try and break me, I don't care anymore. I'm not as weak anymore, I'm stronger and heck you'll get yours in some for or another. It doesn't have to be from me. Life is too short to sweat stuff like that. I've been hit by enough buses, cars and trucks to know--it could all end tomorrow. Wow I'm really rolling with the cliches tonight. I guess they wouldn't be cliches if they weren't true though right?
"just stay there
cause i'll be comin over
and while our bloods still young
it's so young
it runs
and we won't stop til it's over
won't stop to surrender"
So where was I? Yes, after things ended with the boy I thought I loved I met the boy I did love. He never knew GaryJr. He'd never heard of me. He'd never seen the endless parade of workout progress photos. He'd never seen my website, my webzine and he'd certainly never seen me cry in a photograph. He'd never seen me go off in a journal entry. He'd never seen me get real with the world my inner most thoughts and emotions. He didn't know anything about my previous lost loves, my dysfunctional family or my fractured friendships. He just knew me as the boy who wanted to have children since he left home and realized he didn't want to keep trying to kill himself. He wanted to live. And he wanted to have a family and he wanted to live happily ever after like they do in the movies and in soap operas. The boy who watched too much TV, threw his heart into the people he loved. He even pinned his hopes on humanity on them. He wore his heart on his sleeve and he always meant well. He was a super dork. He collected vintage metal lunchboxes, he liked film scores, he would go to any lengths to get a laugh even at his expense. He chased a dream about a white picket fence, and a husband and a family of his very own. When I first told him I wanted a family, and children over the phone because we met online and hadn't yet met in person, he actually cried. His voice cracked and I heard it. In that moment, I was in love with someone I'd never met in person. We'd shared a tender moment from one human being to another. I'd reached him on a level I haven't reached anyone in a long long long time. I was always the one reacting to situations. I was never the one to create a reaction. Certainly never a positive gesture as tears of joy. He told me he felt stupid but that he never thought he'd find another guy who'd want a family. He felt so lucky to have found me. Me?! Lil' old fractured me! I had him at "family".
"a moment, a love
a dream, a laugh
a moment, a love
a dream, a laugh"
I flew to Minnesota and spent a week with him. He came to the airport in his beat up truck with a rose. I was afraid to look at him. I didn't want him to see how ugly I thought I was. He later told me, he was so in love with me and I was everything he'd hoped I would be. It was an amazing week. I didn't want to leave. We eventually flew back and forth and it was hard but I never thought I'd find love again after Jeff. I thought it was over for me. I'd gone back into my cave until this spelunking Greek Olympiad Cheerleader came knocking at my cave-door. After a few months on a visit to Boston, he jumped out of bed and rustled through his bag and got on his knees at the side of my bed and proposed to me. I was stunned. I'm always the one who rushes head long into love without thinking and he was now the one doing it. I blurted out, "of course!" without thinking. He was so happy and apologized and hoped the ring he bought would fit. He bought a pair for both of us to wear. We were very happy, beyond happy but part of my mind, my intuition was nagging at me, telling me I shouldn't tell people. They'd judge us. They try to spoil our love. Or was it because I was afraid it would end and I didn't want to look foolish? Who knows? I started with the people I work with. They were so happy because they hadn't seen me this happy in a very long time. It did come out accidentally with my best friend Joel--he was crushed when he realized no one knew. I feel our relationship took a large hit at that point in time. I eventually told my family,we were getting married and they couldn't have been more supportive. He never told anyone in his own family about me. He only partially acknowledged he was gay before they threatened to kick him out their lives forever. They lived far away in Texas so I guess we were going to cross that bridge when we came to it.
"songs of desperation
I played them for you
a moment, a love
a dream, a laugh
a kiss, a cry"
Eventually, the most optimistic, happy-go-lucky guy I'd ever met who hung on my every word, who laughed at every stupid joke I cracked started to turn dark, and defeatist, his glass was suddenly always half empty if not broken (by me even when I wasn't around to possibly be guilty). Oh I should say that this movie I just saw, 500 Days of Summer captured these moments perfectly. You know those moments in a relationship when you see small tiny signs that things are coming undone but not by any specific occurrence. You reach for their hand and they pull away casually. Some bit that used to make them laugh, only makes them give you that fake half smile. Suddenly they're sick of "your music". They suddenly stop making plans for the future. They don't always call when they say they will. Your heart starts to panic and analyze and judge but nothing substantial has really occurred. If you think about it too long you have a shortness of breath because you think this person is the one and you can't possibly lose them. It would be a tragedy of Titanic proportions. And the smallest things turn into daggers in your heart. But you soldier on because you don't want to rock the boat. You try to avoid ice burg topics. You put your big fucking Paris Hilton blinders on and you don't want to have that conversation and get dumped. You can't go through that again.
So I clearly wasn't getting the point, so he started exploding on me for stupid things like the fact that I didn't like meat. How could he marry someone who didn't like meat, what would we do if he wanted to go for a steak he asked? I said, "I'd get the fish?? Why are we fighting about this?" We argued for over a half hour about this until he hung up on me. I. kid. you. not. He hung up. Now on the surface right now you're probably thinking: something was not right with him. But I was so caught up in it and things began to unravel so fast I couldn't keep up with the arguments enough to react to how I was being treated. I just did everything I could to save "us". I was battening down the hatches, saving the women and children and I was determined to not go down with this ship without the fight of a lifetime.
Soon, the fights would get worse and more direct, "I don't think I could live in Boston, it rains too much. It's not warm enough. Your place is too small." How far could he push me before I would just put us out of our misery. How about, "You're starting to get a little chunky?" *not so subtle pokes at my belly* Seriously, me, I'm 150lbs soaking wet. He suddenly hated my haircut. Why did I "always wear it like this", am I "trying to look younger than I am". Well, "No it's just the only haircut that looks good on me." I'm not sure it had anything to do with his friends all in their early 20's thinking I was younger than him when he was only 24. It's probably the impish/shy way I carry myself in conversation when I don't know people. I'm a wall flower. I'm a shrinking violet when I don't know you. It's like that old line, well it's an old line for me anyway, when I meet new people online: "I can't believe you don't have a boyfriend! Are the guys in Boston, blind or stupid?" Me: "I don't know, I get ignored every day of my life. Maybe I should walk around with my shirt off because that's the only difference between my interweb life and my real life." Well that and I'm not afraid to speak my mind online an project all the confidence of a professional wrestler because I don't think anyone actually reads this shit. I have no walls or reason to get shy. I'm alone in my condo. Oh that was another problem, "I'm not outgoing enough for him." Then it was, "I'm tired of being on the bottom." Even though I said I was saving 'that' for marriage and he said he could live with that. Then it was, "I don't think I want to have children for a long time" knowing I don't want to be 50 with a 10 year old. Suddenly it was I've put in for internships in other parts of the country instead of Boston. "But I live in Boston?" I thought with great despair.
Slowly, I began to hate myself for loving him and not having the balls to tell him to go to fucking hell: I wasn't fat, I wasn't trying to be young, just who I was, I was always going to be shy and warm up to people on my own terms, and I would get the fucking fish or chicken and he could get whatever the fuck he wanted because I wasn't going to be by his side--I'd be in another restaurant across the country far the fuck away from him. Oh and I also grew to hate him for never telling me he didn't love me anymore. Instead thought of crueler and crueler ways to show me like threwing himself at his new best friend in front of me. He would tell me I should be more like him. I should be butcher like him. He would call him at night when we were on vacation together. He'd spend his entire birthday party by his side and only came to my side when someone saw I had gone to the rooftop to cry. I even caught them wrestling in their underwear when I was in the shower and he berated me when I had a problem with that. God did I hate myself for not telling him to drop dead. Eventually we broke up for the first time when I flew out to MN to drive cross country with him to Arizona for his first internship. He barely kissed me when I arrived, he had his roommate pick me up and he was yelling at me from the start, I couldn't do anything right. I was packing stuff wrong. I was too slow, "just do something he'd yell!?" But what I thought. I. couldn't. do. anything. right. I was paralyzed.
The trip was long. At one point I was so tired, I started to get real. I was tired of the throw away comments, the derogatory remarks. We got into an explosive argument where I was throwing out all the shit I could so he would know how much he's hurt me but he was so good at turning things around on me. I would get so flustered because I don't like putting negative explosive things out there. I stutter, I get confused and I forget what it is I'm trying to say. At the same time I felt empowered, enraged, and devastated as we were racing down a mountain road in the middle of nowhere in the dark. I could feel my hand creeping up on the handle of the door. I was catching my breath and he was launching into me with a verbal attack. My heart was racing, I felt my hand gripping the handle harder still. I was exploding from the inside physically, I could feel my body shaking. I wanted him to feel something, I wanted him to suffer the way he'd made me suffer. Suddenly I was 12 years old again, I wanted him to hurt like I thought all the kids, and my Mom and Dad would suffer if I'd killed myself. They all made me suffer so I wanted them to suffer and I thought by dying they would somehow suffer. I was squeezing that door handle, staring out into the mountainside--no where to go but down if I didn't hit a tree and decapitate myself first. I looked back at him, he was railing against me in the most hateful tone. I thought to myself this is crazy. I verbalized it. I screamed out, "What have I ever done to you to deserve all the hate, the posturing about what a failure I am as a person. I've done nothing but love and support you, and fly all over the country to be with you. I've taken your abuse and for what. TELL ME WHAT I HAVE EVER DONE TO YOU. WHY DO YOU SUDDENLY HATE ME? I'm the same person I've always been. Why do you have to say white if I should black!" I was this close to a panic attack, my heart was literally pounding in my chest-I could see it. I wanted to pull that handle so bad. I wanted to die only to make him feel something because he just looked back at me and laughed, like I was insignificant. I meant nothing to him. I was someone he could abuse because he could. He was a bipolar monster who lived to love and destroy people, I'd seen him do it to people he'd called friends and I would be his latest victim. He's lucky I wasn't driving because I was so engulfed in rage and despair I would have driven us both off that mountainside to our deaths. Put simply I had finally seen myself and him clearly--I didn't recognize the pathetic person who was putting up with the worst shit imaginable from another human being. Who was this tool? Certainly not me. The love was dead then and I fell into robot coping mode.
Most times when we'd have an explosive argument over stupid things, he'd apologize up and down and blame himself, "he's stressed and taking it out on the one thing that means the most to him." I fell for that again and again. I was a living walking Lifetime movie. My friends thought I was nuts. Gary he's not right. Something is emotionally wrong with him. It was disgusting. Eventually, we broke up and got back together so much in the final days I wasn't sure what our status was until he broke up with me over the phone with his roommate in the car. He "couldn't really talk freely" but was practically breaking up with me in code. I was stunned. I screamed a blood curdling scream. If a human voice could break glass this surely would have been one of those screams. I could feel the poison leaving my body. I ran around the condo grabbing anything that reminded me of him, a photo, a card, a letter, a fortune cookie fortune, luggage tags, little sketches he'd made for me, candy hearts, postcards--EVERYTHING he'd ever given me, the menu from our first date, the rose from the day he picked me up, THE RING...I took it all, and I locked it in the box I bought him for Christmas before I'd even met him. It was a large antique writing box with a hidden bottom and it still had the working key. When I met him, I was so convinced I would marry him that I wore the key around my neck and I gave it to him before I left and told him, never to take it off and that some day he'd know what it was for and it would change his life. You see I had hoped to plan on asking him to marry me some day. I'd found my lobster and we were going to live happily ever after. I was going to fill the box with memories of our life up to that point and in the hidden bottom, I'd place the ring. It sounded so romantic in my head. This box (and the key I'd secretly taken back from him on my last trip back because I knew it was over) was now going to house all these haunted memories, mementos of a destructive relationship that nearly rotten my soul to death with enough toxicity to kill a third world country. I threw the ring he gave me in the secret compartment and sealed it. I locked that box and it's been sealed since October 2007 when we broke up.
He eventually called, and texted, and tried to apologize in several phone calls months and months later. He did take an internship in Boston and called me en route, he called me downstairs from my condo, he rang the buzzer and called several times after that. I never answered. He's called or texted me on every major holiday and birthday since. I have never responded to any of it. I've also never really put my heart into another man again. I've gone on a few failed one dates and even tried to turn a friendship into something more but quickly realized that I had inadvertently locked my heart in that box in October of 2007 as well. And it's been locked up every since.
"our rights, our wrongs (won't stop til it's over)
a moment, a love
a dream, a laugh
a moment, a love
a moment, a love (won't stop to surrender)"
So I saw this movie tonight, and it hadn't really hit me until I saw this boy, living my life up on the big screen, living the moments I lived that I realized I was in this movie. The good, the bad, the ugly, it was me. I was the boy who lived for fate, chance meetings, the circle of life to find me, love--it was out there and I just had to be in the right place at the right time. And when you have your heart trampled not once but twice, and you're so badly beaten you just quit. The dream died. You become a shell in a routine for a while but like a man who loses an arm you begin to function like you never lost it to begin with. By looking at you, you'd think you had it all together. And while my heart was so damaged and dismantled and cut from my body like an autopsy corpse and locked in a box, my body eventually began to function again, not realizes my heart was gone. I was a functioning member of planet Earth--I was just missing a heart. A heart that until this week was locked in a box in my bedroom with all those other painful mementos and memories.
I opened that box this week. I owed my friend money which I forgot about and I just got a new ATM card and I didn't know the pin. I had to pay him that night and I happen to keep some emergency money in that bottom of that box as well that I obviously haven't needed to touch in the last two years. I put the box on the table and thought, "Gary this is stupid, it's just a box full of stupid shit. You need to pay Joel. Open the box." I sat there, thinking "Open the box". For good juju I went and got the Wiccan pentacle Mama Sweet made me when she said I was a natural witch, she said it would protect me, I'd never thought I needed protection from the bad juju of a failed romance until now so I figured it couldn't hurt. I sat down in front of the box again thinking "open the box. open. the. box." The key was still around my neck. I wear it sometimes as a symbol of strength more than anything else. I quickly grabbed the money, and slammed the box closed. I noticed a stray bag on the table and opened the box again and dumped everything in the bag. Assorted things spilled onto the floor, memories were flooding back. I grabbed them as fast as I could, threw them in the bag and hurled it into the corner of my room. I was overcome for a moment but quickly grabbed a stack of 20's and ran out the door to Joel's. That bag is still in the corner where I threw it. I'm not quite sure where to put it or what to do with it. I've ignored it all week.
Back to the movie, I don't want to ruin it for you because I want you to see it, it's a film 95% of the population can identify with. It's about human relationships, specifically love and more specifically for people who believe in fate and happy endings and have had their hopes dashed. As expected there is an ending that I can say will leave you satisfied and it wasn't thankfully the Hollywood ending I was hoping wouldn't occur. I can say it leaves you with hope (without totally ruining the movie for you because lets face it--could it end any other way? This is Hollywood after all). I realized as the credits came up that I didn't just lock my heart away in that box but my hope as well. I had given up that I would ever find love. I'd accepted it and soldiered on. I'd given up that I'd ever have a family. I'd given up that I'd meet someone who wasn't bipolar, or paralyzed by jealousy, someone who didn't think he was too damaged to be with me, someone who wasn't in it for what I could do for him, but someone who wanted to love me because he loved me because I made him feel like no one else could make him feel--like he made me feel.
So I decided, tonight, to start doing things for me--to stop protecting myself from myself. To share, to dream aloud, to cry, to laugh and mean it, to write--to get it all out and stop ignoring it. To have hope, that some days all the things I've dreamt about will come into being for me. I want to start taking chances again, even if that means I stumble and fall. I mean if I can ride head long into a moving truck, or get hit by a bus, or slide into a homeless person on a bench all going upwards of 20 mph on my bike and walk away with only a few scrapes I can certainly afford to be less careful with a heart that hasn't seen the light of day in about 2 years. I need to stop shutting people off when they do things that hurt me and face them head on--and move forward with or without them and know it's for the best. In the end I believe God or Goddess “repays a man for what he has done; he brings upon him what his conduct deserves.” and if I follow those rules of the universe I hope things will work out for me in the end. Phew. Glad I got that off my chest. Welcome back, new old me, it's nice to see you; it's been a long time!
Well I hope I didn't bore you to death with this explosion of introspection. Feel free to ignore it but big props to you if you read the whole damn thing. If you're close to me it was probably hard to read, it was hard to make these realizations about myself as sometimes these things are but thanks for pushing through.
Scene from The Notebook about love.
Noah: "I am nothing special; just a common man with common thoughts, and I've led a common life. There are no monuments dedicated to me and my name will soon be forgotten. But in one respect I have succeeded as gloriously as anyone who's ever lived: I've loved another with all my heart and soul; and to me, this has always been enough."