3.2. Ghosts In the Machine (The Man's World Mix) in The Stuff That's Not Interesting But Is The Most Interesting Stuff I'll Write

I was going to add this to the previous entry, but it didn’t seem to fit with the whole theme… Or maybe it did fit and I was just too hellbent on making things seem a little sunnier than they usually are that I didn’t really feel the need to soil it with something this murky.

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve seen people that I haven’t seen in a long time, more specifically, people with whom I’ve had sex with, but it was more… Or I wanted it to be more and it never was. All I can really say is that it wasn’t what it should be and it won’t be what I would like it to be. I keep blindly hoping for something more.

I had gotten back from Tahoe and was back at work when I realized that I recognized Adam the little Christian with whom I was quite enamored. If any of you don’t remember how that went down, I’ll condense the story: my sexual relationship with him lead to my being excommunicated from the church that I had attended for ten years, his confusion divided him (he was five years younger than I was) and he eventually left for conversion therapy. Shortly afterward, he contacted me at one point letting me know that he had left but was still living in some valley in the darkest center of California. We lost touch for many years until I went absolutely crazy with fear and drove hundreds of miles to the town he said he was living in. After hours of searching in vain, I discovered he had moved just two blocks away from where I’d been living. I had only intended to initiate a friendship with him being that I was in a relationship with Edgar at the time, but Adam and I began an affair that lasted the whole summer. When it ended, he cut me off and I moved to Los Angeles.

But there he was, standing three feet away from me. I didn’t know what to do. Then someone else walked in right behind him.

Just like I guided Adam, Lucky guided me. I didn’t know at the time, but he was a few years older than I. I hadn’t really had sex or any kind of intimate interaction with anyone since Joe had died, but that all ended with Lucky. He was my first fuck buddy and that was all it was meant to be, but I really liked him. I was obsessed with his tattoos. And it was good sex, not as good as I ever had with Adam, but he was the best.

So there they were standing right in front of me, but I was at work, and I had to walk away instead of wonder what had brought them across my path. Later, when I hopped on Grindr, there they were, staring me in the face. I felt like my ex lovers had been resurrected in a matter of seconds. That was when I realized that Lucky and I had almost hooked up a couple of times on the damn thing. He was a pictureless profile that had messaged me a few pictures but they of course obscured anything I might have remembered. But his face was looking right at me and I felt a little betrayed.

He messaged me last night looking for someone to hook-up with him and his friend from San Francisco. There was a part of me that was interested in going backwards to explore that situationship and seeing if it could still bear any fruit, even with Adam, but going backwards is not what I need right now. I went backwards to come here and take care of my family and it has been an absolute disaster. Why keep going backwards just to satisfy my curiosity about some ghosts that pop up in my phone?