Twenty-Two Less Lights in The Stuff That's Not Interesting But Is The Most Interesting Stuff I'll Write

You know, I’ve started around a dozen entries since the last one I wrote, and then some bombshell gets dropped on me while I’m writing, I stop and then I feel like I have to start all over again. So much has happened in such a short amount of time, it’s truly baffling to me how so much could go spinning out of control so quickly.

I wish I could truly tell you everything that had happened. I went to LA for a funeral, I had a friend who died of AIDS-related cancer. If you still think that people aren’t dying of AIDS-related illnesses, let me tell you, get your vision checked because there are still deaths from this disease every day. While the circumstances that brought me there were less than ideal, it was absolutely wonderful to see everyone again.

It felt like home, which is a feeling I don’t always allow myself to feel, but then I realized that it isn’t a feeling so much as a collection of memories that bring out feelings. I MUST get back there as soon as possible because my misery here is compounded by the echoes of that visit.

Unfortunately, 48 hours later I received news that yet another loved one had passed away. My friend Madisyn had committed suicide. I had just seen her at the funeral days earlier and had no inkling that anything was wrong. It brought my death total for the year to twenty-two. The anger I felt and the rage and everything that overwhelmed it cast a dark shadow over Christmas, and this was long before the dreadful news about George Michael, Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds… who almost should count as part of that number, but don’t because I never knew them personally.

I spent a rather friendly Christmas with family, no drama on the home front which is a first in all of my thirty-three Christmases. That night, however, I went back to B-Side for Laura’s birthday and accidentally dropped acid on Christmas. I hadn’t done that since I was in high school way back in the 1990s… I just felt like I’d drunk too much absinthe except I wasn’t drunk. I don’t know if that makes sense, but the hallucinatory mind-bendy-ness felt like wormwood. It wasn’t that crazy, it just lasted a lot longer than I thought it probably should have.

I made an ass of myself, but it was very nice to feel euphoric, even if it was artificial.

Then things moved at a weirdly slow pace. Why does that period of time between Christmas and New Years seem to break the laws of time? It moves in fits and bursts, alternating between glacially slow and frightfully fast. I hadn’t made any plans for New Years Eve until at the last minute Kyle, a guy who had tried to hook-up with me and when I declined became vicious and catty, got me a ticket to the hottest gay bar in town. I thought it was very sweet of him, especially since our friendship was strained but slowly repairing itself.

There I saw Kyle, friendly and funny as always, this cute twunk that’s been messaging me online for the last few weeks (who was shaking his jock-strapped ass my direction), and Adam, the super-hot bartender that I hooked-up with back in September. My attention was split three different directions, and as the night progressed, I started making out with Adam.

But then, fifteen minutes before midnight I got a text-message from Richard. He had moved back to San Francisco and apparently swooped into Sacramento to spend the holiday with his father, but it wasn’t going well. He needed me and so I dropped everything and picked him up.

Richard was sobbing and hysterical, something I’d seen only once and that was when his mother died. We went to the local leather bar and rang in the New Year together. It just felt so right. He went home with me, rather than face his family, and we fucked passionately… and I mean, all the way. In all of our exploration of each other sexually, we’d never actually had sex… I wanted to wait.

We’d waited enough and it was everything it should’ve been.

The next morning, we went to my parents’ house for breakfast and they were so thrilled to see Richard. He just eased right in. He knew my parents, chatted merrily with Cameron and Chuckie, it was like he was supposed to be there for the holiday… and that’s when the most frightening thing came into my mind. A thought that I have fought against for so much of my life and it was one of the first thoughts of 2017…

As I watched Richard at the dinner table in my parents’ house, I realized that I wanted to marry him.