When I am running toward, grasping for, hoping and building expectation, that is where I find myself most lost, unsatisfied and unsatiated, prone to disappointment, chain smoking on street corners and wondering where things went so wrong. I cannot seek redemption in other people, but I can find it in myself and this, this was never running. If my feet moved slightly faster than usual, it was always the full circle of leaving behind, and never the newer path of chasing toward.
It has been three years of this whirlwind dance, three years of push and pull, three years of uncertainty and eye rolls and disappointment to finally learn how to walk away. I could never be fully present with him until I learned to walk away, and I did, finally, months ago, realize how to leave rather than settle for less than what I needed. And so this time, there was no anxiety, no permeating sense of, “what if?”, no question spirals and mental gymnastics, no second-guessing, no hesitation. There was just him, and me, and this strange history we hold between us.
He was the first guy I ever fucked because I wanted to, a climactic end to the first large-scale kink event I ever attended. His memory is worse than anyone I’ve ever met, and even he remembers the way we brought the orgy to a pause when we fucked that first time. We were, I imagine, outstandingly beautiful.
Of course, I remember more than that. I remember context and buildup, hugging in a rainstorm, the way he doubled back after I complimented his suspenders. I remember my own internal chaos and tumultuous emotions: fear and desire and nervousness and that sense of being off that I just couldn’t shake. But this is all history now; different people meeting at different times and different places in our respective and divergent lives.
Now, I don’t expect much of anything from him, and he has recalled that there is something in me that he misses. Maybe it’s just a yearning for connection- I’m good for that- or maybe it’s just me, but I find myself (somewhat gratefully) not caring. I needed, he needed, and our needs converged for the first time in years and we could finally meet as equals again. It is the first time since that first time that we have.
It was, I suppose, a series of affirmations in their own right: the strength of my body, the desirability of it, of me. I walked naked through his house without a second thought to what my body might be doing. It did not occur to me that he wouldn’t want me, nor would it have bothered me if he hadn’t. Sex without fear is nearly a foreign concept; to not only approach but to instigate felt liberating in an inexplicably resonate way.
He and I are ill-matched in every way except this: sometimes, we are the mindless, no-strings easy thing that gets us both out of our heads. We have used each other for years, and for all this felt liberating and affirming, it does not negate that we continue to use one another when it is convenient. I made my peace with that awhile ago; I lived my peace with that a few days ago.
And so, we fucked: in his living room and in his bed, where he used words to tell me what he needs- “go slow with me,” he said. In the shower and back into his bed, once, twice more, “don’t stop”s and “good boy”s taking form in the space between his skin and mine. We still meet well, match well, fuck well, even if that is the only thing we do well together. He is familiar, the way an old path is well-known; we have walked along this together for years, and it is safe in the sense that I have nothing to lose and no want to gain. We found equilibrium, finally, and if it is never what I thought to expect, it is always what I needed.
I found myself again, there, that part of me that I have missed, that reckless fearless person that flourishes not in running toward desire, but in learning to abandon fear. I found myself, not in him, but in the ways I moved with him, the ways I put myself where I wanted to be, the way I asked and claimed and needed and came in full awareness that this, and me, was enough. That him and this and me and need were finally- finally- at peace.
Monomaniacism 