Anthology - Part IV:
You night never believe this, but I once had a six pack. And no, I don't mean that I went to the supermarket and got myself a pack with six cans of buds - although I can imagine why someone would think that, given how I have been talking about my story of being straight. I think I some point I actually told people I like buds. Beer buds, not guy buds. How times changed...
I also changed after that conversation I had with the guy who outed me in the shower. Looking back now I can pinpoint that this was the kickoff of it all, and it all came down to admitting to myself, for the first time, that I liked men. By opening up to him, I also opened up to myself. That day I was terrified, and I didn't know it then that in less than a year from that conversation, I would be an completely different person. And it all started with my body.
Over the following months, I lost a bunch of weight, I started going out, I tried drugs, went to parties and drove home drunk. I said yes more than no, I made new friends, developed new interests and praised body over mind and heart. I transformed myself into someone I always wanted to have by my side. I was a cool, thin and interesting guy. Naturally, I started to attract the attention of others. Mainly girls, but also guys. The one thing that didn't change though was that old pattern: girls for dating, guys for sex that theoretically didn’t make me gay.
Amongst the few boys, two of them would eventually become more than just an anonymous shag at a toilet in an empty building of my university campus. And boy, they were completely different from each other. The first one was a regular guy, who looked like a regular guy would, who was down to earth, who liked music, food and a quiet night in. We met in a normal situation, no big plot twist, no fireworks. His eyes melted me instantly. For the first time ever, I was not only sexually attracted to a man, I was also emotionally attracted to a man. It was a strange feeling, partly because it was everything I was still trying to suppress, partly because I had no hopes it would amount to anything for all the reasons I already talked about. We became good friends, and every time we said goodbye I couldn’t wait to see him again. He then told me he was in love with a girl, and that genuinely broke my heart. I really wanted to be that girl. I really wanted him to be my happy ending. Only this time, once again, was not my turn.
The second one came into my life a bit later in the year. He was sculpted by long hours at the gym, heavily into partying, his family had money, he had cool friends and did cool things. I never really wanted him to love me, but I watched him walk around in his red speedos at the gym sauna and I lusted over him. I wanted to take those speedos off with my mouth, I wanted him to fuck my face, destroy my ass, I wanted him to make me his bitch. I desired him. And above all, I wanted that someone like him would desire me. This time though, something was different. Finally I had the body someone would desire, but I still feared I had the wrong gender. I expected him to be into girls. And no matter how much I wanted to be his sex toy, I was not a girl. And I couldn’t (and didn't want to) change myself that much. I also expected that, as always, if he knew how I thought about him, it would end badly for me.
And then it got very complicated, very fast. This particular bedlam erupted during an otherwise uneventful week in October 2003. The first guy said he wanted to talk, and the second guy accepted my invitation to go for a drink. The first guy told me that there was no girl, he made it all up, it was me, he was in love with me. And that all he could think about in the last months is how much he wanted to fuck with me - the sexual kind. I was less happy about it than I expected to be. I expected a huge peak of happiness, but it felt good. Not mind blowingly spectacular. I had yet to learn the value of mild happiness, but more on that later.
The second guy, you ask? Well, we went for a drink, and towards the bottom of the second bottle of beer I was convinced he was into me. I invited him to come over to my place afterwards because I was ready to fuck all night long, bid him adieu when I was done with him and then pretend we didn’t know each other at the gym. He offered me a lift home, so I thought I closed the deal. But that's not the way to break a hell loose. He didn’t come inside - me or my place. Instead, he said he had a great time, he wanted to see me again, and he kissed me. For the first time ever, a man kissed me. I'm gonna give you a few seconds to let this sink in.
16th of October 2003. It was not my first kiss, in fact I cannot remember when I had my first kiss. Or when I lost my virginity to a girl - yeah, I had been having sex with girls since I was 16. Or maybe 17. But it is the one which felt like the first kiss. I was 20 years also, about to turn 21, and I had my first kiss. Anything before that didn't matter anymore. Needless to say, that kiss also marks the first time I fell in love with someone. That someone was a man. That man was a jock. And that jock told me that he liked me, and he wanted to take this slow, because he wanted to get to know me better. So here we have it folks.
I didn’t sleep that night. Not because I was horny - I was about to turn 21, I was always horny! I didn't sleep because I couldn’t stop thinking about how that kiss was the best thing I had ever experienced in my life. Even now, 20+ years later, I still remember that kiss like it happened 5 minutes ago. I still think of it as one of the best moments of my life. That kiss also showed me why I kept telling myself that I couldn’t do with guys what I got from girls, why that would be the thing to make me gay. Because now it became clear how much more I preferred it. How much more I missed it. How that kiss was everything I ever wanted and never got.
That kiss pulled my truth out. The following days, I came out to myself: I said out loud, for the very first time, that I was gay. That I liked boys. That beautiful fit boy made me want to tell the world that I found what I needed. He was my dream, and despite the other guy being much better for me, the jock was the one I had always dreamed about. He was the one who made my heart skip a beat. I found my happy ending. It worked. Like Muriel, I got my wedding, only with me it was because someone liked me, I didn’t have to pay for it to happen. Mind you, I was only 20 years old, but I truly believed then that I found the man I would spend the rest of my life with.
Of course, the thing with the red speedo guy didn’t last. At some point he realised that I was just a regular boy underneath a whole amount of temporary muscles I managed to somehow grow, that my friends were not cool, that I didn’t have money to spend on parties and trips abroad… The novelty wore off pretty quickly for him, so he moved on to the next cool thing. I was history. But the damage was done and I was completely destroyed.
I still saw the other guy, the regular down to earth guy, as a side thing here and there. Great sex, and he liked me, so I couldn’t just throw that away. I wasn't in love with him, but we had fun. Neither of them knew about the other though. Also, I should mention that I was seeing a girl casually, in addition to them both. They both knew about her, but she didn’t know about them. This was a messy time of my life, and I made some pretty bad decisions. But that is a store for another time.
I think I was in love with this red speedo guy for the next 10 years of my life. I dated other guys, some of them for years, but in my heart he was still the one who got away. I still hoped for my happy ending with him, even when I got real happy endings later, with people who were much better for me. I am not in love with red speedo guy anymore. I would love to have sex with him nowadays, because he's still very hot. I would also love to have sex with the regular guy nowadays, but I think he's in a closed relationship. His eyes still melt me. Maybe that's where it comes from, how eyes usually have such an amazing power over me. Maybe his eyes are a way of my brain asking me to go back and choose him. I don't usually spend time and energy asking myself "what if", but I know for a fact that if I did choose him, I would not be here now. I'd probably still be living in Brazil, still working in Biology, married to a guy and very likely have adopted kids. I will never know for sure, but I know that choosing the other guy, and everything that happened since, has brought me to this point.
It also shaped my relationship with men: the other guy was a symbol of an alternative universe, one where I got what I wanted. Where someone I desired, but thought would not want me back and/or treat me badly, this someone would actually treat me well. That there was love to be found underneath all the muscles. That my dream guy was still out there, waiting for me to find him. And that I could find him, if I worked hard for it. Whether it was worth working hard for it, that’s an entirely different conversation.
And that kiss, it still haunts me. I didn't realise how much until very recently, but I am getting ahead of myself. There is still a bit of road to travel before we get to the street outside my gym.
I can’t let you go - Ian van Dahl
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