The good news is that I bought deodorant today… Brooklyn
Yup. That's the good news. Lately as I've been trying to cut corners I've become something of a hygiene home scientist. But there are some things that just can't be substituted. In particular, deodorant.
I find that swabbing the offending area with cologne after a thorough shower works for about the first few hours of the day. So long as you're indoors working at a desk. Which I no longer am. And while lathering one's armpits with a wet bar of soap after a bath seems as though it makes sense, you will invariably encounter a nasty chafing by early evening.. Different soaps of course offer different levels of burn (some lasting days and thereby making any application homemade or otherwise impossible), but I have found that in particular Caress left to dry produces the nastiest effect of all the soaps that my roommate buys.
I have found that keeping your under arm hair trimmed neat and close does make a significant difference. Our body odor is after all the gas released by the bacterium that feed off of the dead skin cells that become trapped in your under arm hairs. Thoroughly scrubbing the underarm area while bathing in tandem with the aforementioned shearing ensures that the impending eventual stank will only truly affect those few people who have shown the poor judgment to be intimately involved with you in the first place. Caveat Emptor.
Fortunately the only person with whom I am currently engaged with in an intimate sense doesn't seem to be a discerning gentleman. In fact when I found his ad on craigslist discernment and hygiene were not his main points of interest. Flexible rates and weekday hours however did make their way to his byline. I must have found him on a slow week because he seemed willing if not anxious to forego the standard fee. I was however obliged to meet him before 3 o'clock. I suppose just as a car which sits too long unused must be started from time to time to ensure proper functionality he's willing to throw off a few free runs from time to time. After all our gifts unused are not ours to claim.
To be fair he has made a few remarks about hygiene. He told me that what he most liked about me was that "your saliva doesn't stink…you know guys with bad breath or sour stomachs kiss you and you can't get the taste out of your mouth, you know?"
I did know. In fact I referred him to an essay that I had composed some time ago about the very same issue (see, New Friends Linger While David Disappears). I suppose I should mention that it was David, dear departed David that brought he and I together in the first place. As fate would have it (if fate were a cankered whore) I was first introduced to this man two years ago by David. He was one of David's mysterious and never present friends. A phantom dreamed up by my psychotic bunny to illustrate to me exactly how I could never measure up. David had often mentioned Philip in passing. It was clear to me through David's glassy eyed stare when mentioning him that he was in some way in love with Philip and with Philip's longtime lover Gary. Philip and Gary were David's measure of gay domestic bliss. David had met them both in a neighborhood gay bar in
David became a homewrecker two times over in the same house. I can't remember which one he met first but on his second trip to the apartment David was stunned into silence at the familiar surroundings. Amidst this comedy of errors somehow David became a friend of them both.
Eventually David and I ran into Philip. David melted at the site of him and I knew without hearing his name exactly who he was. He was newly single and sauntering down
He stared through to my soul and his eyes twinkled in satisfaction at having moved me so thoroughly. It was at that moment that I wanted to knock him down and rape him in full view of his friend, his neighbors, David and his two humping pugs.
Patience is a virtue.
When Philip and I saw each other again two years later, I reminded him that we had met before. After a moment his face lit up and so "Oh that's right. Weren't you much heavier?" I proceeded to knock him down and pug fuck his lights out.
I felt as though I had something to prove. More importantly I felt as though I had something to hide. I was much heavier. Heavy with self pity and recrimination. Heavy with loathing and fear. I needed the slate to be wiped clean. I was determined that he would forget all about the dark slouching bespectacled giant pussy that pretended to exist only in David's shadow. I wanted him to see the new me. The fit brown handsome bastard in contacts. The guy hovering over him fucking his heart out of his chest and onto his sleeve. The new me who held his own and who's saliva didn't stink.
And it worked. I measured my progress by checking his updated ad on craigslist. After each new free run that he afforded me his ad would suddenly reflect the time we had spent together. If we had simply taken a long walk and held hands it would invariably appear in his text field; "Long walks, reasonable rates". If we had sat naked after amking love and spoke with brutal frankness about our lives and hopes, that too would enter the pitch; "Whilst we share our feelings: available weekdays".
In no time at all he admitted to developing loving feelings toward me. He gets butterflies in his stomach when I look at him from a cross a table in a crowded café. Each time he sees me he finds me more and more handsome. He sends me notes and leaves messages to tell me that he misses me and looks forward to seeing me again. "billy bean".
And my loving feelings? Perhaps it's all so easy because I have already fought and lost on this same front. I know the lay of the land. I know my enemy. Perhaps that's why with Philip I have been able to achieve the unthinkable for me.
In every other instance of sex that I have enjoyed I was only able to orgasm if I finished by taking the matter into my own hand. There have been the odd handjob and even rarer expertly applied head that have done the trick, but before Philip I have never been able to come in someone while fucking them. That is all behind me now.
Our contrived intimacy, our fictional relationship is so completely manufactured that I am able to let myself believe a lie so thoroughly as to breed into him the hopes of future generations. And we two behave as though in this act we might be able to bring forth a new life unencumbered and uncorrupt.
So do I feel like I'm in love? You betcha. That's why I bought deodorant today.
_____________________________________________________________________
England
Let's revisit this little scenario three weeks later shall we.
Today I don't feel like I'm in love. Today I feel like I'm in chemo. Today is bad. Phil. Sweet Phil. Sweet Philip buttered and bred went all screwy on me. He disappeared again as he is want to do. He resurfaced on Craigslist on Saturday morning as a tight-holed bastard looking for a jaw breaker of a cock to make his morning.
The previous week Philip had lain in my arms and offered himself up to all my affection and attention. He insisted on being my support my staff my shoulder as I trundle through these trying times of aimless living and unemployment. He invited himself to be my guest at a theatrical performance of mine that was being taped by a network television development crew in the hopes of making another pointless reality show. This one about the pointless process of theater. I would be onstage improvising for two hours in front of a packed house and three eagle-eyed network producer's. And as fate would have it Phil would be among the missing.
In truth the evening was magic. It was the cumulative experience of a lifetime onstage and I buzzed with the energy of a rock star. Public Television, The New York Times and various independent producers answered my call to fill the empty seats and like a lover filled to bursting with tenderness and spunk I fucked everyone of them into laughing throughout the night. Its no wonder then that Phil didn't show. He may not have felt so special.
Probably because he's not.
Phil was busy with, as I would later find out, the other 'wonderful man' in his life. Danny. A 24 year old Cuban Gay Porn Star cum graphic designer. Apparently they had met online as well. Personally I think we all would make one hell of an ad campaign for Craigslist. Danny sold his ass on video so that he could afford to move to NYC. And considering our current real estate climate you can imagine Danny must be one tired immigrant.
So Phil has a dilemma. He's ready to settle down and he's torn between two 'wonderful men', the aforementioned whore and Danny. Phil's only problem with me was that I am newly unemployed and do I have a plan for my financial future? because after all he's dated too many 'Losers'.
This from a man who just got a job after spending two years jerking off in his 'home office' and filling his nights with "Hundreds of men".
When Phil told me all this he pleaded "don't give up on me. I love you". I felt as though I didn't have a right to get upset with Phil in fact I don't feel as though I have a right to get upset with anyone and so I didn't. I met with him the following Sunday evening for 'fucking and food' as he likes to refer to our dates. As we fucked he asked me to demand that he didn't see Danny again. And so hoping to avoid a scene, I told him that he was mine and that he wasn't to see this kid or anyone else again, all this while balls deep in his gut.
At dinner he announced to the waitress that he was taking me home to
Oh Phil. You're so full of shit. And believe you me, you've met your match.
He was so willing to surrender to my second choice charms because the porn star that really had his fancy hadn't returned his call that day. But like any choice made under duress it wasn't fated to stick. On Monday he wasn't to be found, hiding no doubt under the stone of his regret. On Tuesday he resurfaced again, and boy did he ever come up for air.
Online at a cinema house waiting to see The History of Violence, Phil called me and began an overture of abuse that must have really impressed all the boys milling about the expansive thinly carpeted lobby. He was advertising his soon to be single status. There was something that he needed to share with me. Something pressing that had been haunting him since our last night together when he imagined that I had begun developing feelings for him."I'm a cock whore frankly, and I don't know that I can be monogamous. I love sex with strangers. I'm addicted to that feeling of newness. And I don't want you to judge me or take this personally."
After a breath I told him that I didn't take it personally and of course I wouldn't judge him. And then down came the shitstorm. He started by telling me he was angry with me. Angry at me, the most understanding, patient, compassionate, well mannered of big dicked tricks that had the pleasure of re-shifting his internal organs in the last two years of his bachelorhood. He was angry because I lacked possessiveness and passion. That I was too nice, too understanding and level headed. He called me 'Phony'. He accused me of hiding my true feelings of letting him hang himself out on a limb and not reciprocating with my own truth.
And was he ever right.
Of course I judged him. I judged him not because he was promiscuous but rather out of jealousy that I could never manage to tap into the kind of wealth of ass that Phil could have at the snap of his fingers. I judged him for smoking Parliament 100's. I judged him for not standing up when introduced to my friends. I judged him for having an extraordinary sense of bravado and entitlement the like of which I couldn't ever dream of owning. I judged him for stealing a fifty cent bag of chips from the Subway on
Throughout the last month I sat on stage directing over 100 anonymous actors in public. Giving my counsel and advice. Voicing my opinion to the point of screaming. Shaking people. Showing up in every respect. Reveling in my ego and in the delight of the spectators around me. Expressing my will. Hoping that this quality of openness and honesty, of volume would somehow transport me to the next place in my life.
But while on the phone with him as it is everywhere else off stage or off page I remained in a stunned silence unable to respond to conflict until he announced that the film was starting. Click. I still suspect he was actually waiting for a date. Today was filled with oddly emotionless cheery phone messages and helpful little e mail drive bys , like "think about seeing a shrink?" "I saw the filthiest porno last night. It was nasty." "I want a man to do me royally and believe he means it".
Well, people in hell want icewater. And you can't Have it both ways. You're either someone's crazy whore or their wife. Get it fucking straight. Crazy Whore. Lovely champion ass fucked whore.
Silence is powerful. I learned that early on in life. Being silent being invisible made me the shadow that hung over my family's home. I was omniscient in my solitude. It made me the ever-present cancer that visited every mealtime every holiday gathering. It was the only way I could express my will. But now, in adulthood…people who you sleep with don't like it so much. Neither do the people you work for or live with. Frankly nobody really likes the guy who shrugs his shoulders and goes along with every ridiculous scheme. Nobody likes the guy who won't vote, who won't offer an unpopular opinion. They can't count on him. He's a coward and not to be trusted. He hasn't his own best interests in my mind. How could he possibly have yours?
He doesn't. Keeping his most authentic self hidden he becomes a slave to his own sense of self importance. He poisons himself with his own mean company, with his reflection. He becomes the sum of all his fears. And so in his relationships and experiences he finds himself repeatedly playing the same bars over again like a ridiculous fugue that can only finish by stopping altogether mid phrase.
And Phil? The last honest thing I said to Phil on Sunday was "Fucking you gives me a headache". And it does every time, in the same spot at the back and base of my skull as if a clot is slowly forming from slow sloshing arterial coursing of my sluggish blood as I pump my futility up into the back end of beautiful fractured Phil.
And so at the end of this serio romantic comedy I dialed David's obsolete cell phone number to see who might pick up. "The code you have dialed in inactive or invalid".
Invalid indeed.
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