Of Another World

Often things do not turn out quite as people expected. Beautiful, fragile hopes are driven ashore by the vagaries of unpredictable circumstance and dashed to pieces on the hard, ugly rocks of reality. As humans, experience will have inured many of us to such disappointments. They are the stick that beats many a dreamer into submission. They are the shackles that bind people's feet firmly to the ground.

But Fate is a clever girl and she knows well enough that, if we are to keep on playing in this big game of chance that is life, then disappointment cannot be our only reward. And so sometimes our tentative expectations are fulfilled: no unforeseen horror awaits us just around the corner. We break even. And then, just occasionally, Fate, with her wicked, smile throws you all the aces and our dreams turn out to be but a pale shadow of another, more luminous reality, of another, more wonderful world, that could not be foreseen. And that, my dears, is the pay-out - the high - that keeps us hooked.

It is also, co-incidentally, the reason why I have not written anything on here for so long a time. Not so long back I made a decision to unyoke myself from all my emotional commitments on the basis of a growing desire to 'be free once again'. And so I did, but with the expectation that I would be not go willingly back into another relationship any time soon. Weeks passed, boys came and went (quite literally) and I felt more strongly than ever that the right decision had been made: I was not the type to tolerate another’s demands on my time well.

Then one night Fate thought to shake my cosy little assumptions up a bit. The Pink Psychiatrist and I were drinking (aren't we always?) in the local meat market, eyeing up the cattle for anything worth the effort of a bite, when along came a little surprise with spiky black hair and a sexy smile. We'd been watching each other for a while by the time he finally sidled up beside me with his pint and a nervous hello. It was all I needed to let go of my own inhibitions and after a little small talk we got down to the serious business of kissing. Intermittently we came up for air and to establish the facts: he was French, in marketing and spoke with an American accent because he had learnt his English in the Deep South. That was enough for the first night. Something inside me whispered 'you like this one a lot', and I wondered whether I was right in thinking it merely the Kronenbourg working its usual magic on the senses. We didn't sleep together that night - a quite astonishing fact to anybody who is gay – though, to be fair, most probably merely because his sister from France was out with him that night, rather than because of any propriety on our part! Instead, we parted at the bus stop with an agreement to meet for a spot of lunch the next day. The next day when I awoke I did so with a smile.

Almost eight weeks have passed since our 'spot of lunch' and the subsequent trip to the park that day, but they have been some of the most surprising I have experienced for very long time. For somebody who, in the past, has prized his independence more highly than anything else, they have also been some of the most disconcerting – even scary – weeks of my life: I have watched as those previously insurmountable barriers simply fall away without any effort or resistance on my part. What once I guarded jealously, I now give away freely.

Sickening stuff, isn’t it? Believe me, I know… but whilst this may not be my most literally accomplished post, it is almost certainly, and quite incredibly, one of my most honest.