Well, that idea was a failure...
Oct. 14th, 2002 03:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gangrel_priOk, I was going to try out the new On Demand thingie on digi cable, but the damn thing rebooted the box. (Yes, to those of you roomies reading this, I was going to tell you about it and pay for it. If it shows up on the bill, call and bitch. It didn't work.)
So anyway, I guess we get the relevant issues here.
Where do I start. This has all been going on for a while. Recently, hell, I can't really say when it actually started, I've been dreaming about Mike a lot. More often than not, I dream he's sleeping beside me, and I'm always so pissed when I wake up and he's not there.
Now I know I've mentioned Mike a lot on here at various points, so let's go back and tell the umpteenth version of this goddamn story.
Mike and I officially met at Boy Scout camp. We were tentmates my second year of Summer camp. As I recall, we both were in Swimming Merit badge class together, but that has no bearing at all on any of this. During the course of the week (for the record, I was 12, he was 13), he made a few subtle and not so subtle advances towards me. Me being an idiot, I laughed them off. Thursday of Summer Camp, John (Ass't Senior Patrol Leader) came by our tent and showed off "Oscar". (I will not discuss what Oscar was. I will say it was rather impressive and gave me a complex for a few years afterward.) Well, John and Mike invited me to go into the woods with them. (Cue porno music.) I watched for about two minutes, feeling a variety of emotions, disgust, desire, and promptly ran backl to camp and told the Scoutmaster. Bad James.
Well, Mike didn't talk to me the last two days of camp. I think he was mildly pissed that I broke the trust issue. So...fast forward to September of that year. Our troop volunteered to park cars for Quilt show at the National Guard armory. Mike and I ended up talking again, and at some point during the morning, we ended up in the bathroom shower at the armory together. So, in theory, I lost my virginity on Federal property. Yay me. I will say I did initiate contact. It was kind of a now or never kind of thing. Nothing much happened between us again until track season started. I was the Manager, and he ran the mile. (Is it just me or does half of this now sound like bad porn set-ups? Gah, to be young again.) Well, since our home feild at the time was the Urbana University Track facility, we walked home together after practice. One day, we went off the trail (home to Urban Legends like "The Sacrificial Virgins"), and thigs happened again. Now by this point, Mike and I were the only ones who got along with each other in our Troop. So, the next summer, guess who my tentmate was at summer camp. Then guess how we spent just about every night after everyone was asleep. Then blush right along with me.
Well, somewhere in this time frame, Mike got sent away to Reform School for a few months, as well as getting kicked out of Scouts. Rumour around school was he was abusing his sister, but from what I understand, he actually punched his mother for that round of "Why I go to a special school". So anyway, I'll skip a few years here, since Mike and I evolved into a "Call me when no one's home" relationship for a few years.
So, Ok. During my Sophomore year in High School, I started the coming out process thanks to Dakota Walker. (She also was Daniella Walker or Dakota D. Risings.) I was involved in Teen Institute, a state sponsored camp for Drug and Alcohol Prevention tactics among students. I ended up going to State TI in 1991, the same year I was also at Ashland University writing a musical. (in other words, right after we did our last curtain call at Ashland, I ended up driving to Kenyon.) I was a little bitch at Music camp. When I got to TI, the assigned me to Family Group 50, Dakota as Adult Staff Supervisor, and Randy as our Youth Staff Assistant. Well, meeting number two of ten for our group ended with Dakota telling us she was a lesbian, and she was running a program on dealing with GLB youth. Well, I went, under the guise of supporting Dakota. The real reason, was of course, trying to sort out my uidentity and learn what I could about being gay, since most of what I knew about being gay centered around Mike. Well, Thursday at State was the big ubiquitous dance that no camp is complete without. (I take trhat back. They didn't have them at Boy Scout Camp.) I ended up admitting to myself, that yes indeed, I was gay. (You'd think after 3 years of sex with Mike I would have realized this, but...) So after camp, I wrote Dakota and told her. I got a lovely letter back from her that I keep in my desk now as a reminder of how things used to be. So I told my best friend Shawn. I ended up blowing Shawn on Mom's washer that very same night. This also marks the point where my friendship with Shawn began it's long horrible decent into outright hatred. Coincidence? I think not. I metion this only because the only other person who knew about that was Mike.
Well, still in High School, let's plumb the depths of every other thing James did to make Mike jealous. One incident involved my time as Inside Tackle on the Football team. An offer was made by someone I thought was cute. I didn't accept. But I told Mike I did, just to get a rise out of him.
One which Mike never heard about involved Alex, yet another fine upstanding Boy Scout. We'll cut this down because I still have fucking nightmares about it. One time, at Scout camp, Melvin fell out of a tree. His friend Alex came to camp late. so as Senior Patrol Leader, it fell to me to keep Alex calm. I did. A few months later, Alex and Melvin (who was never the same after that fall) came to my house while everyone was out of town. We ended up drinking a lot of whiskey, and Alex and I ended up in bed together. Well, I was kind of...um...involved...when my brother walked in on us. (What I find ironic about all of this is that I found out later Richard was fucking at least 4 different girls on mom's bed. So he had NO room to talk.)
We'll skip why I hate my brother (oh what the hell. Rich read my private journal I kept on a Smith Corona Word Processor disk that was hidden on my bookshelf. He then told me he was going to tell mom if I didn't seek councelling to get "straightened out".) and go ahead to a snow day later that year.
Well, I went to Alex's house, since he wanted to borrow money to buy the New Jack City soundtrack. What he neglected to mention was that his little sister was there. I kept trying to find excuses to get Alex alone, he ended up getting the 3 of us involved in a game of strip poker, and we went up to his room where I got to watch him fuck his sister. And I wonder why I have fucking issues now. For the record, I did report it twice. The first time, I was in shock, and I told a minister. He ignored me. The second time was a year later, after Alex had been in a near fatal accident. I remember Children's Services asking me if I thought Alex deserved to be crippled for what he did. I said "no". They ignored it, mainly because Alex's parents were big political contributers to the local Ruling Party. Thus one of many reasons I hate Children's Services. Of course, I also left out why I was there in the first place...
So getting back to Mike. Somewhere in there, Mike met Chris. Chris was an "older" gay man (he was 21), and in the eyes of memory, I can now see he was what we call a "twink". Since I had no idea of any of what contemporary Gay Life was back then, I didn't know that. I do remember that he drove a Gremlin. One of the coolest cars ever. Well, Mike and Chris and I ended up cruising all over town one night talking. Chris knew what it was to be gay, or so I thought. (In other words, he was a specimin in a petrie dish I could examine.) Well, after dropping me off, I guess he and Mike went and had sex. The thing that pisses me off to no end is that I knew it was going to happen, and Mike refused to fucking tell me afterward. Chris on the other hand called me the next day and gave me gory details. Fucker. Both of them. Well, a week later, Chris left. On the bright side, Mike chose me over the worldly Chris. Yay. I felt like a booby prize. But, in the same situation, I would have done the same. Marriage is a bitch. Mike and I had been whatever the hell we were for 5 fucking years. But I think I lost something in the aftermath. Yes, I gained a new lover (Mike learned a few new tricks, and then taught them to me), but I think I stopped seeing Mike as something serious. I think my jealousy eroded into a feeling of...well, for some reason, I really stopped caring about what Mike felt. I remember when I got my truck, Mike wanted to do something, and I tried to stop him because I was sure he didn't care. And now, I know that he did. But that's later.
So, anyway, I did some shit to piss off Mike, and then I tried to undo the damage. All I ended up doing was hurting Mike more. FUCK. He dropped out of my life about the time I graduated.
Around that time, I found out that Chris was living in Mike's old apartment on Hill Street with his boyfriend Gregg.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
taocub met Gregg at one point, so he knows why I think of Gregg as a sleezy mother. To shorten this narrative a bit, I tried to seduce Gregg to get back at Chris for fucking my bf. I sort of worked. I ended up breaking up Chris and Gregg, but I never did sleep with the boy. But, on the bright side, before all THAT happened, Gregg did introduce me to the concept of the gay bar. 1470 West to be precise.
Let's skip ahead in time to Fall Quarter 1994 at WSU. I laugh when I think about this mainly because I realize now I wasn't the only one striving to find my identity in the gay world. I had the advantage of experience, but I also had a full figure that all of the twinks in Dayton preferred to ignore or sneer at. So, one day, unhappy with my dorm life, I decided to call Mike and see if he had any interest in getting a "Monogamous couple" apartment in the WSU housing area. This is when I found out Mike was in jail.
The next year, I worked up my courage and wrote Mike a letter to be forwarded to him. He and I talked for a VERY long time, both by letter and by collect call.
Then I moved, and we fell out of contact again. Then, the next year, I ran across a personals ad in The Dayton Voice that sounded like Mike. I wrote, and 3 days later, Mom calls me to discuss Lisa's pregnancy, and then drops in that Mike had called her looking for me. I kept interupting her lecture on why she didn't want to tell me, mainly because I was hoping he had given her a phone number. Which he had. Well, I ended up taking a very arduous road trip to Toledo via Columbus and Tiffin, with a stop after in Ann Arbor, where I got to see Mike for the first time in years. He lived with Duane, his sugar daddy.
Well, I left, feeling nothing that needed resolved had been resolved.
May 18, 1997 was the last time I saw Mike. He and Duane came down to go to a jewelry show, and spent the night at my place. That night, I finallt got to say to Mike what I wanted to say. And express how I really felt. And he told me he loved me. And he walked out the door the next morning.
In 1998, Evil Kris and I went to Toledo to get MJ off of Duane. That's when I found out that Mike had moved to Louisiana. One of these days, I'll track hime down from there.
And that is the long story of who Mike is.
If you make it through that, I'm hoping you'll understand that I had something close to closure with Mike. Problem being that the dreams make me miss him a bit. I still think that somedays we should still be together, while others I know we wouldn't have made it. But he's no longer a gaping sore on my soul. He more like an old friend I worry about on dark nights.
So anyway, I guess we get the relevant issues here.
Where do I start. This has all been going on for a while. Recently, hell, I can't really say when it actually started, I've been dreaming about Mike a lot. More often than not, I dream he's sleeping beside me, and I'm always so pissed when I wake up and he's not there.
Now I know I've mentioned Mike a lot on here at various points, so let's go back and tell the umpteenth version of this goddamn story.
Mike and I officially met at Boy Scout camp. We were tentmates my second year of Summer camp. As I recall, we both were in Swimming Merit badge class together, but that has no bearing at all on any of this. During the course of the week (for the record, I was 12, he was 13), he made a few subtle and not so subtle advances towards me. Me being an idiot, I laughed them off. Thursday of Summer Camp, John (Ass't Senior Patrol Leader) came by our tent and showed off "Oscar". (I will not discuss what Oscar was. I will say it was rather impressive and gave me a complex for a few years afterward.) Well, John and Mike invited me to go into the woods with them. (Cue porno music.) I watched for about two minutes, feeling a variety of emotions, disgust, desire, and promptly ran backl to camp and told the Scoutmaster. Bad James.
Well, Mike didn't talk to me the last two days of camp. I think he was mildly pissed that I broke the trust issue. So...fast forward to September of that year. Our troop volunteered to park cars for Quilt show at the National Guard armory. Mike and I ended up talking again, and at some point during the morning, we ended up in the bathroom shower at the armory together. So, in theory, I lost my virginity on Federal property. Yay me. I will say I did initiate contact. It was kind of a now or never kind of thing. Nothing much happened between us again until track season started. I was the Manager, and he ran the mile. (Is it just me or does half of this now sound like bad porn set-ups? Gah, to be young again.) Well, since our home feild at the time was the Urbana University Track facility, we walked home together after practice. One day, we went off the trail (home to Urban Legends like "The Sacrificial Virgins"), and thigs happened again. Now by this point, Mike and I were the only ones who got along with each other in our Troop. So, the next summer, guess who my tentmate was at summer camp. Then guess how we spent just about every night after everyone was asleep. Then blush right along with me.
Well, somewhere in this time frame, Mike got sent away to Reform School for a few months, as well as getting kicked out of Scouts. Rumour around school was he was abusing his sister, but from what I understand, he actually punched his mother for that round of "Why I go to a special school". So anyway, I'll skip a few years here, since Mike and I evolved into a "Call me when no one's home" relationship for a few years.
So, Ok. During my Sophomore year in High School, I started the coming out process thanks to Dakota Walker. (She also was Daniella Walker or Dakota D. Risings.) I was involved in Teen Institute, a state sponsored camp for Drug and Alcohol Prevention tactics among students. I ended up going to State TI in 1991, the same year I was also at Ashland University writing a musical. (in other words, right after we did our last curtain call at Ashland, I ended up driving to Kenyon.) I was a little bitch at Music camp. When I got to TI, the assigned me to Family Group 50, Dakota as Adult Staff Supervisor, and Randy as our Youth Staff Assistant. Well, meeting number two of ten for our group ended with Dakota telling us she was a lesbian, and she was running a program on dealing with GLB youth. Well, I went, under the guise of supporting Dakota. The real reason, was of course, trying to sort out my uidentity and learn what I could about being gay, since most of what I knew about being gay centered around Mike. Well, Thursday at State was the big ubiquitous dance that no camp is complete without. (I take trhat back. They didn't have them at Boy Scout Camp.) I ended up admitting to myself, that yes indeed, I was gay. (You'd think after 3 years of sex with Mike I would have realized this, but...) So after camp, I wrote Dakota and told her. I got a lovely letter back from her that I keep in my desk now as a reminder of how things used to be. So I told my best friend Shawn. I ended up blowing Shawn on Mom's washer that very same night. This also marks the point where my friendship with Shawn began it's long horrible decent into outright hatred. Coincidence? I think not. I metion this only because the only other person who knew about that was Mike.
Well, still in High School, let's plumb the depths of every other thing James did to make Mike jealous. One incident involved my time as Inside Tackle on the Football team. An offer was made by someone I thought was cute. I didn't accept. But I told Mike I did, just to get a rise out of him.
One which Mike never heard about involved Alex, yet another fine upstanding Boy Scout. We'll cut this down because I still have fucking nightmares about it. One time, at Scout camp, Melvin fell out of a tree. His friend Alex came to camp late. so as Senior Patrol Leader, it fell to me to keep Alex calm. I did. A few months later, Alex and Melvin (who was never the same after that fall) came to my house while everyone was out of town. We ended up drinking a lot of whiskey, and Alex and I ended up in bed together. Well, I was kind of...um...involved...when my brother walked in on us. (What I find ironic about all of this is that I found out later Richard was fucking at least 4 different girls on mom's bed. So he had NO room to talk.)
We'll skip why I hate my brother (oh what the hell. Rich read my private journal I kept on a Smith Corona Word Processor disk that was hidden on my bookshelf. He then told me he was going to tell mom if I didn't seek councelling to get "straightened out".) and go ahead to a snow day later that year.
Well, I went to Alex's house, since he wanted to borrow money to buy the New Jack City soundtrack. What he neglected to mention was that his little sister was there. I kept trying to find excuses to get Alex alone, he ended up getting the 3 of us involved in a game of strip poker, and we went up to his room where I got to watch him fuck his sister. And I wonder why I have fucking issues now. For the record, I did report it twice. The first time, I was in shock, and I told a minister. He ignored me. The second time was a year later, after Alex had been in a near fatal accident. I remember Children's Services asking me if I thought Alex deserved to be crippled for what he did. I said "no". They ignored it, mainly because Alex's parents were big political contributers to the local Ruling Party. Thus one of many reasons I hate Children's Services. Of course, I also left out why I was there in the first place...
So getting back to Mike. Somewhere in there, Mike met Chris. Chris was an "older" gay man (he was 21), and in the eyes of memory, I can now see he was what we call a "twink". Since I had no idea of any of what contemporary Gay Life was back then, I didn't know that. I do remember that he drove a Gremlin. One of the coolest cars ever. Well, Mike and Chris and I ended up cruising all over town one night talking. Chris knew what it was to be gay, or so I thought. (In other words, he was a specimin in a petrie dish I could examine.) Well, after dropping me off, I guess he and Mike went and had sex. The thing that pisses me off to no end is that I knew it was going to happen, and Mike refused to fucking tell me afterward. Chris on the other hand called me the next day and gave me gory details. Fucker. Both of them. Well, a week later, Chris left. On the bright side, Mike chose me over the worldly Chris. Yay. I felt like a booby prize. But, in the same situation, I would have done the same. Marriage is a bitch. Mike and I had been whatever the hell we were for 5 fucking years. But I think I lost something in the aftermath. Yes, I gained a new lover (Mike learned a few new tricks, and then taught them to me), but I think I stopped seeing Mike as something serious. I think my jealousy eroded into a feeling of...well, for some reason, I really stopped caring about what Mike felt. I remember when I got my truck, Mike wanted to do something, and I tried to stop him because I was sure he didn't care. And now, I know that he did. But that's later.
So, anyway, I did some shit to piss off Mike, and then I tried to undo the damage. All I ended up doing was hurting Mike more. FUCK. He dropped out of my life about the time I graduated.
Around that time, I found out that Chris was living in Mike's old apartment on Hill Street with his boyfriend Gregg.
taocub met Gregg at one point, so he knows why I think of Gregg as a sleezy mother. To shorten this narrative a bit, I tried to seduce Gregg to get back at Chris for fucking my bf. I sort of worked. I ended up breaking up Chris and Gregg, but I never did sleep with the boy. But, on the bright side, before all THAT happened, Gregg did introduce me to the concept of the gay bar. 1470 West to be precise. Let's skip ahead in time to Fall Quarter 1994 at WSU. I laugh when I think about this mainly because I realize now I wasn't the only one striving to find my identity in the gay world. I had the advantage of experience, but I also had a full figure that all of the twinks in Dayton preferred to ignore or sneer at. So, one day, unhappy with my dorm life, I decided to call Mike and see if he had any interest in getting a "Monogamous couple" apartment in the WSU housing area. This is when I found out Mike was in jail.
The next year, I worked up my courage and wrote Mike a letter to be forwarded to him. He and I talked for a VERY long time, both by letter and by collect call.
Then I moved, and we fell out of contact again. Then, the next year, I ran across a personals ad in The Dayton Voice that sounded like Mike. I wrote, and 3 days later, Mom calls me to discuss Lisa's pregnancy, and then drops in that Mike had called her looking for me. I kept interupting her lecture on why she didn't want to tell me, mainly because I was hoping he had given her a phone number. Which he had. Well, I ended up taking a very arduous road trip to Toledo via Columbus and Tiffin, with a stop after in Ann Arbor, where I got to see Mike for the first time in years. He lived with Duane, his sugar daddy.
Well, I left, feeling nothing that needed resolved had been resolved.
May 18, 1997 was the last time I saw Mike. He and Duane came down to go to a jewelry show, and spent the night at my place. That night, I finallt got to say to Mike what I wanted to say. And express how I really felt. And he told me he loved me. And he walked out the door the next morning.
In 1998, Evil Kris and I went to Toledo to get MJ off of Duane. That's when I found out that Mike had moved to Louisiana. One of these days, I'll track hime down from there.
And that is the long story of who Mike is.
If you make it through that, I'm hoping you'll understand that I had something close to closure with Mike. Problem being that the dreams make me miss him a bit. I still think that somedays we should still be together, while others I know we wouldn't have made it. But he's no longer a gaping sore on my soul. He more like an old friend I worry about on dark nights.
