a guy i saw once
Hey, this is a quick content warning for graphic sexual content and brief mentions of sexual assault.
What a limitless being does not have is limits.
I walk around looking for someone to maintain eye contact. I look in the eyes of every guy who passes me in hopes of finding something new. Everyone is an opportunity. Every moment is a moment gone. I sit in Jewish services and I have no idea what they’re saying. The prayer leader speeds through words that mean nothing to me. She leans back and forth and I follow the lead of the boys next to me. Sit, stand, bow, mumble along. My finger traces the page right to left like I can read any of it.
A boy shows up at the cafe, but he won’t match my gaze. He sees right through me. He sees that I have nothing to offer him. Anyone who wants me is missing what I want from them.
-1 + -1 = -2
The fact of the matter is if I’m not myself, no one will be. The issue is that never in my life have I wanted to be myself. I’m jealous to no end. I think everyday about jellyfish. I used to sit in front of the jellyfish tank at the aquarium for forever. I loved the way they float without direction. I loved the purple and red fluorescent lights illuminating their almost clear tentacles. At summer camp we used to grab jellyfish out of the river and slap them across our forearms. Whoever left it on the longest won. It stung a bit, but really it itched. I used to hear stories of people peeing on their friend’s jellyfish stings. I used to lean over a bit at the urinals to see my friends’ penises. I used to imagine everyone naked all the time. If you asked me at ten years old if I could have any superpower, I would have told you super strength, but really I meant X-ray vision. I used to dream about kissing my friends. I dreamt about jerking off with them. Sometimes these things would come true.
In elementary school I was friends with a pastor’s son. I let him tell his dad he converted me to Christianity. He wanted to go to Harvard and he was certain he could do it so long as he got Eagle Scout. I never really liked him much, but I liked his attention. We laughed at the same dumb things, but his feminine giggle annoyed me. Why do you act like a girl? One day he came over to my house and we sat in my bedroom on my furry carpet. It was sticky with semen stains, but I told him it was from my dog. We watched YouTube videos together, laughing at what we had agreed was funny at the time. I didn’t want to kiss him, I wanted him to watch me cum. Eventually we turned on hentai porn and soon enough we were both naked. His penis was smaller than mine. It was pale and seemingly shrunken into his hairless body. My penis was already bending to the right from my masturbation habits. Hairs were sprouting around the base of it and I hated that. Eventually we came and my mom called us down for dinner. Last time I checked he was engaged to a woman or something.
My guy friends used to ask me to give them massages. I rubbed their bodies up and down and they told me it felt amazing. I used to massage my friend’s bare ass. My friends used to send me pictures of their penises as a joke. We would play strip Call of Duty. When I was twelve my friend fucked his girlfriend on the couch next to me. My friends used to ask me to massage them and I would feel tingles in my hands when I rubbed their toned bodies. I wanted everything. I wanted to be just like them. I hated the way I thought about their bodies. I hated the way touching them made me feel. At sleepovers, I’d lay in bed beside my sleeping friends and dream about sucking their dicks. I wanted to rub our bodies together until we started a fire.
At my first psychiatric evaluation, the doctor asked me if I was gay or straight. I said I was bisexual and my mother looked at me surprised. I knew she’d accept me, but I didn’t want to have the conversation. It felt like I needed to just keep it to myself. I didn’t even like to tell my mom when I had crushes on girls, nonetheless boys. After the evaluation, my mom said, “I didn’t know you’re bisexual?” And I said, “Yea I just think I’m open to whatever.” She asked if she could tell my dad and I said sure but I made her promise he wouldn’t talk to me about it. And that’s how it went for years. Don’t ask, don’t tell. My highschool friends and I would kiss sometimes as a joke. One time I even sucked my friend's dick. He came in my mouth and I swallowed it with ease. We called it a “brojob”. During the school day I would leave math class to jerk off in the bathroom stalls. I’d spend class time dreaming of hooking up with boys in my classes in the locker room. I was always most attracted to the nice guys who seemed straight. The moment a boy showed any signs of femininity, I immediately lost attraction. I still find this to be true for the most part. If I meet a guy and his voice sounds “gay” I will lose interest right away like water on a hot pan. I found myself dreaming of normal boys. Everything they did seemed so much better than everything I did. I wanted to kiss them, but I also wanted to be them.
When I was far too young, I downloaded Grindr. I remember scrolling through countless 40-50 year old men asking to see me naked. The average interaction:
Stranger: Hey ;)
Me: Hi
Stranger: What r u into??
Me: Just curious
Stranger: U ever been w an older guy ? ;)
Me: No
Stranger: ur hot
Me: thanks
Stranger: can i see more ??
Me: you first
After a moment or two, a picture would pop up of someone who reminded me of my teacher or my dad’s friend or the man at the picture frame store my mom used to always chat with. I felt gross, like something was out of order. Something was out of order. They liked my young body. They liked that I didn’t look too worn out by the world. My hair was still on my head. My eye bags were yet to engrain themselves permanently under my tired eyes. I didn’t necessarily look like a high schooler, I had a goatee and was relatively muscular, but you could tell I had yet to be used.
Eventually, a man convinced me to come over to his house. He sent pictures of his cats and said that if I wasn’t comfortable I could leave at any point. I knew this wasn’t really true. I showed up to his house and it smelled like incense and cigarettes. His cat met me at the door and his tenant let me in. He was a landlord. I walked up the stairs to his bedroom. The lights were dim, he was facedown on his bed, head in a pillow, completely naked. I was repulsed but I felt like I had to engage. We kissed and he had six less teeth than me. I counted with my tongue. His mouth tasted like cigarettes and old mouthwash. I was barely even hard by the time he sucked me. I remember his tongue going everywhere. Eventually he put me inside him before I could finish saying no.
This happened again in Colorado.
I’m not a victim and I don’t care to see myself that way. This is a product of repression.
I often think about how things could be different. I wish I wasn’t covered in tattoos. I wish I could change everything about myself, but these permanent marks on my skin keep me in the past. I am grateful for them, but I often wish I could just rip them all off. I got them to remind myself of my suffering. I have “YOU WON’T GET WHAT YOU WANT” tattooed on my abs. What a joke.
I look at every guy I meet and I want them to make me better. I’m falling in love in the men’s locker room.
All I want is a guy who I can be friends with and kiss. I want to enter his world. I don’t want to impress him. My friend told me that what I want doesn’t exist. Girls look at me longingly and guys don’t look at me. I met a man at a bar in Manhattan and he asked me to makeout with him. I was into his straight friends, so I just walked home.
Now, I scroll through dating apps in a state of general disgust. It’s not them, it's me. I meet guys at Hillel and they make me smile and I like the way they laugh. I see guys across the bar and I imagine talking to them. Too many guys have told me they’re sorry that they’re straight for me to approach anyone anymore. I just catalog their image in my head, the person I created for them. I see the boys around me and I wonder how they act so effortlessly. Why do I dress like this? Why do I sound like this? Do they even think about this shit? The thing is, I’m into sports. It sounds dumb but its true. I like guy stuff, but I never feel like I fit all the way in. I can pass, but the fact of the matter is I don’t see things the same way they do. I am failing at being a man.
Look around you, we are clearly alone.
I’ll write a novel someday and people will read it who I’ve never met. I’ll write something long and important. I’ll write something that makes me famous and makes people want to be just like me. I’ll write another novel and another and soon I’ll be well known for writing novels. I’ll write about awful things. All I think about are awful things. I want to be rich enough to buy the world. I want to starve myself for a month and call it art. I want to sell my whole body to the military. I want to pray until my hands mold together. I want to become so thin I disappear. I want to get rid of all these tattoos. I want a new body and a new face. I want a new mind and a new life. Who I am right now can exist, but I don’t want to be responsible for him. What I want, I can’t have because I am who I am. I can’t change what I want and I can’t change who I am, so what’s left to do. Be yourself. I don’t want to! What do you do when all that’s left is nothing at all? Nothing feels good. No thing feels good. Anything but this. I go to the gym and fall in love with boys who I’ll never see again. I fall in love with men who don’t exist. I create people in my head and they break my heart. It’s a loser’s game. I’m betting on my own downfall. I love the way your glasses fall down the bridge of your nose. That’s your father’s nose. Those are your mother’s eyes. I love the way your arms know exactly how to be at all times. The veins on your forearms roll and pulse. I love the way your hands hold your phone. They’re delicate in a masculine way. I love the way your backpack hangs off your shoulder. I love the way you slap your friends on the back. I love the way that you have no idea that I love the way that you exist. I love that you are someone. I love that you have friends. I love the way your voice makes sounds. I love the way you walk like you are going somewhere to do something. I love the way you breathe. There’s a slight whistle in it. You terrify me.
Everyday I re-make the decision to be a normal person, but I feel like an alien. I read books about men who hate the world and I feel the same way but the opposite. I read Osamu Dazai, Louis Ferdinand Celine, Franz Kafka, Knut Hamsun, Doug Richmond, even Ted Kaczynski, all in hopes of finding someone who hates the way I hate, but I am looking in all the wrong places. My experience is not one of hatred, it’s all envy and longing. I love Edmund White. He writes about longing in a way I wish I could.
“I looked at every man, on the train or in these lit cubicles, and asked myself if I could marry him. Could I live with him forever?”
“When I desired someone, especially a stranger, I poured myself into him.”
“Although I myself was at least young and in college, I already saw myself as vampire-cold, turned prematurely old as a punishment for vice, and not nearly enviable enough to be that exciting thing, a ‘college kid.’ I’d learned to feel nostalgia for my own youth while I was living it.”
“I knew a man stopped being desirable the moment he desired another.”
(From “The Beautiful Room is Empty” by Edmund White)