Sapiosexuality

Sapiosexuality: (n.) A behavior of becoming attracted to or aroused by intelligence and its use.

It's funny what you remember at 4 in the morning.

The day started out skateboarding to his house. 

After beating his little brothers at Smash Bros 64 for a while to put their egos back in their place, him and I drove over to our friends house to play Goldeneye and Diablo. One single $5 Little Caesars Pizza and a 2-liter of Mountain Dew later, all our other friends arrived. Within minutes, seven guys in a backyard with PVC pipes covered in foam, wrapped in duct tape were cheering and beating the shit out of each other for no reason whatsoever. No magical narratives at play. No knights or wizards or elves. Nothing mystical about it - we just loved the competition. 

At sundown, we all climbed into our friend's truck, and hit the road to see MXPX, our punk rock heroes. Someone in front reached under the seat to pull out the massive, square, polyester CD case full of burned discs - each one covered with incoherent sharpie scribbles - and pushed one in. Volume knob spun clockwise to 63, the seven of us sang the entire album 1998's "Slowly Going The Way Of The Buffalo" with the windows rolled down, every word chanted into the night sky with the infinite verve of youth, and the harmonic pitch of a pack of rabid wolves on cocaine. We were full of unrequited hormones, relentless innocent energy, a confidence that the world would soon be ours, and the invincibility that only naïve 20-somethings can possess. 

Lights flash. Feedback. Rumble. Noise. Drums. Distortion. We moshed the pits. Elbows flew, stumbling in circles, picking up people who fell (as the sacred code of mosh pits commands). A security guard body slammed one of us - to this day I'm not sure what he did to deserve it, but I am sure he deserved it. We drank things we shouldn't have. We jumped on each others backs and shot our fists in the air to every chorus. We draped our exhausted arms over each others shoulders and laughed. Our sweat smeared all over bodies of hundreds of other people who did the same to us in that blur of carefree chaos and bruises. 

With the final encore over and our shirts soaked, we walked outside; the night air wicking away the heat from our bodies, seven bulletproof boys walking in a line, all wearing matching green paper bracelets. Driving back, we put in a Less Than Jake CD, threw fireworks out the windows, lobbed sweet and sour sauce packets into cars, and pulled all of our coins from our pockets together to get as many drive thru 99 cent tacos as we could. We were kings of nothing - but kings nonetheless. 

Some of us had plans of going to college in another state.
Some of us were looking into joining the Coast Guard.
Some of us had ambitions of being rockstars one day.
Some of us just wanted to marry the girlfriends we were with. 

None of our dreams came true. Life forced us get older, move away, get into friendship-breaking arguments, and take jobs that turned us into the exact kind of adults we swore we'd never become. God knows where everyone is now.

That one glorious night of music and abandoned freedom would be the last time all seven of us would ever hang out together again.

...we just didn't know it yet.

gains-burroughs.

 

i dont want a woman who thinks the alignment of stars dictate her mood,
or that the planets justify her behavior.
i dont want a woman who consults crystals for advice,
tarot cards for guidance,
or thinks she can see the color of my aura to define my energy.

i dont want a woman who thinks men are awful, incapable of good,
part of the "oppressive patriarchy" that have no use any longer,
and that masculinity is "toxic".

i dont want a woman who has enjoys it when i pay for dates when we go out,
opens doors for her,
buys her gifts on holidays,
birthdays,
and anniversaries,
givs her massages every night,
maks dinner for her,
does all the chores when shes had a long day,
and listens to any problems she might have...

...but then feels its beneath her to do any of those in return, because she's not my "slave".

i dont want a woman who talks about the universe as if it has a will of its own,
and uses the word "manifest" interchangeably with "planning",
as if just hoping for something a lot will make it real one day.

i dont want a woman who thinks all of her exes were narcissists or sociopaths,
without first considering the common thread.

i dont want a trump supporter.
or someone anti-abortion.
or way too into guns.
or flat-earther.
or anti-vaxxer.
or pothead.
or alcoholic.

i dont want a woman who thinks body counts dont matter because its "just a number".
its not.
its reflective of so, so much more.

i dont want a woman who shifts into victim mode and throws around the term "gaslighting" in any discussion where shes wrong
so she can avoid be proven wrong
because shed rather try to make me a villain instead of admit something or accept a difficult fact.

i dont want a woman who slaps me when shes angry,
pushes me,
hits me,
screams at me,
claws at me,
or punches me...
but says it shouldnt matter because "shes a girl and im a guy and it doesnt hurt me, so stop being a little bitch."

(it always hurt me.)

i dont want a woman who is a "boss queen".
i dont care if she makes more than me.
triple what i make.
or quadruple.
...or half.
or no money at all.
i am not intimidated by your income. i welcome it.
and if she makes less - or none - ill compensate for it and take care of her.

but an irritating, demeaning, condescending woman
who thinks neglecting and berating me is the same as having power?
or think having an brash, rude, ego is required
in order to be competent and successful in life?

no.

that doesnt intimidate me.
that drains my sanity.
because then im spending every ounce of my free time navigating the blind hubris
of what amounts to a spoiled 10-year old mind in the body of an adult.
because if i argue back and win,
then im an asshole.
and i dont win anyway.

i want a woman who is compassionate.
caring.
loving.
soft.
kind.
generous.

a woman can be all of those things AND be successful at whatever they do.

i want kids.
i want a family.
i want a christmas tree that i put presents under at 4 in the morning when the kids are asleep.
i want to surprise her with vacations.
i want a pet we get together and name together.
i want to get a call from the school saying my kid is sick, so i take off from work and spend the rest of the day with them.
i want her to fill in my gaps, teach me the things she knows about life and the world that i dont.
i want to her to fall asleep on me 10 minutes into the movie we spent 3 hours deciding on.
i want us to juggle finances. be late on bills. pay off a house. have a joint account.
i want to be far away from my own family and her not judge me for it, or buy in to the myth of, "you can judge a man based on his relationship with his mother".
because, no. you cant.

the world is an insane, brutal, and unforgiving place.
friends can leave,
family can destroy,
co-workers can betray,
and the outside world doesnt care about me on any level.
but the woman im with
needs to be at least the one place in this big chaotic universe where i can find peace.
a hug.
a lap to lay down on.
a kiss.

not another set of arguments and accusations as soon as i come home.

i want a place where i can be vulnerable
share my pain
my past
the abuse
my family
my exes
everything
and her not hold it against me.
but instead appreciate that i trusted her enough to open up to her, and only her
and to be thankful that i survived all these decades
because all of it made me the person i am right in front of her.

i want to be her rock.
i want to be the person she brags about to her coworkers when they see my picture.
i want to be the person she comes to when she needs anything.
i want to protect her.
our kids.
our pets.
i want to be nervous dropping off our daughter at prom.
i want to be stressed out watching the last 30 seconds of my sons ballgame.
i want to explain death to them when our goldfish dies.
talk about religion.
politics.
relationships.
even fucking astrology.

but that life... will never happen.

im too old now. too damaged.
too ugly.
too... gone.

but i was close
once.
ill have to be happy with that.

i guess.

Deux Ans Sans Amour.

You tell someone you love them when things are going beautifully, and they believe you and reciprocate.

You tell someone you love them even when things are falling over your heads like the Roman Coliseum in an earthquake, and they shake their head and wonder how that's possible.

You tell someone that you will love them - and only them - long after everything is over, and they'll call you a liar.

But I submit that this is only them projecting their own limitations, because they themselves could never love someone to that level, therefore rendering the concept of Forever Love impossible - even in the face of self-imposed loneliness. Which, in their head, makes you a liar.

And yet, here I am.

It's been two  years since her and I touched each other. And I've yet to be with anyone else, in any capacity. Sexually, romantically, kissing, hugging - even going on any dates or talking on the phone. September 22nd, 2016.

It's September 22nd, 2018 now.

And here I am.

I still feel every ounce of love, pain, betrayal, trauma, and indescribable beauty of me and her. I can still hear the sound her lips would make when they parted after we'd kiss. The different types of laughs. Rolling in her drool on her pillow in the morning. Sitting on the bathroom floor, holding her hand, her "pee pal". Cleaning out the gutters on the roof and then laying out in the autumn sun and taking pictures. The way she would grab me and hold me when we'd make love. The things we'd say into each others' ears in the dark for no one else but each other. The poison oak hike. The Dandy Lion rescue mission. Cooling each other off with paperback books in the afterglow of summer night sex.

It's all... still here. Preserved, perfectly in this lonely heart. Like a glass case I don't let anyone touch or point at or look at for fear of anything contaminating it. The highest highs and the lowest lows are all in there. No one can take that away.

Not all the new guys in the world that have been in her bed. I had Nala. Moonlight. No one else has.

They have their own version of whatever she's decided to be.

* * * * * * * * * * 

I didn't realize how long it had been without sex (or anything involving a woman) until about a year had passed. I put the notification on my calendar months prior for some reason. Woke up to it on my alarm.

I fully expected for my primal urges to take over at some point. I trusted that, at some point, hormones would take over and override heartbreak and regret and drive me into something else. All guys need pussy right? "Gotta fuck new pussy to get over old pussy." That's... that's what they always say?

They never kicked in. I never got to the, "I just need to feel pleasure again," or the whole, "I just want to feel wanted again," mentality. Seemed like a cop out. I know it's normal - I know she has done it tons of times - but it never triggered in me.

Any thought of intimacy always funneled back to her.

And me.

And her and I having a family.

...

I never go out.

* * * * * * * * * * 

I'll probably add more to this post later. It's getting depressing. Took me 40 minutes to write this far. She shouldn't affect me to this magnitude two years later, but she still does, in full, unapologetic breaths of memory.

I could never escape her cloud.

In truth, I've never tried.

Because I've never wanted to.

I fear I've done all the "healing" I can possibly muster for this lifetime. And I'm just left with the wound of my soulmate being far, far away.

Once I Pass’d Through a Populous City

Once I pass’d through a populous city imprinting my brain for future
use with its shows, architecture, customs, traditions,
Yet now of all that city I remember only a woman I casually met
there who detain’d me for love of me,

Day by day and night by night we were together—all else has long
been forgotten by me,

I remember I say only that woman who passionately clung to me,
Again we wander, we love, we separate again,
Again she holds me by the hand, I must not go,
I see her close beside me with silent lips sad and tremulous.


- Walt Whitman

Clynelish 14, neat.

Migrations

Sometimes I'll see a feather on the ground and I'll wonder if the bird it belonged to a ever flew over you, 800 miles from here.

 I'll wonder if it was ever so beautiful that you pointed it out to your daughter as she looked up with you, before ignoring it and going back to playing.

There are so many Oregon license plates here.

Every car, every truck, every jeep I see with that green tree - I wonder if they ever drove through Medford on their way here. If they ever drove past you. Or sat at a stop light next to you. If you were ever stuck behind it at a Dutch Bros drive thru waiting to your Pumpkin Latte and your daughter's straw of whip cream.

All of these thousands of hypothetical invisible coincidences that connect us but we'll never know.

And the only reason they mean anything right is because I can't touch you.

I don’t know how to explain to someone why they should care about other people.

Like many Americans, I’m having politics fatigue. Or, to be more specific, arguing-about-politics fatigue. 


I haven’t run out of salient points or evidence for my political perspective, but there is a particular stumbling block I keep running into when trying to reach across the proverbial aisle and have those “difficult conversations” so smugly suggested by think piece after think piece: 


I don’t know how to explain to someone why they should care about other people. 


Personally, I’m happy to pay an extra 4.3 percent for my fast food burger if it means the person making it for me can afford to feed their own family. If you aren’t willing to fork over an extra 17 cents for a Big Mac, you’re a fundamentally different person than I am. 
 I’m perfectly content to pay taxes that go toward public schools, even though I’m childless and intend to stay that way, because all children deserve a quality, free education. If this seems unfair or unreasonable to you, we are never going to see eye to eye. 
 If I have to pay a little more with each paycheck to ensure my fellow Americans can access health care? SIGN ME UP. Poverty should not be a death sentence in the richest country in the world. If you’re okay with thousands of people dying of treatable diseases just so the wealthiest among us can hoard still more wealth, there is a divide between our worldviews that can never be bridged. 
 I don’t know how to convince someone how to experience the basic human emotion of empathy. I cannot have one more conversation with someone who is content to see millions of people suffer needlessly in exchange for a tax cut that statistically they’ll never see (do you make anywhere close to the median American salary? Less? Congrats, this tax break is not for you). 
 I cannot have political debates with these people. Our disagreement is not merely political, but a fundamental divide on what it means to live in a society, how to be a good person, and why any of that matters. 
 There are all kinds of practical, self-serving reasons to raise the minimum wage (fairly compensated workers typically do better work), fund public schools (everyone’s safer when the general public can read and use critical thinking), and make sure every American can access health care (outbreaks of preventable diseases being generally undesirable). 
 But if making sure your fellow citizens can afford to eat, get an education, and go to the doctor isn’t enough of a reason to fund those things, I have nothing left to say to you. 
 I can’t debate someone into caring about what happens to their fellow human beings. The fact that such detached cruelty is so normalized in a certain party’s political discourse is at once infuriating and terrifying. 
 The “I’ve got mine, so screw you,” attitude has been oozing from the American right wing for decades, but this gleeful exuberance in pushing legislation that will immediately hurt the most vulnerable among us is chilling. 
 Perhaps it was always like this. I’m (relatively) young, so maybe I’m just waking up to this unimaginable callousness. Maybe the emergence of social media has just made this heinous tendency more visible; seeing hundreds of accounts spring to the defense of policies that will almost certainly make their lives more difficult is incredible to behold. 
 I don’t know what’s changed ― or indeed, if anything has ― and I don’t have any easy answers. But I do know I’m done trying to convince these hordes of selfish, cruel people to look beyond themselves. 
 Futility can’t be good for my blood pressure, and the way things are going, I won’t have health insurance for long.      Like many Americans, I’m having politics fatigue. Or, to be more specific, arguing-about-politics fatigue. 
 I haven’t run out of salient points or evidence for my political perspective, but there is a particular stumbling block I keep running into when trying to reach across the proverbial aisle and have those “difficult conversations” so smugly suggested by think piece after think piece: 
 I don’t know how to explain to someone why they should care about other people. 
 Personally, I’m happy to pay an extra 4.3 percent for my fast food burger if it means the person making it for me can afford to feed their own family. If you aren’t willing to fork over an extra 17 cents for a Big Mac, you’re a fundamentally different person than I am. 
 I’m perfectly content to pay taxes that go toward public schools, even though I’m childless and intend to stay that way, because all children deserve a quality, free education. If this seems unfair or unreasonable to you, we are never going to see eye to eye. 
 If I have to pay a little more with each paycheck to ensure my fellow Americans can access health care? SIGN ME UP. Poverty should not be a death sentence in the richest country in the world. If you’re okay with thousands of people dying of treatable diseases just so the wealthiest among us can hoard still more wealth, there is a divide between our worldviews that can never be bridged. 
 I don’t know how to convince someone how to experience the basic human emotion of empathy. I cannot have one more conversation with someone who is content to see millions of people suffer needlessly in exchange for a tax cut that statistically they’ll never see (do you make anywhere close to the median American salary? Less? Congrats, this tax break is not for you). 
 I cannot have political debates with these people. Our disagreement is not merely political, but a fundamental divide on what it means to live in a society, how to be a good person, and why any of that matters. 
 There are all kinds of practical, self-serving reasons to raise the minimum wage (fairly compensated workers typically do better work), fund public schools (everyone’s safer when the general public can read and use critical thinking), and make sure every American can access health care (outbreaks of preventable diseases being generally undesirable). 
 But if making sure your fellow citizens can afford to eat, get an education, and go to the doctor isn’t enough of a reason to fund those things, I have nothing left to say to you. 
 I can’t debate someone into caring about what happens to their fellow human beings. The fact that such detached cruelty is so normalized in a certain party’s political discourse is at once infuriating and terrifying. 
 The “I’ve got mine, so screw you,” attitude has been oozing from the American right wing for decades, but this gleeful exuberance in pushing legislation that will immediately hurt the most vulnerable among us is chilling. 
 Perhaps it was always like this. I’m (relatively) young, so maybe I’m just waking up to this unimaginable callousness. Maybe the emergence of social media has just made this heinous tendency more visible; seeing hundreds of accounts spring to the defense of policies that will almost certainly make their lives more difficult is incredible to behold. 
 I don’t know what’s changed ― or indeed, if anything has ― and I don’t have any easy answers. But I do know I’m done trying to convince these hordes of selfish, cruel people to look beyond themselves. 
 Futility can’t be good for my blood pressure, and the way things are going, I won’t have health insurance for long.

They keep saying not to.

They keep saying not to let you win.

But they don't understand that you won a long time ago.

Whitman

Hungry and hollow

Being what you are, there is no help for it.

You see, people don't hate you for being simple, they're on their guard against it, that's all. Your simplicity is a kind of flame which scorches them. You go through the world with that lowly smile of yours as though you begged their pardon for being alive, while all the time you carry a torch which you seem to mistake for a crucifix. 9 times out of 10 they'll tear it from you and stamp that light out. Your chance is merely a tenth, you see. But you're worth every fraction.

Hello.

[A dream I just had, so I'm writing it down:]

The room was red, erotic, and dim. We were there, laying in an exhausted afterglow, lazily catching our breath. A conversation just happened, though I can't remember far back enough to say what was said. 

But I do remember her forlorn expression and her perfect Bambi eyes asking incredulously why I said that we were going to end one day. I guess I told her that. I tucked her hair behind her ear and sighed.

"Something I realized a long time ago and then again very recently," I hummed. "Everything is temporary - even permanent things. I've had a dozen women tell me how unshakable their love for me was and could love me - only me - forever and ever. That they could never have sex with anyone else ever again." 

I paused, lost in memory. Then continued in amusement.  "Do you know where they all are now? Married. To someone else. Kids. Pet dog. All that.

"I'm out of your league. I know I'm out of your league. We'll have fun, make our inside jokes. I'll fuck your brains out and take your body to places you've never been. But one day, I'll be ordering a shot for one and you'll be gone."

She winked her eyebrow at the suggestion.  I smirked sadly and assured her. "You'll find some better-looking guy, or one with more money, or who dresses sharper, and all of these little perfect moments will stop mattering to you. And you'll move on. And deep down I won't be able to blame you. Because To me, right now and forever,  you're so god damn beautiful and wicked intelligent that I have no idea how you haven't taken the world over already. The only theory that makes sense to me is that you simply have chosen not to yet.

"All of this... This is all temporary."

She blinked. As if that had all happened to her before and knew it was true... so she had nothing to say. 

I rolled on my back and stared at the ceiling in the dark, unable to let her see my eyes as I pushed forward with the truth. "I'm going to fall for you more and more every day, until one day you'll be the 'love of my life'. And that's when you'll leave for a good reason I can't even fathom right now. 

"So understand that every night with you is the very honestly the luckiest night of my life. And tomorrow night I'll feel all the luckier. And the night after that, luckier still. I know better now than to plan on forever. But because of that, I will never, ever take a moment with you for granted.

"I don't know anything about the future other than it's going to happen. And I hate that it does because it always changes what's good about now. 

"So," I said, turning towards her, my shoulder pinning the pillow down, revealing the rest of her moonlit face. "I'm just going to appreciate you right now, love. Soak this all in, enjoy these half-drunken, torn-clothes, delirious nights. I'm finally happy again right now. This probably won't last, but I'm happy. And it's because of you. 

"Which is more than I can say for any of the other 7 billion people in this temporary, fucked up world."

Medford.

It was Christmas morning.

I'd spent the last year and a half of my underwhelming existence trying to vindicate it all by pouring myself into one girl.
She loved me until she hated me... and hated me until she loved me... and then back again.
Our wheel spun every day, never knowing where we would land.
But it had to end here.

Christmas morning.

She was telling me she was fucking some other guy now just to get over me.
And she hated me so much that she kept... trying to tell me I was doing things with other girls... that I had to be by now...
I could tell she was yelling it so hard because she had to convince herself.
To make it easier.
But of course... there was never any other girl.
There was only her.
And her perfect beauty.
And all of our violence and supernova love.
But now there it was.
Collapsing.

On that rainy Christmas morning.

Hearing those words... then reading them.
I wanted to go back... back... back in time... fix it all... be a better person so maybe she would be, too.
I thought terrible things.
She knifed those images into my heart with her perfect lips from 800 miles away, as if her only road to escape some self-inflicted guilt was to carve one through my chest.
Words crafted to obliterate.
And... I let each syllable whittle me to shreds.
For over an hour.

I loved her.
Then tried to hate her.
I failed at that, too.
And then somewhere I died.

It was the last time I spoke to her.

It was Christmas morning.

The Death of a Bachelor

The poem she said reminded her of me.

------------------------------------------------

1. I still have naked pictures of you. I want you to know that. I want to start this off right.

2. As I am writing this, the cat that you hate is peeing on the bed. That is what will be waiting for me instead of you.

3. I keep asking the same questions because I always get drunk right after we talk, and I can’t remember any of your answers.

4. I could decide not to drink, but you know how I feel about not drinking.

5. I miss your moan. It was one of my 3 favorite things about you.

6. You broke up with me the night before the national poetry slam finals. It’s sad how few people understand how shitty that is.

7. When you start to cry, I know that you’re feeling something - which makes me like you again.

8. Dream: Climbing through endless bodies, sweaty and writhing and inside of each other, I can see, but not the source of light, just the skin it’s reflecting off of; We find each other, ignore the rest, clinging to each other, the bodies straighten beneath us, go slick from the sweat, like a bowling lane, and we make love till I wake up.

9. I keep trying to find out if you cheated on me.

10.  I never cheated on you.

11. I think the guy sitting next to me on the plane is sleeping with you, that’s why he doesn’t like me.

12. So is the stewardess. You guys are going to have a threesome tonight.

13. Every time I am not looking directly at you you are having a threesome.

14. When we talk on the phone, your other hand is holding a penis.

15. The penis is bigger than my penis.

16.  All of your previous lovers cheated on you because you made them feel this way.

17. I never cheated on you.

18. I’m sorry I yelled at you.

19. You deserved it.

20. Dream:Looking from the outside in to my bedroom at my grandparent’s house, the one I was always scared to sleep in, the room is dark, I can hear your moan, not the rustle of the sheets or bodies slapping together or voices talking, just your moan, I can’t move, there is no light, just the open door and your moan.

21. This airplane is not bringing me home; It is simply dropping me off somewhere else.

22. When I get to the apartment, I will look that cat dead in the eye, and tell him that he is the reason why mommy left daddy.

23. Some of my friends pretend to hate you now. That’s why I love my friends.

24. When the plane lands this will all be my fault.

25. In Oregon, the sun sets like the sun should set. In California, it takes far too long. The glow is unbearable, like the whole sky is covered in sheets, the day threatening to start with or without you.