Non-committal or just a ho-ho-ho?

(Originally published 12/6/2006)

It’s Christmas time, a time for miracles they used to say. These days you can break your neck looking high and low for a miracle, a little something unexplainable to justify the brief feeling you have once a year that God exists. Although I can’t point to peace in Iraq, a cure for AIDS, or George Bush’s head on a plate to make you believe, I can let you in on a quiet little miracle going on this very instant: I’m dating someone!

We’re well into our 6th week, this guy and I, and although I’m still up to my old ways, hammering away at my insecurities and psychosis that keep popping up like a Whack-a-Mole, he still seems 100% interested and undistracted. Now famous for wanting a boyfriend, getting said boyfriend, then running for my life, I am trying my hardest to focus on only the good in this one. That he’s attractive, nice, hung, has a decent job, and thinks I’m hot. Sure, he’s doing those little things that have in the past irritated me enough to change my phone number and wear disguises (doesn’t watch television, puts too much product in his hair, calls me while walking down a loud, windy Chicago city street), but I’m hanging in there. I’m 30 years old now. It’s time to concentrate on a person’s devotion, their passion, their honesty, and not that you find it annoying how they use the word "lover" when describing an ex. Or that they despise both "The Simpsons" and "South Park." Or that they don’t vote…

OK. So, I’m having a hard time with this. Instead of looking deep within myself for the reasons that I tend to focus only on the boys who have little to no interest in me, then build walls between myself and the boys who actually are interested, rather than examining myself, seeking treatment, exposing my complicated neurosis and, God forbid, actually fixing this problem, I decided rather to simply ask my friends what was wrong with me.

I mentioned to my friend Elias that, in this particular situation, I need to either sh*t or get off the pot. Men tend to lose their patience around me. It’s not that I’m waiting on "the next best thing." At least I don’t feel like the type of *sshole that does that. It’s just that seemingly every time I give in and go for it, those tiny things I was able to look past in the beginning (the beginning not coincidentally being the time when the sex is always the best) seem to amplify themselves and take over my life. Suddenly, for example, their being "chatty" at first becomes a constant barrage of words and noise, an unbearable distraction forever interrupting my television time.

"Sweetie," he told me, "even Hermes only lets you wear the scarf in the store so long before they pull that sh*t off of your neck! The worst thing you could do is wait too long that he moves on and then you’ll regret it!"

Why, I then asked him, does it never feel like it’s enough?

He said, "I think it comes down to the natural male instinct: TO HUNT. Since we gays don’t typically do the hunting of wildlife, we replace it with our own form of wildlife: MEN. What fun is it in catching the deer licking himself next to the stream, not running at all from anything? NONE AT ALL."

Such profound words from a man who carries his dog around in a Coach bag.

I found these words encouraging, whereas they took the blame right off of me. It’s not that I’m sleazy or indecisive or afraid of commitment. I possibly am genetically prone to this type of behavior. Had I been born 1000 years ago and was only allowed to eat what I killed myself, my need to hunt would be well catered to and I’d never look beyond my hairy caveman husband for love and affection. Unless he grunted too much. Or his loin cloth didn’t match his club.

But, in our time, my hunting is restricted to Saturday nights in the gay bars. But even the cavemen, who HAD to hunt out of the necessity to survive, grew tired of the constant chase and began to farm and herd livestock instead. In a word, they evolved.

So, in celebration of the season of the birth of Jesus Christ, perhaps I’ll take a page from Charles Darwin. Maybe it’s time I evolved. I’m thinking of that fish in the evolutionary chain, the one who over time grew legs and learned to breathe outside of the water so that he could eat whatever was just beyond the shoreline. That fish wasn’t as stupid as I tend to be. He evolved to get what he wanted and never thought twice about going back into the ocean. Why would he? What he’d wanted so badly and strived so hard to get was right there in front of him. And even though he might’ve missed life in the ocean or the anticipation of getting his fins on whatever it was he’d been eyeballing for 16 billion years, he moved forward.

He eventually became a dog-loooking thing, then a monkey, I think maybe a bird for a time, then finally a human. But apparently not a gay human, otherwise he would’ve jumped right back in the water to start over.