That World Inverted

I’m not sure how honest to be. The next part of the story is embarassing. It’s shameful. I still have not fully accepted what happened. That night in Albuquerque, the night before the wedding, I committed a sexual indiscretion much frowned upon by the gay community. Yet it’s one of those moments that simply happens, you didn’t think, you didn’t think, you didn’t think…and then he says to me, as we lay in each other’s arms, “How long have you been positive?”

My body stiffens. Energy zips through my spine. I look up at him with terror in my eyes and he pulls away from me for a moment and I say, “I’m not. But I guess you are.”

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It was Blondie that taught me that it was okay to talk during sex. And not just talk, but ask specifically for what you wanted. Up til then, I was under that sad deluded naivete that a ‘good’ lover would just know what to do, would just find those right spots. I’m not saying that doesn’t happen, but it’s not the only way it happens. This naivete is born from the notion that sex and love are the same thing. Blondie broke me of that ‘bad’ habit.

We would be lounging around my room, kissing and doing what we do, and he would out of the blue make a request, like I was a DJ on a radio station. At first, I was taken aback, like “I’m not gonna do that” even though I wanted to, but I just didn’t want him to ask me like that.  It seemed so unromantic.  I should have just known or he could have communicated without words.  But Blondie was not like that.  He pushed and prodded me to tell him what I wanted, to do what he wanted, to talk, to open up, to share desires.  In about a week, I was babbling during sex, asking for this, telling him i liked that, and on and on.

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We sat in the sweat lodge, hot, wet, covered in mud. Everyone else had left except for me, Blondie, and Balance who sat in the opposite corner, beating a drum. Even though Blondie were filthy, we somehow managed to slip our tongues in each other’s mouths. We rolled around in the mud, almost rolling into the center pit, filled with steaming rocks. At one point, the lodge actually caved in on one side (the gods saying no to erotic sweat lodges, some would later claim).

It was some of that sweet, spine-chilling lovemaking that is rare and when it comes you jump all over it. I probably jumped a little too far. Eventually, Balance left and we stayed a little longer until the mud began to dry up in our creases and corners and things got a little chilly. We slipped out of the lodge and ran into the deserted main house and into the shower. The mud poured off us in sheets, clogging the drain, spilling over onto the floor, making a mess. We stood there and kissed and then pulled apart from each other.

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Sometimes living out in the mountains would get very lonely. Inevitably, the people you spend your time with would become friends or enemies, but very rarely lovers. You see too much of their undersides too early. Romance is fragile and often shatters under the immediate weight of daily living. There was no room for love.

I often felt like the farmer’s daughter in those stories involving traveling salesmen. With the arrival of any new person, I would rush to my room to put some new clothes, attractive, distinctive, revealing. It was the mountains of New Mexico and you could get away with wearing just about anything. Wrap some old curtains around you, top it off with a dishtowel with a fancy design and a whole lot of tanned skin and you had yourself a look. Or take an old lime-green thermal, rip off the sleeves and collar, pair with a melon colored broom skirt and some flip-flops and you were an oasis of color in the drab landscape.
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I had left a lover in New York. We had met one drunken evening at a salacious and rowdy bar in the East Village. After several vodka tonics or beer or whatever, we found ourselves dry humping on a padded bench, where I am shocked to admit I had humped with many a boy previously. The bar was closing and they turned the lights up, transforming what had been a dim den of charming iniquity into a filthy, fluorescently-lit black-painted room. We gathered our things and stumbled into the night. As luck would have it, he happened to live around the corner. We had a nightcap and found our way into his bed, a large floppy thing in a tiny room. But it smelled of Bay Rum and had a Japanese block print on the wall and he was charming and smart and sexy. In between moans and orgasms, we talked about Hindu mythology and Japanese literature. Two or three months whirled by in a haze of chicory coffee (he was from the South), single malt whiskey (and a bit of a drinker), classical music (he worked at Lincoln Center) and Mexican dinners (he loved it). I was pretty sure I was in love.

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