Thursday, July 31, 2008

Travis

So I had a day off, and stumbled out of bed at around...4pm. I lead a glamorous life but hey! When I got home and 8am I got my solid eight hours sleep still! Colin was passed out on the couch, looking a little bit hungover and quite horrible. So I dragged him back to his room while he mumbled something about a jacket. He looked quite cold so I got a jacket out of his wardrobe and put that on him. It didn’t seem to help but I thought I’d be quite maternal.

It wasn’t until Justin got home and went to talk to Colin that it made sense. Xander had dumped Colin, and wanted back the jacket he had lent him, and Colin missed his borrowed jacket. I think that’s what they were saying anyway. It’s really hard to eavesdrop sometimes when they insist on whispering. I mean, I’m going to find out anyway!

It was my turn to cook dinner, and so I felt that since Colin was feeling crap I would get KFC.
Honestly. So we sat like civilised people eating out big bucket of chicken and I got told by Colin about how horrible men were and how I should never date. Xander had dumped him, at least they were finally telling me things.

Clearly Colin wasn’t paying attention to me though, since I have like, no intention of dating. Ever. I’m quite content with going out, picking up and going home with a guy who I may/may not call later that week when I’m bored. It sounds harsh, I know. But how many guys are going to object to a free lay? They might object afterwards but of course if they’re not calling me I don’t hear it.
So it doesn’t count.

Being a Friday night, and more importantly a Friday night where I wasn’t stuck behind a bar getting tips from ugly people for taking my shirt off, we went out. Justin, Colin and myself are pretty damn cool sometimes. Like the Three Musketeers, or the Three Amigos or something.
We all walk into a club and we’re so fashionable that everyone stares at us. Well, mostly at me, because I’m fashionable, but you know what I mean.

Colin wanted to spend most of the night sitting down, I think because the bottle of Vodka he’d been drinking the night before was still getting to him a little bit. He was also drinking soft drink, which is weird because I think anyone who has just been dumped is in need of at least as much alcohol as their body can tolerate, if not more.

Speaking of dumped, it was as I was dancing around on the dance floor with Justin, that we spotted Xander. Justin ran off to play therapist to Colin, or at least try to avoid letting the poor boy see his ex skanking it onto a new boy, and I ran to the bar to get another drink, mostly just because my current drink was running out.

“So how’s Colin?” Came a voice from behind me.

I turned around, and there was Xander. I had been spotted. Damn.

“He would probably be better if he didn’t see you.” I said, turning back to my drink.

“Well I could leave now...if only I had someone to leave with.”

I just turned and looked at him. The music at the club was loud but I was sure I hadn’t misheard what he said. Yup....my housemate’s ex was coming on to me. Great.

“Well there’s a forty year old virgin over there, have fun Xander.” I put a straw in my drink, took a sip while giving Xander a cheeky grin, and then moved away as quickly as one can with a
full drink.

It was then that I spotted what might be the hottest guy on the planet. Okay, so there’s a few obscure actors who are hotter, but he was without a doubt the hottest guy in the club that wasn’t me. A match made in heaven.

He was blonde, a natural-looking one too, not the bleached crap. Wearing a black singlet that showed off everything just enough, dancing enough that he didn’t look too reserved but not so much that he looked like he was on drugs. Ticks in all the boxes. I bounced over to introduce myself.

As is tradition in gay society, the first way of introducing yourself to a guy, especially one you find hot, is not to walk up and talk to them, but to simply walk past, grab their ass, and then wink at them. I did this and about twelve steps later had my arm get grabbed and was pulled back to face black singlet boy.

“I’m Matt. Wanna dance?” He asked.

“Sure.”

He never asked for my name. I don’t think he really cared.

We spent the next four drinks and few hours dancing, and making out, and generally showing ourselves off. People generally get sad when they see two hot people hooking up, it reminds them that they can only get people on their level. Matt was a lot of fun though, everything was going well for me to have a good night. I had no idea where Justin and Colin were, and frankly, I didn’t care too much since Matt was right there in front of me with big blue eyes and being the world’s greatest kisser.

Another few drinks later, Matt and I somehow ended up in the toilets. The toilet stalls at a gay club are not often used for people to actually go to the toilet, and it is definitely not uncommon for guys to be coming in and out of toilet stalls in pairs. It definitely takes some adjusting to seeing the first few times, and it’s not something I would normally do, but I was in the mood for a taste of Matt before we went back to someone’s house.

Just as I was getting started though, Matt’s pants were coming back on, and he just shook his head and looked down at me.

“Wow....you give crap head. How disappointing. I thought stooping to pick up an ugly, pretentious guy would have paid off tonight...”

And just like that, Matt was gone.

I however, didn’t quite know what to do. I sat in the toilet stall for a few minutes, wondering what the hell had just gone wrong. Thinking was happening quite slowly after so many drinks I’d lost count, but I was pretty sure I’d been called ugly. And conceited. I’m neither of those things.

I walked out of the toilet stall with only one thing on my mind. Getting a hot guy, and getting him in to bed. I didn’t need Matt, and hot guy would do to prove to myself that I was neither ugly nor stuck-up. As I walked across the dancefloor in search of prey, I felt myself pushed up against the wall and kissed. By someone who was quite a good kisser too.

It was Xander.

Xander was actually a pretty hot guy, wearing a *really* hot jacket and he was interested. Instant ego boost. And so we left the bar basically that instant, and about twenty minutes later we were in my bed having some really amazing sex.

Then the door opened. I was in a position where I couldn’t see who was at the door, but Xander was.

“Colin?” Xander said

“Xander?” I heard Colin from the door.

“Colin?!” I pulled myself out from under Xander and sat up.

“Travis!!?” Colin basically shouted.

The bedroom door slammed again.

Colin's Long Walk - Part 4

COMING SOON

Friday, July 11, 2008

Colin's Long Walk - Part 3

The upside to my dark, lonely apartment is that being a house belonging to a group of males under twenty-five, it contains quite a vast supply of alcohol. Even more importantly, the couch is within arm’s reach of the fridge.

So while I sat, drinking vodka out of the bottle and watching episodes of TV shows where people get broken up with, I came to a rather depressing realisation. It wasn’t that I was single and alone – that one had sunken in on the way home.

The realisation was that I was actually kinda sad about it. I’d been so busy making myself be annoyed about my jacket (although in fairness, it was a cool jacket), that I’d neglected to actually realised that I was just trying to keep myself angry since that way I wouldn’t have to be depressed. Deep I know, but that’s the kind of self-reflection only obtained by half a bottle of vodka and that episode of Will and Grace where Grace has been dumped and lies in bed depressed all day as everyone fruitlessly tries to cheer her up.

I mean, Xander and I had been dating a little over two months, which when you convert into gay-relationship time, was really more like six months. You see, gay relationships for some odd reason tend to function differently to the relationships of straight people. While a straight relationship will quite commonly last for six months, and this is considered a milestone, and a year onwards is quite common once a relationship has hit this boundary, the average lifespan of a gay relationship is under three months, and so a relationship that makes it to a year is considered to be something akin to marriage.

So two months, although it doesn’t seem like a long time, was actually quite a while. Two whole months of petrol and spending money on soppy things like dates and presents and giving up nights that I could have spent doing productive things like getting drunk and watching TV in order to spend time with my significant other. Well at least tonight I was back to the productive things.

So productive in fact, that at some point in the night the combination of the alcohol, the tiredness, the depression, and the sheer comfiness of our couch combined, and I passed out.
Unfortunately, heavy drinking and emotional exhaustion are horrible if you let them associate with each other, and so at some point the next morning I woke up to pain. After I attempted to open my eyes a few times, only to decide that closed was a much better position for eyes because the light couldn’t hurt them as much that way, I then tried to figure out what the pain was.

Oh yeah, hangovers. Man’s best friend.

After about ten minutes of lying, wallowing, feeling sorry for myself, I was finally motive to attempt movement by the overwhelming urge to pee. But this worked out, since the toilet is close to the shower, and after a night of drinking there is nothing that feels better than sitting down in the shower and just letting the hot water make everything feel just a little bit better while you’re waiting for the painkillers to kick in.

About twenty minutes later, I emerged from the bathroom now resembling something that although not completely human, could be considered to be one of mankind’s early cousins.

Definite improvement.

I then grabbed my phone and set about arranging a lunch date with something that is essential for the survival of almost any gay man in a modern world – the straight woman.

There are many different kinds of straight woman that accompany the gay man in his journey through the world. There is the one that lives vicariously through the adventurous sex lives that gay men often have, relishing the scandal that takes places. There is the attractive woman who goes to the gay clubs where no one can hit on her, and then there is the unattractive and slightly large woman who goes to the gay clubs because then she actually will get some male attention as the drunken gay men feel her up. There is also the straight woman who for some unfortunate reason, keeps falling in love with gay men.

Emma, my straight woman, fell mostly into this last category. Although she did love the scandal of gay sex that was my life and friendship circle, she also had fallen hard for several different gay men. She had slept with at least two gay men, dated three who had decided they were gay not long after dating her, and she had dated a drag queen. Twice. We never asked her why or how such a relationship worked, since we were afraid of the answer.

Tuesday, July 1, 2008

Colin's Long Walk Pt2

It was only upon reaching the door to the apartment that I had the world’s slowest realisation – that my keys were in the jacket that I had hastily left slung over Xander’s desk chair. There was an obvious problem involved with this. I could ring the doorbell to my heart’s content and Justin would be none the wiser, having been trained to be a heavy sleeper after months of living in a bedroom next to Travis. Travis of course was probably going to be out all night, which left me in the horrible predicament of sitting looking very lonely out the front of my apartment, or walking up the road and going clubbing.
Neither of these were particularly attractive perspectives, and although, as is the case with many newly-single people, I had a very strong urge to drink quite a lot of very strong alcohol, this was something that is best done in the privacy of one’s home with people who care about you and are able to call you an ambulance. If I was to attempt such a practice at the Commercial up the road...most likely I would end up being ‘taken care of’ by a man in his mid-thirties who was more than willing to have his way with me in my drunken state.
Faced with such a situation I did what many better and lesser men would do, I sat on my doorstep and cried. Not my finest moment; probably enough to top the moment of vomiting in the park after excessive drinking – although that is a different story that is best saved for another time. My saving grace of such a situation is that unlike the time in the park, there was no one around to look at me, and take photos to post on Facebook. I consider this to be a good thing.
But it was definitely one of those situations where life just gets too much – where you want to totally give up on men as a species, turn straight, marry a moderately attractive and slightly older woman and live in a sexless marriage with an ill-conceived child and a Labradoodle. Possibly I have given this concept too much thought.
It was at this moment, where, inevitably, things got worse.
“Forgot your keys?”
Xander had arrived. With an incredibly disgusting smirk on his face that I would have found attractive a couple of hours earlier, holding my apartment keys, complete with TinTin keyring, in front of me.
And wearing my jacket.
In this situation I was faced with four possible comebacks. There is the horrible prideful step of pretending I was okay, and refusing the keys in order to prove to him that I don’t need him. This would still leave me out in the cold however, so it probably isn’t the most successful option.
Next there is the simple idea of taking the keys, storming inside without so much as a thank you, and pretending that I never saw him and that he barely did me a favour. Tempting, since it both gets me out of the cold and still keeps my pride – mostly.
Options three and four involve hugs and pretending that all is well, or making a smart-ass comment about my jacket.
Naturally, I take option four.
“I also forgot my jacket, did you happen to see that anywhere...such as being worn by my recent ex-boyfriend?”
“No I didn’t see your jacket. Do you like my new jacket though? I got it last week.”
Smug bastard.
As much as it pained me, I had to say goodbye to my beloved jacket. You know that a break-up has gone into a strange place when the loss of a jacket merits more depression than the loss of the boy, but since a conversation with my newly created ex wasn’t at the top of my to-do list, especially while I was tear stricken, cold, and outside my apartment. So I reverted back to option two. I snatched the keys out of his hand, turned and went inside and closed the door behind me.
I then did something that was probably quite immature considering the situation, and I’m not entirely proud of either.
I stuck my tongue out at him.
I know, classy. But desperate times call for desperate measures, and I felt that it avenged the loss of jacket even just a little bit. I then climbed the many stairs up to my very dark and lonely sounding apartment.