HERE'S A NEW WRINKLE...

The other day a long-heralded letter arrived from my thirty-year crush, the REAL Friedemann. A soul-baring letter in which he shared the pain of his marriage and its vicissitudes, though quite careful to point out, for all the similarities in our two cases, that he was not attracted to men.

Well, at least that's out in the open. This is the guy who shows up in leather pants and strokes my cheeks to say hello. While I am perfectly willing to believe him, and in fact the stuff he does that drives me crazy argues for it being cluelessly performed, the need to point that out does kind of stick in my craw.

I guess I can't hold it against a guy whose bad luck with women is practically the stuff of legend if he distances himself from me and the mess I've made of my life at the last moment—he is saying "I still love you," after all, and many people rightly want to make sure they are not misunderstood when they utter that particular phrase. In fact, most of us probably do.

God knows I do, even when I have no idea what I mean myself...

The thing that drives me craziest these days is that I see nowhere where I do in fact fit in, and being a closet Benedictine, I hold that there is no salvation outside community. But the gay men I know are missing what for better or worse is the experience that has marked me as an adult: fatherhood and family. And the bi men I've read and met all seem to be or have been cheating in various degrees of happiness before "it" eventually hit the fan.

So I guess I am just "Exhibit A," the idiot who took his marriage vows seriously enough to leave them behind. I am only too painfully aware that the unforgivable thing I did was to leave not for another person, but for an idea, and an idea which is at bottom an idea of myself. I can't help it if it looks ludicrous or hateful to those who look in at it from the outside; I have gotten myself into more trouble in life trying to do the right thing than anything else. Ever.

Something about what paves the road to Hell, I guess.

Where, at the moment, I seem to have arrived and booked a bridal suite.

Hang in there, all.
Things will not stay this way forever, or even for long.
They may get worse before they get better, in fact it seems rather likely.
But they will not stay the same.

Lord help us all.
.