A Better Perspective

Sometimes when something happens, at first, I can look at it from the wrong perspective.


I mentioned the other day that tomorrow I will be developing an "illness" and leaving work a little early and spending the afternoon and evening with T.  I have not really seen him in a long time.  I did see him last night, but it was only for dinner with his family.  


This morning I woke up after having a dream about T and I. These dreams happen a lot.  I sometimes dream about us being intimate.  I sometimes dream about us together on the beach or on a cruise.  Sometimes I dream about us together with our families.  These are all different, but the thing that's the same is T and I are always by each other's side.   


So I was having a crappy day at work and all that was keeping me going was that I was going to have a lot of time tomorrow with just T and I.


Then I got a text message from him.  "I have to look at some houses with my Realtor.  Do you mind if we do that?"  (T has bought several houses as investments that he rents out)


REALLY??  I have not seen him in a week.  All I wanted to do was be with him and melt into his arms.  Could he really not wait to look at houses for another day?

As I was stewing about it, I started thinking about the dream I had last night.  I started thinking about the key element of the dream.  T and I by each other's side.


Then there was another thought.  He has looked at a lot of houses and this is the first time he has invited me along.  This is a chance for us to be together doing "regular" stuff... together.  To be part of another aspect of his life.


Then I realized I was not upset at all.  I realized that I was happy he asked me to come with him.  


I was happy again and looking forward to my visit with my boyfriend.

Glad to be Home

Yesterday I spent most of the day on the road returning from vacation.  It was a good vacation that saw my daughter turn 7 in the Magic Kingdom.

All the way home I was thinking about how nice the family vacation was and how much I wished that T had been there.

When I finally got home, I was glad to be there.  There is something comforting about being in your own bed, among you're own stuff.  With all the familiar sounds, smells and feels.   I like being home.  I like hanging out at home and being there with my family.  But for me, there are is one thing missing.  T is not there with me so home for me is not yet home.

I was not able to see T tonight, but I will see him tomorrow.  I will be there with his family, but that is OK.  I will just be happy to see him.  To smell him.  To kiss him, even if it is a stolen kiss when no one is looking will, at least partly, fill a void in my heart.

Thursday I am looking to spend a lot more time with him.  He does not work on Thursday's but I think I might be developing a "virus" that could make me have to leave work early on Thursday so I can see him more.

At least for a few hours this week, I will be home.

Skinny Dipping Alone

Good Evening from sunny Orlando, Florida!! After driving down here with 4 kids in the minivan and then spending a day and a half at Sea World in blistering heat, i need to relax a little. Rather than staying in a hotel, K rented a house. There are some pros and con to a rental house compared to a hotel or resort down here. Definitely one of the pros is the private pool. It's not as big as you might find in a resort hotel, but the key word is PRIVATE.

Tonight after K and the kids (including AJ's daughter) all went to bed, I was not really tired. I wanted to go for a swim. I turned off all the outside lights. The kitchen lights too. I walked out on to the deck. I took off my clothes except my Jockey boxer briefs. I got into the water which was warm, but just cool enough. Then I threw my Jockey's on the deck and swam as God made me.

It was relaxing for a while but then I decided that swimming was too much work. I looked around and spotted a partially deflated raft. Perfect!!

I climbed aboard in all my glory (which was actually below the water) and slowly floated about the pool. Occasionally I would paddle to avoid hitting the side of the pool. I closed my eyes and wished that T was here with me. I miss him a lot and skinny dipping with him would be a lot of fun. The more I thought about the more... er ... distracted I became.

Eventually I realized I was running with my ... uh... periscope partly above the waterline.

Good thing everyone else was asleep.

Taking a Break

Very early tomorrow morning I will be packing up the kids for a well deserved vacation.


I do not plan to blog on the trip, but focus on my family.  K and I were talking yesterday that this may be the last trip we take as a family.  Just the 6 of us.  I had not really thought about that before. I don't feel stress about it, I think it will be OK.  Our family will just have some additional members.


Honestly, I would give most anything if T could have taken this trip with me.


See you next week!

Free Advice

I don't like to give advice.  I will frequently tell people what I think about something, but I rarely will tell someone what I think they should do.  Also I don't usually give advise to other bloggers.  


Today. I am going to make an exception.


My blogger friend Cameron has been struggling for a long time, like a lot of us.  He is gay, but  desperately wants a normal straight marriage with his wife.  I can't say I blame him.  It was not  long ago that I still longed to go back to the "normal" days when K and I were both certain that we would be together forever.  Back to the days when we presented as a normal couple.  It was easy for us to do too.  After all we really got along well.  We still do.


Cameron and his wife are in a cycle.  A cycle I know all too well.

They are circling.  Well, Cameron is anyway.  I think he needs to accept that he is gay and cannot be successfully be married to a straight woman.  I could be wrong, but the odds are not in  his favor under the best circumstances.  He is not in the best circumstances.  His wife is not really supportive.  She is not comfortable with him being gay (the ewww factor).  And it is clear their relationship is dysfunctional on several levels.


Now, this is not a criticism.  It really isn't.  It's not his fault that things have worked out this way and I can't blame him for wanting to go back to what is comfortable.   I know as well as anyone, how easy it is to get caught in the swirl.  Then once you are stuck there, it is VERY hard to break away.



For him, my advise is the same as T has told me about many other topics.  "You have to accept it."  He has to accept the fact that things are probably never going back to what they were.  Once that is done, he can decide where the rest of his life is going.


If he does not, I worry that he will circle forever.

Old Boyfriend

Until recently I would not have thought I would be talking about a current boyfriend much less and old boyfriend.  I talked to an old boyfriend today.


On Wednesday I am taking the kids to Orlando for a visit to the House of Mouse.  K is already there with her team for a tournament which will end on Wednesday.  She and the parents of her players have rented a house and they will be leaving as I am arriving.  We will stay there, with AJ's daughter for the remainder of the week.


No trip to Orlando with kids is complete without a trip to Walk Disney World.  Have you looked at the prices to get into that place??  HOLY SHIT it costs a lot.


Just as a joke I posted something on Facebook about slipping the kids under the fence to save money.  A short time later I heard from a boyfriend I had in High school.  I think I have talked about him before but I was involved with him during my senior year of high school.  Neither one of us used the word "gay" during the entire time we were together.  


Anyway, after not talking to him for 20 years I reconnected with him on Facebook a while back.  He has been with his partner for 12 years.  So he reached out to me on Facebook saying he might be able to help me with the cost of Disney tickets.


I called him this morning.  It turns out his partner work at Disney and has a pass that can get 3 people into the park for free.  FREE??  YIPPEE!!!   It should save me something like $500.  


I wonder if Facebook will want a cut of that.

Dreaming

I have been dreaming about being with T all day.

Balancing Progress with Patience

I have a very simple dream for T and I.  I want us to be together.  I want us to be inseparable partners.  I want people to think about us as a unit.  "Oh, let's invite T and Jim to the BBQ" people will say.  If someone who knows us spots one of us out alone, they will ask where the other one is.  It's that simple.  Anyone who has been married knows what I am talking about.


I want all of that with T right now. 


But when I bump my dream up against the reality of both his situation and mine, I know that it is not going to happen now, but probably in the future.  But sometimes wen I think about the time it will take, I feel stressed.  I feel anxious.  I know that T hates it when I get all dramatic.


Tonight I was at his house with my 2 youngest kids and a whole bunch of T's relatives.  (including kids about the same age as my kids.)

My daughter and I spent some time feeding the fish in the Koi pond.  T sat down with me and my daughter went on a tour of the garden with one of the older nieces.  He could tell I had something on my mind and asked what it was.


I mentioned that I was thinking that I wanted to have some alone time with him.  I am going to be out of town most of next week so I won't get to see him then at all.


"But this is your dream too, right?" T asked me referring to me being together with his family and my family.


He was right.  And I think even though I had just written about it, I had already forgotten what a big step for his family that I would be there at all.  


It was at that moment that I realized that patience is in order.  I needed to take stock in the progress we were making and the fact that it seems to be acceleration. (His mom sent me home with a ton of leftover food including that salty lemonade I like.


In the end, I had a good night.  The kids had a blast and were well behaved.  


As I write this I am falling asleep at my keyboard so please forgive me if there are more typos than usual.

Bad, Worse, Then Better

This has been a shitty week.


I have been swamped at work.  K is getting ready to leave for her tournament in Orlando (she left tonight.)  I have been dealing with the aftermath of the death of the family dog.  Add in all the regular crap I have to deal with and I have just about had enough, thank you very much.


There was one thing that kept me going all week.  I was going to a father's day party at T's house.  His mom was making a clam dish that she knows I like.  His sister was BBQing ribs, that everyone likes.  Best of all, much of T's extended family will be there.  That is a hugely important thing.  The fact that his parents would be comfortable with me there at the same time as the rest of the family, is a big deal for them.


K had arranged for our regular babbysitter to come and watch the little kids.  (The older ones can fend for themselves.)  Or at least I thought she had.  I sent a text message to the sitter to confirm that she was coming and telling her what time I wanted her to come.  


"I didn't know anything about babysitting tonight.  I have to work." came the reply.  


Just great.  K insisted that she confirmed it with the sitter, but it is possible they got their dates wrong.  Either way I was screwed.  While my older kids can take care of themselves, I do not trust them to watch the littler kids.  Not only that, the little kids don't listen to the older kids at all.  I might be able to leave them for a hour while I run to the store, but not out for the evening.


I let T know that my sitter fell through.  Dang it!!  So there is my shitty week going straight to hell.  The light at the end of the tunnel, just went dark


Several hours later I got a message from him.  "My dad says you should bring your kids."  Another big step.  Not so much that he invited my kids, but when T told him that I was not going to able to make it and why, he thought about it enough to suggest a solution.  Why is this a big deal?  Because if his family was indifferent to me, they might have just shrugged off my not being able to come, not caring if I was there or not.  But instead, he invited the kids because he thought it would be better if I was there.  


I guess I am making in roads after all.  My gloomy outlook on the weekend suddenly turned brighter.

Time Is Short

Shortly after we bought our house, we went looking for a dog.  My youngest son was two and we knew that we would need a mild tempered and patient dog.  We went into the local Petco and they were hosting the Humane Society who had a bunch of dogs who were ready for adoption.   As we walked around, we found one who was laying down, and not really paying attention to all the commotion going on around her.  Even when my son poked at her, this dog just laid there.  


I knew we found our dog.


We did not have a too much information about the dog, except that she had been found pregnant and wondering the streets.  The vets thought she was about 5 years old.  She had puppies in the care of an elderly couple who fed her hamburger and rice every day.  But the time we got her, she was pretty overweight.


For the past 8 years she has been a constant companion for our family.  My middle son and daughter have been particularly fond of her.  For the dog's part, she preferred me.  When K and I were still sleep together the dog slept on the floor on my side of the bed.  When I move to another room, the dog still slept with me.  


Even over the past year when it was getting difficult for her to walk up and down the stairs, but she still came up to sleep next to my bed.


We found out today she had liver cancer.  We all when to the vet and said good bye.  I took the kids and K stayed behind to be with the dog at the end.


I am not really sad for the dog.  She had a good life with us.  She went from running the street as a stray with a litter of puppies, to being a pampered pet who's only job was to be cute at the right moment.


But what it did do, was get me thinking about how short life is.  Yes, people live longer than dogs, but the reality is our lives are finite.  We do not have all the time in the world.  When the end comes, no one will know, but when it comes, there is nothing you can do to stop it.


What is the lesson here?  Life the life that you have.  Do not waste one more minute being someone you are not.  Do not pass up on the love of your life because of what others might think.  Do not dwell in fear of the change that is inevitable.


My worst nightmare is being on my deathbed and regretting that I wasted the one life I was given by God. 

Sick Boyfriend

T called me tonight.  He is not feeling well.  He might have the flu or he might just be sleep deprived.    I wanted to come and hold him.  Make him chicken soup.   Make sure he has everything he needs.


If we lived together, I would do that.  I would take good care of him.  And what's more I would be glad to do it.


I then started thinking back to my marriage to K.  If my memory serves, I have helped her through at least 4 serious surgery (with recovery time in weeks).  That does not count delivering 2 babies by c-section.  In all cases I helped her to the bathroom.  I changes badges.  I helped her in the shower.


The point is, when my partner needs me, there is nothing else on my mind.  Nothing is more important.  I miss work.  I skip other things I like and focus my attention on their needs.  I do the same things with my kids.  When someone close to me needs me, I am there.


That brings me back to T.  I very much want to take care or him.  I want to be there to bring him soup.  I want to be there to cuddle with him as he tries to sleep.  But I can't.  He lives over an hour away so I cannot be with him when he is sick, no matter how much I want to.


One day I will take care of him.

Can't Help It.

Dinner was over.


The dishes were still on the table.  I'll get them later.  All I can think about now, is being here with you.  Snuggled on the couch, watching something on Food Network.  


The windows are open and there is a cool breeze coming in from the porch.  I look over.  The sky is dark and clear.


"Let's go outside and look at the stars" I suggest.  Grabbing a blanket from the back of the couch, we go out into the yard.  You help me spread out the blanket and we lay down to look at the stars.  


We held hands as we talk about the stars and constellations.  We talk about the    We saw a shooting star pass overhead.  I closed my eyes and wished the same wish I always wish.  I opened my eyes, turned to see my man and  I knew my wish was coming true.

After laying there for a while I notice your breathing change.  You start to snore a little.  I lean over and kiss your cheek.


I was not really sleepy, so I decided to take a quick swim.  I did not want to go inside and it was dark outside, so I took off my clothes and slipped into the water.  The water was only a little cool on my skin and it felt good. 


I rested my elbows on the edge of the pool where I could watch you sleep.  I hear your snoring over the crickets and could not help but smile.  


I turned and lazily floated on my back for a while.  Then I heard something enter the water.  I looked over to where you were laying, all I saw was a pile of clothes.  Then I felt your arms surround me.

I turned to face you.


I gazed into your dark eyes. 


I could not help but lean into you and kiss your lips.

Sometimes, I Just Need to Vent

I don't usually get too upset over things.  Usually.  Today I am pissed and since I am in my house alone (with the kids sleeping upstairs) and have no one to vent to, you get it.


I have told you before the K works for a church.  She is in charge of kids activities.  As part of her job she takes the younger kids out of the regular service to another room and they have "kids church."  Then in the evening she has night church stuff going on, so she has to be there too.  On most days I go with her to church in the morning.  The kids go and my youngest two are a handful for her to deal with while she is working.  If I am there, I can help her with them and be an enforcer of the rules.  I almost never go to the evening events and our kids stay with me.


Today was different.  I went with her to church like usual, but this evening the event was a big summer picnic with one of those huge inflatable water slides and other water related activities for the kids.  I went with her to that too.  Since she has to run the event, and it looks good if her kids attend, I thought it would be best if I went too.  Keeping in mind I am going for her and the kids.  I have exactly ZERO interest in these church events.


In the end the kids had a good time.  The the event - itself was fun, but the set up and tear down was not a lot of fun.  And I did more than just watch my kids.  I spent a lot of time in the hot sun directing the kids (some as young as  on the water slide so no one got hurt.


When it was over and I helped her clean up (which took much longer than it should have).  When it was all over, we were finally on our way home.  K mentioned that she was going to take a shower and then leave for a sleepover at AJ's house.


REALLY??  Well, isn't that nice for you...  It's a good thing I didn't want to be doing anything.  So after spending all day working at HER JOB, she a was going to take off.  I wondered if she would at least help me get the little kids to bed.


Look, this is not about her going to AJ's house.  It is not about a sleepover, it's about me not sleeping well last night and then helping her with ALL of her stuff ALL day and then leaving me to deal with stuff here.  It would have been nice if I could have gone to bed early and she could have taken care of the kids.  Nope.  No early bed time for me.


Am I being petty?  I don't know.  Maybe. I guess I will finish this blog, go to bed and dream about where I really want to be.

Happy... but Thinking About What is Missing

Last night I got to spent the evening, first with T's family, and then with T alone.  Together with his family I had a nice dinner.  As usual they made me feel welcome and part of the family.


I think that T's mom, who was initially scared of my relationship with T, now enjoys when I play with T's nephew (who is the same age as my daughter).  


His sisters are warming up to me and that is nice too.  They are very close to T and having their acceptance is important.


Tonight, however, I am alone.  The kids are up in their beds, K had gone to AJ's house for the nights.  He just got back this morning from a business trip and K is jonesing to see him. 


(On a side note, she tole be several time over the years that she really didn't care if she ever has sex again.  I guess a bunch of sex with a straight man has changed that tune.)


T is at his house.  I spoke to him a few hours ago and he was very sleepy.  I did not talk to him long because he was tired and ready for bed.  I am tired too, but not ready to go do bed.

As I am getting ready for bed myself, I cant help but remember me dozing at his side last night on his couch.  I was laying together with him, my arm around his.  We were not naked, but it was nice a peaceful.


There is just something about dozing with my arms around him that just makes me feel so good.

Lucky She Found a New Guy

As I think about dealing with the paperwork surrounding my divorce, I was looking thought the comments from my last post.   The comment from Rob reflected something that T and I have been talking about off and on for a while.


Rob said: "You are very lucky. This is the easiest divorce I've ever heard of. Probably the fact that she's falling right into the arms of another guy helps."


Rob is right.  T and I have talked about that before.  A year and a half ago, K did not think that she had any prospects.  She was pushing 40 and with 4 kids and a gay ex-husband.  She was not feeling very good about herself or her future. 


I think because of that she was reluctant to let me go.  Whenever I wanted to go out with T, or do anything out of the house, I would get a lot of shit.  When T and I were together it was difficult to really be with him because I was always worried about how much crap I would get when I got back home.  


Today, that is not the case.  Occasionally, I get a little crap, but usually that is when we are trying to coordinate when she can go out and when I can.  Or who is paying for the sitter if we need one.

I think it is a good thing that K has found AJ so quickly.  Things are still not moving fast enough for her liking, but she hates waiting for anything.  Now when I go to see T, I can focus on him.  I can enjoy being near him and I never have to worry about it.

Working Out the Details

I am getting more and more comfortable with the idea that K and I will be divorced soon.  I am looking around my house and thinking about the things I will change when she and kids are moved out.


The first thing is I will be moving back into the master bedroom.  After all I do pay the friggin mortgage, and I am sleeping in one of the smaller bedrooms.  The worst part of my current situation is I have to walk all the way down the hall to use the bathroom at night.


This morning I got a copy of the official complaint that my lawyer will file at the courthouse.  I am listed as the plaintiff and K is listed as the defendant.  (She called me and joked that she was not happy about that...)  I also got a worksheet that we have to fill out that will tell the lawyer how to list the distribution of property.  


We are agreed on most everything already, we just need to write it down.   Since I will be staying in the house and will have to pay for it myself, I worked out a budget for myself, including money I will put toward the support of the kids and cash I will pay to her for the kids.  I am not paying her alimony and she has not asked for it.  I told her that I might be able to skimp on some things and giver her more, but she told me that, "you have to live too." which I thought was nice.


What we did not get from is something to work out custody of the kids.  If we have agreed to 50/50 custody, even thought they will mostly live with her, do we still have to mess with paperwork?  If we do nothing, is joint custody assumed? 



The truth is, just like she trusts me not to screw her financially, I trust that she will not screw me with respect to the kids.  (It helps that I know she is very scared that the kids will blame her for the divorce.)   I will ask more questions of the lawyer on that later.


If we can get all our information quickly, I could be a single man by the end of the summer.  K will be a single woman.  AJ is waiting for the divorce to be final before he pops the question to K, even though he has already purchased a ring so her singly life will likely be short lived.

Tonight I drove to T's house for a little while.  Once of the nice things about the summer time, is that even if I cannot get to T's house until the early evening, it is still day light.  I took this picture of his Koi pond.  We sat next to the water tonight and as he fed the fish, I listened to the sound of the waterfall.  As the sun was setting, I kept thinking, how much I wanted to be with him.

The Light at the End of the Week

At the end of a long, hard week, it is nice when it has a good ending.


When I went to bed last night, I did not have a very good feeling about myself.  I was scared about my relationship with my children.  I was scared about my relationship with K and I had not seen T in almost 48 hours.


When I get up this morning, however, things seemed more normal.  My daughter seemed no worse for wear as she came bounding over to me asking for eggs for breakfast.  That started my morning on a up swing.  I then took my youngest son with me on an errand and while I was there I met up with K who was coming back from a sleepover at AJ's house.  (Must have been his birthday present.)  Then we (Me, K & kid) drove out to K's church for lunch at their hot dog fundraiser.  After that, I took a quick shower and headed off to get T at his office for an evening together.

In order to get away from everyone, I booked a room.  We went there after a really nice dinner.  After doing what gay men sometimes do in hotel rooms, we laid together for a long time and talked.  Several hours, actually.  We did not have the TV on.  We did not have any lights on.  We did not have any clothes on.   We talked about everything.  It was one of the best conversations we have had together in a long time.  For that time, all the drama in our respective lives was melted away.  We just talked about out thoughts.  We talked about things we did or things that happened in college and other points in our respective pasts.  We talked about our future together (a very important topic for me).


BTW, if you were curious about what T looks like, he posted his picture on his blog.  No, you cannot ask him out.

As the hours tonight ticked by and my skin felt the warmth of his, I thought about my blog from the other day.  I thought about how it must have sounded.  Like I was seriously considering dumping T for the unknown prospective partner.  After the evening I just finished, it is simply ridiculous to picture myself with anyone else. 

Are the Kids All Right?? Bad Faggot Daddy.

Today was a rough day.


Last week when K's parents here, she took them to look at some of the houses that her and AJ were looking at.  She brought my daughter (who is almost 7) along with them.  As K was showing them all the rooms, my daughter asked a question.  "Where is daddy's room?"  K told her that I was going to stay in the house we live in now.  I think she accepted that answer with not too my fuss.


Today was different.

When I got home from work, I found my daughter playing a game on the xbox, which is not unusual.  I found K making a cake (AJ's birthday today) and she was upset.  Apparently my daughter had a meltdown this afternoon because she was upset that I was not going to be moving with them to the the new house.  By the time I get there it was over, but K said she was sobbing uncontrollably for a while.


None of the kids have mentioned to me that they have concerns.  In fact I have pretty much been pretending that everything is normal.  It's not.  They have, however, been talking to K.  And she feels like she has been answering their questions all my herself.  She also feels that because we have not told the kids I am gay, that she is forced to explain what is happening without being able to tell the one that that might make sense out of all this.


Now, K is sometimes prone to exaggeration.  She sometimes will make something bad seem much worse than it really is so I sometimes take things like this with a grain of salt.


Tonight as I was tucking my daughter into bed, I talked to her.  I did not tell her I am gay, but I did talk to her about them moving to a new house and me staying behind.  Her eyes started to well up.  As I talked, she started to cry more and more. 


Me:  I will not be far away.
Her: But I won't be able to walk here from there.
Me:  Well, no, but I will see you nearly every day.  I will be there to play or help you with your homework.  I will come for dinner most nights after work.  And sometimes you will come here and stay with me.
Me:  I will be OK.  I promise.
Her: What if it's not OK?
Me:  It will be OK.  I promise and mommy promises too.  We will make it OK.
Her: What if you stop coming?
Me: That's not going to happen.  I will always her there for you.
Her:  Not when you get old and die...


I have to admit, I did not see that last one coming.  I managed to calm her down enough for her to fall asleep, but I sure did not feel very good about myself.  This is another cost of coming out of the closet.  I am arguable closer to my daughter that the other kids.  I try not to play favorites, but if I had to pick one, she would be it.  So to see my precious little girl sobbing and telling me that she does not want me to live somewhere else, was just breaking my heart.


I was not quite ready for this and I have to say I felt like a bad faggot daddy.


The next several months as K and AJ finalize their plans to move and then move, will be very difficult for me.  I am not looking forward it at all.

And on top of all this, I have to tell them I am gay.  We are planning a trip in August.  Just me and the kids to Maine to go camping.  When it's all done, I will spend something like 2500 miles in the minivan with 4 kids.  We are all looking forward to the trip.  When talking to my mom about the preparations for the trip she told me that I have to tell the kids before we go up.  I have lots of extended family in that part of the state and they all know I am gay.  There is a high likelihood that one of them will let something slip and that would not be the time to talk to the kids.  After the cat is out of the bag.


If my daughter's reaction to our separation is any indication, my coming out to them may not go as well as I was thinking it would.

Not Made of Glass

I used to think I was pretty good a expressing my thoughts in writing.  Apparently this is not the case.  


The point of my post from yesterday, was despite my tendency to look for the greener pasture, I was staying with a man who loves me even though the situation is not perfect.  


T and I had a conversation this afternoon.  I am not going into conversation we had here, but suffice it to say that we are NOT broken up and we will face the difficulties together.

Patience

I like trains.  I don't know why exactly, but ever since I was a kid, I have been fascinated by them. There is something about seeing, hearing, and sometimes feeling a diesel locomotive pulling a row of cars across a grade crossing.  I like the sound of the train's horn and the sound of the signal on the flashing lights.


Back when I lived in New England, there was a railroad spur that came right near my house.  There was a train that came most every day.  The speed limit on that spur was 10 MPH.  Sometimes I would follow the train for miles.  There is nothing better than being the first car when the gates come down.  It's like having a front row seat.  (I took this picture back when I lived up north.)


But getting to be the car at the front of the line is tricky.  It takes patience.  You have to be in the right place at the right time.  Usually that involves getting to a point ahead of the train and waiting.  That is not easy for me.  If I find I am waiting too long, I get antsy.  I start looking around for better options.  When I think there is a better location, I usually cannot resist the urge to jump on knowing that I will not be able to go back to the first location.  Since the train does not stop.  If I decide to go to the second location, by the time I realize it was a mistake, the train will have already passed by.  


I frequently will give up my first spot and head to the second one.  Almost ever time, it turns out that the second spot is not as good and I miss the opportunity to be the first car when the gates come down.  I usually end up kicking myself and wondering when I will ever learn.

Some of the blogs I have been reading lately have a similar theme.  Some gay guy is looking over his shoulder for a boyfriend better that the one he has.  Maybe more muscular.  Maybe younger.  Maybe with a stronger sex drive or maybe a larger penis.  When they jump, they find things are not a rosy as they think they are.


K and I were talking the other night.  She was complaining about some perceived disaster in her life.  Something that was not right or was not improving fast enough for her taste.  I made a comment that I thought her life was shaping up pretty good.  She had a whole lot more clarity about her future than I did about mine.


Now when I said that I was referring to my desire to find a circle of friends, but she took it to be about my off and on frustration about T not wanting to live with me one day.  (Yes, I know he wants to, but just not enough to deal with the other issues he has going on, but let's not go down that road today).


"That's your own fault." She said.  "You have a choice.  You can either accept what he is willing to give you or you tell him he can't meet your needs and find someone else."


I was a little take aback, and I did not say anything to that.  But I have been thinking about it for the past few days.   Add that conversation to what some of the bloggers are talking about and it made me think about trains.


Why am I hanging around with T?  He is not very tall.  He is older than me (but look younger).  He is not muscled all over (but he is slender and sexy).  He is a workaholic and not available as much as I would like.  And finally he as a family situation that may prevent me from having the one thing I want most in the world.  A life together with my partner.  There are lots of other gays around, and I know T would understand if I wanted to change our relationship and go pursue them.  But then I think about the train.


T is like the first spot I pick to wait for the train to pass.  He is a good many and I know that he loves me. He is the one I picked.  He represents the good spot. Are there better spots?  Maybe.  But most every time I go to what I think is a better spot, it turns out not be be better at all.  In fact, it usually turns out to be worse.

How do you give up a good spot for a riskier one?  How do you give up a true love, for an unknown?  


I don't know. 


I'm thinking I should learn the lesson of the train and hold my ground on this one.