Notes Towards a Personal Ad

Gathering thoughts into focus, scattered from months of being unsatisfied. Mostly settling on what doesn't work, and what I don't want to do anymore. Realizing that nobody's perfect, and nothing is likely to come of it—not saying that out of cynicism, but out of exhaustion. I've been sick and tired so long that I'm sick and tired of feeling sick and tired—I mean that literally, not metaphorically. All the poems in the world don't stand up to one long musical interlude.

Of All Things Most Yielding, the album

Have to be Taoist about it. Have to realize that going with the flow means letting go. I trust that which I already know to be trustworthy, and let go of the rest.

Of All Things Most Yielding

Tired of doing all the work. Tired of looking. Tired of waiting. Tired of being overlooked.

Tired of even the good encounters that lead to nothing enduring. And there have been good encounters. One time events, one time get-togethers that led to a few ecstatic hours, never to be repeated, no matter how often it's been tried. Schedules, desires, personal needs, narcissistic self-centered impatience. The good encounters never seem to want to come back. The ones I didn't get much satisfaction out of seem to want to.

Tired of driving a few hours to meet someone for unsatisfactory sex, then having to drive home. Or, worse, pick him up then drop him off again. I'm the older, sicker one, yet I still have to do all the work? Is it worth it? Not but rarely.

Tired of men who are constitutionally unable to be honest with themselves, and so spend most of their time and energy dancing around the volcano rather than leaping in. Tired of picking up the pieces. Tired of putting up with their dances of denial, plus seven veils. Let's cut right to the bottom line, since I can see through the veils, anyway, as though they weren't there. That probably scares some men away at the start, because they can sense it on some level.

Tired of living rural and isolated. Everybody wants to just be friends.

Well, when I was trying to hang out my shingle as a bodyworker and energy worker, I never had any repeat clients, either. Lots of clients came to me once, had an amazing experience on my table, sometimes life-changing, sometimes visionary, and never came back again. Not even for a follow-up when they needed it. So I'm used to one-time-only visits, on many levels.

And you tire of it. There's no satisfaction in things that never endure.

Tired of sex without love, even good sex without love. Not going to say No to good sex, anytime soon, because in truth I'm told I give great sex. Maybe it's the energy work skills, the Tantric experience and training, and I'm told I blow minds. Maybe it's too much. Maybe it blows fuses, and is more than they want to deal with. Maybe that's why they never come back.

The energy work clients never came back, either. Maybe it's because they really weren't ready to change their lives. No shame in that: most people aren't. Most people would rather cling to the bars of the hellhole cage they know rather than squarely face the Unknown. I used to be that way, too, till the bars got taken away and I started to live for real. But maybe not that many people are ready for that. So I blow minds, so I blow fuses, so I'm intense to be around—all things I've been told.

At the end of the say, the shaman doesn't live in the village. He has to live on the hill nest to the village, because he's too scary to be around, or so the villagers feel. Too much Weird Shit happens around him.

Still, it would be nice if the occasional young men came to visit.

Tired of feeling alone, for whatever reason. Maybe it's all your fault; maybe it's an energy thing; maybe it really is that you're too intense. It doesn't matter when the end result is the same: another night alone.

Tired of being hypersensitive and hypersensory. If you could turn it off, you would. Or maybe not. There's pleasure in the extra senses, not just Work, not just Professional encounters. There's joy in being of service to others.

Tired of attracting broken men for their healing (and not my own). Tired of being the sexual healer. Tired beyond belief of being put on whatever pedestal is in season this year. Tired of being everybody's guru and nobody's boyfriend. Tired of unequal relationships. Tired of being a magnet for men who need to be fixed, who once they're fixed fall out of love with me and vanish. Tired of being the Dragon Finishing School for Men's Sexual Healing & Personal Growth.

Tired of not being with peers, with equals, with someone you could talk to about mutual interests on the same level. Tired of meeting men who are frankly cute but dumb. Tired of the lack of dinner conversation that isn't about sex or other aspects of gay life.

Extremely well-educated, but living in Coventry is getting old. Extremely willing to go out of my way to be with the right man—but no longer willing to do so without some reciprocity. No longer willing to exhaust myself doing all the work of either meeting up or being in a relationship in general. You can come to me. I have a nice private place, which is warm, comfortable, and always clothing-optional.

Tired of the offensiveness of pit given by those who think it's all about the sex, and not about the companionship. Tired of men who don't want to grow old in a relationship with any other man mostly because they're terrified of growing old, period. Tired of the narcissism of youth culture, even when it's expressed by older men, or conversely damned by them. Older men who don't get younger men aren't showing their maturity when they demand an impossible perfection. They should know better. You can't force anyone to be what you want them to be, even if what you want them to be is good for all involved. You can't make people be better than they want to be; they have to want to, and it's their choice.

Tired of men repeating their same relationships mistakes because they lack the self-awareness to notice and break their own bad habits. Tired of people who prefer to live unconsciously because they think it's easier, even when it's not. Tired of the lack of personal responsibility that people take for their own lives.

I'm just tired.

I have a lot to offer. I like what I like. I like guys who are heart-smart as well as intellectually smart. Nothing bores me like insincerity. And I usually can read your mind, because most people are transparent to me, always have been. What interests me is someone who knows who he is already, is comfortable living in his skin, and doesn't need me or anyone else to complete his life or make him feel more like a whole person. Looking for a man who's already a whole person, who already likes himself. The poet Rilke once wrote that love is "two solitudes meeting," which means leaving space for each other. I love spending time with the people I love; and I also love my solitude. An hour of silence and solitude every morning is the best anti-depressant I know; I'm better off with it than without. As much as I would love spending time with you, even just sitting reading in the same room together, not talking, exchanging few words, the sense of your presence would anchor our lives into the bedrock of Home. There's no place like Home.

Survival

I look at some of the people I know who are living with HIV, with AIDS, with cancer, who live with these and other life-threatening illnesses and situations, and I want to say to them:

You're a survivor.

You're tougher than you ever imagined you were, or needed to be. You've proven yourself to be tougher than you thought by your quiet action of living through what has killed so many others. You might not feel like a hero, but you are.

Maybe that's small comfort, some days, yet it's what gets us through. The difference between a hero and a coward is that a hero runs towards the battle, not away from it. Think about that, on those darkest of days.


Adam, from Spiral Dance

I've had some serious dark days myself, and I have had been down some similar roads. I've come close to my personal extinction, and I live with a (non-AIDS) permanent chronic illness, that takes a huge toll on my lifeforce and energy. Comparisons don't really matter, though. What matters is that we survive, and live, and thrive. Sod anybody who tries to pull you down to their sordid and sorrowful level. Those who try to drag you down do so because they can't stand being reminded that someone might get out of the black hole they call home. They've forgotten a really important lesson:

Why do we fall?
To learn to pick ourselves up again.


Beach Prayer (2005)