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LONELINESS OF A GAY ACADEMIC
#1
Hi, Project,
I’m writing you at a very special time when I need to tell you how I feel and what emotions I carry inside me. I'm now a forty-five year old  guy, when I was already putting aside my dreams of love, at the age of thirty, I fell in love with a twenty-three-year-old and lived with him a beautiful story, with ups and downs, like all true stories, but really a beautiful story, a true story, indeed, even if absolutely out of all the schemes.
 
After almost 15 years I had the distinct feeling that this relationship had gone into crisis, I couldn’t even say because of whom, because I also did my part, and in any case talking about guilt in these things doesn’t make much sense. My boyfriend, if we want to call him so, because he was 38 years old, seemed to have moved away from me, had had other experiences and it seemed to me that he felt much more fulfilled in those experiences than in being with me.
 
He never hid anything from me, I knew he was looking for other relationships and needed them. It may seem strange but our relationship rested on other balances. We never fought, but I heard him move away more and more, then a couple of months ago, he practically disappeared and I never heard him again, I thought he had built another story and had found his way. But he could even call me! Disappearing completely is not part of his usual behavior. I didn't know what to think, I wondered if I was right to call him but the doubts were many and so I let so much time go by, then finally I decided and I called him.
 
We started talking again as if those two months hadn't really existed, it seemed that in our relationship there had never been a pause, I didn't ask him about his companion but from his talking I had the impression that he was absolutely alone. He dedicates himself to his studies, because he is truly a scientist, but he lets go everything else. On feast days he does not shave, gets up very late, doesn’t even cook and is practically abandoned to himself. He asks me if I want to go to his house, I go there and I find the most complete confusion, dirty linen everywhere, dishes to wash, bed in disorder, the desk full of books and sheets of all kinds. When he opens the door he has unshaven beard, tousled hair and a distraught face, looking at him one immediately thinks of a drug addict but he is addicted only to coffee, plastic coffee cups are scattered everywhere. He asks me if I want to have sex with him. I tell him: "After! Now let's do some cleaning.” We work in pairs for a couple of hours before giving the house a minimally decent look (and it's a very small house). Then I open the fridge and it is a total desolation, practically there are only very old leftovers. In the pantry there is only a box of beans, fortunately there is also a bit of pasta and a garlic head in passable conditions. We do two washing machines, but he is distracted, I don't ask him about his ex, because the answer is obvious in the facts: he’s alone again. We eat a pasta and beans which is good and puts him back in a good mood.
 
Around three in the afternoon we finish having lunch, then he sets in front of me, like he does when he wants to have sex, but I should say when he needs to have sex because for him it's a deep need. I was tired and fatigued but I tried to be up to the occasion. He wanted in every way to try to involve me in his sexual fantasies that are quite different from mine, he described situations in which he found himself when he was still a boy, if not even a kid, and that left deep traces inside him. Sex with me was almost a way of reliving those situations, asking me what I would do if I found myself in those situations, whether they were exciting for me or not. I tried to respond with the utmost honesty, but always with the fear that my answers were far from those he wanted, I saw his attempt to involve me in his world, in his sexuality and at the same time I had to tell the truth and don't disappoint him.
 
He tells me that at sexual level I have to try to find a ground compatible with his, that I have to do it for him, but he also demands that I really tell him what I think. If I pretended, he would feel encouraged and comforted, but sooner or later would realize that what I tell him is not true, and he wouldn’t accept such a thing at all. I have always wondered if with his other partners he has ever faced certain things but I believe that it never happened. He once explained to me that he never told lies to other people and when he was asked questions, he replied telling the truth, but no one was really interested in what could go through his head. With the others he simply omitted the most private topics, he left everything at a more superficial level and for this very reason he ended up feeling like someone reciting, pretending, because omitting means not considering the other to be able to understand, in other words means not trusting him.
 
From me he feels accepted at another level, he doesn’t feel judged and in fact the thing that I appreciated more than any other in him is the spontaneous tendency to trust me instinctively. After all, I don't expect him to have sexual fidelity, maybe sooner or later it will come, probably not soon, but it doesn't really matter, but I expect him to speak clearly, and on this point he never failed.
 
Sometimes, months ago, when I went to hear him when he was giving some lectures, I was enchanted, even if I didn't understand anything of what he was saying. He looked like another person, he was perfectly in order, without being excessive in anything. I saw him as absolutely rational, a true scientist, capable of perfect and spontaneous self-control, he didn’t act a script, he treated his audience almost professionally, with ease and at the same time with the detachment of one who is used to social relations. I saw how they treated him with respect and almost deference, even though they were almost all older than him, and I was happy about this, but I knew that this was only one aspect of his life, and not of the fundamentals. 

He devotes a great deal of time to the substance of his scientific works rather than to appearing, even if the interest in science, which makes him spend so many nights awake, has something obsessive and probably comes from a rather depressed background tone, he seeks in that way to escape a substantial loneliness that isolates him at an emotional level. He is no longer very young but he is definitely a handsome guy, and I would say also boy, because he still has, especially in private, the impulsive and emotional way of doing of a boy, he is affirmed in his field, he is fascinating, but behind there is an abyss of solitude to which nobody pays attention. I love him and I also think I’m important to him, he says that I’m important only or almost exclusively on a sexual level, but I believe that it’s not so, he doesn’t like the idea of binding himself to someone, of depending emotionally on someone also if he needs these things, or better he certainly doesn’t need to depend but to be loved, he needs someone who loves him for his weak sides. He knows that I will not give him up, that I understand when he is not well and that I accept him as he is. He trusts me and I trust him, he never put me in embarrassing situations.
 
I’m reminded of a conference that he gave more or less six months ago. Before he started, he saw me in the audience and came down to greet me with the utmost respect, just as he would greet a luminary of science, almost a Nobel prize, no familiarity, just respect. I remember that when I sat down again many people looked at me wondering who I was. At the end of the conference I went to shake his hand and he answered making me a little bow. I love him, I wish he were happy. Years ago I thought he could be happy with somebody else, but now I start thinking that maybe he will never be happy in the true sense of the word and that he will still need to be understood and accepted with all his contradictions. He trusted me completely and he'd never trusted anyone else the same way, he let me into his most intimate world in which I think no one else has entered, I don't know if this is called love, but I think so. The relationship I have with him will never be a standard relationship, with a standard sexuality, it will be a world of our own, which seen from the outside may seem completely absurd, if not pathological, I know today that I have not lost him and I'm happy, but it's not something to be taken lightly, it's not a fairy tale or a recital with the script already written, it's a reality to be built.
 
Sometimes I'm almost afraid that he can invest all his affection on me without even realizing it, I'm afraid of not being up to it, sometimes I also think I could die a lot before him, I'm older and such an event is absolutely natural. In certain moments, very ours and very intimate, I feel that he totally melts, that he needs to be embraced, almost protected, and these are the most beautiful moments, other times he puts me in crisis with some terrible reasoning or reproaching me when I begin to speak freely and repeat always the same things. Sometimes he tells me that I am hypocritical and it's true, that I must learn to tell the brutal truth, that I must not hide behind words. I lost so many friends but I never lost him because we created almost a symbiosis, maybe it's just that. I no longer ask myself so many questions, I simply feel happy to be close to him even though I know it won't be easy at all.
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