Stuck In A Moment I Can't Get Out Of (Part 5: Abrupt Ending)

My life is abrupt. My relationships start and stop without much hesitation or agonizing. This isn't to say I don't spend great deals of time considering and evaluating things as they happen, it's just that when I reach a decision or someone else makes a decision for me, I go with it. Regrets are dealt with later, if it all. As some have pointed out, my stories are the same way.

Some people seem to think that my stories end abruptly because I get bored with them, or I don't know what to with them. Nope. They end abruptly because that's the way I live my life. A martyr complexed knitter and her friends ask me to pick up my life and move to Pieceofshitdeserttown, I do it, despite my comfortable life and my friends' protests. When, five months later, I am broke and miserably unhappy, I take what I can carry and head home, leaving many of my Earthly possessions behind me. And when Scott accepted my invitation to Nantucket, that was it, we were going. Even though I didn't know him very well, and what I did know I didn't particularly care for.

It was my fault as much as his that the weekend sucked so incredibly much. I couldn't postpone the trip but I could have invited someone else, an old friend, CSB, Tommy, someone I would have enjoyed spending time with regardless of sexual activity. But I'd chosen Scott, and now we were two slightly frustrated gay men who had to spend one more night sharing a bed.

When I learned that he'd taken money out of his account to buy the books, and put some of it aside to take me out for our last lunch before we went home, I disliked him a little less. Plus, he had brought me orange chicken.

We didn't talk much that final night. There was no "coming to terms" with anything, no animosity, just nothing really to say. I woke up, showered, and was pretty much packed before he woke up.

"Morning." He said after a healthy yawnstretch.

"Yes it is."

By the time we made it out of the room, it was noonish. We put our bags down at the front desk, and went downtown to find a nice restaurant. I don't remember what we had, only that it was incredibly good (though not as orgasmic as lobster ravioli). After lunch, we headed back to the hotel, picked up our bags and called a cab. We had about a half hour wait before our plane left. We both read with our headphones on while we waited.

I didn't have any urge to push him out of the plane on our flight back to the mainland. Rather than have my mom pick us up at the airport and risk having to throttle Scott, we took a cab to her parking lot. He offered to drive me to the bus station, but I decided to toss my bags in my mom's condo, and wander around my old neighborhood.

And that was it. Apart from a rather terse Thank You e-mail, I never heard from Scott again. There was something comfortably familiar about that.

original post: http://insafemode.livejournal.com/90960.html

Stuck In A Moment I Can't Get Out Of (Part 4: Contraction)

It doesn't take a degree in physics to know that you shouldn't poor scalding hot coffee into a glass you've just taken out of the freezer. And any server from a corporate restaurant will let you know that you don't take mugs fresh from the heated dishwasher and fill them with ice and cold soda. A quick change in temperature and the glass expands or contracts and creates a fissure and crack, time to get a broom and pick up the pieces.

When I came out of the bathroom and saw nearly naked Scott laying on the bed, I was hot and bothered. I took a while to cool down and fall asleep, and all was right in the world. When I woke up the next morning, and he was prancing around in his see-through kimono, singing and dancing to David Bowie's "Heroes" AND GOING THROUGH MY SUITCASE.

Fissure. Fissure. CARACK!

"Why are you singing that Wallflowers song?" I asked. Once he'd stopped twitching, he explained to me that they had merely covered the song for The Godzilla soundtrack. I knew this already. "Oh, I thought it was a Dylan song."

After a few minutes of awkward silence, he asked "What's on today's agenda?" I do not have agendas. I had intended on spending a romantic sex-filled weekend with someone, anyone really on this tiny little island. As that was no longer going to happen, I was willing to take the events of the day as they came, though I suspected no coming would be involved.

"How about breakfast?" I asked.

Breakfast was phenomenal. Not because of the food. The food was good, but nothing special. Eggs benedict, sausage, and apple juice. It was also not because of the company. The company was mediocre at best. All Scott could talk about was how he used to be fat. There were several times during our breakfast where my fist considered assisting his bulimia. What made breakfast phenomenal was when the bill came.

Scott looked over the bill, did some calculations in his head (a welcome change from the finger counters I'd dated previously), and said "Your total comes to eleven dollars."

"Ok." I said, and I reached into my pocket. My wallet was gone. Oh the shock. The horror. I rechecked each pocket three times. I lifted the cushions of the booth. I checked under the table. The only thing keeping me sane was the knowledge that my wallet was zippered into my secret inner-jacket pocket. "I can't find my wallet. I must have left it back in the room."

"No problem, you can pay me back when we get to the room."

Remarkably, we were unable to find it in my room, even after going through my suitcase, checking under the bed, and going through all the drawers. "Fuck. I can't believe I lost my fucken wallet. I'm going to go down to the front desk and try and retrace my steps. I mean, I had it last night when I paid for our dinner. It can't have gotten too far."

Instead of going to the front desk, I went to the Nantucket Bookworks and proceeded to be frustrated by their lack of anything worth reading. After about fifteen minutes, I gave up and went back to the room.

"Any luck?" Scott asked.

"Only the bad kind."

"What are you going to do?"

Guilt trip you into buying all my meals. "I don't know. I guess I could spend the rest of the trip eating at The Tap House, and charging all my meals to the room, and have my Mom pay for the charges on her credit card."

"Orrrrrr." He said. "We could charge everything to the room, and then not check out."

I'd been trumped.

"No, I couldn't do that. How about you just pay for the meals for the rest of the trip? After all, I've already covered airfare, and hotel. We're only here for another day, anyway."

"I didn't bring that much money."

So don't eat Mr. I Used To Be Fat But Now I'm Thinner And Holier Than Thou.

I pretended to be in deep thought. What I was actually thinking about was this really cool Italian Seafood place I'd walked by. They had Lobster Bisque, and Lobster Ravioli on their menu. Ohhhhhhh lobster. "How much money did you bring?"

"Not much."

What had he planned on doing? Clearly, not me. He knew I wasn't up for being anyone's Sugar Daddy. He didn't seem to like my company very much. I'd invited him because I'd hoped he would be putting out. Why had he accepted? He hadn't even expressed an interest in sight seeing. "Then I guess we might as well leave."

For the first time, something that looked like it might be a genuine emotion other than "You don't appear to know shit about David Bowie" passed over his face. It was just a drive by, but it was a start.

"You want to go home?"

"Well, I don't see much point in staying." I confessed. "We don't have enough money to enjoy the trip or enough chemistry to cause any mildly entertaining reaction."

"You...you don't think we have chemistry?" He appeared to be returning fire in the war of bullshit.

"You've seemed pretty irritated since you picked me up in Barnstable. And then there was that shit with my mother. I mean, if you're going to tell my mother that we're having a romantic weekend here, the least you can do is put out."

"So you want to fuck?" This is the point in the poorly written romantic comedy where the two mismatched characters begin making out passionately, and the camera zooms out, showing that the two are clearly going to be fucking during the passing of time music montage.

"No." Maybe just a little. "That's not the point. I guess I don't understand why you wanted to come here."

"You invited me."

"Yea, but..." Damn it. "Why did you say yes?"

"Because I didn't have any plans this weekend. And the world's ending, and..."

"You didn't know that when I invited you."

"I don't know. I don't know why I came."

"Me neither." I left the room, not slamming the door at all, and walked back to the Italian seafood place. Their bisque was amazing. Their lobster ravioli gave me an erection that didn't go down for weeks.

Scott was not there when I got back to the room. His belongings were.

I was in the midst of determining the proper way to act when he came into the room when he came into the room. "I brought you some Chinese. Do you like Orange Chicken?"

There was hope for him yet. "I love Orange Chicken." However, I've just eaten lobster ravioli and and lobster bisque, so the Orange Chicken will have to wait. "Thanks."

"No problem." He sat down at the little desk in the corner of the room and opened up a bag from the bookstore. Not much money, eh?

original post: http://insafemode.livejournal.com/90074.html

Stuck In A Moment I Can't Get Out Of (Part 3: Out Of Synch)

The worst entries in bad_sex are the entries that merely say "Bad sex is no sex at all. LOL." Being the moderator, it is all I can do to muster the restraint to not ban every idiot who thinks that shit is funny. But I am a master of restraint, no?

But the truth is, not having sex when you're expecting it is one of the worst types of sex. Still, having spent just a few hours with Scott between the bus station in Barnstable, and the restaurant on Nantucket, I resigned myself...hmm...that's not correct...I impeached the possibility of us having sex. He was cute. He was smart. He was also a complete asshole who didn't so much make my skin crawl, as actually stand up and run screaming into the night.

"That was a good dinner." He said when we were back in our room. "Expensive. But good."

"Yea, it's hard to find cheap lobster pot pie these days. I usually wait for June to roll around so I can have one of those delicious McDonald's lobster rolls."

"Ewwww. Are you serious?" He asked.

I gave the universal I'm-too-bored-to-tell-you shoulder shrug.

"I'm gonna go change for bed." We were already in bed, or technically, on bed at this point. While he was in the bathroom I read the unabridged, annotated version of War and Peace a few times, and still had time to complete the Sunday New York Times crossword puzzle in permanent marker. When he came out he was wearing...

"Is that a kimono?"

"Yes, they're very comfortable." And see-through. Nice ass. Uh-oh. Red alert. Red alert. We have a breach in the cranial cavity, please direct all blood to the cardiac area. No! The cardiac area. Damn it, who let all that blood trickle down into the secondary brain?

"I'm going to go...brush my teeth." And look menacingly at my cock until it got in synch with my brain. It didn't take long to stare the wilt into it.

I made a very concerted effort not to look at his body as I climbed into bed.

original post: http://insafemode.livejournal.com/89444.html

Stuck In A Moment I Can't Get Out Of (Part 2: Uncomfortable Silences)

Some silences are beautiful. Holding your lover as the sun comes up over the ocean. The middle of the night when you realize that you are laying next to the most important person in the entire world. The seconds after orgasm when words become as useful as copyright warnings on Kazaa. The silence between Scott and I while my mother drove us to the airport was entirely unlike any of those silences. This was the silence of two men walking to the electric chair. One of them was going to be pulling the switch. The other...wasn't.

"Have a good trip." My mother said, knowing full well that we weren't going to.

I presented my tickets at the counter, submitted to the newly created security measures, and handed my bags to someone I hoped was an employee. I handed Scott's bags to someone I hoped wasn't an employee. Unfortunately, both worked for Cape Air.

"The reason we have to take all your bags." The cheerless woman behind the counter explained, "is because weight distribution on planes of this size is very important. We ask that you don't take anything on the plane with you besides yourself, your tickets, and maybe a book or newspaper. We also may ask you to move seats depending on the physical properties of our other passengers."

So if someone "of size" came on to the plane, I wouldn't be able to sit next to the borderline anorexic guy I was taking with me? How would I push him out of the plane if he wasn't within reach?

"The view is beautiful, isn't it?" Scott asked. That's right, keep looking out the window. If I kick you hard enough your skinny ass will go right through the glass and into the ocean. Just think, you'll be sharing your deathbed with a Kennedy.

We both survived the flight. Sadly.

Once on the island, we caught a cab to the hotel. "Do you want me to pay for this?' He asked. Let's see, I was supplying the hotel, the airfare, the dinner. Yes, I think I did want him to pay the ten dollar cab fare. This made him snippy. I had clearly picked the wrong guy to spend the weekend with.

Between when he'd picked me up at the bus station, and when we'd dropped his car off at my mother's, we had spent a half hour at his house listening to David Bowie and talking about how he used to be fat. The conversation bored me. I didn't care if he used to be fat. I would have cared if he used to be interesting, but that wasn't the case. He hadn't purged away the interesting part of his personality. He'd never had one. Hence we'd grown up in the same town, been only a year apart in school, yet I had never registered his existence.

"This hotel is great."

"Yea. The canopy bed is a nice touch."

"Do you want to watch TV?"

"Sure" Anything not to have to make small talk with you, Scott.

Every station in the country was still on 24 hour apocalypse watch. Even MTV was just playing Live's "Overcome" and U2's "Stuck in a Moment" over and over and over and over and over again.

"Oh, look, there's a minifridge in here. I'm going to go to the grocery store and buy a few things. Want to come?" I asked.

"I hope you don't think I'm going to put out this weekend."

The part of my brain that tried to connect my question with his answer, popped out of my ear and ran screaming for the ocean, where it gave itself a proper Viking Funeral. "I'll take that as a no then."

"I'm just saying you don't need to buy condoms."

"I liked you better when you were fat," I said, "and I didn't know who you were."

When I came back from the grocery store, Scott was in his boxers in the bathroom, admiring his body in the bathroom mirror. "You know I was kidding before about the whole not putting out, and the condom thing, right?"

Sure, Mister Mind Game. I've spent a month living with a spoiled narcissistic schizophrenic compulsive liar with a cute accent but no ass, your kung fu is weak. "Oh yea. Obviously. I would never seriously insult you for your old body size. I'm not an asshole." Luckily, he was in the other room, and I didn't have to make eye contact.

"So what do you want to do today?"

"I just want to walk around the island and check out the beaches, and the touristy little places." And if you're going to continue to be an asshole, I want you to cover your dick in snails and stick it in a lobster trap.

Our walk was mostly tolerable. It was Indian Summer (or Native American Warm Season When Most Schools Are Out, if you're going to be all P.C.), and the beaches were barren, but beautiful. We talked about our respective arts. Me, being a writer, he, a photographer. He was not very knowledgeable. I had studied photography in junior high, and I appeared to know more about it than he did.

When the sun went down, and the shops closed up for the night, we decided to stop at the restaurant attached to the hotel, The Tap Room. I ordered a Caesar salad, and a Coke. He had a Lobster Pot Pie, and a couple of beers.

"Hey, do you mind grabbing the bill for this meal?" He asked. "I didn't bring my money with me."

"How about I wait here, while you go up to the room and get your money? It'll only take about two minutes."

And we dived head first back into uncomfortable silence.

original post: http://insafemode.livejournal.com/87683.html

Stuck In A Moment I Can't Get Out Of (Part 1: Scotthole)

My father moved to Martha's Vineyard while I was away at school. It wasn't remotely traumatic. It wasn't even a remote island (I'm cockslapping myself for that joke, don't you worry). I started spending on average about three weeks of the year on the island. I felt like a Clinton.

But despite all my vast Martha's Vineyard experience, I'd never been to Nantucket. Sure, I'd drunk the Nectars, I'd recited the dirty limericks, but I'd never actually been there. I was overjoyed when, in April of 2001 I won a two nights stay at The Jared Coffin House, complete with round trip airfare for two from the Cape.

In July, I was hanging out with some jailbait who was crushing on me, and who I was...desperately trying not to crush back on (I barely made it...he was sooo cute/funny/smart/completely illegal), and he asked if he could come with me to the island. No. No. No. Hmmmmm...No. But it did remind me that I had to book the trip at some point. I was going to Seattle in August for the National Poetry Slam finals, and I was broker than an old pop culture reference, BUT I didn't want to go to Nantucket during the winter when it was all cold and desolate. So I called and made a reservation for September 14th. 2001.

September 11th, I was scheduled to do a poetry show in Portland Maine, with the only really Deaf Poet on Def Jam, Ayisha Knight. I was voicing all her poems, and she was signing all mine. We'd also interwoven our poetry into one long show. It would have kicked so much ass, but, you know the planes and the buildings and the dying happened, and it didn't look like the show was going to happen. We were also opening for Folk Implosion that night. Damnit.

After an awkward day of honing my ASL skills on the subject of terrorism, we drove back to Boston, where i was staying with Zuzu the Political Activist. That was fun. Really. I'm being completely sincere. No, I mean it.

After a few hours of nonsensical ranting, I checked my e-mail.

Hey Safey,
Looks like the world is kind of fucked up right now. Are we still on for this weekend on Nantucket? I completely understand if you're not in the mood, but maybe some time away from the real world will do us some good. Hope you're slamming your heart out.

Scott.

Oh, right. Nantucket. Scott.

Scott was the one person who ever replied to my PlanetOut ad (looooooooooooong since removed). He was 23 (I was 24 at the time), a former fatty who was now borderline anorexic, and interesting. Not necessarily in a good way. We'd gone to a PJ Harvey concert together a week before, and had...hmmm...we had something that was almost fun. The concert was good. I discovered he lived on the Cape at the same time I had, yet we had never met. However, we knew about a billion people in common, so we talked about them.

After out pseudo-date we sort of hugged, but not really, and he drove back to the Cape, while I was explaining to Zuzu why, despite our awkward first "date", I had invited him to Nantucket: "No other prospects."

Scott picked me up at the bus station (sexy, sexy), and drove to my mother's. The plan was to park his car at her house, take the cab to the airport, and be on our way. But nooooooooooooooooo, Scott wanted to meet my mother, and have her drive us to the airport. I love my mother, but she's CRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAZY, and more than a bit bitchy to my friends. Jennifer had suggested running her over with my car, my boss at Kookaburra Canyon would hide in the kitchen when my mother came to visit me at work, and Liam was more direct when he asked me "Dude, why is your mom such an insufferable bitch to me?" She had plotted to have Elvis killed before I figured out that that wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing. Why would I want to introduce her to someone I didn't particularly like, but wanted to have sex with in the near future?

I prepped him. My mom knew I was gay (she had nearly walked in on me and Elvis on more than the occasion), but we didn't talk about it. Talking about it involved crying. This is the woman who just two weeks ago, chastised me for voting in VT instead of MA (that's where my ID is from). "Just think, if you'd voted here instead of Vermont, you could have changed things."

"What do you mean?" I asked her.

"You did vote for Bush, right?" No, she wasn't kidding.

My prep for Scott included just telling her we were friends from College (he was currently attending the community college I had gone to a year and a half before), and that we were going to get away from the 9/11 stuff.

"Actually," he confessed when we were in her house, "I met him on an online personals site. We're going for a romantic weekend." I was so going to kill him.

original post: http://insafemode.livejournal.com/87001.html