Good lawd, I am so far behind on this project. If I didn’t state it in the last one, life has gotten in the way. More specifically my own sadness and malaise keeps me from writing. Try as I might I cannot escape it. Regardless, I set out to complete a task and I shall stand triumphant in the end. I just have to double up my efforts to get back on track. Which, I know I can do.
In addition to my general lack of disinterest, I have had a hard time coming up with new and exciting tracks that bring about vivid memories. That could be due to my inability to listen to music. Lately all I prefer to have in the car has been silence. Just the thought of putting on something makes me anxious. What do I listen to? What will be brought up in the listening? When one has a habit of attaching memories and emotions to songs, it becomes a dangerous game of Musical Russian Roulette when starting a playlist.
On Saturday I was feeling calm enough to listen to something, other than my own thoughts. The song that drifted lazily out of my car speakers was Robbie Williams’ “Heaven From Here.”
I have been a huge fan of his since his first release in the U.S. “Millennium.” I went to my local target and picked up a copy of “The Ego Has Landed” and I have not stopped listening to it since. Robbie was my teen idol, my muse, my obsession so many times in my life. For a brief moment, one entire wall of my bedroom was COVERED in his posters.
Again, I have no idea how my parents did not know I was gay.
I will assure you, I am not attracted to Robbie. I love his song writing. His lyrics are just fun, and coupled with Guy Chambers music… ecstasy. Every album the two collaborated on are my absolute faves. Every track is a banger and I couldn’t pick a favorite if a gun was held to my head. The stuff since the two parted… It’s hit and miss. As I’ve gotten older, I have grown to appreciate the later stuff more than before. However, nothing can beat his early stuff.
I attempted to share this love with my husband throughout our time together but… He hates him. I have to accept that. And it is a consistent hate. Whenever I have had my phone iPod on shuffle, I will tense up the moment I hear the opening notes of a Robbie song. I sit taut, waiting for the moment my husband turns to me with disgust in his face and says, “This is terrible. Who is this?”
I cannot stress this enough, every time. Without fail. And he can’t see who the artist is on the stereo screen. So, he’s not doing a “bit.”
Regardless of my husband’s ultimate feelings about Robbie, the first song I ever gave him to listen to, because it held a “secret message” from me to him was this song. (And I hope you remember my initial post where I explain the implications this action brings.) At the time, he was indifferent about it and did not respond near the way I wanted him to. I was hoping for a: “who is this guy? he’s amazing!” or “this song is fantastic. I feel the same way.” None of that. But that’s my husband. He never reacts the way one expects. Ever. Even now, I know him better than anyone, and he still surprises me.
The one thing I remember, more than any other, was his: “I don’t like the line about our shelf life being short.”
In hindsight, I know he was speaking about our relationship “shelf-life” but with how everything has since played out… It stings. As a result, I go into a weird metaphysical headspace where I begin to believe that I somehow made his diagnosis happen by sending this song to him. Like I inadvertently cast a spell using music.
Even the title “Heaven From Here” contains a new double meaning. One that makes me very sad and I cannot bring myself to type. But I know, dear reader, that you understand what I reference.
I’ll shelter you, I’ll make it alright to cry And you’ll help too cause the faith in myself has run dry. We are love and I just wanna hold you near. Know no fear we will see heaven from here.
All of this is gut wrenching for me. I think of everything I have done, thought, said, and believed over these 19 years and I feel nothing but anger toward myself. I am furious that I took so long to realize how wonderful my husband was and how I doubted what I wanted. I was so caught up in the bullshit of the whirlwind of previous relationships and it made me question possibility.
One thing I have learned is, let yourself feel these emotions. Don’t question what you want. Pick a path and go. If it doesn’t work out… It will be rough but you will survive. And you will come out stronger on the other side. Life is meant to be lived. The good and the bad. Because without the other, it would not give the significance the other deserves.
I just want to preface this next post with a warning. This deals with some sensitive content around “sexual abuse” trauma, and if you are at all uncomfortable with such topics I do ask you to stop reading. I don’t want to trigger anything for anyone. This is, above all, a safe space. So, if you wish to continue I very much appreciate your continued patronage of my ridiculous little life.
This song was from one of those albums that completely defined an entire “era.” This came out right at the time that my husband and I had finally “split.” After 4 years of cheating on him and getting caught, we had decided to break-up. The only caveat being, we would still live together and sleep in the same bed. What we were doing at the time was staging what our future relationship would turn into. For all intents and purposes we were “broken up.” In reality it was an open relationship, but my husband and I were so opposed to that kind of “gay culture” (at the time) that we had to call it something else.
Out of this entire CD, there were 5 songs that just hit specific points in my husband’s and my relationship and some of my past experiences. This song, “Love for a Child” made my husband think of me. It told the tale of how, I’m assuming, a young Jason Mraz grew up just a little too early under the distracted attention of his disengaged parents. The line that specifically spoke to my husband was:
“…and making love at far too young an age And they never checked to see my grades What a fool I’d be to start complaining now”
It’s true, I was exposed to sex much, much too young. As a result I became overly sexualized and started to believe that I was only good for what I could offer sexually. I’m certain it is what set the foundation for my sex addiction.
The first time I was sexually abused was by a neighbor kid when I was 3. I have snapshots of what happened with him, but the one thing I remember with clarity, was my mother’s rage from finding me buck naked in the backyard. She had only checked on me because the neighborhood boy left in a hurry and I hadn’t been trailing behind.
“Why are you naked?” She had shrieked.
I remember following her back into the house, staring at her back. Her dress was beige with different colored strips and she was wearing flip flops.
All I can recall was after that event I was no longer allowed to play with that boy. Why, I didn’t know. Being the good kid I was, I followed the order.
It’s weird because that entire neighborhood was rife with kids down to do sexual stuff. When I got older there was a boy who would only ever want to play with me if he wanted “something.” He had a code name for it and I knew, once I heard that phrase, that it was gonna happen. He called it “working bears.” Which… As a gay adult man is funny to me. Bears… come on.
Once this kid got what he wanted he would turn on me. There was one time where this asshole got all of the neighborhood kids to gather on the lawn of the house across the street, and they called me a faggot. That is not an exaggeration.
My saving grace was getting out of that hell hole. My mom’s department was moving from Southern California to the Central Valley, and my mom jumped at the opportunity. I couldn’t wait to get out of there. I knew, even at nine years old, that a fresh start has limitless possibilities.
While I wasn’t sexually assaulted by neighborhood kids in our new town, I was teased and bullied. So, progress, right?
I was mainly teased for being fat. I was also weird. I had adopted the mentality really early on that I rather be strange than normal. I would say “thank you” every time someone said, “You’re weird.” The need to conform to what everyone else was doing was something I never believed. That is, unless, it was awesome. (Aka power rangers bitches!) Otherwise I marched to the beat of my own drummer, and usually kids don’t like that.
The internet made making friends way easier. I had a ton of online pals who had similar interests and were also a little kooky. It was in the digital space where I found my community.
What I also found was internet pornography.
The problem with having technologically illiterate parents is that the kid ends up setting all the shit up, and therefore learns how to manipulate the programs to do what they want. Even though my parents had me on the setting for “child safe” content, I knew exactly how to remove any restrictions. And when my hormones were raging during puberty, I would change my browsing capabilities to include adult sites and I would spend HOURS perusing every photograph.
This was all gay pornography, by the way. Never once did I search for images that featured women. Why would I want to pretend when my windows of opportunity were so short? Let’s get right to the good stuff. The only problem is then I would have an identity crisis with post coital clarity. It’s super fucked up to have religious dogma mess up your orgasm. And I firmly believe it affected my ability to even relax in the moment now. I feel this immediate urge to not be where I am. To cleanse myself of my “sins.”
Good lord I am a mess.
Finally after a few years of this ritual I needed to know if I really was “gay.” The only way to do that was to take what I had seen in pictures and put it into practice. At 13 years old I started reaching out to gay men on-line to meet up for sex.
There were only two who were willing.
The first one knew that I was a chubby pre-teen and he still agreed to meet with me. I had arranged to meet him at a Wal-greens around the corner from my house. There he would pick me up and take me back to his place. I logged off, jerked off, and found the terror in my ridiculous plan.
I logged back on and told him that my dad was a cop and I was going to turn him in. He freaked the fuck out on me. I panicked, again, and then told him that wasn’t true. He responded with this filthy e-mail saying how he was going to find me and kill me. I deleted it, but I should have turned that shit into AOL and regret not having done that to this day.
This episode left me frightened from another attempt for a about a year. Then the draw to do something about my desires pushed me to try again.
The second person I spoke to was “Scott.” He was an over the road trucker, in his 40’s, who agreed to meet with me. I lied about my age, but even when I was “honest” about being “16” he still agreed to meet with me. (God, my rage is building.)
Like an idiot I agreed to have him pick me up at midnight at the end of my street. I thought that this was safer than him picking me up at my actual house. (I didn’t want him to know where I lived!)
Like a hooker waiting for her next trick, I waited out on the corner.
Sidenote: no shame to sex workers. I just say that because of the irony of the scene.
Scott pulled up in his beat-up, aquamarine Mazda sedan. I got in and he drove me to his house just a mile down the street from my own. He snuck me in, and as we were on our way to his room someone started to come out into the hall. He yelled at them to get back in their room, to which they immediately did. He ushered me back into his room and we did stuff on his water bed.
Shortly after I met him for the first time, he dropped me off and I walked back home saying, with “absolute certainty,” that I was definitely not gay. I did not enjoy that. He smelled, he was hairy, he was old. I was not into it. With hindsight I know now it’s because I didn’t enjoy it with him. Even though, plot twist, hairy and older are very much my type. Do with that what you will.
While I wasn’t coerced into anything (I sought him out and initiated the conversation) he should not have agreed. Once he learned my age he should have shut that shit down, explained to me that that isn’t appropriate or even legal. He should have known that I was not emotionally or mentally prepared to deal with that choice. But, he did not.
The thing I find so insane is: why would he risk everything to do it? He didn’t know that I wouldn’t have told my parents. I could have turned him in, told them where he lived, or helped with a sting operation through instant message. All of these I should have done, but that would have meant telling the truth to my parents. Instead I kept it to myself to deal.
I look back on this with regret. I took from myself something that should have, at the very least, meant something special. Instead, I treated my first sexual encounter as a case study. One where the results were skewed and that, inevitably, didn’t hold any weight in my future choices.
I wish I could say that I never went back, but I met up with this dude three more times. Each time more repulsive than the last. My “favorite” had to be my first time performing penetrative sex on him in the back of his semi, parked in a Rite-Aid parking lot.
There is this video going around TikTok that states: we are who we would have felt safe with as a kid. The truth in that statement is unreal. These encounters turned me into a grizzly bear when it comes to kids and sex. If I hear someone has been harmed I get very, very angry. I want to do everything in my power to protect them from the mind fuck that comes with it. I want to keep them from ever having to deal with that kind of trauma. The only way that will ever happen is that we must sit down with our youth and have very honest and open conversations. Without them it makes sex this secret, sinister thing. One in which we need to feel shame in. And while that is not always true, there are shameful acts (as depicted above), it should come with no emotional baggage.
Man… it really never occurred to me that those brief revisits of past relationships would cause me so much anxiety. After writing them out, I started to notice my old “bad habits” coming back to haunt me. Specifically overeating. When I sat down and examined my emotions I immediately figured out what was causing this stress. These past events were traumatic, and I still have not dealt with them. I never gave myself the resolution I needed. Instead I just buried them in mental boxes, piled over with other unresolved issues, and put them at the back of my mind. Here I thought these were cute little stories, but boy was I fucking wrong.
The thing that hit me the hardest was how quickly all of these events occurred. In the span of 9 months I came out, dated three men who all dumped me, and then at the end of all that I dove headfirst into another. At no point did I take some time to do some self reflection or healing. Instead I carried my baggage and bullshit into the next. Being dumped in such quick succession had to mess with my self-esteem. No one takes that many emotional punches, so fast, and comes out unscathed.
No wonder I was so fucked up in the beginning of my husband’s and my relationship.
Even now I sit and wonder, what had I done? What did I do wrong in these couplings? Being a mild narcissist I tend to make everything about me, good or bad. Clearly, I was the common factor in all of these situations, and it stands to reason it must be my fault. Which, with some distance, is only half wrong.
Yes, I was at fault here. I was needy, clingy, and desperate. And nothing stinks more than desperation. Even for myself, it is a huge turn off. I can only imagine what it was like for these three emotionally fucked up fools. One wasn’t even out of the closet, the other was buried deep in his and married at the same time, then the other was an alcoholic who was dating a 17 year old. They also contributed to the failure of these relationships. The stench of which was also on their hands. Who deserves more blame is up for deeper introspection. One in which I don’t really want to do.
I just need to box these back up and return them to the past. It’s nice to pull things out every once in awhile to merely glance. Look for too long and one starts to notice the imperfections. I lingered.
The thing I regret (and I know it does no one any good to dwell on past failures) is that I took all of this bullshit into my relationship with the man who would become my husband. Looking back I genuinely messed things up and, as a result, built myself a little hell from my actions. And, seeing how I did this to myself is the worst feeling in the world. One I never want to repeat.
Ultimately… It doesn’t matter. What happened, did. I cannot change them. Instead, after years of self-analysis and journaling, I have learned from my mistakes. And despite attempting to push Charlie away, he is still in my life. So dwelling on the “bad” takes away the beauty that is now. Yeah, it would have been nicer if I had dealt with my baggage before dating someone new, but that’s not really my M.O. I seem to think that one will repair the other. It did not. It will not.
When my husband and I first got together he gave me three CD’s. (Much like what Travis had done.) Two were debut albums, Jason Mraz and Maroon 5, and the other was Coldplay’s “Rush of Blood to the Head.” I loved all three. Equally. And as I do, there were songs on each that have become obsessions at one time or another. The one that spoke the most to me, out of the three, (at this time) was the song I have chosen for this post. It perfectly encapsulates how I felt after all of these damaged relationships. While the fault was handed to me I wish someone else could have taken it. “Pay no more than absolutely zero.”
In preparation for this blog I knew I wanted to do a Finch song. It was the one that seemed to fit the next entry the most. And for whatever reason I didn’t want to do one from Alkaline Trio. That seemed too easy. But as I re-listened to the Finch album “What it is to Burn” everything came rushing back to me with absolute detail. All of a sudden I was back in my station wagon, smoking a Turkish Gold cigarette with the windows down, listening to track 12 on repeat.
I was, once again, in the darkening hours of 17 and mourning my break-up with Travis.
I got over Jason way too easily. Before I knew it I was back in the AOL chat rooms, chatting with the gays, hoping someone new would pop in. That’s when and where I saw the username THINKAdio enter the room with the sound of a screeching door. For whatever reason he enjoyed my username, melancholychaos, so much that he messaged me.
Travis was 24, 5’10, on the chubby side, covered in tattoos and piercings, and a big time skater. I thought he was gorgeous. I can still see the first picture he ever sent me. He had this big goofy grin, black spikey hair, and wearing latex gloves. He was a piercer in those days, long before he became a tattoo artist. I was immediately attracted to him.
It also didn’t hurt that he was a huge nerd and liked Star Wars as much as me.
On our first date we met up to see the movie “The Order” with Heath Ledger. He liked horror movies and was a big fan of him, so it fit. My mom unknowingly dropped me off for this date and then drove off, only to circle back around to see who it was I was meeting. Later on she would ask me if “the guy with the tattoos” was my boyfriend.
After the movie we went back to his place, where his friends happened to drop by. I met them right out of the gate. They were all just like him and super goofy. His best gal pal, who’s name escapes me, was so super awesome. I loved her the most. She had the driest humor.
The reason I chose two albums for this entry is because it was this night when he handed me two burned CD’s. One was Alkaline Trio’s “Good Mourning” and Finch’s “What it is to Burn.” Neither of the discs had the titles, just the band names, which as someone with OCD drives me a little crazy.
Regardless, I couldn’t wait to get back to my place to listen to them.
He dropped me back at my parents’ house, in his white Toyota pick-up, and would call me later that night to talk on the phone until 2 in the morning.
When I first listened to the CD’s I fell instantly in love with Alkaline Trio. I could understand the lyrics, the tempo of the songs was energetic, and it was relatively campy. All of their songs are about death and dying but presented in this really obtuse way. I attempted to listen to Finch but on my first try I really didn’t like it. All of the songs were so depressing that I could barely make it through one without a grimace on my face. I slid it into my bulky CD case and forgot about it.
When I was younger I use to have this sixth sense about relationships. Like, I could tell you who was going to dump who, and about how long it was going to last. With Travis I saw the number two and I knew he was going to break my heart. But, I didn’t believe myself and really didn’t care.
I was super into him.
At the time I thought we had dated for two months but maybe we didn’t. My perception of time seems to be a corrupted. Because I vividly remember being dumped by Jason the night before school started and it was shortly after that, maybe a week, when he and I met for out first date.
Maybe it was two weeks? Fuck. Who knows at this point.
We talked on the phone every night, when he wasn’t drinking at the bars downtown. This dude appeared, to me at least, as a huge alcoholic. I was from a family of non-drinkers, my father being an ex-alcoholic himself, so dating someone who went every night was unsettling for me. It was one of these drunken nights when he called me up and asked us what we were.
“Sooooo… Like do I call you my boyfriend?”
“Yeah,” I said. “At least I thought we were.”
“Cool.” He replied. “I got a boyfriend. I’m gonna go back in.”
“Okay, have fun.”
Everything seemed to be going fine until one day, he was MIA. I went to school, texted him on the way and got no response at all. I tried calling in between classes, but it went right to voicemail. I was panicked. I could feel the energy shift and I knew what was coming. After school he finally messaged me and said to come over to his place.
When I got there, he was sitting in his room, with the lights off, listening to some mopey album. I sat on the end of the bed and waited.
The CD stopped and he mumbled to me, “I think we should see other people.”
My blood turned cold.
“Okay,” I said.
“I still want to be friends though.”
I did not want to be friends. I was so mad.
“I’m really sorry,” he said.
“It’s whatever.”
None of what I wanted mattered. I had zero choice in the situation. Clearly his mind had been made up and there was nothing I could say or do to change the outcome.
I said my goodbyes and left feeling hollow. It was absolutely out of nowhere. Everything was perfectly fine one minute and then not the next. To this day I have no idea what the fuck happened. I really wish I knew. I know I asked him once, but for whatever reason the answer didn’t stay with me. Maybe it was dumb. Or perhaps I didn’t want to hear it because it was so simple. All I have is my own conclusion and it was because of the age gap, which is stupid because when he dumped me I was a month away from turning 18. But, maybe he wanted a boyfriend he could go to the bars with. Have some cute thing hanging on his arm.
After that I spiraled out of control. Another fucking break-up so close to the other, I was beside myself. I started to smoke his kind of cigarettes, dress just like him, drink alcohol, and I became even more obsessed with Alkaline Trio. But I knew that wasn’t enough. I had to like that second CD. That was why he broke up with me, I chose the wrong one to like. I pulled the forgotten Finch album into the rotation, just to show how committed I was.
It reoccurred to me today that one CD represented the happier times of the relationship and the other got me through the break-up. All of the songs on “What it is to Burn” made sense. I could identify with them. And they truly spoke to me.
So much of who I am came out of that short-lived relationship. Isn’t that ridiculous? I crafted an entire identity from it, just so that I could, in the off-chance, make myself more attractive to him and he would take me back. He absolutely did not want me back and I was even more lost in the attempt.
In hindsight I shouldn’t have dated him. I should have taken some time between Jason and Travis, or better yet, from Travis to my husband. I think I had had too many break-ups in such a short amount of time that it was destroying my self-esteem and self-worth. I needed to heal from these events. What I chose instead was further self-destruction.
One of the weirdest things about that relationship was that sometime during Travis had given me a lighter. I cherished it after he dumped me, hoping I could use it as some totem to bring him back. One day I went to my car after school and the thing had exploded. It rested in tiny blue plastic fragments on the passenger seat. Since then I have tried so many times to recreate this event, but not once has it been done.
This last year, on November 3rd, Travis died of Stage 3 cancer. I still can’t believe it. It had been years since we had spoken. We would occasionally “like” each other’s posts on Twitter and Instagram.
Now, I leave you with the second album. Track 12 is my favorite. It was the one that spoke the most to me. Maybe because it’s good or because like, most things in my life, the number 12 follows me around as some kind of omen or lucky charm.
The Journal of a Jaded Josh 