Some time ago I wrote the ‘story’ of Guy #168, except that it wasn’t much of a story, but rather an overview of all my personal issues standing in the way of me getting an actual, loving relationship with a Guy.
It’s not that Guy #168 is not a story I don’t want to tell:
Guy #168 was someone I met at this orgy this one time. For a while he was someone I wanted to be more with than just ‘someone I run into at orgies’. And when I say ‘for a while’ I mean Guy #168 was on my mind pretty much every time I had sex with someone, from Guy #169 all the way through #275, a good one and a half year of my life.
I have this habit of having dysfunctional crushes.
So when I met Guy #174 my first thought was This Guy doesn’t look at all like Guy #168.
Of course, being hopelessly in love doesn’t mean I become picky when it comes to picking Guys to have sex with. On the contrary: when I’m hopelessly in love I remedy my hopelessness by projecting all my feelings onto someone who doesn’t match my image of perfection, and then I resent that person for not being perfect.
Guy #174 was an exception in many ways, and I think the reason for it was feelings. His feelings.
I really wanted Guy #168 to have feelings for me, but instead I met Guy #174, a smart, funnily tortured cocaine addict who reminded me of myself in more ways than I was comfortable with. I say ‘funnily tortured’ because his drama was a great source of laughter for me. My life was far from on track at the time, but his issues dwarfed mine. We were similar in many ways, but Guy #174 seemed worse off in all dimensions. He was the embodiment of solace.
At the time I spent my waking hours at home, jobless, taking care of my stepdad. Guy #174 also lived with his family, his life lacking direction as well. He spent his sleeping hours away from his home as much as he could, as did I. He remedied his sadness with cocaine. I got high on weed every day.
We both lived life forgetting as much of it as we could.
When we first had sex Guy #174 made me forget about Guy #168 for a short while, like a few hours. It was like taking a new drug and discovering a new kind of high. Only the second time Guy #174 and I got together he gave me gonorrhoea, which is just the most annoying of all STD’s.
Like the caring person he was, Guy #174 joined me as we went to get our antibiotics. It struck me as hardcore to see him swallowing his pills with a bottle of champagne: this was clearly not the first time he had taken gonorrhoea meds.
I suppose it was in that moment I decided Guy #174 and I would continue as friends, something I instinctively felt he was willing to do: he’d seemed in awe of me from the moment we met, giving me nothing but compliments about my personality and the way I dealt with my issues, neither of which I felt were deserving of any praise.
I could tell he lamented the fact I wanted to be just friends, but he granted me full control of the relationship. For me, Guy #174 became someone I could talk to, about whatever I wanted to talk about.
“I am in love with this Guy I met at this orgy,” I told Guy #174, wanting to vent my issues as Guy #174 was often keen to let me.
“I don’t want to hear about that,” he said however.
I refrained from talking about my feelings for another Guy, until a few days later, when I brought him up again. This time I was allowed to. I could tell he wasn’t happy listening to me talking about a Guy I liked more than him, but he didn’t resist.
Guy #174 never explicitly said he had feelings for me. I suppose he knew me well enough not to.
I guess when we’re in love we prefer being tortured by the ones we love over not being with them at all. I didn’t resent Guy #174 as I would so many others who didn’t resemble the Guy I was in love with. Instead I appreciated him for allowing me to quietly torture him with my meanderings about this random Guy I met at this orgy this one time. It was what I needed, and Guy #174 was all too available to give me what I wanted, from laughing about his life, to whining about mine, to antibiotics, to just friendship.
Over the years I’ve been with a lot of Guys. yet as far as I can tell only a very few of them ever developed any feelings for me. With the exception of a few weeks with Guy #143 and a long distance fling with Guy #96, I never experienced much reciprocation. Likewise, the few people who ever fell for me…simply fell.
What can I say? I only fall for people I can’t have. People who fall for me I can have…so why fall for them?
Did I mention I only do dysfunctional crushes?
This one time Guy #174 and I went to a gay sauna together, where of all people we ran into Guy #168. It must have been an eye opener for Guy #174 to see me ache for attention from someone I barely got it from. I imagine it helped Guy #174 to let go of chasing me.
Usually when someone I had sex with isn’t perfect in each and every way I become dismissive toward that person.
Guy #174 didn’t look like the Guy I really wanted, he always complained about how not doing cocaine was such a drag, he had given me gonorrhoea. Yet despite all that I always enjoyed his company. His feelings didn’t chase me away as people with feelings so often do.
Guy #174 wasn’t perfect. Instead he was very much like me.
“We’re both stuck,” he once said, summing up both our lives in three words.
As time passed, we saw each other less and less frequently. My life gradually got ‘unstuck’, my need of solace fading away, hopefully not unlike Guy #174’s feelings for me.
We don’t really keep in touch these days. Of all the people I ever suspected of having feelings for me, Guy #174 was the one that made it the least awkward. Of all the people who ever gave me gonorrhoea, he was the only one kind enough to take our meds together. I feel sorry I didn’t feel for him what he seemingly felt for me, but if I’d ever get gonorrhoea again, I’d want it to come from someone like Guy #174.
Coming from a narcissist, that means a lot.
Thank you, Guy #174.
168guys.com 