Depression

There was a time when Facebook was my main source of dates.

The country I lived in was a small, almost anonymous strip of land hidden inside South America. The gay scene was small, being gay often considered smaller. It had no Grindr, no Craigslist, for there was no anonymity to speak of.

Except for Facebook, where you can date in plain sight.

For reasons still not entirely known, the human race went through a phase where it was considered completely normal to invite total strangers to be your friend. It doesn’t get much sadder than that.

Still, I wasn’t complaining. Every few days I would get a friend request from a Guy who I had never seen or heard of. It always meant that friend was into me. All of them were closet cases. Living life inside a closet is depressing. Sometimes this depression echoes into sex, as was the case with Guy #94.

Guy #94 was a bit like the donkey Eeyore, Winnie the Pooh’s friend.

He had this radiating glow of melancholy resting on his shoulders. That surprised me at first, because closetwise he could have done worse. He even had a boyfriend (who would hit me up on Facebook a few days later and would go on to become Guy #95).

Maybe it wasn’t the closet that had sucked the life out of Guy #94. Perhaps he was simply depressed.
Either way, it wasn’t long before Pooh started having enough of this moodkill. I guess it’s unreasonable to ask depressed people to leave their mood outside when they step into my car on a first and most likely only date, but still, at least during sex act as if you’re enjoying yourself! You don’t even have to smile. Just moan a little.

Guy #94 did nothing but radiate sadness throughout our date. He complimented my looks and even the stuff I did to his body, but with the same reluctance the Catholic Church credited Galileo. I wasn’t exactly feeling the love. In fact, all I felt was Guy #94 feeling sorry for himself.

I wondered why this Guy had taken the effort to befriend me on Facebook. It became clear a few days later, when his boyfriend did the same.

Guy #94 wasn’t the slutty type. His boyfriend was. Guy #94 wasn’t a date. He was a scout, sent by his boyfriend to explore me. The only reason Guy #94 went on a date with me was to prep me for his better half. His sadness probably stemmed from the fact he didn’t want an open relationship. He settled for one, knowing closet cases in banana republics were lucky to find any relationship at all.

My guess is Guy #94 didn’t resent me. He resented his boyfriend for making him do me, for bearing the brunt of his boyfriend’s shyness. Guy #94 probably didn’t like the fact his boyfriend would also end up in my bed a few days later.

God knows what Guy #94 and #95 were thinking when they started an open relationship inside a closet.

Relationship summary:

LENGTH: 2 hours
FORMAT: Sad sex date
SEX SCORE (0 = Vinegar on fries <–> 10 = The best sex ever): 3.5

Dear Guy #48,

Are you still alive?

I can’t find you on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or even Myspace. If you died I would never know.

Our lives only intersected once. It was on September 18^th, 2009, my last night in Toronto.

Our date was heavily anticipated. In the weeks leading up to it we had exchanged messages of ever increasing length and depth. Often Guys on Craigslist speak in abbreviations (e.g. m4m, vers/top, no ff, 33, 6in cut, 6’1’, 160lbs, in2 bdsm, no ws), but the two of us had swapped entire autobiographies. We had even talked over the phone for hours.

Our actual date was one of the best I ever had.

We met up in Downtown Toronto and simply made the city our home for the night. We sat at the harbor front for a long time, staring out over Lake Ontario. We talked. I can’t remember what we talked about exactly. All I do remember is that we talked a lot. It was immensely liberating to have found someone I didn’t have to explain my thoughts to.
At one point we found out we both liked the Pet Shop Boys. It was just one of the many places where we ‘found’ each other.

I knew you were someone I could be with. In fact, I felt very much at home in your presence. It wasn’t the kind of bond I ever expected to find with a Guy.

Two and a half years before our date, I had left my home. Since then I had grown from being a shy bicurious recluse to a sexually confident predator in a city full of prey. Now I had finally found a sense of home the night before I had to fly back to it.

Our date ended on the backseat of a cab. I don’t know about you, but to me it was the best cab ride ever. We kept our clothes on, but apart from that the cab driver had access to free porn whenever he looked in his rearview mirror. We didn’t care.

The plus side of riding a cab at night is that cab drivers are probably used to people making out on their backseats. The downside is that cabs drive fast when there’s no traffic to make the moment linger.

Our ten minute taxi adventure would be the only occasion we ever consumed our feelings for each other. We consumed them like rabbits, but even animals can only go so far inside a taxi cab before they get arrested. In that sense our relationship got stuck in foreplay. Kiss me hard before you go…

Things didn’t end after we said goodbye. The lengthy emails and phone calls continued for a while.

Of course, distance is often a deciding factor in the battle between longing and ease. I would go on to meet other Guys, closer to home.

…whatever home was the first few months after our date. You made me feel at home in the backseat of a taxi.

Had I stayed in Toronto we probably would have gotten to know each other much better and more intimately. Instead our relationship slowly dissolved like smoke after an explosion.

In what would become your last email to me you told me you were suffering from severe depression. It was almost a year after our date. Depression had always been one of your main adversaries.

I realize it sounds weird, but I sincerely hope you didn’t kill yourself. Whenever I think of you, that’s my first thought: Hopefully Guy #48 is still alive.

One of the things I liked about you was that you didn’t let yourself get caught up in social media as we’ve come to know it.

It also means I have no way of knowing how bad your depression really was. We had a very strong human connection, but not a digital one.

I hope you managed to overcome the sadness.

Kiss me hard before you go
Summertime sadness
I just wanted you to know
That baby, you’re the best

Relationship summary:

LENGTH: 6 hours (not counting three weeks of anticipatory emails and phone calls)
FORMAT: Date
SEX SCORE (0 = The obligatory economy class baby that cries throughout long flights <–> 10 = The best sex ever): 9

Connection