The sun has fallen behind the trees as my Gay Old Soulmate and I sit here on the deck in our little queer retreat cottage. If all goes well, we soon will leave behind the house we have lived in for twenty-seven years in the city we have lived in for thirty-two. We will move to a different house in a different town a few miles away from where we sit now.
Only an occasional bird call or distant dog’s bark breaks the silence. My soul has lived in unsettled quiet for some time now. Continue reading
Bare chest to naked back
skin pressed hard to weary skin
one arm awkwardly squeezed
to the mattress below
the other wrapping him tight
Silence, mostly silence
we turn, reverse position
his arm now wrapping me
in duration proportionate
to the burden of the day
Sometimes hanging on
is simply hanging on
sometimes it is survival
the one reliable embrace
the world can offer
I pass the sign on the way to the upper swimming hole at the Rock River near Newfane, Vermont. The sign doesn’t say it, but optional should be in quotation marks. From this point on I will feel more exposed with clothes on than with them off.
So I strip as soon as my feet touch the gay beach. That only shifts my sense of exposure. Is it really possible to feel more naked in the midst of a crowd of naked men? In my youth we would have called this skinny dipping. Dipping, of course, hardly describes even the secondary purpose for our activity. Although I hold no expectation of a side trip into the woods with a handsome stranger, a palpable energy pervades this place no less than the fresh smell and sound of the water rushing over the rocks on its way to the West River. I feel the little arousals in me prompted by the bodies surrounding me. I compare my own skinny, aging, untanned body to theirs. Does every other gay man hold a gym membership and spend all his days lying naked in the sun? Few, if any, tan lines show. My dermatologist would be appalled even as I am enthralled.
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I’ve been in this relationship nearly 30 years now. But I still check out the good looking men I see on my train ride and walk to the office each day. I fantasize about a little encounter. Would my Gay Old Soulmate object? Maybe he’d be thrilled to see me actually try something interesting and a little risky for a change.
I’m at the age where I could use a novel adventure. But being “at the age” is just the problem. Continue reading
As I become more and more a gay old soul, life’s challenges fall roughly into four themes: spirit, body, relationship, resources.
Spirit
After I first came out we dreamed of a fairy godbrother circle. A sort of gay spiritual order with its own spiritual discipline to weekly: