I had dreams this morning, but I think I lost them over coffee. Let’s find out.

I didn’t write yesterday, despite waking up in my own bed (which is becoming much more rare) and having nothing to rush off and do, as happened on Friday.

I almost just went back added “alone” to in my own bed. My side dude is moving. I wonder how this is going to change things… I guess we’ll find out. I care and I don’t, but really I care.

Honestly, while I really really like him as a person, I never really liked having sex with him. And it’s not even that he’s not good, and attractive even. I just don’t feel it.

I paused and stopped writing right there (wow, this certainly is a habit that deserves to be maintained – I’m out of practice after taking just a few days off – it’s like a physical skill) because this part is difficult to talk about, and leads from the past to the future, leaving me in the present.

I feel like I’m missing the signs. I can’t help myself, especially in times of stress, from looking at everything around me and hoping it makes more sense than this madness in my head. That is the explanation behind this, all of this, every last bit of it, every dream, every memory, every random dude I sleep with even though I don’t really want to.

What is it like to actually want to have sex? Does anyone really know?

I mean, I certainly do get horny. But then, why wouldn’t masturbation cover it?

The boy said that to me one time, I don’t remember what we were doing or where we were going, but I was in his car. We were talking about sex, I think I mentioned that female ferrets can die from not having sex, and I could relate. The conversation hit there, then moved on to whether or not ferrets can masturbate (can they?).

My takeaway from that conversation was that he did not view sexual neglect as reasonable motivation for infidelity.

And that’s a really bad sign for whatever we’re going to try and make of this.

That’s why, despite it all, despite the fact that he’s a very attractive man, despite the fact that he has just the perfect body to curl up against in the middle of the night and his voice sounds like the stroke of a velvet glove against the back of my ear when he whispers in his sleep, despite the fact that he immediately knew how to cook my favorite foods (I am not a picky eater by any stretch, but I am particular about good food) and never even had to ask again about food allergies (my own parents have nearly killed me so many times that I have a permanent heart condition), despite the fact that our past has all the statistical points of overlap to predict a longstanding relationship…

I stopped writing for a second. I’m giving myself the out this time, I’m letting me off the hook (I went back and erased “just this once” because we all, whoever you are, know that’s bullshit. And I just thought about cigarettes). There’s something bigger I was about to talk about, before I mentioned the boy, and that’s what the boy has done to my mind. Not his fault, I picked him up specifically for that purpose – to hide from myself. I always find the biggest whitest man I can find and hide myself behind them. They view me as a certain type of person, in a certain way, and that’s so much easier to talk about than anything that’s underneath all that.

Even now I feel myself desperately flipping through my mental rolodex of usual excuses and distractions, my heart fluttering like a stack of heavy weight index cards, my lungs feeling the same friction as a thumb would, shuffling cards (I have to go back on the second cup and find out what that maneuver is – I have a feeling I’ll need to bring up that analogy somewhere again) and because I won’t let myself settle on any of them, I’m nobly trying to be better than all these excuses…

Instead I’ve come to a dead stop.

And I’m giving myself the out this time.