Summer in January

While in our little gay visit, we went to a strip mall with all kind of cute and quirky gay shops: the Java Boys, the Gay Mart and so on and so forth. Everyting very witty and very expensive.
I managed to get infatuated with $200 jeans and a beautiful $200 jacket. Totally beyond my reach but absolutely adorable. Something like the beautiful men in the bar and the stores: overrated, trendy and beautiful, and of course, unattainable. Because even though they gave us the eye (two Latinos and to Anglos hanging out together do tend to call people’s attention, even in pan-ethnic Miami, but it was Fort Lauderdale, after all) they also managed to appear somehow blasé and slightly bored, returning to their drinks/magazines/cigarettes once we passed. But not without having given us the once-over at least three times.

But it’s all part of the game. The game of looking, that is universally played in beaches and bars all over the world. And I got an eyeful this time. Remember I’m an unrepentant voyeur. Hence my penchant for amateur porn. And the beaches were aplenty with beautiful men (or at least men I find attractive, that sometimes are not the ones the gay fascism dictates, mind you). I seem to find men attractive for what they do more than for what they look like. I noticed I look more at the way a man moves than to his facial features or his perfect six-pack. I notice first if he’s got strong legs or nice hands or a swagger than noticing his biceps, his Aberzombie threads or his perfect haircut.

 
During this vacation I got to do some people watching, something I don’t usually do. Watching people in the street or at the beach is really lots of fun. I watched men at the mall, at the beach, in the street, taking the train and just plain lounging around. And most of the ones that caught my attention seemed to have that ‘free’ attitude around them: a swagger and a touch of vanity that made me look. They seemed more in touch with their bodies than the usual Northerner American I’ve been surrounded by lately. Is it the overabundance of Asians, Latinos, Middle Easterners and Eastern Europeans what make them a smorgasbord of delicious male flesh? Or was it the feeling of being on a vacation what put me so in touch with my own flesh? So then how come it did not affect my feelings? Am I really detached as he seems to think? Just not available? I think a part of me withered away when my last relationship ended and this one started. I have never been the same again. I cannot reconcile my Madonna with my Whore. I cannot move from the living room to the bedroom. Possibly because I find the bed as a place to make love boring and the fact that he needs to plan and keep everything under control a total turnoff. And that leaves me cold. Literally.

 
Now that we’re back home I have felt the heat slowly leave my body. That sultriness that has been with me these past two weeks is slowly giving room to the cold that has been with me lately. It may be me, as he says. But then how come it does not seem to be there with other men? How come I find myself looking at other men in those beaches and feeling vibes that remind me of long gone desire tingling in my spine? Oh, well. I’ll leave that question for some other time. Right now I’ll try and retain some of that heat and inject myself with some nostalgia. It’s always difficult to try and teach the reticent, to guide someone who was so repressed and closeted to make them free and unassuming. I’m hoping there’s a sensual, adventurous and fearless man underneath the controlling, OCD’d surface. For my own sanity, I hope he’s there.

XOXO