20th Century Boy...

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Robin Black: Why Don't You Love Me?

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Notes from the Concrete Jungle: Cheaters Anonymous

I’m a Southern Boy, I can’t lie about that, even my accent won’t leave me. Yet, as a Southern Boy, there is one thing I hate. In fact, I loathe it. Care to know what it is? Well, even if you don’t, I’ll tell you - County Music. Seriously. There’s an old joke my father told me many times when I was a kid. It goes something like this… “What do you get when you play a Country Music song backwards? The guy gets his house, his dog, his wife, and his kids back.” Now, the joke got me thinking just a bit. What happens when one lives gay life in reverse? See, I’ve noticed something in gay life; our relationships are a bit short and quick. I don’t know if it’s by nature, or if there is a specific reason, but it seems to be true. So I’ve been thinking, if we live our life in reverse, does that mean we get to keep all our dreams? You know, kids, husband, family, good job, and all that? Sadly, one look at our culture tells us we are not living it in reverse, but seem to be stuck in permanent fast forward. Our culture is built upon the age of porn ads and disposable boyfriends. Maybe (and this may just be the cynic in me) we’d be better off with the fully pose able, automated G.I. Joe figures from our youth. At least he won’t leave you, and if he does you can always just introduce him to some Independence Day style action and strap him to a bottle rocket and send him whizzing off into the clear blue skies. Ah, wouldn’t that be a wonderful miracle? Sadly, that is not an option, not even remotely. Well, I guess it MIGHT be an option if you’re the sadomasochistic type. And even then there are about a gazillion laws that protect him from you. So what’s a modern boy to do with an age old epidemic that seems to be plaguing our culture in alarming numbers? After all, infidelity, or “cheating” in layman’s terms, is a plague. So what are we to do? A bit of a back-story here: In October of 2004 I had this boyfriend who I’d been dating on and off over several years. With us it was always the same old story of two people eventually going their separate ways when our roads would part, get back together when they merged, etc. etc. ad nauseum. The last time, and I do mean the last time, we were together things between us seemed to be going very well. At that point in time I was in a decent job and things in my life seemed to be moving forward. One night, as I was sitting around the house waiting on him to come home (yes, we made the effort to live together), an IM box pops up on my computer. It was a mutual friend asking if my boyfriend was around. Of course, my boyfriend hadn’t arrived yet so I asked my friend what was wrong. The box was silent for several moments, then the familiar ding, and then words blazed across the screen. “He’s cheating on you.” Silence. Was it a joke? Maybe. I tried to take into account that my friend was a bit of a practical joker. I tried to brush it off; after all we were the perfect couple in a lot of ways. We didn’t fight. He had his friends. I had mine. We didn’t generally annoy the hell out of each other. I mean, it wasn’t perfect, but it was comfortable. There in lies the problem: Comfortablity breeds blind eyes. Over the course of the next several hours I learned of my boyfriend’s… lack of better judgment… through saved e-mails, conversations, and a few-well placed phone calls. I became a mini-detective gold mining all my friends and usual haunts for information. Yes, I’ll admit it was a bit stalkerish, and a tad overboard, but I wanted to have all my information in place before I confronted him. I mean, I did have the best information in the world. The guy who told me he was cheating, well, that was the guy my boyfriend was cheating on me with. Eventually, days later, when all the information came into place, I confronted my boyfriend. His excuse for doing it - “I don’t know.” “I don’t know?” How do you explain throwing away something good with “I don’t know?” And thus begins the decent into the maelstrom of trust issues, doubt issues, and the oh so lovely self-esteem issues. I’m sure you know the whole stream of questions, “ Am I not good enough? Am I not attractive enough? Has he told me the truth on this, that or the other? Why? Why? Why?” The world suddenly becomes an endless series of questions, and not a damn one of them has an answer to it. And friends, well they are about as useful as a heat wave in July. Wait, I take that back. They were more helpful then I give them credit for, but that was in the long run. But at that particular moment in my life, well, they weren’t exactly the most helpful group of people ever invented. When I asked them why my boyfriend might have done it, I’d get the same generic answers. Answers I’ve could have read for myself on the net (which I did too - by the way). You see, studying infidelity, specifically gay infidelity isn’t anything new. Clinicians have been studying it since the early 70’s. Type in “gay male” and “infidelity” in your search bar and the whole spectrum of reports will appear at your fingertips for you to browse, shop and research on your own. What do all these reports have in common? They don’t give a Southern Boy like me an iota of information into the male psyche I didn’t already have. All of them pontificate the same jaded dated reasons as to why men cheat. Amusingly enough, there are some real amusing reasons that run the gauntlet from boredom right down to the classic “I want to fit in” syndrome. And while these may be valid reasons accepted by doctors and the like, these are NOT valid reasons for your lover or mate. You see, in all honesty, that little desire to cheat destroys something incredible precious and damn near rare in this world. Think of it this way: In every relationship there is a precious gem, trust, and it’s the most rare and purposeful gem in the world. You can hardly find it or see it, but when you do the damn thing shines brilliantly against all odds. Now, when cheating enters into the picture, that little gem gets a bit discolored, or worse, shattered. It’s damn near impossible to rebuild. In the wake of infidelity you’re left holding a gem made of the shattered and bruised egos, a relationship in need of repair, broken trust, and boundaries forever crossed. And in that shattered wake, the little pieces of trust shine and reveal just how broke you really are in new and scary ways. This is why fidelity is a virtue. Fidelity breeds something of its own. Trust. And with trust, all things are possible. So, before signing off this week, I’m going to pose an open question, and in the coming weeks, post some of the comments and respond to them. I’ll ask a few fairly simple questions. 1.) Have you ever been cheated on? 2.) Did you or did you not take them back? 3.) Why? 4.) If you’ve never been cheated on, do you think you would take them back if they did? And why? I’d like to see some answers to this and in the coming weeks, we’ll explore it a little further. For now, enjoy time with your friends, lovers, mates and what have you. As for me, I’m going to go curl up next to Rog and pass out for a little while. - Texas

NEMESIS: Number One In Heaven

Just remember, it's ALWAYS your turn to shine!