An interesting call

Kind of a quiet evening was shaping up this evening. I have started on a new short story series I am reading for Charlaine Harris. This one is called Night's Edge. It is very good. They have left the Harris story for last, like dessert. I never read ahead in books. It spoils it for me, and I think it's cheating.

I had settled in to read for about an hour when the phone rang. It was Terry, a guy I met through Match.com who lives up near Cincinnati. He is a 54-year-old virgin, who has lived in a small town his whole life, and never really had the courage to do anything - literally. He is a very sweet man, but it just breaks my heart that his whole life is passing him by while he tries to decide what to do about it. He was excitedly comparing and contrasting different men he had met online and which ones he likes for which reasons, and talking about the kind of man he wanted, etc. I just finally had to break in and tell him "Look, man, you're not ready to get married - you've never even held hands!" I think he was putting way too much pressure on himself about sex, when he hasn't really accepted who he is yet. I told him not to worry about sex right now - to concentrate on getting out in the world and just meeting some other gay people.

We talked about the "Howard Sprague" fag - that character of yesteryear who lived in small towns, never married, and was eventually known as a "confirmed bachelor". Yes, he was accepted, and had his place in the town, but it was a very lonely life. Terry doesn't have one friend who knows he's gay (at least not that he has told). He doesn't know one person he can talk to about the things weighing so heavily on his mind. He is relying on people he meets online to fill that role. I was glad to do it for him, but it made me so sad. I told him that if he wasn't honest with his friends, if he continued to hide who he was, that he really didn't have any friends because he wasn't letting people know the real him. You can only be so close to someone and not share something so vital to who you are - you are forced to hold people at arms length. He said he understood, but I wonder if he really took it in.

I ended by telling him to watch Auntie Mame with Rosalyn Russell again, and Now Voyager with Bette Davis again, and think about what those movies mean, and why gay people identify with them so strongly. I also told him to find a supper group, bear group, MCC Church, something in Cincinnati, and get into town, and find his people. Just interact with some real live gay people. Not to have expectations about sex, or relationships, any of that, but just to feel what it is like to be around others of his own kind. I hope he will do it. I wonder if he will. Baby steps, Terry, baby steps.