Proximity and Distance

Wonderful, long conversations with my family over Christmas have left me thoughtful at the moment, particularly around one issue. My mother said that sometimes she has to check herself because she forgets that other people haven't had the life experiences she's had, so things she discloses quite casually are shocking and confusing to other people she meets. Now, I think that the people who know me would agree that it's fair to say some of the life experiences I've had place me pretty far outside of mainstream experience.

I was sat in a pub last night with my ex-boyfriend, listening to him talking about how he didn't think much of spending Christmas Eve up all night having sex with a stranger on disinhibitory drugs and, well, all the other things about his re-invented life now he's free to go in the direction he's wanting to head that I won't go into here out of respect for his privacy.

It makes me look at guys I see in pubs, in the street, in cafes and online and wonder whether or not they and I could really relate any more in any meaningful way. My mother says my nose has changed shape over the last couple of years and attributes it to drugs and I think she may be right.

My thinking now is along the lines of whether or not I can turn back along the road I've travelled the last few years, the strange choices, the extreme situations, the experiences I've had, or not. Can I get to a point where, when people ask, my deciding factor in fancying a man is whether or not he'd be a threat to me in a fight (most aren't, and I think I say it for drama), whether I can break the cycle of meaningless but diverting casual sex with strangers, the deliberate choices to look for people as fucked up as I wonder I might have become?

Within the relationship I had, I think he and I both used one another for collusion with our drug use and high-risk behaviour. I'd think I was okay because I never got as wasted as he did, he'd think it was fine to get wasted because he never sought out people for violent sex.

I do think the diagnosis has some part to play in it, leaving me without much sense of fear, but I've never really worried for my life, so I can't pin it on that, but the sense of shame and poisonousness that accompanies a diagnosis does leave me with the feeling that there's a distance between me and people who are negative. Either that I pose a threat to them or that they just won't understand my experiences. Or, worse, they'll remind me of the space I could have occupied if my life hadn't taken off in the strange trajectory it has.

I don't do things by half-measures, I never have, so I suppose it's hard to imagine a life where I live within mainstream parameters. My appearance, my body indicate my decisions to move outside of the norm, my behaviour confirms this. Realising that a week ago I was seriously considering starting a course of steroids in the new year has made me think about why I can't just accept that going to the gym as often as I do has left me in fantastic shape and must help with my health, whereas steroids might change my appearance, but not make much difference to my strength, but a big difference to my health.

I'm kind of obsessed with experience and novelty, not with sustainable self-development. The thought of doing the same things for a protracted period actually frightens me in a way I'm sure a psychiatrist would seize upon, but I've lived the fifth gear lifestyle for a few years now and I'm sure it's time I realised that that's getting boring too and the only ways out of it are either to walk away or to push myself harder, pedal to the floor until I wrap myself around a tree or something.

I'm not like other people, but that doesn't mean everything I do has to go further than anyone I know. The thought of simple things, like breakfast with a lover, of someone washing my hair, seem slightly hard to imagine sometimes. Talking to people online, guys I thought attractive or interesting, it was nigh-impossible to find someone who wasn't spending Christmas Day on cocaine.

I wonder what's going on with gay men, or people in general, that there's this overwhelming self-destruct going on. Is it body-crisis about HIV that so many of us are on Steroids? Is it the way we've been brought up to equate our sexuality with death and entropy that there's such a high percentage of nightclub casualties, crystal zombies. Do we all really believe that we're the walking dead?

I may be the walking dead, I may carry the seeds of entropy within me, but I think I'm reaching a point where I've got to make some kind of decision about which way I walk. Turning back, it's a pillar of salt, running forward and it's yet more fire-walking to endure.