DEREK’S DISCLAIMER: I am not a medical professional, neither am I giving any medical or legal advice. If you are seeking help from a doctor or an attorney, please consult said professionals. These are my personal thoughts and feelings on the subjects discussed, and my blog is my own personal experiences and journey with mental imbalance. Thanking you in advance!
Derek’s additional disclaimer: Some of the names have been changed to protect the not-so-innocent. ☺
Welcome back, my fellow bent minders! And HAPPY PRIDE MONTH! And to start Pride month off, let me tell you how I began my gay career. Ha!
Unrequited love. Le sigh. I have been there. Too many times to count. Being in love with or obsessed with or infatuated with someone who cannot or will not return my feelings. Or he is just not available, whether he is straight or married or partnered or in another city or state or even country. Or planet. And quite honestly I’m sick of it.
My little story goes wayyyy back to 1989 in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. I was 22 years old at the time. So PICTURE IT! LOL I began working in the bakery section at a gift shop and gourmet food place known as Southern Hospitality. It may have been my first day there, but I saw this man – short, muscular, dark-haired and moustached (definitely my type) – walking around wearing an apron. He worked in the coffee section of the store. I thought he was Puerto Rican or Mexican perhaps. Turns out he wasn’t. But his name was Paul Gilbert Lassiter. He was 36 years old at the time. What can I say, I like ’em older! And over the course of the next several months, I became absolutely obsessed with this man!
I began talking to him and spending as much time in the coffee section with him as much as I possibly could. It didn’t take long for me to realize that he was gay!!! And this was as I was already coming out, because earlier that summer I had been to my first gay bar, the Power Company, in Durham. Well, he started talking about The Power Company and Boxers and Capital Corral in Raleigh. So, I tried going to all of those places in hopes of running into him.
To cut to the chase, my infatuation culminated Halloween weekend of 1989. The Power Company had a Halloween bash of sorts. Paul said that he was going to be there in costume as some sort of weird bird. So, of course I went, too. I spent the earlier part of the evening with close friends on Franklin Street. I was dressed as a white man, which morphed into James Brown or somebody. I had a brown wig and was wearing my father’s old leather coat from the 70s. It was all very strange.
Anyway, after I hung out with my pals, I took to The Power Company, because of course I HAD to be with Paul. Well, he was there dressed in that weird bird costume. Or whatever the hell he was supposed to be. We danced and hung out. He introduced me to poppers. And we literally danced the night away.
Then the end of the evening approached and as was customary, Power Company played something slow to indicate they were closing. Paul and I melted into a slow dance together. I was in heaven. We danced for a few minutes, but then he suddenly pulled away. The bar was indeed closing. So, we walked outside to the parking lot to his tan Subaru, actually. We stood there talking for a while. That is when I asked him to kiss me. He smiled, but he refused. He said that he saw us as friends FOREVER, sitting in rocking chairs – or some nonsense. I told him how I felt about him. He said that he didn’t feel the same way. But then he leaned in and he kissed me (tongue and all LOL) for what seemed like an eternity!!!!! And then it was over. He said that he would see me at work later that day. He got in his car and left, and I walked up to my car on the parking deck in TEARS!!!!!!!!
Needless to say, I was a mess. When I got home, I just simply collapsed on the floor of my bathroom, a wreck. When I woke up the next morning, I remembered that I had to be at work! God, that meant I had to see him. I quickly showered and dressed and drove like a bat out of hell to work. When I got there, I realized that I missed a time change. I was an hour early!!! LOL Well, at least it was an hour early and not an hour late, as one VERY annoying coworker pointed out.
But yes, I did see Paul. And I apologized to him for making a fool of myself. He said no apology was needed. Later on in this particular storyline, I did invite him over to my place to hang out, which he did. And I still chased after him. That is until he was replaced by another man I chased after. But that’s another story.
Apparently, this became a pattern for me over the next several decades. I just recently realized at 54 that it is time to stop and let it all go. As they say there is nothing like an old fool. But going within and seeing my patterns and asking myself all the important questions of why I do this. Is it because my parents “gave me away,” which is how I looked at it for years (which is another story)? But my mental wellbeing comes first, and all of the chasing after Paul and other men did me no good. After all, the ones I chased, I did NOT end up with. All I did was bring myself down further and further into a cesspool of low self-esteem and yes, mental illness. Because you see, there is more to the Paul story, but I will delve into that at another time.
In summation, after FINALLY realizing that the best way to break free from this unrequited love BS was to focus on ME. To love ME. I know it is so cliché. We have all heard it a million times – love yourself, focus on other things blah, blah, blah. But it is even more than that. I have found that it is a true and deep going within and breaking off that part of yourself that does those clingy things. To stand up for YOU. And believe me, that isn’t easy.
More to come, because this story is FAR from ovah. So, in the meantime, be well!
And again, HAPPY PRIDE!!!!
