Damn

I don't get angry very often, but I've had a bit of a bad week for it. Not in the loud outburst sort of way that b&c indulges in every 7.3 minutes: I've only ever had that sort of temper when I was young and when I was going through the divorce: it's so frightening that I won't feel it unless I'm absolutely driven to it, and I'm not easily driven. This has been more the petulant sort of anger that makes me adopt a short tone with one of the kids when they're asking me to do something for them that I'd rather not do, and I always regret it instantly, especially since I'm almost never angry at them.


I tend to think there are two sorts of anger, and it's easy to tell which is which by my emotional response to it. There's righteous anger, which I'd bottle and sell if I could. When someone has wronged me, and I'm in no way at fault, I find the (earnest but non-violent) expression of such anger to be a powerful combination of catharsis and self-affirmation. Non-righteous anger, which is unfortunately much more common, is much more destructive. And it's usually about something other than the nominal source of the anger. It's a lot like badly referred pain, which I occasionally get thanks to a family history of gall bladder problems. Every once in a while (though not in a long time, thankfully), I'll drink some eggnog or have a large amount of whipped cream, and a while later, my gall bladder will give me a pain in something that isn't anywhere near my gall bladder. (While I'm off topic, I'm going to make a note to myself to use this idea the next time I run into a bottom who's having trouble taking my cock: "Dude. Your ass doesn't hurt because my cock's too thick. You're just experiencing some badly referred pain from your gall bladder. Maybe lay off the sour cream for a while.") So this week when I lost my patience a couple of times with EFU, it wasn't really that I was angry with her. In one case, it was that I was pissed off about having to go to three stores to find a battery for the garage remote and then going to the grocery store and finding that they didn't have any all purpose flour. (WTF?) And in the other case, it was when we were practicing parallel parking in anticipation of her driver's exam, and she was doing a fine job, but I was worried about her exam and, more so, about the fact that if she passes her exam tomorrow morning, her plan is to set out right away to drive by herself all the way to Marlboro. Eight to ten hours in questionable weather for her first solo drive. Egad.


Similarly, when I get angry at some boy for flaking on me, I'm usually angry at myself at least as much as I'm angry at him. That's happened a couple of times this week, too. In those cases, there's usually some mixture of justified and misdirected anger -- generally the boy truly has behaved badly -- but it only takes an iota of non-righteous anger to make the entire anger experience toxic.

I've been hooking up for a while now, so I'm used to the inherent flakiness of men, and most of the time I just roll my eyes and remember that I successfully hook up on a regular basis. When I don't roll my eyes, when I actually get upset, it typically means that something about the guy was uncommonly desirable or that I'm really upset about something else.


For example, a couple of days ago, a late-twenty-something, smooth, cute, Asian guy responded to a craigslist ad, and we exchanged emails for a couple of days, and then we chatted online, and he said he was free Tuesday evening, and he was so excited and seemed so genuine that I gave him my address at the end of our chat, in clear violation of my policy not to give out my complete address until I've talked to the guy on the phone and he's on the way to my place. Then I left the office, and when I got home, there was a lame email from him saying that he had to work later than expected and that he wanted to try for Friday instead when we'd have more time. Two hours just isn't enough, I suppose. I could tell immediately that he'd simply chickened out, and I was angry, but mostly I was feeling stupid for ignoring the warning signs: he'd never been fucked before; his experience was limited to a few handjobs; he didn't give me his cell number; and he kept asking more questions about specific scenarios and getting very excited about the answers rather than moving towards actually closing the deal. A guy like that is clearly not going to follow through immediately; sometimes, you can cultivate them so that they follow through in a few weeks or months, but if you do that, you'll find that youthful cuteness is really no substitute for experience and skills. I just wasn't thinking clearly because he was pushing the smooth, Asian, and bottom buttons. Fortunately, I was able to console myself with the fact that he claimed to have an 8" cock. I just don't see the point of a hung Asian. I really don't mean that to sound derogatory or racist; it's just that when you're dealing with a smooth and slender person, a 6" cock already looks big. An 8" cock would totally violate the aesthetic. Not that I was planning on spending a lot of time looking at his cock.


And then there was the older couple from Northern Virginia. They didn't actually flake on a specific date: they just expressed a whole lot of interest in the general concept without being able to agree to a specific date, even after a week of emails back and forth. But they seemed like a lot of fun, and I don't often get to play with couples. (I love playing with couples because then I'm the center of attention.) And one of them had very perky nipples. But they also seemed very conflicted about actually following through. They have a joint email address and one of them (oddly enough, the bottom, who most seemed to admire my cock) kept deleting my emails, so they kept asking me to resend the same picture. And then I got separate emails from an individual email account from Mr. Perky nipples. He sent me some racier pictures of himself, but he said that he didn't want his partner to know that the pictures existed.


And, most of all, they're from Northern Virginia. Gay men who live in Virginia necessarily exercise a certain amount of self-deception to pretend that it's great to live in a state that so explicitly discriminates against them. I doubt that these guys actually play together very often. I'm pretty sure that one of them (the younger one who sent me a picture of someone else sucking his cock) plays a lot separately, but I reckon that talking about finding a third -- and occasionally answering an ad and then one lying to the other about why it didn't work out -- is a way for them to make them feel more active than they are. (Gee, I sound angry, don't I?) They would have been relatively convenient from my office in Bethesda, but, truly, someone really needs to engrave Lasciate ogni speranza voi ch'entrate on the Virginia end of the Cabin John bridge.