Pomeriggio

Got together yesterday afternoon with my friend J, who's in town for the rest of the month. (The latter part of this posting is about him.) We met at the gym, which was where we first met back in 2006, when he unleashed a kind of sexual energy in me that I don't think I had known before. He and B and Thom remain the sexual holy trinity for me: most memorable. When he's dressed up in a suit and tie, he looks a bit like an Oxford don or a furry pipe store proprietor, but in his natural jeans and T, you can see the lean muscle and the grey fur that first caught my eye, to say nothing of that nice baritone. He's the only man who ever made B a little jealous, which, of course, pleased me very much.

He is a consciously polyamorous fella. He and his partner of over a decade live in different countries and spend most of their time apart. J especially has a healthy erotic appetite, but he is also very committed to doing the right thing. The rule that he and his partner have is that there are no secrets. So when I met his partner after knowing J for some months, both personally and biblically , the partner knew a lot (!) about me.
It is an arrangement which works for them. They are deeply connected to each other, talk by phone and camera every day. And their priority is each other. To an outsider they are a Mutt and Jeff odd couple, but once you get to know them, you can see and feel where the bonds are. Not everyone can pull off this kind of complexity but they seem to have done a very good job of it. I have been very pleased to have this connection with J; it's a great combo of the erotic and the friendly.

We were talking yesterday about play and anxiety. I recall that what struck me so powerfully when I first got together with him was the complete absence of anxiety in him. I had not realized how much anxiety there was in both me and the men I had slept with. In that fear-free space he made, it became impossible to do anything wrong. Great sense of liberation. And he certainly brought out the play in me. I remember telling that when we were together I felt like a kid with a hardon. God knows that draw to playfulness was a huge piece of my time with B, who was a virtuoso playmate, most excellent. Sex is like a sponge, capable of being drenched with almost anything else. It can be dramatic or grim or transcendent or a whole host of things. But one of the things it can be is play.