I'm not broken!

Had a conversation today with an ex co-worker who is at least 20 years my senior. It was an interesting conversation about what gay sexual freedom was, that he remembered people being arrested for simply BEING in a gay bar ... before the stonewall riots. I can hols my own in such conversations.

He wondered if maybe AIDS wasn't a good thing for the gay community because it really made us THINK about sex instead of being so cavalier about it. I thought that was interesting. DEEP. But interesting, or maybe lemonade out of lemons-like.

At the same time, he decided to tell me that I was neglecting a large part of my life. That I spent too much time traveling and all that and that I was giving too much of myself to my children and not taking care of ALEX. Although he respected my role as a parent and how important it is to me, he thought I needed more.

I tried to explain to him that I made a conscious choice last year NOT to just have sex for sex's sake and that I wasn't crazy. I went a year without sex from the last time I touched my ex-wife to the next time I felt ready to really do anything ... these past 8 months for me aren't a dry spell, or some sign that I'm broken. This is how I do - the real me isn't comfortable with casual sex for sex's sake and I have to be true to me.

Apparently, according to him, it's unnatural not to have sex.

What the fuck!? For the love of Jesus, we all spent the majority of our lives NOT having sex. I'm not saying I don't enjoy it - I'm saying, I've got shit to do. I refuse to let my dick point me in the direction I should go ... instead, I determine my destiny and I get there.

He admitted that he doesn't have kids and isn't at all paternal. In fact, he said he would toss a baby into the trash if he had one. (Graphic, I thought). In the end, we agreed to disagree, I think. I'm not sure. I don't think I got through to him and I think he's actually trying to pluck feathers off a chicken and shedding the blood of a goat in the name of getting me back to normalcy.

But I want to be perfectly clear about this. When I had conjured up JACK in order to be able to really handle promiscuity, I never once neglected my children. I wasn't late to pick them up from daycare .. even thought I was 200 miles away. I never once forgot to feed them, bathe them, help them with homework, give them their asthma medicine before bed, read with them ... tell them how much I love them, or kiss on them or love on them.

I have NEVER brought home a piece of ass, or otherwise introduced them to a bevvy of fuckers I've dated or bedded. They have a stable life, albeit it with parents who don't live together. They are intelligent, well-rounded kids who will contribute positively to society and through them my legacy as a father will live on far beyond my grave. That's important to me. And I was able to maintain that even when I was fucking a new dude every month ...

And you know what? Whether I am a whore or no, my kids won't have to deal with a FRACTION of the nonsense I had to deal with as a kid - the fighting, the arguing, the police, the lovelessness, the stealing, the lying, the taunting, the oppression. NONE of it. My role as a parent has nothing to do with my sex life, and I'm not giving TOO MUCH of me to my kids. It's ridiculous.

The truth is that my decision to STOP being promiscuous? It's for the same reason that man thinks I should be fucking my brains out. Because I deserve it.

Except I don't deserve sex. I deserve a man - the totality of a man. And I'm not going to find him treating my dick like a metal detector and men like pieces of scrap iron.

That's how I'm taking care of ALEX.