Please please let me get what I want....

Dearest D.,

I find myself once again unable to sleep. Mostly due to thoughts of you swimming through my mind, so rather than toss and turn for the next several hours. I thought I’d sit down, fire up the computer, and fire off a letter to you.

Earlier tonight before heading to bed, I found myself perusing your Flickr page yet again. I honestly don’t have a clue how I ended up there as I was working on a different letter with a different subject when I ended up on your page.

Once again, I was struck by how odd the fact that you have no less than 500 plus pages of photos tagged with your “favorites”. As I paged through roughly 10 percent of the photos you’ve tagged, I had any number of conflicting thoughts and feelings enter my consciousness.

The first being how curious the shear number of photos tagged and the time it must have taken to search through the photos and tag them. And for what reason? I suppose it’s pretty obvious the reason for tagging the photos of naked and nearly naked guys and why you’d wish to view them repeatedly. And while the photos of guys with boners in their boxer shorts creating “pup tents” may be amusing in an adolescent kind of waywhat’s the point?

Actually, I have to wonder what’s the point with spending so much time searching through and cataloging the creative efforts of other individuals? Supposedly, if it’s even true, you have two fine arts degrees. Why not spend the time creating your own art and uploading it? But hey who am I to judge, right?

The other thing I was struck by was the thematic subject matter of many of the photos. That is outside of the close ups of guys crotches with boners under their clothes, et al. And I’ll spare anyone who might read these letters regularly yet another diatribe about your claims of not thinking about people as sexual objects. Ugh yeah.

The ones that affected me the most were the ones of guys showing physical affection with each other by embracing, holding hands, etc. A fact I find rather ironic given my experience with you was one of a guy who was pretty cold in that regard. And by your own admission claim to be a person who doesn’t really feel the need to hug or kiss friends in greetings, good-byes, etc. So, why the need to tag any number of photos of guys engaging in such activities? Freud would have a field day with that one no doubt.

Only I don’t think it would take Freud to figure out the psychological dysfunction in that one. But then again, maybe it was just me you didn’t feel the need to kiss or hug.

As always when I view your Flickr favorites, once I got through the initial shock. Then had a few good chuckles while passing through disbelief I arrived at that all too familiar place of sadness. And realized how pathetic your life really must be.

When I say pathetic, I don’t mean it in the current stereotypical manner in which the word is used in a self-superior way in an effort to make another feel small. I mean it in the classic meaning of the word (from Greek pathētikos capable of feeling, pathetic, or more accurately to be filled with pathos).

As I looked through the photos, I thought how sad  it must be to live such a hollow life to not allow oneself to engage in any such activity related to physical affection, but feel the need to catalog any endless number of photos of such in an effort to have a connection to such albeit a distant and digital one. While one part of me thinks I can’t even begin to understand the need for such activity. There is another part of me that doesa part of me does understand the need for such pain and suffering.

I thank each and every deity known to man that I no longer live my life in such a manner. I lived many years in such a situation and I refuse to return to it.

Once again in some strange way, by trolling through your Flickr page I came to yet another (and perhaps deeper) understanding of my attraction to you. I do believe it was your sadness and pathos to which I found myself attracted. Maybe because of it being a familiar feeling due to my own experience with it.

And of course as I’ve mentioned before, perhaps I was attracted to you due to my desire to heal you of your “affliction”. Never mind whether you wish to be healed of it. Which it’s pretty obvious you don’t I think. As it appears you’re pretty content with your continued sufferingat least to the causal observer of your Flickr page.

It’s interesting. I had lunch with a couple of friends I met through the same Yahoo! group where you introduced yourself to me, both of whom I’ve known for several years. They’re both married and somewhat closeted. And while it would be very easy for to take the tactic so many openly gay men take and judge them mercilessly. I don’t. But instead treat them with same respect, dignity and love with which they treat me.

After we finished having lunch, I was struck with the same thought I had post my hookup yesterday. I was amazed at how these guys treat me with far more respect than individuals such as yourself that I’ve met over the years who make such grand and overly dramatic claims about relationships. I’ll take what I get from my closeted, married, gay friends over the way I was treated by you any day.

In the email that was your parting blow, you made the statement it’s obvious I feel as though I’d been wronged by you. If that’s what you need to believe to bring you comfort, so be it. However, nothing could be further from the truth. However, I do believe I was lied to and used. And rather than exhibit the kind of courage that is necessary to have the kind of friendship/relationship you so pompously claim to seek you instead exhibited quite the opposite.

I think at last I may be winding down enough to get some sleep. Praise the gods I’m working at home tomorrow.

As always, sending  you much love.