Hurt or Bored? (Live with it.)

Is there any in-between?

Of course there is. There's "intellectually stimulated." There's "someone fun to have sex with that you can talk to before and after." There are friends that make you feel happy.

I don't necessarily go for "nostalgia," per se. But once you hit post-50, the experiences you have start to repeat themselves and you can therefore start to compare them without being overly emotional about it.

My senior-year-of-high-school love Ginny: Aside from being pleasant in general, she was interesting and intelligent and open and sensitive. And there was physical chemistry, as evidenced by the time she came by my house when I was in bed with menstrual cramps. As soon as she walked in my bedroom, a wave of what I now (but didn't then) know were "endorphins" flooded my body, and all cramps and nausea vanished! At the time, I didn't know what such a physical reaction was.

I liked the stuff we did together, too: Tried to explore one different religion, at least. (We went in search of a Unitarian church in Fort Worth, got lost on the way.) Loved Jessica Lange in "Frances" together and got matching "Frances Lives" T-shirts made at the mall. Got matching "Japanese" sweatshirts because they were cool. Snuck cigarettes. Went with her on a cross-country trip from Texas to her grandmother's home in Georgia.

What we did together was kind of a blueprint for what I wanted for the rest of my life: to explore together.

What she wasn't was loyal. The personal experiences that I thought were special were something that she was able to re-create with others once I went off to college. That fact hurt deeply.

Myself, I've been unable to re-create those "personal experiences." I've never felt as close to anyone as I did with her in the spring and summer of 1983. I never thought that would be the case --- I had awards! I was off to college in the fall! I thought I had a whole exciting future ahead of me.

And I did have a future. I did some stuff. I achieved some milestones despite being personally miserable: Got my bachelor's degree. Went to San Francisco and got my master's degree. Went to live in New York City. All things that I wanted.

But I've never had love. I loved Ginny. I don't know that she loved me --- she was a bit too quick to find someone new once I went off to college! But I loved her, and I felt real love from her at the time. She saw me, and she was willing to experience things with me.

In the 35 years since Ginny, my most intense infatuations have been with (1) one of a set of twins that I was really close with as friends --- this twin constantly "let me" massage her but nothing else; (2) a low-life coke-shooting dominatrix into the club scene and teenagers; (3) a married man, my boss, 25 years my senior; (4) a Norwegian tranny via the Internet; and (5) a former 1980s poetry classmate of mine, also via the Internet, who wanted phone sex and my concern, but no emotional closeness. Despite the scattered few months of intensity in each case, there was rarely any "there" there.

I've been alone for years and my psyche has been cleared of the last one (#5) for months now. And I can't imagine anyone ever coming into my life again. Which is puzzling. Why am I singled out for such a solitary existence? I don't get it. I don't get what appears to be my "fate." (But I suppose that's the point of "a fate" --- deal/live with it.)