After San Francisco my sexuality reawakens in Durham, NC (Transitional)

Too large a chunk of my life was wasted after my one heterosexual relationship ended. I've never been able to understand myself well enough to decide if there was an unconscious will to self-damnation or if it was merely inadvertence and carelessness that came near to killing me. I've often thought that laziness and inattention are as deadly as the most destructive passion.

Before Siobhan left I'd started drinking, but always with Gordon. Once or twice a week, I'd get drunk enough to sing along with a gospel record but not obnoxious and was too young for it to diminish the next day.

After she was gone I drank more often and heavily, working myself up to a fifth or rum in a night. Many cans of Colt 45 on my light days. Drinking nights became the nights we watched movies like Robot Monster and The Gore Gore Girls .

I didn't drink every night, evolving into a drunkard not an alcoholic. Eventually the wear and tear on my body left me tired the next day. Very irritable, leading the The Spectator to mention "the surly one" in a review of my used bookshop.

At first I'd take a long early morning walk from my house to downtown Durham. Later I'd turn to food for 'recovery.' A nearby mom'n'pop greasy spoon sold huge hamburgers with an equally impressive side of fries. Two of the burgers were enough to make me almost reel in response. Bojangle's Tailgate Special became my regular Sunday morning breakfast. Fifteen years after she left sanity returned and I shed 230 pounds. (Oddly enough when I used to weigh over 400 people would ask me if I used to play basketball. When I'm slim it is replaced by basketball.)

As an obese giant I didn't think about sex, certainly not about love. I'd wholly given up on the latter. Jacking off was sufficient. Willowy (sort of) again I got horny. Lonely too.

I've zigged and zagged along the scale of misanthropy so much I'm not sure where I stood on the human race then. Bars were even less enticing than when I'd been young. Older a bar seemed like nothing more than a chance to humiliate myself. (Yeah, yeah, I know age doesn't really matter to rational people. Or rather I've read that. You humane, mostly monosexual folks need to stop kidding yourself. Over the millennia when has sex been rational?)

And all of my friends were straight.

Thank you, Tim Berners-Lee for the world wide web.

Part One, Part Two, Part Three.