Aguilas Off Pine

Tag: intimacy

Denial of Desire

Aguilar

I took a long break from updating the site because of the holiday season and to wrap my head around where I wanted to go next with my writing. Basically, I have had an idea going around in my head for quite a while now and I sat down to outline it, create a writing schedule and give myself prompts to flesh out the narrative. Life has its own plans,  but for now the schedule is to sit down and write weekly. The posts themselves are not going to be in any specific order, but I figure this way I can get my stuff up and string together a cohesive narrative. For the sake of organization, I’m keeping it all under one category, Ricardo. Other posts will be categorized accordingly but I’ll reserve this one for this new project. Anyway, without further ado:

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I registered a flash of recognition on his face before he approached. I had just seen him in the gym locker room and we’d both had the same thought, head to the park afterwards to cruise. It answered two questions, “Had I met him before?” and “Do people here recognize me in our outside life?” The answer to both questions it turned out was yes. He stopped in front of me and as I reached down to grab him, he returned the gesture. I was relieved to feel that he wasn’t hard yet either as I was worried, he would move on if I wasn’t ready.

“I’ve seen you at the gym right?”

“Yea man, I just saw you at the locker room, but we’ve met before. You’re looking a lot leaner by the way. Keep it up. So?”

“Let’s go to the darker spots.”

We walked through the park bleachers to a darker area. I leaned back against the little league fence and pulled my sweats down a bit. He pulled his own down and then pulled mine to my ankles, groping my legs and running his fingers through my body hair. He started stroking himself and squeezing my ass, then went down on, his hands still holding onto me and pulling me closer into him. For a moment I froze, unsure if this was affection or lust on his part. I figured it didn’t matter right now and moved his baseball cap aside so I could grab his head, stroke his hair and push in with more leverage. He stayed down and kept using his hands to push my clothes further off me, letting his hands explore every fuzz covered part of my body.

I let him know that I wanted to eat him out and asked to switch positions. I pushed him up against the fence and pulled his pants down, pulling mine up in the process. I dropped to my knees and pushed his cheeks aside so I could get in there. He had definitely put on more muscle since the last time I had seen him at the gym. I started to finger him to see if he was comfortable with going further and although he said yes, he kept shuffling his body in such a way that I could not enter him. He was just tall enough that I would need him to angle differently to enter and he kept hovering just out of reach.

I persisted in the position, less so because I wanted to be inside him and more so to continue pressing against him, kissing the back of his neck and reaching around to feel his pecs and pinch his nipples. He wasn’t completely smooth either, although I was the hairier one of the two. I felt the hair on his stomach, around his nipples, kept kissing his back and holding him while I thrust behind him, not quite in him but with my member rubbing along his crack. I couldn’t deny that I was enjoying the moment, but beneath it all was a different type of desire.

I had noticed him in the locker room because he stood out from the older gentlemen, who were all rushing to finish their own trysts before the gym closed. That gym in particular has an active scene and even before I had moved to the area, I would go there on the chance that after a workout, I would find a warm, willing body in the showers or steam room. I hadn’t been looking at that moment, seeing no point in rushing to hook up at this gym in the moments before closing when I knew the park was nearby. So it was that I flashed a smile in his direction, seeing that he was also rushing to get dressed and therefore wouldn’t take it as an offer for anything. I just hadn’t seen him in a while and I remembered having a good time prior.

He registered the smile and looked down but I thought nothing of it. I figured perhaps this wasn’t the guy I remembered. I didn’t think more of it and headed out to my car, drove a couple minutes away to the park and pulled in. I’m not sure if it’s because we’re out of the little league season or if the park closes earlier when it’s cold, but I was glad to find the park dark, with the lights already off. I recall being worried about actually stepping outside of my car because although I was open to the idea of getting off, I knew that what I really wanted was to spend the night with someone. It had been cold recently so the thought of watching a movie, kicking back with some weed and beers, and making out on my couch had been running through my head.

I pushed the thought away and stepped out, figuring that I was there anyway, may as well take care of business. I had just stepped into the area by the bleachers when I noticed him approaching me and we got down to it.

We continued, not as we were but changing positions and moving when other people got too close. Neither seemed interested in having others join and I appreciated the way he kept running his fingers through my body hair, finding new spots to caress, and pressing his body against mine just as much as I was pressing on his. That earnestness and desire brought to mind the scene on my couch, back home, cozy and enwrapped in each other. For a moment, just a moment, I waded too far into daydream and began to lose my erection, too much of my blood was being pumped to my heart instead of my dick. So I pushed the thoughts away again.

“Are you close?”

“Yea, I can get there but I have to use my hand. This is good but,”

“Oh no,” he interrupted, “I’m the same way.”

“Can I eat your ass while you jerk off? You’ve really been putting on muscle, haven’t you?”

“Thanks man and yea,” he turned around and I pushed his cheeks aside with my hands, taking a firm grasp before I spit at his asshole, the hair catching my saliva before I pushed it in with my tongue. As he finished I could feel the spasms running through his body and he clenched his cheeks against my face and tongue, both squeezed rhythmically. It was my turn and I stood up and he gripped me again, facing each other and pulling me into him. My chin came up to his shoulder height and I remembered dancing with an ex this way, he was slightly taller than me so I had rested my head on his shoulder as we drunkenly moved along to the music.

I turned away from this man and asked him to keep grabbing my ass but faced away from him and didn’t back up into him. I was forgetting myself for a moment, forgetting the time and the place, and needed to ground myself to wrap up. I finished, making sure to miss my sweats which were still down to my ankles, squeezed out the last drops and flicked them away. We thanked each other and headed out. No other words were spoken, but he beelined to his car and I detoured to the restroom to rinse off my hands and face, not wanting to smell like anything when I got home.

I drove to my empty home and went to bed, pushing away the thoughts I had had of passing the night in another’s company.

Aversion to Intimacy

Aguilar

I don’t understand what’s so broken in me that small moments of intimacy can cause me to spiral.

On Friday I went out with an engineer I had previously gone on dates with but with whom nothing long term seemed viable. We still touched base every once in a while when I was in Long Beach and now that I’ve been living here we’ve chatted but hadn’t met up. We had talked about why I didn’t seem interested in hooking up and I guess that’ll be open ended because sometimes NSA fun can be had, but going out for dinner seemed pretty low stakes. The conversation was good and we ended up going for drinks too.

I think we chatted for about five hours straight catching up on our lives since last we met, fairly surface level though. I guess he wanted to work up the courage for it, but after the first beer he asked, “So what about your love life?” I was so irritated to be asked because I knew there was nothing great to talk about. I let him know that I was bitter and disillusioned from my last relationship and that it was difficult right now to put myself in a situation where I might get hurt again. Perhaps I said it differently to cushion it a bit, but in a short summary that’s where I’m at emotionally. I explained what had happened with my ex and answered his follow up questions for a while and then asked him about his love life.

He reminded me that he wasn’t out to his parents yet and was waiting until he had a boyfriend. I didn’t let him know, but I recalled that being one of the reasons I thought I wouldn’t end up dating him. I asked some probing questions of his decision to wait. No, he wasn’t financially dependent on them. No, not all his siblings knew, although they likely suspected. No, he didn’t think it would be too much pressure to put on the other guy, although he understood what I meant. The topic shifted to some difficulties I’ve been having and how I’d like to go back to therapy and get that sorted, possibly diagnosed, in part so I can tell future potential partners that I process feelings differently for specific reasons. He questioned that reasoning, saying he liked to let his dates discover him and he wasn’t so worried about telling them about himself. When he told me later in the evening that he had commitment issues I asked him if he didn’t think those two behaviors were linked. It honestly was a nice night.

The problem is that on the way home I was crying after the intimacy of our conversation. It wasn’t even that it was that deep, it’s just that I haven’t been that open with anyone in a while. I have moved away from my closest friends and while I still chat with them often, it isn’t the same as being in the same space as the person you’re showing your heart to. And maybe it wouldn’t come as such a shock if I was more open in my day to day life or made more time for others instead of prioritizing solo activities.

The next morning in fact, I was out by Mt. Wilson with two close friends. They too had had a recent death in the family and at different times in the hike we teared up telling our stories. Maybe that didn’t bother me as much because it was familiar territory. It’s true we hadn’t had deaths in our families before, but as friends we didn’t shy away from difficult conversations and had had lots of emotionally charged encounters and yet, we’re still all friends and we’re still in each other’s lives.

For meeting new people, it’s been difficult to be that intimate, because I’m not sure that they will still be there later on. So I close myself off, letting my nurtured aversion to intimacy lead.

It isn’t just new people either. Yesterday my brother in law pressed his head into my shoulder to read a restaurant menu off my phone. I imagine he could feel me tense up and he has called out our family for being too frigid. He grew up with a family that is more physically affectionate than we are, maludjusted in their own way. I had left home thinking it was just me that couldn’t deal with physically being close to people, but have since learned it’s all of us siblings too. For those moments his head was resting on my shoulder, I felt a warmth inside of me and it made me uncomfortable, not the warmth itself but that it originated from my brother in law and that intimacy felt stolen, as if I was crossing a line in feeling anything from the physical touch of my sister’s husband.

That awkwardness around physical intimacy even carries into sex. During foreplay I am actively engaged in physical affection and haven’t ever had a problem with it in the moment. But last Thursday I hooked up with a guy I had been with in the past and had really great sex. The sex this time was awesome too, but there was a moment in between, when he had finished inside me, that I felt uncomfortable laying beside him. I told him my stomach felt a little bubbly and that I needed a moment. While it’s true that I felt a pressure inside that hadn’t been there before, when I got to the bathroom I took some time to just collect myself emotionally. He had been trying to cuddle and spoon me affectionately and I just couldn’t handle that. I went back to his bedroom and we continued for some time, but I noted how, for a time anyway, my mind had detached and wandered, removing my heart from the sex and it was just my body performing a penetration.

I have known what it’s like to not worry so much about these types of things, to not be shocked by intimacy because it’s more normal. Although there is some degree of this that is related to the pandemic, as touching strangers still seems like such a charged event, the awkwardness is not new and had gone away. I think, as I described to the engineer, I’m still reacting to my breakup, to the sudden loss of emotional support. Although I want that, I’m so scared of losing the support suddenly that I’d rather not build it with anyone new.

That’s why, instead, I’m just scribbling into the void, letting these out onto the internet, to fester online.