Me = -[b+(a/c)]*xz

I had a really valuable phone conversation with The Guy last night. We’d been chatting online, and he told me about another person whom he’d had sex with a couple of nights before, but it seemed to be developing into something; yesterday they’d been constantly e-mailing each other and sending each other e-crushes. This is a different guy from the one who lives in another city. This is someone whom he’s had sex with just once. This kind of upset me all over again, so I asked if I could call him, and he said sure, so I did.

I was moved to tell him that I’ve been having sort of a crush on him, and that I’d been wondering why I’m just a sex partner to him. But he told me that he sees me as a friend whom he has sex with, and that he’s picky in whom he sleeps with; if he didn’t find me attractive, he wouldn’t sleep with me. In some ways this made me feel good — hey, I’m attractive! — but in other ways, it didn’t — hey, so what do those other two guys have that I don’t?

I was able to talk through a lot of things that had been going on in my mind, and he actually helped me to some insights. Here’s what I came to realize: part of why I’ve been jealous of the other people he sleeps with is because I’m envious of the fun he’s having. I’ve put restraints on myself while resenting the fact that other people feel free not to have those restraints. So, rather than lament the fact that he has multiple sex partners and wishing that he wanted to be monogamous with me, I need to give up the fight within myself and allow myself to have more fun. But it’s not just that, because I’ve had fun before; what I mean is that I need to let myself have fun without feeling guilty about it.

I want to post here an excerpt from an e-mail I wrote a friend a couple of months ago, which will go a long way towards explaining some truths about me. By the way, I’m starting to wonder why I’m baring my soul in this blog so much, and if it’s doing anyone else but me any good. But anyway, here’s the excerpt:

Here’s an anecdote. When I was a sophomore in high school, in Tokyo, I hadn’t yet begun to drink alcohol. It just wasn’t something I wanted to do – it seemed wrong to me.

That year, I idolized a senior named [X]. I was crazy about him. We’d become good friends that fall after acting in a show together. I looked up to him and thought he was the greatest person in the world. I didn’t know if he was gay or not, and it didn’t matter, because this was purely an emotional thing, not sexual. But I adored him.

One Saturday night, a bunch of people from my high school went to a bar. This happened all the time in Tokyo — the Japanese bouncers didn’t know how old we were, or didn’t care. I was there with some people, and [X] was there with some seniors. And the next thing I knew, he had ordered a mug of beer and was drinking it. Looking back on it now, it’s silly, but seeing him drinking alcohol really upset me. I thought so highly of him, and to see him doing something that I thought was wrong was really confusing for me. How could he be the person I admired so much and yet be drinking alcohol? If he was drinking, what did that mean about the moral precepts I had set up for myself? Had I been wrong not to drink?

I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the Disney version of “Pinocchio.” In the movie, Pinocchio, the good little boy, runs away to the Island of Lost Children, or whatever it’s called. The island is filled with lots of other boys who have run away from their families, and on the island they gamble and smoke cigars and so forth. When they do bad things, they grow donkey ears and donkey tails. Pinocchio starts to fall under their influence and do bad things as well, and he grows ears and a tail. When I saw that movie as a kid, that scene really upset me. I didn’t want there to be bad things in the world.

But, years later, I’ve realized that the behavior attracted me, too, and that’s what had scared and upset me about it. See, I grew up being a good little kid — loved by my parents, adored by my teachers, the smartest kid in class. It felt really good; it made me feel secure; it gave me a sense of self-worth. But seeing that scene in “Pinocchio” threw something unwanted into the mix. I didn’t want to know that it was possible to misbehave, to be a bad kid; that was something *other* people did, not me. If I was a bad kid, wouldn’t I lose the security that my parents and teachers had given me? Wouldn’t I lose everything I’d based my identity, my self-worth, my value as a human being, upon?

There’s so much going on in those last two paragraphs; in some way or another, almost everything that has caused me angst during my short life thus far has come from taking them and rotating, refracting, multiplying by x, dividing by y, adding or subtracting z, or any combination thereof. My life is an algebraic equation gone wrong. I have to start over with a new formula — the old one has given me nothing but irrational numbers.

Be optimistic: you can change your life.