Show Me Your Scars

Show Me Your Scars (Casual Encounters w4m)

What are you afraid of?  Will I frighten you?  With my edge and my age, with my baggage and my scars?  Or are you carrying as many or more as I am? Fearless, open and bold, I’m searching for the hot connection that could turn into more.  Let’s find some short term fun; even better if we click for more than that.  Hit me.

I’m trying not to lose hope.  Hope that in the time my body has left to fuck with abandon, my mind the capacity to understand what I see, my heart the capacity to hold life’s inevitable pain, that I will find my partner.  Yes, I was married.  Yes, I’ve done the procreative thing, and very, very well at that.  Whoever and whatever I’m looking for next is about my soul, not the perpetuation of the species.  I’m sure this desperation appears between the lines of many of my posts, and probably scares many away. 

Desperate himself, by his own admission, David had answered another post of mine much earlier, Open to Suggestions, although could have answered this one just as well. 

“I’m a mess of a man who can’t stop trying to become a girl.  My dog takes care of us both lately.  I yearn for the intense complementary nature of man with woman (who’s the man tonight, then who’s the woman?  Maybe name-tags would help.)

“Harmless and loyal, kinky to the edge of practical, not into gratuitous pain or filth.  Starting to feel a bit desperate (not the thing to show early on, but I’d rather start with someone who is brave enough).

“Oh… I almost forgot… I’m practically indestructable… big and coordinated too!

“David, in the mission”

I liked this honest writing, although was confused by the ‘trying to stop being a girl’ thing.  He lived in my neighborhood, and left a phone number.  I called him after a couple of beers two days after he first answered me.

We must have logged six hours of phone time before we actually met in person.  David even called me once before we met as his alternate persona, the one he calls ‘Tammi 2-Hole,’ a cross-dressing, tweaked out bisexual in lace panties, pink nail polish and size 16 high heels.  You read that right.  That I can find such a man intriguing is proof that I’m crazier than most.  David only has sex with men when he’s high, and considers himself straight the rest of the time.  He’s cohabited with two women, almost married one, and is searching for the same kind of connection I am.  Maybe everyone is, whether they care to admit it or not. 

David is scarred.  A six foot seven inch giant of a man, cursed or blessed with a gifted mind, he brings humor, challenge, acceptance and a raft of scars with him.  HIV positive, a meth user when I met him, who lost his mother at age three, the year we met he was resuscitated eight times after a heart episode, had two valves replaced in his heart, and lost half of each foot to gangrene.  Now in a size 8 shoe, he stuffs the toes of his boots with newspaper and pretty much can do anything, save climb a ladder.  (This last is a bit of an issue, as he works – when he works – in construction.)

We mostly talked on the phone, didn’t trade a lot of emails.  But his second email, before we first talked, was accompanied by a photo of him prone on a bed, wearing heavy makeup, an exposed thong under a short skirt, and some sort of corset arrangement.  I showed him this email and photo recently, and he expressed shock that I ever responded to him.  He was very high when he sent it.  He wrote:

“Hi… thanks for sharing yourself in the note. In the past I have had good comprehension and recall on such detail when shared over time. We’ll see how the processor holds out, tho.

“I’m sorry I didn’t get to the phone last night; I see that you called around 11:30. I think I was nursing a beer at Treat St Bar about then.  Fortunately we get other opportunities to complicate our lives!”

Indeed.

“I take your points in order, at my great peril! (See below for **my** Standard Operating Procedures).  I included my limits because I’m in the habit of packing information densely in my emails (I’m especially looking for additional savings now because I AM pretty much desperate for a novel female connection that is more than the smallest of conversations…. ;-).   I do find that CL can waste away hours of otherwise unproductive time in an entertaining and erotic way.”

You don’t say.

“I’ve met women in the past in my daily activities, and only first used Craigslist in an attempt to meet someone after falling out of engagement in early 2002. I have found CL to be great for entertainment, and for kinky and casual sex encounters, but the actual back-and-forth has dwindled to near zero and I can’t remember the last time I actually got someone from CL into my house!  I think I got a guy to come upstairs a couple of months ago when I was dressed in drag and trolling for cock, but he did a u-turn at the top of the stairs when he saw that I was, in fact, more ‘freak’ than ‘fairy’.

“I’ve pretty much stopped putting up ads and I force myself out of the house to meet folks – this turn of events is probably a good thing for me.”

There was something to consider.

“Anyway, I’ll leave the conversation for a later time (if any communication occurs after you/we each get a taste (?) of one another in person ( I almost said ‘private’, but I realized that this could mean an entirely different ‘taste’).   Could also be a severely complex meal with the fatal ingredient that you allude to.”

What did I say?  A reference to his HIV positive status?

“So the written banter is already out of hand. I live near you.  Let’s get together soon and see of we want more of what we find? eh?  I’m mostly looking to get some naughty and maybe even decadent and lurid power play from a woman that I am physically attracted to sexually. I can be OK with fat, pretty much won’t give skinny a chance…”

Uh-oh – deal breaker?

“…and I tend to week knees and drooling when curvy midsections are sighted in a context that has me either crawling around in dark theatres for men to use or standing proud and directing the curvy one to ….. I hope you are neither skinny nor fat!

“If you’re really brave come over and see my girly side getting to know herself today or call me back and we can meet at Treat for a draft.  Tammi still wants to meet you ASAP – unless something changes from the trend towards wanting to become the first MegaPornStarPostOpTrannyCockWhore over 40 years old!

“I’m an especially messy little thing today… Filling or covering my mouth in order to cut into the mass verbal effluent would be something to think about, perhaps. Anyway, I tend to see it as a great opportunity to see what you are faced with.  So the ball just left the paragraph, went over the net, and landed in your court….

Bye for now.”

When we met, David was also trying to reboot his life.  The only way he saw to get himself off speed was to get out of San Francisco, the home of his connections and bad habits, dealers and user friends.  He spent many weekends gradually selling off his belongings at garage sales, and taking a few loads of stuff to his father’s house near Healdsburg, as he attempted to wrap his head around how to get himself together.  I was in a similar place of re-identifying who I was, and we found lots of common ground. I bought a TV and a bookshelf from him, overpaying for both in an effort to finance his recovery journey.  He wasn’t sure if he was going on an extended trip or moving away entirely – it was going to depend on how things went.  I suppose I was embracing a bit of ‘there but for the grace of god go I” in hanging out with David.  A giant of a man, he eats massive burritos and drinks a gallon of milk a day out of the jug.

And he cares for Barney, his elderly yellow lab, who quite literally keeps him alive.  The responsibility of keeping track of Barney, keeping him fed and walked, is often the most arduous set of tasks on his agenda in a day.  But he never fails Barney, and Barney never fails him.  When his car was towed away with Barney in it, he managed to negotiate the rigors of the system while speeding to get him back.   (Barney is so old and mellow that he slept through the whole thing in the back seat, unnoticed by the law along the way.)  David cared much less about the truck. 

A back injury just before his scheduled departure delayed him by a month, while he lay, displaced from his apartment, on his king sized mattress in the garage.  I visited him, bringing milk and Gatorade, and walking Barney for him.  The scene was reminiscent of… nothing I can name.

I wish I was physically attracted to David.  He’s a good looking man, who’s gone through some striking physical changes since I met him.  First gaunt and twitchy while loaded, he quit using and put on lots of weight.  Then after the heart surgery, he lost 30 pounds, then gained them back and then some.  Some say he looks a bit like Ted Danson, but I really don’t see it.  Now he wears a pot belly that is distinctly unappealing to me.  I may claim to be fearless, but his HIV positive status scares me, too.

But the scariest thing of all is that, were I to sleep with David, I would likely lose my friend.  I have no idea how to be a friend and a lover at the same time.  I’ve only had the chance to try a couple of times, and neither time has it worked.  I guess that would be something to strive for – a friend and lover both, but I don’t really even know what that would look like for me.  Lovers excite and entice; friends comfort and understand.  While sex can be comforting to me, a lover or partner has never also been one to really share all with.  I hope I learn.

David took an alluring photo of me lying in the grass above Baker Beach, which I use to respond to Craigslist connections.  It really pulls them in.  I look busty (I’m not especially), slim (I am) and ready to spread my long legs to the sunshine and whatever else available.  I thank him for this photo daily – it works well for me.

I think David will stay my friend, not my lover.  I hope he’s not pining for me – I don’t think he is.  A recent visit to his house in Reno found my name in magnets on his refrigerator, a mug with my name on it next to the kitchen sink and a series of phone calls from friends who all knew who I was and that I was visiting.  Despite my strong urge to be remembered, this makes me nervous.  I don’t want to be the object of his – or anyone else’s – unreturned love.  I’m not sure why that makes me uncomfortable, but it does.

David.  Crazy, over-the-top, been-there-done-that and more David.  Not my Mr. Right either.  Too bad, that.

What I learned from David:  Not every brilliant, scarred man is a potential lover, I’m perhaps not as fearless as I thought, and a friend is something to hold onto forever.