This is something that one of the head facilitators said to me after I did my offence map. I guess I’ll try to explain an offence map first – so it’s basically looking at everything, your background, your state of mind, your emotional state, high risk situations – so it’s trying to strip everything back and look at “you” when you committed your offence. It’s also about trying to look at it from the victim’s perspective – I found it very powerful, it’s still playing on my mind now!
Obviously – so that’s the badly explained…. Anyway part of what it did was make me look at my own life and I think it was actually what’s given me a different perspective (beyond that whole being locked up and losing all of your freedoms and being strip searched). I fully know I’m not perfect – there is legitimately something broken in me – my emotions don’t work as they should – I have massive regulation issues – There was a fight my ex-husband and I had once – he called me emotionally retarded, I now think he’s right. I don’t know if that is the bit in me that’s broken. I honestly think it is – my emotions are fucked!
When I was in prison I first heard the song “scared to be lonely” and there was a large part of that resonated. Was I only having sex because I was lonely – so for a brief moment, I wouldn’t be lonely, I’d feel loved.
Is it just our bodies? Are we both losing our minds?
Is the only reason you're holding me tonight
'Cause we're scared to be lonely?
Do we need somebody just to feel like we're alright?
Is the only reason you're holding me tonight
'Cause we're scared to be lonely?
I know there’s a large difference between sex and being loved. Don’t get me wrong I love sex – I wouldn’t have had near as much sex as I have didn't. A comment from one of the guys in my DV Course when I said I had a lot of sex (in excess of 3000 people) – the remark was “I was thinking more around 150…” So yeah… I’ve had a stupid amount of sex – especially when you consider that I’ve had two very long term relationships where I was “mostly” monogamous.
One of my ‘housemates’ and I had a fight last week (oh anger regulation fail) and he mentioned the fact that I hadn’t had sex – I’ve been out of prison for nearly 2 months and you know what – I’ve had offers (duh!), I just don’t feel that burning need, that drive to have sex. I am going to guess that it’s happened because I think I need to fix myself first. That and to be honest my sex drive is non-existent at the moment because I’m so internalised and focused on the stuff that is going on in my head.
So much of this is also tied into my self-image and self-esteem. I’m getting older and I know I am… there’s a certain point as a gay man where you cross a “line” or I think you do where you are no longer as attractive. I’m ok with that – mind you I also did have the option of working out while I was in prison to help improve my body image and my health and weight. I pretty much chose not to take those. I am reasonably comfortable in my skin. I can handle being a vaguely out of shape nearly 50 year old. This puts me in the “daddy” category and let’s face it I am generally not attracted to twinks – I’m not attracted to young guys, if it was just for sex – yeah maybe… and you start getting into this whole bizarre world of sub-cultures… and I will be honest I don’t feel like I belong. I have spent most of my life feeling like I don’t belong- I have always struggled to feel like I am part of the gay community as I honestly didn’t feel like I belonged, I’ve had conversations with other people and they say the same thing. We’re a splintered and fractured community – the only time I felt I belonged was back in my clubbing days, even then you had a large part of the community that would “tsk tsk” over the fact that you were doing drugs.
I'll do slight segue – the only place I ever felt I belonged was in the Melbourne Techno scene. These people were awesome, next to none gave a shit that I was gay, they let me be me and I let them be them. It was most definitely some of the best times in my life. Some of those parties were totally fucking epic!!!
I’ve always looked at being gay is hard because if you want to plug into the gay community – it’s all about sex – you have to look a certain way (which I did for a number of years), you have to be promiscuous, you have to party hard (and obviously take copious amounts of drugs). Then the different sub-cultures have different rules or whatever… At the end of the day it’s all bullshit – it’s bullshit I bought into though. I was a party queen (and I looked damned good), I flirted with the leather community (flirting MAY not be quite the right word), I was part of the sex on premises crowd for a while (this was a body image issue).
For me being gay was about sex and it seemed to pretty much sex only. You don’t go to dance party to do a point of meth and expect to meet mr right – you’re doing it meet mr right now in the toilets… and then there’s chemsex – this is why I was in the party scene, the sex on premises scene, the let’s have sex with 3 people in a day scene… Drugs have been a massive part of my sex life.
And I think this where the sense of connectedness comes into things. If we look at my emotional issues and my emotional regulation issues – I think it was equating sex with “love” – I was taking attention as a positive. This person wants to be with me – it means that this person must love me… which of course you then have the emotional downer when you get rejected. There was really cute Irish guy I met at The Wickham (a gay club) when I was speeding off my tits – I had a date with him with him the week after where we played chess and got stoned. I freaked him out because I was apparently being too intense – I kept staring at him (he was really fucking cute and he had an accent!!!!!). Anyway he kicked me out and said we were pretty much done as he wasn’t after a relationship as he already had a boyfriend.
The funny thing too the number of guys I hooked up with that didn’t see me as relationship material… here I am basically looking for mister right and I will admit that the large number of guys I slept with at the end of the day I was looking for a boyfriend, significant other so on… It’s sort of really stupid to think that the sheer number of men that I slept with and I was looking for a boyfriend. I had one guy who I had sex with say “you’re a nice guy – I wouldn’t introduce you to my parents.” How you go from being a nice guy to not being introduced to the olds is beyond me. I got that a lot that though – a large part was my reputation, I had a reputation as a slut and an addict, apparently if you have an extensive sexual history people don’t want a bar of you. Don’t get me wrong – I was looking for a relationship, I hate being alone and this is one of the issues I have. I meet someone, fall in love with them and then all of a sudden – it’s all about them and I take a back seat, then I crack the shits and start “rebelling” – it’s when I start cheating or self-sabotaging. It’s completely unhealthy and completely stupid. I do dumb things… It’s almost like I can’t allow myself to be happy.
So going back to thinking about my feeling of connectedness – I don’t want to be alone… and then there really time I can’t stand being around people. Go figure! Maybe that is what’s broken. I don’t want to be alone, right now I do want to be alone….
Eh – I’m fucked up…. (and of course it gets worse!)
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