The Gay Outdoors

Taylor Swift (Labyrinth, Midnights, 2022) I'm actually falling for someone here and now, someone who laughed at a post I made on social media and had the balls to message me telling me how funny he found it. Someone who I thought was so goddamn cute in so many ways that I had to tell him that after that message. Someone who went through hell for fifteen years with the wrong person, recently became single, and suddenly lands in my DMs. Someone who I think is trying to fall in love but still needs to heal from the hell he endured with his very recent past. Someone who I want to pursue but absolutely respect his boundaries first. Someone who I can't tell for the life of me as to whether or not he's going to be there in three months, six months, or one year. That last sentence for me personally is crucially vital, because when I can't determine any sort of longevity with someone, usually determined by how well I "read" them, it usually means they're there to stay. But anything can still happen. In my life though, it's usually a long-term thing. And I definitely feel that he will be a milestone moment of my life, even if it's just as a friend, for the conversations, and the cute meet-ups that he always initiates on a whim when I usually plan ahead. The way he throws playful teasing one-liners at me and I immediately return it right back. IDK what this is going to be, but it certainly carries some momentum with it. Is this what it means to fall in love? Even if the relationship potential is a long, long way off? I've always been told for the last fifteen years that the best, strongest relationships one can have - in the most intimate loving consensual sense - often start off with a strong foundational friendship, especially if the attraction is there. I wonder if that's what is happening here. I've not been in many relationships, and the ones I've been in ended in some dramatic fashion, either by being cheated on, or ghosting, or being ghosted on. But fuck, you know, for once, without Grindr, Tinder, or any other staple of gay social go-tos, I'd like to meet someone that hasn't seen my bare ass at random or quirky bios that nobody reads anyway. And so far, this guy, this handsome mfr, lands in my DMs over a joke about me loading Grindr on my phone two weeks ahead of Pride Month. Yes, it's only been two weeks. Yes, it can reach two months. And yes, it certainly can reach two years. One never knows, do they? I am a very patient man. God willing, let this be the man I've been waiting for.

I loathe falling in love. And the day that the biggest part of my heart’s deepest desires are realized, that’s the day I realize it was worth the wait.