Dear C. - Jan, 19

I feel like you deserve an explanation to why I went away - I thought a lot about this initial sentence, because I don't want to say that I owe you one. You lost your right to be owed something by me a long time ago. This one is on you, and maybe I shouldn't tell you anything. But this is my letter, to get my closure, and to make me feel like a better person, so I can move on.

In a nutshell, you are boring, annoying and creepy. That alone would not be a reason for me to go, but your behaviour started to affect me, my relationship and my friends. Until we got to the point where I said "enough" and cut you from my life. I don't miss you and I genuinely think my life is better without you. And probably the only reasons we started a friendship is because I haven't seen your true colors then, and I did not have any other options.

You seemed like a nice guy, you are cute and interesting, but you don't seem to understand the concept of boundaries and respect. This game we play also has rules, even though it is not a conventional game. And one of them is that, being an outsider, your are not supposed to try to be an insider. Unless the conditions are perfect for that - trust me, been there, done that, took the pic and got the t-shirt. And even when I was the one kicking the insider out to get his place, it hurt me to do so. You seem to be ok with that. The way you acted around my man, especially when I was not around, was so extreme that even he had to tell you off. And he's probably the nicest person anyone will ever meet. He does not tell people off. He did with you, what does that tell you?

You disrespected him at work, acting so intimate around him to the point that some people started to think you were me. You put his career in danger. We will be eternally grateful to you for all the help to get the job, but not at any cost. You used the time that I was away to abuse your friendship and force something with him, while pretending you were my buddy when I was back. And even if you tell me now this never happened, the fact that I felt this way shows how bad was the way you behaved. I am not a jealous person, ask anyone. I do not mind if he fucks around, if people come to sleep with him in our bed, if he spends the day watching movies and cuddling. I was jealous of you. And not because I think you are better than me and would threaten me, but because I you crossed so many lines.

And then one day you came to our house and forced your way into a very drunk friend, who had a boyfriend at the time and was in a closed relationship. You took him home, pretending to be a nice person and to help someone, but you only thought about yourself and what you wanted, disregarding how many times he said no. You knew that, in that state, he would not resist you too much. Ok, we are all grown ups here, and being drunk is not an excuse for anything. But what you did not see was him crying in our couch for a couple of hours the next day, because he cheated on his boyfriend. He clearly did not want that, and if you have asked him while he was sober, he would have said no - like he said so many times early on the party. As the sober one, you should have known better and been the better person. You were not - big surprise.

From that point on, you were banned from my house and later from my life. I was sure that you were someone I did not want around, and I would try to be as far away from you as possible. You are toxic and selfish - that seems to be the common opinion of anyone that gets to know you, after you are in their life for a while. Others told me so.

So why am I here spending my lines and kilobytes writing you this letter? Because of J., who is my actual friend, whom I love and who is an incredible person. One of the things we talked about was that everybody deserves an explanation to why someone leaves them. J. says not everybody does, and I told him I would never do that to anyone. I was wrong, I did it to you and you deserved it. J. was right. But this bothers me.

I do not want to be that person, I want to be someone better. I am doing this for me. To have my heart in peace that I put this out there, that you have the chance to see it, maybe understand it, and who knows, learn something from it. It is not my problem if you will see this or not. I honestly do not care about you, or whether you will be a better person or not. This is for my peace of mind. I might have gone without an explanation, but there is one here for you to see.

I am being selfish, but you, of all people, will understand that.

Reclaiming my bottom

For me, one of the boringest things in the male gay world is people who say they're only this or only that. I get, preferences and stuff, but by being a gay man you usually have the chance both to fuck and to get fucked, so why not use the best of all worlds?

All that said, I am only a top, and I've been like that for a while now. I can write here justifying my preference and behaviour, but that doesn't make me less boring. In fact, I don't like to be a top only, but at the moment I don't have a choice. And I'm hoping to change that. I want to take back the control of my ass.

I started my sex life being exclusively bottom. Back then, I didn't accept myself as a gay man, and the excuse I used to trick my brain into thinking I was straight is that I would do with boys what I couldn't get from girls - I would have my ass fucked. I could never be active with another guy, because in my head that would make me gay. After all, I could put my cock inside a pussy, so I did not need to "use" boys.

In my early 20s, when I started to accept my sexuality and embrace it, I tried fucking someone and I liked it. I then became full time versatile. I would do basically anything - inside the normal spectrum, as I've always been a bit of a vanilla. Those were happy days.

Later in life I had a bad experience - I don't want to go into details to preserve those involved, but in a nutshell he was big and he was bad, and that changed me. Even physically, as I believe he literally torn me apart. Since then I lost the interest in being bottom, cause it was always associated with pain and discomfort.

Still, the bottom in me kept showing signs that he was alive and well. I kept having fantasies about being penetrated, and when I was with someone who I fancied, I always imagined how it would be to have them inside me. The one factor in common with all those boys is that they had either small or thin cocks.

Right, now I want to make a pause and talk about small and/or thin dicks. I've never been that much into penis size, even when I used to bottom before. Sounds very cliche, but for me it was always a matter of how it's used and what else comes attached to that cock. In fact, I came to notice throughout the years that people with small and/or thin cocks are, in general, better in bed. My theory is that they know they're not massive, so they make more effort to compensate what they feel is not enough. Same applies to guys who are not the main beauty standard. I came to notice that someone who's hot, have a big dick, etc, tend to rely too much on that and don't do much else. Again, this is generalisation and all rules have exceptions. Besides, I firmly believe that there are lots and lots more things to do than to put a penis inside an ass, and a good fuck can (and often does) happen without penetration.

All this and the discomfort in being a bottom affected me to such extent that I developed a fetish for people with small cocks. I search for those kind of videos to masturbate, and I get genuinely pleased when I meet one in real life. And I promise this is in no way pity.

Another thing that is part of my masturbation fantasies is to be a bottom. More and more I think about being passive, having someone fuck me, but it doesn't only stay in the introduction of the penis in my asshole. It goes further. It's about the feeling of someone pushing their body against mine. Forcing themselves - not in an unauthorized way - inside me. The knowledge that my butt is giving them intense pleasure - just as my mouth, hand and cock can do.

But when it comes to the real world, it is very disappointing. Even though I consider myself much more penis oriented than bum oriented, probably because of something realted to Freud's phallical phase, I can be very liberal with my hole. People are allowed to lick it, touch it and even lightly finger it. More than that and it becomes painful and uncomfortable. The main reason I don't bottom is because it hurts. But not in a "of course it hurts but I enjoy it " pain. It hurts for real, and it hurts real bad. To a point that there's no more pleasure.

I do believe that there is something physical, maybe some sort of hemorrhoid. But there's also a psychological factor involved, I am sure. And I'm willing to change them, both of them. I want to be a bottom again. I want to fulfill my fantasies and stop being a boring gay. I want to ask someone to give it to me good. I want my ass fucked.

I don't know how I will achieve that, but that's one of my goals from now on. And maybe, who know, in a couple of years I can be bottoming in a town near you. 

The edge of reason

Feels like I stumbled into the VIP room by mistake, and it's just a matter of time until someone show me the door.

It's not new, but still very actual and accurate.

I hope you're ok?

No, mate, I'm not ok.

I think about you every day. It's one of the first things that comes to my mind when I wake up, and it's one of the last things I think about before I go to sleep. I miss you a lot, more than I was even aware I would. I even deleted and blocked you from all types of social media, in the hopes that I would.hurt less if I didn't get to see you. It didn't work, cause you're inside my mind.

I'm also experiencing the return of a lot of my unresolved abandonment issues due to the fact that you left. I'm not saying this is your fault - if anything, it's my fault: my background, my experiences and insecurities. But you are certainly the trigger.

I'm afraid of talking to people, I'm afraid I'm always doing something wrong, but worst of all, I'm afraid of being myself with people around me. Even those who are close to me, like my best friends and my husband. I was myself in a very deep level with you and you left very fast and with a very thin explanation, and that just fuels the belief that it's my fault that you left. That you left because of me being me.

I also couldn't bid for Toronto flights in June, cause I'm very far from ready to be there and don't be with you. To be there and don't see you. To be close and at the same time so far away. All the antecipation about Toronto finally coming back to schedule became fear, discomfort and resentment.

But probably what hurts the most is that I don't want to be your friend anymore. Getting over our friendship has been hard, and I feel like I could never try anything else again with you, as I would be too afraid of losing you again and going through all this again. I'm not sure I could handle this for a second time. Besides, I feel like I did not deserve the way you left me. I get that you have a lot on your plate over there, but you said you'd be here forever and then something changed. And whatever it was, it was stronger than our friendship. And I keep wracking my brain, trying to think what could have been so strong to beat how strong our friendship was. And slowly it's sinking into me that it wasn't anything strong. I rolled my eyes at you and that was enough. So our friendship was not as strong as I believed it was. At least not for you. You dismissed me from your life very easily. I have some other theories as well to why you left, but that terrifies me even further. 

Right now I feel trapped in an unsolvable problem: you're the only thing that could make it better, but at the same time I don't want you to be the solution. So no, mate, I am not ok. I'm a wreck. But that won't make any difference to you. It's none of your business, as we're not friends anymore. So I'll go back to write about you and about what I'm going through in my blog, I'll go back to talking to my real friends about it, I'll go back to living my life and finding my peace, and then one day it will hopefully be alright again. 

I hope one day I'll be able to think about you and feel nothing. Until the day comes, where I don't think about you at all. Then I will be ok. Then, life will be good again.

The fat closet

A couple of days ago someone made a very rude comment about my belly on the tube, and it made me laugh. Not with joy, neither with shame. It was just amusement. I hasn't and wouldn't affect me negatively, and there's a reason for that. Some things can be changed, others will always remain the same. And that's not really bad.

I've always been overweight, as long as I can remember. As a child I felt self conscious about my thick thighs, and my mom, knowing that and wanting me to be healthier, told me that if I'd eat standing up all the food would go to my thighs. I won't judge my mother's parenting techniques, I just want to show that fat is nothing new in my life. And I've always lived in a world where fat is wrong.

Yes, full disclaimer, there are tons of studies linking obesity and sedentary lifestyle to health issues, so in that aspect fat is bad. But I want to focus here on the aesthetic and social aspect of being fat. Even using the word fat has a negative connotation to it.

I'm alright to say I'm fat. You might want to call it chubby, overweight, excess of deliciousness, thick, large... It's all synonyms, and I always believe that the word by itself is not offensive, but the intention behind is what makes it. But I'm also not here to discuss semantics.

It took me a while to be alright with being fat. My early to mid twenties was filled with crazy diets, slimming pills ordered over the internet or prescribed by dodgy doctors, immense time spent at gyms and the constant aspiration to have a palstic surgery. I was living in Brazil, it's very common there. As an idea of how bad it was, not only once but twice I fainted on top of a spinning bike at the gym, halfway through my 3rd spinning class while starving myself.

I did have a six pack at some point. It was not easy: I only ate lettuce, broccoli and chicken breast, I spent 4 hours a day at the gym, 7 days a week. I felt great, I felt beautiful, my life changed. But it was not natural. It was an artificial change. I couldn't work, have a social life, have a realtionship, eat something here and there. I had to live this abnormal life to have a "normal" body.

Obviously, judging by recent pictures of me, that did not last. I started living my normal life again and the fat came back to me.

Many times I asked myself why. Why was I born like that? Why couldn't I have been born thin? Why couldn't I have better metabolism? Why was I doomed to be fat forever and why was the cost of changing it so high? 

After a while I started to realise that the problem was not with me - or not with my body, to be precise. The problem was with the questions I was asking. The problem was with the perception the world has with being fat, and how that affects us every time, even when we cannot see it. I was not wrong to be who I was, to have the body I had, to live the life I lived. I just had to accept it, accept myself.

Accept may sound defeating, but it's not. Acceptance is a big win. I believe that in life everybody has their different and multiple closets that they need to come out of, and this was one of mine. This is who I am, this is my genetics, this is my body, and even if I lose everything I have - friends, family, job, money, love, dignity - my body will always be there with me until the day I die. So I have two choices here: I can hate it, try to change it and live unhapilly ever after, or I can learn to love and accept it.

Coming out of my fat closet was not easy, but it was achievable for me. And it was a great decision. Once I accepted that I would be forever fat and there's nothing to be done but live with it, the bad thoughts slowly gave space for the good ones. I started seeing that my body has good bits. My thighs, that once we're a source of embarrassment, are now something I'm proud of. My manboobs, who I always associated with femininity, give me great sexual pleasure. My belly is often something I can use to make jokes and get people laughing - usually with me, not at me.

I am proud of my body. I love it, and I care about it. It is my treasure. It is not perfect, but it is the only thing which is truly mine in this life. And this was not an easy journey, but being out of my fat closet made me a better person. Better than any diet, pills or surgery could ever had. Maybe those work for someone else, and if they're happy with them, that's what matters. But this is my story, my truth, my body. 

My amazing, beautiful and very loved fat body. 

Dear B. - Jan, 2019

You broke my heart. And you know what? It was not only once. I get that you have issues, and I understand how serious they are. But that does not make you the center of everything. Everybody has issues, in different degrees and levels. You are probably too busy with yourself to acknowledge what is going on with someone else. And that is a bit selfish, don't you think?

I tried my best to be there for you, to lift you up, to include you in my life. You never let me in for real. I get that it is not easy, but you let others in and that hurt. Because all I always wanted was to help you, and to make you see yourself with my eyes. You are way better than you think, in different aspects. I was trying to show you that. Yes, I know I am not easy to digest. I know I can come across too intense, to say the least, but I have good intentions. And I really liked you.

But then I started to see that, if it wasn't for me, we would not have any contact. I stopped writing you, and I take the blame on this one: I was testing you. I was testing if you would write me back, if you missed me in your life - I also have insecurities, big surprise. Your attitudes gave me the answer I was not hoping for, even though I was expecting it. Until the day I confronted you about it and you just left. Maybe confronting you was not my best move, but I stand by it. And the way you just left everything was a horrible realization that I did not mean a lot to you. 

Not a good feeling.

Now cut to tonight, when you liked one of my pictures. You couldn't even write me anything. And when, again, I confronted you, you said you did not mean it and things have been rough for you. For you. Once again, it is all about you. How you feel, what you do, how things affect you. I don't really make any difference in this equation. If I needed any more proof, you threw it in my face. Silly me for believing things could be different.

You are so into your head and your problems that you cannot see others anymore. I want to help you, but I also need help. We all do. And I feel you are not willing to give. Problem is, there is no relationship with only one way. Don't get me wrong, I would not do things expecting anything in return, it is not about that. It is about being there for each other, being friends, giving and receiving. I want to help, but I don't want to be a professional who is only doing their job. I want to be your friend, but I think you are not ready to be friends with me. Because I should also matter.

If you ever want to tell me your side of things and work on it, I am willing to try. But I will tell you beforehand that I will not jump into us until I am sure it will work. I do not want to get hurt, especially by someone I care about. You helped me learn that.

Perception and perspective

Perception

It's like in a movie, where the hero dates the wrong guy, who everybody hates. And everybody asks themselves why is the hero with that guy. And everybody hopes that they'll break up, leading the hero to finally find true love and happiness, while the wrong guy will be forever miserable. We've all seen that movie, we've all rooted for that outcome. Until you are the wrong guy.

Perspective

A statement like "the sky is blue" is absurd for those under a cloudy sky. They'll call you stupid. They'll make you doubt yourself. But no matter what they say, you know it's true. Even if everybody else cannot see it. Having 99% on one side doesn't make that side true. Actually, most of the times, majorities are wrong. Ironic, isn't it?