I slept twelve hours, 4 a.m. to 4 p.m., waking up groggy and lethargic.
Last night, I was introducing Friend #1 to the wonders of gay.com; he had finally decided to dip his toe into the turbulent water of online same-sex personals and chat. As I was leaving, around 1 a.m., he thanked me for my help and I said: "Don't thank me—you might land up cursing me for this someday".
Drove home, went back online, and landed up in an instant-messaging chat with Friend #2, who is under a great deal of personal stress from various sources simultaneously.
Each of us has our own ways of dealing with stress/pain (physical, mental, or emotional). They are our security blankets, our fuzzy bunnies: places, people, things, and activities we return to again and again to get some relief from the pressure, when everything just gets to be too much. Even if they aren't the best choices (and quite often, they are the worst), they are familiar, comforting, sedating.
I already know that when I find myself sitting on the sofa at 2:00 a.m., finishing off a pint of Haagen-Dazs that I just bought thirty minutes ago at the local 7-11, that it means that there is something that's too painful for me to think about or deal with.
Well, Friend #2's fuzzy bunny is to have as many one-night-stands (or one-hour-stands) as possible with men he meets on gay.com. He's well aware of what's he's doing and why he's doing it, and he doesn't care—this is how to chooses to deal with the overwhelming pressure in his life.
Hey, who am I to judge? I still sometimes find myself stuffing down my painful feelings with fatty food. At least he's burning calories instead of consuming them. I just told him to practise safer sex and warned him: "You can't fuck your pain away".
And then I drove down to the 7-11.
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