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Jako
August 22, 1995
I started going dancing. For me, that was the high, dancing. Not taking drugs and dancing or getting stoned and dancing or drinking and dancing, just dancing. A friend of mine introduced me to a guy and he and I started dating and after a few weeks I was totally in love with him. Not because he was who I needed to be with, or because I was really attracted to him, but because I needed affection so badly and I wanted to be loved. Having this kind of cute and kind of intelligent guy dote on me and tell me I was beautiful and wonderful and write me love letters and poems was about all it took. I thought this is it. This is the man I'm going to marry and have children with. I had found that ideal true love that I always read and fantasized about. After being in love with him and dating him for about a month and a half, I think I felt like I was ready to give him my body as well as my mind, just another romantic notion. We planned it, I got on the pill for a month before we had sex, he used a condom, we were very careful but I was only thinking of pregnancy. I was never scared of STDs. As far as I knew, none of my friends had ever had one, they never talked to me about having an STD; even all these really sexually active friends I had. AIDS happened to older gay men. That's the perception that I got from high school. People at risk were people who shot up drugs, older gay men, and people I didn't know.
We had sex a few times and by that time I had finalized my plans to go
to Europe. I felt that although I had all this freedom away from my parents,
I was like a little socialite just flitting from one person to another.
I really wanted to get some time for introspection. Kelly the guy I was
going out with felt kind of scared about me going away for six months and
then coming back and supposedly still having a relationship after only
having gone out for two months. I think he might have also realized that
I wasn't going out with him for him, but what he could give me.
When he broke up with me I felt totally shattered. He didn't tell me why; he just stopped calling. After him I started dating my friends. I decided well, nobody I know has a monogamous relationship so I'm going to try it too. I was really naive. I just didn't know what was right for me. I would go out with one friend and make him my boyfriend and we just wouldn't get along or something and then I'd leave him.
In a span of four and a half months of my first sexual activity I had seven partners. For me, that was too much. While I was in Europe, I spent the last nine months of traveling celibate. I decided that I wasn't going to be with anyone anymore until it was the right person. By the end of that time, writing lots of poetry and spending all that time with myself, I got to a point where I was at more peace with myself than I'd ever been before. I had a perception of who I was in the world and what it meant to be part of our world. I thought well, I really like myself now. I can do a lot of things and I've got a lot of potential. Maybe now I'm ready to really love someone because I love myself. My body is healthy so I want to make sure that whoever I date doesn't have any diseases in case we decide to be sexually active.
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