the boy, rook

Changes Part 2: Hello Colorado

So more big changes: my husband and I finally made the move from NYC to Colorado. We’ve been here about three weeks now … and we already love it.

We were in New York for about six years. New York is a great city; very diverse, very active, plenty to do … you never have to leave! There are a ton of people there; there’s something for everyone and everyone is there to find it. There are sex clubs and gay bars, kinksters and gay geeks and socially conscious hipsters. It’s a great place to live … for a while.

But we weren’t happy there, either. Yes, New York has an allure, it’s a sexy place full of great eye candy. But the thing about allure is that it wears off, and that applies to cities and people. But in most places when the allure wears off you’re often left with a comfortable peace and familiarity. In New York, though, when the allure wears off, that means it’s time to rush off and find something new and shiny all over again. Building and maintaining relationships was almost impossible for us. If you were more than a stone’s throw from your friends, you would never see them. My husband and I made a habit of living in interesting places – like Roosevelt Island or a quicky apartment on the upper east side. Our home was always open and we were always happy to trudge out to other boroughs to see our friends, but out of sight and out of mind in New York, and most of the time our friends forgot we were there.

Socially it was tough. We got burnt out on getting hurt by the people we’d know for years. We wanted real, lasting relationships with friends. We wanted to be where people could generally be assumed to be nice, and the assholes were the outliers who should be shunned, not normalized. The difference between life in NY and almost anywhere I traveled was amazing; even the Starbucks employees in Austin, Texas or Nashville or Denver were heads and tails nicer than in New York, so much so I wondered if I was being swindled. (Jaded much?)

But what of the kink community? Surely a place like NY is the place to go for kinksters. Possibly. There is the New York Bondage Club for gays.  But in actuality, NY is not the center of the kink community. Chicago, Seattle, Portland, San Fran  are all kinkier towns than NY. I never had a session with a New Yorker – all of mine were with people outside the city. New York is a also a highly sexualized and highly selfish city; it’s all about what you can do for me to get me off. Relationships are hard to form. Even our own friends – some of whom we had three, four, and five-ways with – were more about sexualized encounters than just hanging out and talking. You were either someone a person could see themselves having sex with, or you weren’t. In one case, a friend of ours says to my husband, completely out of the blue, “I don’t mean to be mean, but [Rook] isn’t really my type.” Roger that.

So you know what, NY got old. We got tired and worn down and were unhappy. And so far, no one misses us, and we don’t miss the town. In Colorado – in just three weeks – we’ve seen people be more friendly, I’ve had nice “hello” chats with kinksters, the community here seems open and friendly and I can actually see myself getting involved in it.

Not to mention the mountains! I can’t wait to go hiking, skiing, camping, backpacking … I might even go rock climbing again. All these things I love to do but were actually so hard to do back in NY. The weather is absolutely beautiful. We live right next to open fields where we can go playing with our dog. People are nicer. The prices are cheaper (our rent is half as much … for a bigger, roach-free place!).

But mainly, I’m happy. I have hope again to become the person, kinkster, husband, boy, and friend that I envision myself to be(come). We feel like we’re home for the first time in years. And we can’t wait for what Colorado has to offer.

Changes Part 1: Becoming a Fitter Boy

This year is a year of intense change for me, chapters closing, new ones starting, all in the pursuit of a life and lifestyle that I want. I believe in going for the things one wants, never just waiting for life to hand you good things; instead, I try to make the things I want in my life come to reality. So this year, a lot of new things are taking place. I got married. We moved from NYC to Denver. We have a plan.

But the one area where I have, time and again, fallen down on making the life I want is in the realm of my own physical fitness. For all of my life I’ve been a bigger, heavy person; and for all of my life I’ve hated myself for it. There’s a lot of deep issues there; but my weight has been a constant struggle and I decided that this would be the year I finally conquered it.

My weight has always gone hand in hand with my self confidence issues and shyness. I was teased for being fat as a kid, which drove me to use food as a comfort. Still to this day when I get stressed, worried, or just generally anxious (even if its good anxiety), I find myself wanting to eat as a way to expel the nervous energy. (Now I chew gum). But because I was shy and had no self confidence (or had it robbed of me), I did my best to stay in the shadows; that led to feeling bad I could only exist in the shadows and then reinforcing behaviors (or lack of behaviors) that kept me in the cycle.

I’ve always tried to lose weight and be “good,” but I’ve always failed. In high school I went the bulimia route … somewhat successfully, losing 30 pounds in about a month a half. It’s not a pleasant weight loss method. In college I tried on and off various regimens, but didn’t commit seriously to the effort until a few years ago. Then I tried, would do really well for six weeks, fall off the wagon and gain it all back. Six or eight months later I’d try again with a new regimen. But nothing stuck, not until this year.

Losing weight will be the greatest accomplishment of my life, if I can make it happen. I want it so badly, and this year it’s within reach. I’d be lying if I said it was only about my health. Yes, at my worst I was pretty heavy and could barely walk a mile without getting tired. But it’s also about my own vanity. My whole life I’ve been the ugly kid; the fat one, the one that no one would date, or even be friends with. I want to put all that behind me … if someone doesn’t want to be around me it should be because I’m an asshole not because of the way I look. I know its not necessarily that healthy to wrap so much of my self-worth into how I look, but that’s just the way it is for me.

I know I will never be an Adonis; I won’t be the sexy-god-man who’s leather harness perfectly outlines his giant pecs and six pack abs. I may not even be “thin,” but I don’t want to be “fat” any more either. I want to go to a bar and not feel like I’m repulsive, to feel like I could go to Sanctuary and be invited into a scene, and to feel like I’m capable of pushing myself physically in bondage scenes. I want to feel like I could be suspended, or ride in a sling, without worrying if it’ll rip out of the ceiling. I want to feel and look sexy … at least in an average way.

I don’t normally talk about this journey with anyone. I even had another anonymous blog just for my weight loss journey but I stopped focusing on it in order to focus on the actual journey. But I’m posting this here, now, because it’s a major aspect of what’s happening in my life. I’m doing this not just to get thinner, or healthier, but to make myself better. To improve myself. To become a better, fitter boy; to remove the obstacles that keep me shy and sedate and to build my self confidence so I can become a more active person in the community.

So far, it’s working. I haven’t stayed on the wagon every week this year; but so far this year I’ve lost 50 lbs. I have a ways to go, still, but I’ve come pretty far. Even in the last few weeks of busily bustling about the country and not eating well, I stayed right around the 50lb loss mark.

I’m healthier, I’m smaller, I’m more active. Whereas at my worst I couldn’t walk a mile, now a mile isn’t enough for me. I love working out. I love sweating, gasping for breath, feeling my heart pound out my ears, hurting afterward. I love this journey and I love what I’m becoming.