Am I happy? I need a new gay contract.

“Are you Happy” I asked him. It was after we had sex and the high still lingered. He had been my fuck buddy for a couple of weeks. He didn’t know I had a boyfriend and didn’t live alone. I asked him did it matter. He asked if I liked what we did together. I liked the high, because he had the best drugs. He was convinced that he was such a great lover. I’d had better. He asked did I like that thing he did with his hand and spit. The truth, it made me nauseous. I told him the truth. He looked like a child that just been told Santa Claus was dead. I knew my relation and drug connection was over.

Athletes and sitcom stars do it all the time, renegotiate their contracts especially if a sports team or television show is doing really great. They usually want more money and power. The “Friends” on NBC got like a million dollars each per episode as oppose to the hundreds of thousands of dollars they were already making per episode. Is it greed or common sense? The big executives were going to profit no matter what.

“Are you happy” he was one of my closet gay friends. He was so young and innocent. He responded that he was in love. I asked him if would be happy if he knew that his boyfriend was cheating on him. He said he trusted his boyfriend, but I knew something he didn’t know yet I could never break his heart.

I was in renegotiation with my life and didn’t know it. When I was seventeen years old, at seven o’clock on a Saturday morning my sister woke me up from a gorgeous sleep screaming like the end of that Spike Lee movie “Wake up!” She said it was urgent. She grabbed me by my limp wrist and dragged me from the futon. She sat me down in front of the family television and pressed play on the VCR. It was gay porn. I choked on my bad morning breath. I looked at her confused. She pointed to the television and demanded if I was sure I wanted what the two well built men were doing to each other. I pondered the question because I didn’t know the plotline. The two men looked like they were sword fighting with their dicks. I guess it was my fault. The night before I made the mistake of telling her I might be homosexual. I was just reading the literature and only seventeen years. I considered it a phase like Mormonism or High School. My sister grabbed my crotch in which my now erect penis was poking out of my gym shorts. She told me I was defiantly gay. I had failed her heterosexuality test. I understood what my sister was trying to do. She wanted to make sure I knew what I was getting myself into. For her, it was just about sex. It was what I would do in the bedroom. I knew I was gay when I kissed Miguel. I was sixteen years old. Actually he kissed me. He told me that I shouldn’t be gay and then he kissed me. I had touched lips with a girl but it was just that, the touching of lips, cold as ice, more like a chore. When I kissed Miguel it felt as if my entire body was on fire. It wasn’t about sex just the opposite. It wasn’t about my dick, that curious flesh hanging between my legs and what I would spend a lift time doing with it. It wasn’t about my dick. It was about my heart. It was about my soul.

“Are you Happy”? We were getting high and looking for boys on the internet. He was what I called a freak, ho and a regular. I saw him at all the sex spots. He was in his late thirties, secure, only thought about the next conquest. He responded that he wasn’t happy, that he almost died the year before and no one came to visit him.

Of course, I didn’t have any idea what I was getting myself into. I was gay and had no instructions. I thought it would be so damn easy. I only knew of the gay people on television marching down the streets, the bumping music, the chiseled bodies, everybody laughing and hugging on each other. It looked like a fun party and I was sure I looked good in a Speedo. I was young, fun and full of cum, so I thought I had gay success written on my dick print.

Almost thirteen years later I woke up with a police officer pointed his flashlight in my eyes demanding, “Who did this to you? Did you get their names?” I tried to answer him but my mouth was full of blood. I spit out a tooth onto my pink polo shirt. I tried to remember what happened. I remember I arrived to the bar drunk and angry. I’d gotten into a fight with my boyfriend before I left the house. I remember being disgusted when I got to the bar. My life had become some cruel joke. I was tired of seeing the same people every week. I was tired of the same madness of internet sex, drugs and all the other addictions. I felt like my life, career, love was going nowhere. And I was getting older and suddenly the bartenders were treating me like I was trespassing. I remember that I got into an argument with some queen in the bathroom. We had once been friends but he no longer liked me because I wouldn’t sleep with one of his friends. I told him he wasn’t my pimp. I don’t remember what happened. I do remember picking the fight. I didn’t know there was more than one. I do remember getting hit when I opened the door to leave the bar. I do remember getting kicked to the ground. The rest I was too drunk and passed out. I just balled myself in the fetal position and covered my head as they kicked me like they were tenderizing meat. I thought gay people were supposed to be nice. I was so damn angry. The gay life I knew was over. I was no longer the invincible parti0boi. I was no longer in the spotlight. The gay life I knew started disrespecting me. It became violent and rude. It was the best thing that happened to me. I was bored and stuck. I needed that ass whooping. I answered the officer, “I did it to myself.” I stumbled home.


“Are you happy” I asked my best friend since college. He was on the phone with me as I waited in the emergency room and reading me bible quotes. His newest reincarnation was a re-born Christian. He told god was the only true happiness. I laughed. He used to say that ecstasy wasn’t the only true happiness.

My sister called me the next day. I told her the story, she laughed. I was sure she imagined a bunch of RuPauls and hairdressers scratching and hitting each other with flowers and pillows. I told it was more like a “Boyz in the Hood” beating. They were gangsta, straight up homothugs. I liked it rough, but not that damn rough. I was left with a concussion, scraped up face, two cracked ribs and a missing tooth with no dental insurance. I understood the lesson. My life had gotten completely out of control. It was as if I was banging my head up against the brick walk trying to get it to change or soften and finally my bruises were beginning to show. It wasn’t sexy. It wasn’t so gay.

What was my intention? When I decided that I was gay, my intention was that I didn’t want to live a lie of marrying some woman and feeling trapped and frustrating my entire life seeking my family’s approval. I wanted my soul to be free. I couldn’t understand what the hell happened to my plan in those thirteen years since I came out. I needed to renegotiate my gay contact because I was no longer happy. The fantasy was over.

“Are you happy” I asked my soon to be ex boyfriend of eight years. We were lying in bed together watching the night news. He ignored me. Before I got some sense knocked in my head, there was the fight with my boyfriend. “Why are you still here” he screamed at me. It wasn’t like I hadn’t heard it before. He was my live in boyfriend of eight years. Our relationship had gotten stale because we no longer got each other’s dick hard but still co-dependent. It was my birthday, my 30th birthday. He hadn’t spoken to me all that day. I guess he was trying to punish me. We had had a fight several days earlier about money. I got a new job that paid me well and I was working a lot of overtime hours. We were finally at a point that money wasn’t an issue. We got the new television. We were getting ourselves out of debt with so many overdue bills. I thought he’d be happy that I was finally contributing. It’s not so easy to erase the past. I’d had problems. We’d been together for almost eight years. I was just twenty-two years old when we got together, just a kid, I didn’t know what I wanted, my intention was safety. I chose him because he was safe. I’d come from a family of abuse, instability, abandonment, so when I went looking for love I naturally chose what was safe. It was nobody’s fault.

I came out of the closet because I didn’t want to be trapped in a loveless marriage. I became gay and still got trapped in a loveless marriage.

I knew it was our last argument on my 30th birthday. I was screaming at him that he acted like whatever I did wasn’t enough, that I was finally trying and he should be happy. Yes, I had been a liability, untrustworthy and I’d cheated. It was the growing pains, but we stayed together. And yes, he had been somewhat of an enabler, and he was passionless and he could be stubborn. But we stayed together. We were co-dependent that way.

He said, “Why now!” and it didn’t’ matter because he didn’t care anymore. It seemed so unfair, everything I had been fighting for, the struggle, and how hard I’d been trying even when I was lazy and seemed hopeless to be what I thought he wanted me to be. And I had thought I finally did it, that I could be that person, but he was yelling at me it was too late. It seemed so unfair. I realized I couldn’t win. I was making myself unhappy to make him happy because I had convinced myself he knew happiness. I thought he had the fucking secret.

I knew that was our last argument because I suddenly stopped seeking approval. I knew I was enough. I knew there was nothing wrong with me. I didn’t have to argue because I had nothing to prove. When I turned 30 years old it was like a part of my brain that had been dormant suddenly activated. I realize I was in re-negotiations for my life.

Happiness for me at twenty was not the same at thirty. I used to want the fairytale, the romance, the picture but now I just want the sanity. I wasn’t so impressed anymore. The gay life seemed like a lot of bullshit to me. I no longer cared about the pretty boys with big sticks, having pretty friends, dressing a certain way, or constantly stressing about the gym. I had bought into the illusion and like anorexic I couldn’t see I’d had been starving myself for thirteen years. I was empty. I needed a better life.

I’d had many gay friends along the way who had re-negotiated; who decided they no longer wanted to be gay because they felt gay life was just a “use and be used” soulless business. They decided they’d reformed and attempt straightness again because they figured gay men were nothing but sex and debauchery. It was the worse lie. They didn’t realize they were the contributors. They were full of bullshit. They were afraid to face their sexuality. I was going to have to look my dick in its eye and asked him what it really wanted because the fantasy was over. I was finally going to have to deal with my happiness because just being gay wasn’t enough.

“Are you happy” I was staring in the mirror. I knew that I wanted better friends. I wanted more money. I wanted my writing career to be further along. I wanted better sex that was reliable without the stress of a relationship. I knew I was a work in progress, but the key word was “work.” I’d made a lot of bad decisions. I was just going to try to do better now that I knew better.