You're Not One of Those Emotionally Unavailable Fags...

...but you are beginning to worry that you might be dating one. Ever since you dropped the old "I'm falling in love with you" L-Bomb on Blonde Beard, something seemingly imperceptible, yet practically platectonic, has changed. For starters, your mood has turned to shit. And not just your run of the mill shit. We're talking diarrhea shit. And unfortunately for you, your Hobosexual Roommate has used up all the toilet paper. But, as usual, you're getting ahead of yourself.

You were feeling okay on Tuesday before your date with Blonde Beard, although your friends were taunting you over your use of the word "date." And to your dismay, they even started teasing you with the "BF" word to describe your budding relationship, which was absolutely ridiculous so you started to refer to Blonde Beard as your non-Boyfriend, because really, if this is one of those unrequited love things then you're not interested in getting anymore emotionally involved than you already are. Hell, over the past thirtysomething years, you've only told two other boys in the entire world that you loved them. Let's just say that when you use the L-Bomb, you mean it. But unlike the age old adage about the Chicken and the Egg, in your world the L-Bomb definitely comes first, with the "BF" term coming in second, albeit a near photo-finish. Meanwhile right now you're more like a gay Chicken Little who's still smack in the middle of the damn race, even though your sky has already begun falling (in love).

So you and Blonde Beard decide to go to his place (he still hasn't even been to your Home Sweet Hovel, which seems a bit weird, but whatever) and order some Burritoville Burritos (the cannibal in you chooses chicken) while watching something embarrassing on Pay-Per-View (Nancy Drew). The delicious burrito makes up for the lousy movie, but you're getting caught up in the unimportant (yet extremely embarrassing) details. During the movie you notice that you're not playing footsie as much as you did when you watched V for Vendetta last week. And after the movie, although you have (thank God) great sex, for some reason it seems a bit more rushed than before. And when you go to bed you feel like there's less cuddling than you've become accustomed to. And in the morning, Blonde Beard pushes the snooze button one less time before he hops out of bed. And on the M8 crosstown bus, he never once rubs his knee against yours. But the real kicker is that when you get off the bus at Sixth Avenue, you find yourself standing out in the rain with neither an umbrella (literally and symbolically) nor any sort of future plan to see each other again. And Blonde Beard always asks you about your schedule in order to make your next date.

Instead of working, you end up feeling sorry for yourself and moping around your apartment all morning. Everything annoys you, especially the dirty dishes that your Hobosexual Roommate left in the sink. Equally irritating is his week's worth of unopened mail that is overtaking the minuscule chopping block cart that doubles as your kitchen table. And when you hop in the shower you get really peeved that your recently purchased bar of soap has somehow disappeared into a shaving of nothingness even though you've been showering at either the gym or over at Blonde Beard's. In fact, you notice that the Hobosexual doesn't even own his own bar of soap! But the real kicker comes when you make your way over to the little teaspoon-sized basin that your landlord considers to be a sink, and you actually start to seethe from all the disgusting hair clippings that the Hobosexual has trimmed from his body and left blanketing everything. You are too old to be living like this. You need stability in your life. You need to live in an apartment where the hair clippings in the sink are yours. Or, at the very least, are Blonde.

Instead of writing you start flipping through Time Out New York to look for distractions. Only what distracts you is an advertisement for a new co-op in Jackson Heights where the studios start at $160k. For a second you worry that your Lasik might need a touch-up, but instead of dialing your eye surgeon, instead you find yourself dialing the Real Estate Agent about her obvious typo. The next thing you know you are headed out to the Gay Latino Barrio in Queens to look at real estate you can't afford even though it's Midwesternly cheap. Funnily enough, when you turn around from ringing the Real Estate Agents buzzer you are shocked to find your flight attendant friend, Jet Blew, who's standing behind you in the vestibule. You haven't seen him since the XXX-mas party last December when you hooked up with The Cellist; a period you now refer to as B.B.B. (Before Blonde Beard). Apparently Jet Blew is on a layover and saw the same ad you did. So you go upstairs and practically cry on his shoulder as you tell him all about your non-Boyfriend and your unrequited L-Bomb.

The Real Estate is a nice distraction, and actually could make a really nice Home Sweet Home if your Daddy Warbucks would help get you out of your Home Sweet Hovel by co-signing the mortgage. You're pretty sure that no bank in their right mind would ever approve a loan for starving writer who's living off his Blah-Blah-Blog Income. Which, thanks to an advertisement you're running on Facebook, is actually Outgo. Especially during a national mortgage crisis. But you're too busy dwelling on your whole Blonde Beard situation to be thinking about anything that might affect someone else. Especially anything national. But when the hairy man in question sends you a text message informing you that he's on his way home from work and absolutely starving because he didn't have time for lunch, you take the opportunity to ask if he'd like to meet for an early dinner, even though you have no appetite.

You end up meeting at a loud, crowded, cheap burger place in the West Village, cleverly named Westville. It's probably not the greatest choice for the heavy conversation that you want to have, but the prospect of being dumped in a nicer, quieter, more romantic restaurant sounds equally awful and expensive. Not to mention so fucking cliché that you'd rather be dumped in a burger joint, if for nothing more than the sympathy that it would demand during your rehashing of the event. So when Blonde Beard asks you if you're feeling better you decide to take the opportunity and jump right into the source of your recent mania. Suddenly you feel like Mr. Sheffield on The Nanny after he told Fran that he loved her and then decided to take it back. Instead of humiliating yourself and bringing up the whole embarrassing situation again, you just remind Blonde Beard of the other night when you said that thing that he didn't respond to. And when he instantly knows the thing you're referring to, even though you've just given the lamest most vague description possible of the event, you instantly realize that indeed, it was a very big thing, for both the Plaintiff as well as the Defendant.

You feel immediately desperate. It's a place that you're, unfortunately, familiar with, but, thanks to lots of very expensive therapy, you realize that this situation has just triggered all of your Abandonment Tissues. Typically you are extremely confident in most any social situation, probably too confident for your own good, but whatever, it's who you are. However, since you were adopted, this sense of confidence can be dismembered faster than Lorena Bobbit could sever a penis with a blunt carving knife. And, right now, your confidence is M.I.A. As in M.i.a. Farrow and all of her adopted children who probably wonder where they came from and why their birth mothers didn't want them either? Although you are now old enough to recognize this pattern that has repeated itself throughout your thirtysomething post-adoption years, it still takes you off guard in that same breathless way that a kick in the balls will. But here you are, once again, watching someone, whom you may or may not be in love with, (Oh please, who do you think you're kidding with the "may not" shit?) watching someone you love begin his incomprehensible retreat. Away from you. "Anxious" is what normal people might feel in this type of situation, yet you find yourself feeling desperate. As in a sort of "Mommy, please don't give your two day old baby up for adoption" desperate kind of way.

You preface this irrational fear with your adoption back-story, which may be too much information for someone who's about to dump you, but whatever, it's a long enough story to prolong the break-up for a few extra minutes. And then you explain to Blonde Beard that, after you dropped the L-Bomb, that his behavior seemed to change. That his previous level of extremely generous portions of affection seemed to have waned after you unleashed the explosive L-Bomb. And this change has made you very uneasy. You brace yourself as Blonde Beard thinks about your accusations and prepares himself to sign the relinquishment papers and sever all ties with you. But then something drastically unexpected happens; Blonde Beard apologizes. He tells you that his feelings for you have not changed. He tells you that he wants to continue seeing you. He tells you that if his affection for you seems to have waned, that it is completely unconscious on his part. But the most interesting part of his apology is that you believe him.

Suddenly you feel like a big fat idiot (your appetite has obviously returned), but luckily that's when the waiter brings the burgers, so you get to be a big Gay-Fat idiot with a Cheeseburger Deluxe to boot. Which, of course, will only make your boot even bigger than it already is. But Blonde Beard's apology seems sincere and you are struck by how quickly he changes the subject to something unimportant. You realize that he's hastily changing the subject, not because he feels uncomfortable for you, but most likely he's changing it because he feels uncomfortable. Just because he wasn't ready for the L-Bomb doesn't mean he'll never be ready. It just means that he wasn't ready yet. And he's uncomfortable talking about it now because he's still not ready. But not being ready doesn't mean he's abandoning you. Maybe it has less to do with the fact that Blonde Beard is emotionally unavailable, yet more to do with the fact that you are emotionally un-fucking-stable. Anyway...