I attended a wedding celebration for some friends of a friend. The
couple was together for less than a year before they prepared to take marriage
vows.The celebration brought together the two men’s mix of friends from various
walks of life. The couple decided to exchange vows and have the ceremony at a
later date because both guys’ families were not able to attend the date they
wanted. After the two guys privately exchanged their vows they invited their
friends to celebrate in an informal sort of reception.
At the dinner I saw a mix of personalities from a variety of
personalities. I made small talk with the guy who sat beside me and discovered
he was in his mid-twenties and he was a virgin. While he acknowledged his
attraction to men he hadn’t acted on it in a sexual manner.
Fascinating.
I asked The Virgin about why he had refrained from having sex and
he told me that he knew how he wanted his first time to be and he was committed
to finding the guy that he would have that experience. Naturally, I asked him to
describe the experience he sought.
The Virgin went into a descriptive monologue about having sex with
a man he loved on some possibly exotic location on a mountain top or some such
description and as I listened to him speak I smiled. When he finished I thought
about the vision he gave and his continuous use of personal pronouns.
I asked him, “Is anybody else gonna be there besides you?”
He laughed and asked what I meant.
I told him how his entire fantasy only spoke about his own fantasy
but had he considered what the man joining him in this fantasy might want. He
looked at me quietly for a moment and I saw my question sink in. Before he
could respond I jumped in and explained that I thought what he had described
was both beautiful and attainable, but it didn’t leave much room for his
potential partner’s desires. After all it does take two to tango and more often
than not the guy he meets would have some ideas about the romance as well. I
told him to hold onto his fantasy but to leave room for the magic.
Romance happens in the small ordinary moments of life. It will be
the tiny details of the seemingly forgettable moments that will warm your heart
years later. Moments like the way he looks when he first uses the L word; the
way he touched your face that time he kissed you; the song that’s playing in
the background the first time you really make love.
Love doesn’t begin or end the way we think it does. Love is a cliff
that we stumble upon. We stand on the edge and love beckons us to jump.
Regardless of what we’ve been through, what we’ve hoped for, or what we feel we
deserve we will decide in that moment whether or not to make that leap into
love. It will sound crazy and preposterous for a number of reasons, but it will
be necessary. Those who’ve ever taken the leap can attest to the courage that
it takes to give one’s self over to the possibilities of love.
Love doesn’t happen on the realm of logic. It breaks all the rules,
challenges all the standards, and leaves us fundamentally changed. You might
ask why in the world would anyone do something illogical, especially with no
guarantees. The answer is simple. Love has no guarantees and it offers us none.
The only guarantee we’ll ever get will come from our trust in ourselves. The
trust that we can guarantee ourselves that, if we make the jump, we will either
grow wings and fly or we’ll be strong enough to survive the fall. Either way we
will have had an experience that will forever change us (hopefully for the
better). Our decision to take a chance will make all the difference. Even if
it’s not happily ever after we will be able to look back and never regret the
experience. Whether that change is good or bad, negative or positive (I detest
absolute terms) depends on our perception of the experience and how we use what
we learn from it. I believe that if we stay open to the possibilities, the
impossible can happen.
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