The Fat Crawler Experience
Journal (April 2006)
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My Journal for April 2006

April 3, 2006
 
Where can I even start?  There are so many things to tell, and something very big to clarify and explain.  So let me start with the clarification.  First of all, I am gay, not bisexual.  In the past few weeks, I have learned a lot about gay life and culture that I didn't know at all before.  Apparently nearly all gay men come out as bisexual when they first come out, so I am not all that rare.  And I need to explain something else that is related, and I don't know that I necessarily understand it all myself.  Natalie.  I was in love with Natalie.  I was very much in love with her.  I was desperately and sickly in love with her.  I am over her now.  I think a lot of that love fed into other things that I need to explain.  I have been asked so many times, "Well, didn't you always know that you were gay?"  Evidently, most gay men know pretty early on that they are.  I can say with absolute honesty and truth that I had never even considered the possibility until about a year ago.  I'm not saying that I didn't have some tendencies before that, but I had personally simply never considered it.  I think a lot of my Natalie obsession fed into that perfectly.  When I thought about her, the "perfect" woman of my dreams that I knew I could never realistically have, I didn't even think about other women.  This made it very easy for me to not even think about my sexuality beyond her.  I assumed that because I was so in love with her, it was natural that I would not be attracted to any other women.  But when I finally got over Natalie, pretty much lost contact with her and didn't think about her that much anymore, I started thinking about other people.  People from my past that had meant a lot to me.  People I wished I had known better.  People that I had had an attraction to that I hadn't realized before.  People that were men.  I had admired attractive men for a long time.  I wanted to be like them.  I wanted their lifestyles.  I wanted their popularity.  I wanted their abs and great physiques.  Now I have those things, and I still am attracted to them.  I started thinking about them sexually.  But there's more to it than a simple realization.  I can remember a time when I wrote in this journal about my confusion over other men.  I couldn't understand why they acted the way they did.  How they could think about sex so much and let it have such a grandiose effect on their lives.  I never had that... until about a year ago.  I think this is something so important that doesn't get discussed as much as other stuff that has to do with gastric bypass and weightloss.  I had no real libido before.  I had a sex drive, but it was extremely low.  I took care of business probably once a week, and that was enough.  Often that was more than enough.  Well, now that I work out five days a week, and lighter and stronger than I've ever been, and simply feel better, I think about sex.  I think about it a lot.  I hadn't known before that this would be a side effect of weightloss, at least not to this scale or degree.  Sex is a very important part of my life now.  I'm still a virgin, but I don't think that is going to last much longer.  I think several reasons for me still being one is A) I had such a low sex drive; B) I was very unattractive to people before, including myself; and C) I was gay and didn't know it.  These three things have been resolved, and it's only a matter of time at this point.  But that former lack of sex drive also made it very easy to not face my sexuality at all.  I never thought that by having gastric bypass I would end up a gay man.  I just hadn't considered it.  I'm not saying I regret it.  In fact, by this point, I actually enjoy it and my life has never been better.  Which is the next thing I need to get to.  Everyday when I wake up, I wake up happy.  For no reason at all, I am simply in a good mood and life is good and I really couldn't ask for anything more.  There are a couple reasons for this, but the first would be my coming out.  I no longer carry this stress on my life that I think has been laden there for so many years.  I wasn't dealing with it for whatever reasons, and it was wreaking havoc on my life.  Right up until the morning I went to my mother crying and told her the truth, the tension was unbearable.  Now that I'm out, my life is nearly perfect.  And it's all because of that stress relief.  I can act how I like and talk how I like and about whatever I want, and I don't have to worry about somebody finding out my secret, and I don't have to try and force myself to live a life that wasn't natural for me.  I don't have to try and date girls and sleep with girls that I really wasn't interested in, just because that's what other people thought I should do.  The other thing that has changed dramatically is my relationship with my parents.  Dad moved out, Mom is having issues with her boyfriend, and I am not taking a hand in the situation at all.  I listen calmly for a few minutes, give a suggestion here and there where I see appropriate, but for the most-part, I have no part.  And it has been the best thing I have ever not done.  By this time, I figure my parents are adults that can live their lives how they want without my input and opinions.  They don't need me to hold them up and fix things when they fall apart.  It's not like I could before anyway, but I would always try.  And that put so much stress on my life.  Now I don't have that and things are better than ever.  Now... clearly since I came out, things have been happening.  My life is changing at an amazingly rapid rate.  First of all, I went on my first gay date.  His name was Nathan, and I should have never agreed to meet him to begin with.  I only agreed because I had been rejected by another guy that I had been very interested in, and I didn't want to do that same thing to somebody else without first giving him a chance.  I talked to him on the phone before we met, and he seemed normal enough, so I said I would meet him.  We were to meet at Hannaford's grocery store.  He wanted to meet there because there was nowhere else to go in this tiny town he lived in.  So I drove the hour-long drive to get there and waited.  When he showed up twenty minutes late, I knew instantly what an awful mistake I had made.  I already knew that he had a ponytail that went down to his butt.  I figured it wouldn't be forever, so don't judge him on that.  Well, he showed up in a bright orange hat, sunglasses that he never takes off (even inside), a muscle shirt (though he has no muscles, but only hairy armpits that were hanging out of it), and hadn't shaved.  And I wouldn't judge a guy simply by his weight.  He wasn't even that overweight.  But you don't tuck in your muscle shirt over your belly that is hanging out over your too small pants... that you are proud you bought at the Family Dollar... that are too long for you and you have to roll the pant legs up on the bottom... revealing your shoes you are proud you bought at Ames... that went bankrupt over five years ago.  Now anyone who knows me, knows that I talk a lot.  I freely admit it.  But this guy talks so much that he literally smushes two or three sentence fragments into one jumbled phrase that makes absolutely no sense.  The entire time I was hanging out with him, I had to keep asking him over and over again what he said.  Oh, and his clothes were filthy (he said several times that this was the third time he had worn the entire outfit without washing it) and he made a point to mention that he hadn't showered in a couple days.  I was dressed very nicely and was just date-worthy.  I have no idea, even now, what the hell I was even doing there!  So we went into the store because he wanted to buy a pre-cooked chicken for dinner.  We were going to go back to his parents' house and hang out with his family because there was simply nothing else to do in this place.  Well, when we went to buy the chicken, he saw a friend who works there.  After he had smothered the guy with words, I swear to you he said, "Hey dude.  Do you have any free chickens?"  I was about ready to die.  His friend said that he didn't, but there were some that were one dollar less than the others because they had been sitting there for four and a half hours.  So that idiot actually took the one dollar cheaper chicken!  Then we went to rent a movie.  His mother and brother were in the video store coincidentally, so I met them.  They were both very nice, but Nathan talks so much all the time that they are silent constantly.  His whole family barely talks at all because he jabbers on so much.  Well, he only wanted to rent one movie because the first one was free, but you had to pay for the second one.  After that, I kid you not, he said, "I'm going to run over to McDonald's for a second.  I've got a connection on the inside that will hook me up with free sauce."  I was about ready to go home by this point, but the story line just gets so much better from here.  So I followed him back to his house.  He brought all of his stuff into the house while I sat at the table waiting.  It was a nice little house, kind of in the woods in the middle of nowhere, but nice just the same.  Well, his dad was standing at the stove cooking corned beef and cabbage when I first went in.  Probably the first thing I noticed was the huge glass display case on the wall that held the family collection of miniature Nascar cars.  Then I noticed the American flags... and the giant dead fish on the wall... and his brother's computer with soft core porn popping up every few seconds... and the house's decour that was a mixture of Christmas decorations and yard sale antiques.  Okay, Nathan is one of the biggest flamers I have ever met.  I don't necessarily have anything against them.  Lord knows I can be flambouyant at times, but this kid is out there.  But his family is completely conservative.  I couldn't figure it out at all.  And Nathan couldn't be in the closet if he wanted to, but he had done the whole bit years ago about coming out to everybody.  Well, his mom and brother came home.  Nathan told me to sit on the couch because we couldn't eat at the table.  There were too many magazines and other trinkets there, so I went to sit on the couch... and nearly broke my tailbone on the steel frame hide-a-bed that was inside of it.  As we started eating, his brother brought out a collection of guns and started cleaning them in front of us.  Apparently that's what he does to "wind down" at the end of the day.  Seriously, if Deliverance were made into a Broadway musical, it would be set in their living room.  Well, finally we started watching Rent, (which is the biggest piece of garbage I have seen in a while, by the way), and we were just sitting there.  At some point during the afternoon/night, I would just laugh randomly once every ten minutes or so.  How could I not?  This was insane!  Finally, his mother just gave me a look of What's wrong with you?, and I said to Nathan, "Your family must have had a heart attack when you came out!"  Well, his mother started to say something, but of course he jumped right in without letting her mutter a sound, starting explaining how his whole family expected it and blah blah blah blah... I felt so bad for his mother, especially, because you can just tell that she has given her entire life to her family, and they really don't appreciate her at all.  The entire time I was there, she was doing laundry, or cooking, or washing dishes, or something!  I offered to help a couple times just because I felt so bad, but of course she said no.  At one point she came and watched part of the movie with us while she folded Nathan's laundry, and she kept asking if every single person on the screen was gay.  I know she wants to relate to her son, and she tries really hard to, but she just doesn't know how, and he doesn't make it any easier for her.  So we were watching the movie, and everytime nobody was in the room, Nathan would ask me if I wanted to go watch a movie on the computer in his bedroom instead.  I clearly could read between the lines there, and said I didn't want to.  It was so obvious that he wanted to hook up!  And why not?  By this guy's look, I must have been the best date he's ever had!  And this was my first gay date!  I mean, I'm not a conceited person generally, but I was way out of this guy's league.  So after he said for the third time that we should go to his room and I said no, I started hinting that I was going to head home soon.  His family went to bed around eight o'clock (probably so we could be alone *sigh*), and he said, "You can spend the night here if you want."  Ha ha ha ha, that was so not going to happen!  I told him that I was tired, though, and I was going to head home because it was such a long drive.  He didn't say much, and we hadn't hit it off at all, so I couldn't really get why he was sulking so much.  So I asked him, "You aren't disappointed that I'm leaving early, are you?"  I mean, it was so obvious that "we" weren't going to happen.  So he replied, "Why?  Did you think I expected to get laid, or something?"  I was in shock, and told him that I hadn't even meant it that way, and I didn't think that... which was a lie, because it was so obvious that he did expect to get laid.  Ugh, he was so gross.  So anyway, he had to go move his mother's car so I could get out.  As I was getting in my car, he said, "So when can I see you again?"  Never!  But I said, "Well, the next time you're in Newport, give me a call."  He never comes to Newport and he doesn't have my phone number, so we should be good.  I drove home and swore to myself that I would always go with my gut from that day on.  No more pity dates.  No more scrubs.  No more compromising my standards only to be nice.  And no more scrubs, ha ha.  Okay, so from there life went on.  I put up a picture of myself from the shoulders up on Myspace.com of me wearing a cowboy hat, and the letters started pouring in.  Skeeze after skeeze started writing to me.  Loser after loser wanted to "hang out".  Day after day I got sick of hearing, "You are just so hot," and "Wow, you are so good looking I can't believe it!"  I'll admit that at first, it was all very flattering.  But after about twenty or thirty of these letters came in, I was getting sick of hearing the exact same thing from guy after guy.  I get it.  Apparently I'm more attractive than I had thought.  Don't you have anything better or more interesting to say?  I travel and speak languages and have a family and don't want to talk to losers like you.  Is this what it's like for women that get hit on by straight guys?  No wonder it's so hard for most guys to get some action.  So I wasn't about to start hooking up with random strangers.  Sure, I would flirt with the occasional cute guy in a far away land, but all the guys I met online were pretty much there for a reason.  They either wanted a quick hook-up with no strings, or they had some major flaw that made it nearly impossible for them to get a date.  Ironically enough, probably between sixty and eighty percent of guys who have written to me so far are completely in the closet.  So for all you straight people out there that think we homos are so rare... we're not.  Just a large population of us haven't come out of the closet.  I had never realized that little fact before.  So I started being more picky... much more selective in who I would write to or chat with.  I couldn't have talked with them all, anyway, honestly.  There were simply too many writing to me.  So I went to Montreal with Bethany.  She just finished her two and a half years with the Peace Corps in Paraguay.  And this is the same Bethany who studied abroad with me in Mexico.  Well, all of her friends had gotten new lives since college and didn't seem to have time for her, except me!  And she told me one day that she had never been to Canada, so I said we were going to Montreal... in three days.  So I drove down to Massachusetts to get her, and then we stayed at my house.  The next day we went to Montreal.  First we got lost a few times, but after a while, the streets fell into place.  We went to La Musee des Beaux Artes and saw great works from all over the world.  We ate in a quaint little restaurant on St. Catherine Street.  We sipped coffee at a little cafe.  We went to the gay village and danced the night away in a drag club.  It was awesome.  I had so much fun and have seriously been thinking about moving to Montreal now, just because I love it there so much.  The atmosphere is more relaxed, the people are nice, nothing is overly expensive, they have great shopping and universities, and they have a gay village!  Well, we drove back that night, and then I brought Bethany back to her parents who met us halfway so she could go home.  I put my new bumper sticker on my car: "Sorry girls, I'm gay."  Well, I thought it was funny...  It was so much fun, and I was so tired, but I can't wait to go back up again.  My friend, Tim, actually just invited me a few minutes ago to go with him, but my next topic is stopping me.  I'm having my boobs cut off in two days!  I'm so excited!  I'm not going to have the chest of an eighty-five year old woman anymore!  What more could I ask for?  I'm not looking forward to having drainage tubes again at all, but it's a small price to pay to not look like Grannie from the Beverly Hillbillies.  Besides, it'll give me more time to talk on the phone with Christian... my new boyfriend.  Okay, so I met a guy online.  Yes, I know.  It's creepy and he'll probably chop me up in my sleep.  But I don't think so.  He's so nice, and good looking, and smart, and he likes me for me.  He's seen all of my pictures from before I had surgery, and he knows about my wheelchair and my leg brace and my height, and he still likes me.  In fact I think he likes me a lot!  He lives in London with his parents, as he's about to start university in the fall.  So yeah, he's eighteen.  Now I know that's young, but that's okay!  I mean, I still get carded at Walmart because I don't look old enough to buy an R rated movie, and you only have to be seventeen for that!  And I practically act like a kid myself, anyway!  And is age really all that important?  I don't think so.  So anyway, he wants to come and visit me for a couple of weeks this summer, and I can't wait.  I really like him and I could see us having something, if we can work out this distance thing.  I've already talked to him on the phone this week for about twelve hours combined, and online probably another ten or so.  I know it's crazy, but we're having fun and a good time and like hanging out and laughing together, so what's so wrong with that?  Nothing.  So I'm not going to worry about it at all.  And he'd probably kill me if he saw that I wrote this, but he was an extra in the first Harry Potter movie.  He used to be an actor, though he quit to go to school for advertising, but you can actually see him in the movie.  And his father was in the '99 Winter Olympics on the United Kingdom team, though he begrudgingly only came in ninth.  I think it's kind of cool, but Christian used to feel a lot of pressure to be a great skiier when he was younger, just because his dad expected it.  Well, I really like him a lot, and we get along great, so I'm very excited to see where it all goes with us.  And on top of all that, I have my confirmation with the Church a week and a half after the surgery.  I think I've got enough on my plate by now, so life will continue to go on, I reckon... by cracky!  Ha ha ha, so things are great and I really couldn't ask for more.  What a wonderful world.
 
 
 
April 11, 2006
 
Well, I didn't get my surgery yet.  I went all the way down there, checked in, waited for about four hours, went into the prep room, got naked, sat on the gurny...  He was running very late, came in for about two seconds, said he wouldn't operate because of the formerly infected hematoma on my leg, and left me to get dressed and go home.  I wasn't so mad that he pushed me off for two weeks, or even that the real reason for it was that he didn't want to work late, but I was very unhappy that they had left me sitting there all day long when they could have just said to go home much, much earlier.  Even if it was from the hematoma, they could have glanced at my chart and told me not to come to begin with.  So that means I have to go back on the nineteenth and do it all over again.  Ugh, and I still have boobs for another week, but somehow life goes on.
 
 
 
April 14, 2006
 
Oh. My. God.  I went and weighed myself and for the first time in my adult life, I weigh under two hundred pounds.  I'm right on the edge between 198 and 199, but that is friggin' amazing.  I'm just stunned and in shock completely, and I feel so sexy today, ha ha ha.  Life is so great!  I just can't wait to see what the rest of the day/week is going to bring.  Yay!
 
 
 
April 20, 2006
 
Boobs got chopped off yesterday!  I'm sore today, but it only hurts enough to really say my nipples feel bruised.  I honestly expected it to be much worse than this.  I thought it would bad, agonizing pain, but nope!  I still don't even know what it looks like, as I'm covered in bandages until tomorrow night, but going up the stairs, it's weird to not jiggle and feel off-balance from all the upper-body movement.  I hadn't even really thought about that aspect of it.  Well, just thought I'd drop a line while in my drug-induced bliss.
 
 
 

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