I have male friends that I don't sleep with.

I've never had any trouble making female friends. Growing up in a house full of women, the dynamic of relationships with the opposite sex has never been as foreign to me as it has for some of my male classmates. I've never had a problem connecting with women, or making female friends. It's always been very natural and always felt safe.

As a kid growing up in junior primary school I remember being surrounded by women. My mother takes great delight in reminding me that at 7 years old I was dubbed the School Casanova by our local paper. All the girls wanted to marry me, and all I wanted to do was go shopping with them and borrow their shoes. I used to receive at least 5 marriage proposals a day from budding faghags who couldn't understand why I wouldn't kiss any of them while I was making eyes at the local rugby captain.

Friendships with men however... now there's a minefield I've been trying to cross for years. Having my first boyfriend at 15, I discovered a completely new facet to relationships. Add the sparkle of sexual energy and I felt right at home with men who felt a mutual attraction towards me. So much so in fact, that when I tried to start making male friends I found myself feeling completely inept. How could I possibly have a friendship with someone who didn't find me attractive?

As a young teenager I found myself engaging in sexual relationships with guys I never really fancied, but who I found impossible to communicate with in any other way. Flirting became my staple, and my fallback, and everything that fell either side of that setting felt uncomfortable and false; if you didn't fancy me, you obviously didn't want to be my friend.

So began the seemingly natural selection of my friendship process.

I would become 'friends' with somebody who was attracted to me, or someone I was attracted to, blur the boundaries of that relationship, and play that card until either I got bored or he gave up on me. It's hard to think back to a time when I had a male friend I did not have some sort of sexual chemistry with. It became a bit like a power struggle, and hugely reminiscent of most Pitbull songs actually. My whole take on relationships in any sense of the word had become sexualised. Outside of that narrow view point I was a fish out of water.

Going into rehab was a pivotal moment for me. I found myself in a situation where I could not engage in (or even have the suggestion of) a sexual relationship. I remember waking up one morning and having a red letter moment when I'd made my first male friend who I wasn't attracted to and thinking: now I'm ready to stop taking drugs.

It might seem strange that that is how my thinking progressed, but for me the inability to form strong and meaningful relationships with other men felt central to my problems with drugs and drink. I remember that morning so vividly, and the thoughts that crossed my mind. Thinking that now that I'd been able to make and maintain a friendship with another guy that everything would fall into place for me, such was my desperation for acceptance and validation in the male world.

Looking back on it now I can see that that was just the beginning of the process for me. It has literally taken me years to get to the point where I can honestly say: I have male friends that I don't sleep with. And for someone who's never had an issue like this, that may be really hard to understand. Just as for me it's hard to relate to someone who grew up having male friends. That just wasn't part of my experience.

One of my work colleagues left the company today. I've known him for over 4 years now; we trained together, learned together, became young men together. We've laughed, cried, argued, and at times probably (definitely) wanted to kill one another. So today hit me like a truck when an overwhelming sense of loss seemed to sneak up behind me and punch me in the back of the head. It suddenly dawned on me... he won't be my smoking partner on the log outside the parking lot. We won't be there to calm each other down when our clients wind us up. And most importantly for me, he won't be around anymore to continue to show me how a good friendship can be. I feel the loss like a gaping hole in the side of a demolished building; the tattered ruins of fabric flapping in the wind and my vulnerability exposed to the elements of the world.

And I'm suddenly struck by a thought that filters into my mind like a warm beam of sunlight; I've done it. After all these years of trying and searching for a meaningful friendship that would show me the progress I felt so keen to achieve... I have actually done it.

I have a male friend that I'm not sexually attracted to. I have a friend that I can rely on and who can rely on me. I have a friend that when I discovered was leaving, felt like he took a piece of me with him. And I feel so proud and so privileged to have been a part of something that may seem so trivial to someone else, but has been so life changing for me.

In the ever shifting journey that is my life, the ability to make and maintain friendships has always been a battleground of my own fears and perceptions and inadequacies. And I am now fully aware that life is never about destination, but about experience. As I step out of my old way of thinking into an intimidating world full of possibilities and fears, as a single gay man standing in my independence on my own two feet again, I am not alone.

I feel ready with my friends beside me.

Sinking

Back in the same boat again, or at least the same currents; this was not a floating feeling, but a sinking one.

You join me towards the back end of my tether.

The noise has died down, the circus has departed, the crowds have dispersed, the well wishers long since moved on... and here I sit. Alone. On my bed. Having just fled the arms of another man.

I'm not entirely sure what is happening to me. I've been single over a month now officially, and I feel like a ruined man. No matter how hard I try I cannot dilute this feeling with infatuation or male attention. Tonight is not the first time I've gotten up and walked out of someone's house because I just couldn't follow through with the high of distraction I felt that I needed.

He was beautiful. Truly. But he wasn't you. And every smile, every accidental touch, every moment that I spent in another mans presence cut me like a razor blade; sounded like a chainsaw in my ear.

Yet something stops me from being alone.

The silence. The quiet. The stillness. It's excruciating. The thoughts that run rampant through my mind grab me by the throat and pull me under, till no matter how much I struggle I'm enveloped in their fullness. I claw at my throat, I thrash and scream but no sound comes out. And the louder I shout, the harder it pulls at me and the deeper I fall into the dark, dense depth of my hurt until I'm suffocating under the weight of this intangible beast that seems to cackle and hiss as it pulls me to it's belly.

I am undone. And exhausted.

I have lost count of the uneven flecks of paint on my ceiling and walls. I can no longer sort my socks into colour coded lines; my cupboards sparkle with the frenzy of a man desperate to be distracted. Even in the presence of friends I feel like Pinocchio. Wooden; a boy who yearns for the reality of living yet is still pulled and strangled by the strings he spent years trying to cut.

Untethered, they try to wrap themselves around my neck set on choking the life out of me, in a desperate attempt at keeping me bound to my past.

At least my nose ain't growing. There's a kind of solace in the fact that I can say it and own it. The mess in my head and heart spills out onto the sidewalk for all to see. And I am done trying to clear it up.

There is something quite final about a man who realises he's drowning. And yet, amidst the waves there's a peace at knowing it's happening. At least a drowning man who knows he's drowning has the awareness to reach for the life boat.

So here I shall continue to sink, until I've offloaded the weight that pulls me down to the dark.

The silence. The quiet. The stillness.

It's excruciating. 

The picket fence.

In my quest for introspection and understanding I'm a week into my sexual sabbatical. The purpose of this quest? Well, I suppose in a way it's to broaden my understanding of the clients I'm currently counselling, but mostly it's to do with my past.

As an experienced, previous sex worker, and a drug using hedonist, my life has been incredibly sexually driven since I was about 14. It's hard to remember a time that sex didn't play out as my 'go to' buzz when I couldn't get my hands on the brown or crack. Usually it coincided with my crack use/coke use, but the two weren't mutually inclusive.

Having received affirmation for my sexual attractiveness for most of my adult life, stepping into a monogamous, sober committed relationship for the first time has proved near to impossible. At times.

He loves me, unconditionally. As much as I love him. That much is certain. But the surety I sense of him never having experienced my lifestyle or my darkness as I like to call it, becomes more obvious day by day. When one has never experienced hell, can one truly appreciate the freedom of this circumstance? Or understand the depths that this darkness had (has?) a grip on me? On us.

I've never been a fan of vanilla. 

Lets be clear here, vanilla is good. Vanilla can be great.

I just feel at a loss when it comes to moving away from the darkness that I find so exhilarating. The excitement, the buzz I felt from anonymous sex most of my adult life, the danger of not knowing, of not having tasted something... once the floodgates have been opened, how do you find the off switch that then moves you into Pleasantville monogamy?

At times I find the tenderness excruciating  As if I'm having my finger nails ripped off one by one. The intimacy of some moments can feel otherworldly and completely out of reach to me.

I want the picket fence, the 2 and a half kids and the golden retriever at the end of the drive. The smell of roast chicken grilling in the kitchen as I come in through the door after a hard days work. The security of knowing someone will always be there with me and for me. But how could someone be there with me when they don't understand the depth of my 'used to be'?

I can't switch it off. Take me or leave me; this is my battle. 

And as I move further and further into my committed relationships, I find the enormity of what lies ahead terrifying and untenable. It feels like something I was not destined for. 

Is my destiny already written, or do I hold the power to face the demons that pull at my weaknesses?

'So you're a whore?'

I could read her thoughts in those beady little eyes. The corners of her mouth twitching at the sight of my shame, eager to pounce on her prey like a matted-haired scavenger seeking out weakness on a savage safari plain.

Was that glee behind those horn-rimmed spectacles?

I had found myself in a counselling room before. I had laid my soul bare for a stranger in the hope that I would find some solace in my confession. In fact I'd been handing over £40 a week over the last 4 years for the pleasure. But this was a different beast altogether.

Where to even start with an explanation to this predicament?

If someone had told me 4 years ago that this is where I would've ended up... I would have bet big money against them being right. How did I possibly go from being a working boy on the street, with a drug habit and highly questionable taste in men who like to beat the bejesus out of me, to finding myself in a stable, mature relationship with a man who would do anything I asked of him?

Domestic goddess was not my main objective at this point in my life.

However, he seemed to stay.

A passing fancy who took me to dinner and then took me in his arms and held me there for 2 years.

The discomfort at having someone gentle and thoughtful in my life made my skin crawl. Give me bruises. Give me danger. Give me arrogance and narcissism. Give me lip. Give me something familiar to work with here. Gentleness, love, care... none of this felt like me. Or him. Or anything I knew.

I ran. Almost every day. I didn't think I could take the soothing love that was being offered by this creature who, no matter how much I wished it, would not beat me.

The running shrunk in distance, and shrunk in intensity. And he eased my hurts and fears. No matter how terrified I felt, even though the terror remained.

However, he seemed to stay.

And now we found ourselves in this brightly lit box, with the she devil from Essex sitting across from us, passing judgement from behind her horn-rimmed spectacles and her Maggie Thatcher do.

'So you're a whore?'

Is this what I had wanted all those years of searching? Moving from destructive relationship to destructive relationship, drowning myself in someone else only to end up years later sitting in front of this psychodynamist with nowhere to hide, in front of the man I loved.

He wanted to spend his life with me. I wanted to make it past January.

Too late, I felt her say. You're too late. You're here now.

You can't crawl back into your hole after being wide awake.

Wide awake I was.

First draft

August, 2009

Whispers of the night before assailed my thoughts as guilt descended upon me as a wretched vulture frantic to feed, tearing at my weak flesh and devouring me from the inside out.

The heaviness upon me crushed every hope every joy out of my soul. I was desperate to cry but the release would not come. I tried to think but had no thought in my head I could capture long enough to pin down into focus.

Had I done it again? Was it all a nightmare?

In the last few days everything had felt so surreal; a nightmare would have been a welcome distraction into my unending routine of self destruction and self pity.

The morning sun belied the darkness I was trying so desperately to exorcise from my body.

Focussing on the tangle of clothes hastily heaped on the floor next to my bed I was struck by the sudden notion that he was in my bed.

Suddenly awake as my heart leapt out of my chest into my throat I spun around in my bed haunted by the lingering image of a naked stranger in my house.

Calm. The bed lay unspoilt; heavy with its teasing emptiness.

Wrapping my arms around myself, I felt the clammy, dirt from the night before still plastered on my skin like a scarlet letter branded on the hide of an unclean animal.

Shaking. Overcome with guilt and emotion, and assailed by flickering taunts of glistening bodies writhing in the darkness, I clamped my eyes shut and tried to force the truth from my head with my hands.