Compasses

Recently I referred to my moral compass – knowing right from wrong. While that thought was still in my mind I ambled over to Flip and noted his similar yet different conflict (Another Conversation- before his clarification). It seems pretty simple – married guys, looking to stay that way, accepting the basic morality of keeping it zipped. But Flip and I appear to diverge with his question being: “can he keep it zipped?” and my question being “do I want to keep it zipped?” And in my case even if I “want” the question still comes back to whether I “can”.

My therapist and I have this little repartee: he says if I like pussy, I can’t be gay and I say if I like dick, I’m surely not straight. This led us to the conversation I wrote of last week. Nate in a room with two doors – a man behind one and a woman behind another: easy, first the man and then in best caveman tradition, on to the women. As with any answer that comes so easily, one should be wary. Surely I would start with the man: the thing is somehow I see myself finishing with the man also.

Which brings me to a question that has been danced around: Carrie accepts I am bi (maybe) but believes me to have a much stronger leaning to the gay side than I am willing to admit. I note this lack of support to Sis and she sympathizes. Yet I do not really question Carrie: why does she feel this way.

Carrie has spent a little time with me. Figure that out of the last 7,200 nights, I have shared a bed with her for more than 7,100 of them. Figure that maybe I have had sexual climaxes with her four or five thousand times. Twenty years is a long time. The point is that Carrie knows me: she knows me as well as anyone and in some ways better than I know myself.

So if I were to ask Carrie why she believes me to be gayer than my self perception, she would have an answer. She would acknowledge that I am not looking to leave and realizes my comfort with women as best friends. She would tell me that I notice women on the street because they are more noticeable: men just do not present the same way.

Then she would swoop in for the kill. The undeniable fact is that my sexual fantasies are all about men. Carrie knows not only of the preponderance of the homo-erotic fantasies; she knows of their power, their depth. Woody Allen may joke that he has never had an orgasm that wasn’t right on the money, but they are not all the same and Carrie knows not only what will excite me: she knows what will send me through the roof.

So I can discuss the fact that I emotionally connect to women – Carrie and Sis are two great examples. I can write how I walk down the city streets in the summer and notice all that nice cleavage – wonderful eye candy. But for twenty years Carrie has conducted this ongoing test measuring my excitement, how hard I get, what makes me cum, what keeps me going. She knows the answer, I know the answer, and by now even you know the answer.

So the moral compass may tell me not to cheat on my wife but it also tells me not continue to lie to her and to myself.