{"id":3472,"date":"2014-05-01T10:30:33","date_gmt":"2014-05-01T14:30:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.highstrungloner.com\/?p=3472"},"modified":"2016-07-10T13:14:19","modified_gmt":"2016-07-10T17:14:19","slug":"tantrum-no-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.highstrungloner.com\/?p=3472","title":{"rendered":"Tantrum No. 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

This actually happened before<\/em> the one I wrote about previously but whatever\u2026<\/p>\n

In March of 2010 Derek<\/strong> and I spent a weekend in Provincetown.<\/strong> I used to live there<\/strong> and he had never been there for more than a few hours,<\/strong> so I figured it would be fun.<\/strong> It was.<\/em> For a while.<\/p>\n

It was during\u00a0the \u201cshoulder season,\u201d<\/strong> so there was no event that weekend that I remember. We stayed from Friday until Sunday at The Chicago House.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Most of the weekend is\u00a0a blur<\/strong> because we drank. We drank a lot.<\/em><\/strong> We were\u00a0at the A-House<\/strong> on Friday night, I think, during Bingo<\/strong> at The Little Bar.<\/strong> We won<\/strong> a couple of cards and ended up drinking for free!<\/strong><\/p>\n

I believe we spent Saturday evening drinking at the A-House disco.<\/strong> It was pretty empty when we got there but it was relatively busy later in the night. We also went to The Vault.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Walking back<\/strong> to our guest house, I took out my iPhone<\/strong> to show Derek<\/strong> a scene from a porn film,<\/strong> just a\u00a0second,<\/strong> really, that I find funny.<\/strong> What a mistake.<\/strong><\/p>\n

A qualifier:<\/em><\/strong> In my experience, most<\/em> gay men<\/strong> have porn<\/strong> of some kind\u00a0or another on their smartphones.<\/strong> I used to have more,<\/strong> not a lot of movies but some photos.<\/strong> I'd been downloading dirty pictures from the internet for more than\u00a0a decade before I met Derek,<\/strong> so I had quite a collection<\/strong> by then. Derek<\/strong> had one of his \u201cepisodes\u201d<\/strong> when I showed one of the photos<\/strong> to a mutual friend in a bar one afternoon. He just could\u2019t believe I would do that<\/strong> in front of him (as everyone else in the group, partnered or not,<\/strong> was doing at that moment!). He found it insulting.<\/strong> This attitude<\/strong> was, I thought\u00a0at the time,<\/strong>\u00a0fallout from\u00a0being\u00a0married to a woman for ten years<\/strong> and\u00a0his\u00a0Mormon background.<\/strong>\u00a0He often said things like "Margie and I would never do that,<\/strong>" comparing our relationship<\/strong> with his former heterosexual one.<\/strong>\u00a0Me, I think gay<\/strong> and straight relationships<\/strong> are fundamentally different.<\/strong> He obviously didn\u2019t agree with me.<\/strong> I eventually deleted<\/strong>\u00a0most of the minuscule\u00a0amount<\/strong> of\u00a0porn<\/strong>\u00a0on my phone. I moved\u00a0what I\u2019d collected on my computer\u00a0to\u00a0an external drive,\u00a0<\/strong>and I didn't acquire any more while we were together.<\/strong>\u00a0Still, there were\u00a0many future arguments<\/strong> during which he insisted<\/strong><\/em> that I delete all of it, <\/strong>claiming I was obsessed with porn.<\/strong> He often checked<\/strong> to see if there was anything new<\/strong> on that drive. I am not<\/em> kidding.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Anyway, when I found\u00a0the\u00a0one second of footage<\/strong> on my phone, Derek<\/strong>\u00a0started screaming at me<\/strong> on the street beside\u00a0Town Hall. I was shocked.<\/strong> I know: stupid me!<\/strong> First of all, I couldn\u2019t figure out what on earth he was so angry<\/strong> about. Once I did, I told him that I refused to have this argument<\/strong>\u2014or any<\/strong><\/em> argument, really\u2014on the street<\/em><\/strong> in Provincetown.<\/strong> Neither would I have it back at the guest house<\/strong>. Once again, I found myself as half of \u201cthat couple,\u201d<\/strong> like\u00a0so\u00a0many\u00a0vacationers<\/strong> I saw while I lived in P-Town.<\/strong> (I lived above a lesbian karaoke bar,<\/strong> so this was almost a nightly occurrence<\/strong> during the season.) It was humiliating.<\/strong> Drunk as I was, I had\u00a0enough\u00a0of my wits to just\u00a0keep quiet.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Back in\u00a0our room Derek tried to continue arguing.<\/strong> I refused<\/strong> to raise my voice.<\/strong> He started packing his bags<\/strong> and said\u00a0he was going home.<\/strong>\u00a0There was a lot of clich\u00e9d door-slamming drama.<\/strong> I figured I could just take the bus<\/strong> home on Sunday and told him it might be best if he just left.<\/strong> I<\/em> certainly wasn\u2019t going anywhere.<\/strong> I can just imagine what it would be like trapped in a car with him driving drunk for eight hours. No thanks!<\/strong><\/p>\n

He eventually returned to the room, trying to apologize.<\/strong> I just wanted to sleep,<\/strong> still refusing to have an argument<\/strong> while I was drunk.<\/p>\n

We left as soon as we woke up in the morning. I was hoping to avoid the owner and the other guests,<\/strong> knowing that they must<\/em>\u00a0have heard<\/strong> some of the chaos.<\/strong> Of course,<\/em> they were all sitting\u00a0around the kitchen table.<\/strong> I quickly apologized<\/strong> and we got out of there.<\/strong>\u00a0I was mortified.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Most of the ride home was quiet.<\/strong> I\u2019m sure we talked it out<\/strong> eventually but I don\u2019t really remember<\/strong> how it happened.<\/p>\n

Sunday happened to be my friend Mike\u2019s birthday.<\/strong> Since he lives on The Cape,<\/strong> we were supposed to stop by<\/strong> and see him on the way home to Philly. The atmosphere<\/strong> between Derek and I that morning was so toxic,<\/strong> that I just couldn\u2019t<\/strong> put anyone in the position of having to deal with it. We didn\u2019t stop<\/strong> and, unfortunately, I didn\u2019t call.<\/strong> I still feel terrible<\/strong> about it and I am still apologizing.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Here is\u00a0the offending one second<\/em> of footage.<\/strong>\u00a0What I think is funny<\/strong> is the look<\/strong> on the man\u2019s face<\/strong> when the guy on the left ejaculates.<\/strong> Really.<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0One second<\/strong>\u00a0of footage caused all of this drama.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Heatstroke\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This actually happened before the one I wrote about previously but whatever\u2026 In March of 2010 Derek and I spent a weekend in Provincetown. I used to live there and he had never been there for more than a few hours, so I figured it would be fun. It was. For a while. It was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[17,291,24,288,48],"tags":[289,5,489,524],"class_list":["post-3472","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gay","category-highstrungloner","category-provincetown","category-relationship","category-travel","tag-abuse","tag-derek","tag-gay","tag-relationship"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2ccTA-U0","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.highstrungloner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3472","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.highstrungloner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.highstrungloner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.highstrungloner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.highstrungloner.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3472"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"http:\/\/www.highstrungloner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3472\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10529,"href":"http:\/\/www.highstrungloner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3472\/revisions\/10529"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.highstrungloner.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.highstrungloner.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.highstrungloner.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}