There are times and then there is time.

Time flies.

There are times and then there is time. Profound? I think not, more an obvious observation of the movement of life and everything that surrounds us.

Nearly everything we do is governed by some sort of time frame, arriving and departing from work, appointments, music, films, books, food, waiting, sex, periods of gestation and ultimately our very own existence. Depending on how you depart this world and what you may or may not believe in, you more than likely will be remembered by dates arrived and departed, quantifying just how much time you actually spent here.

Time allows us to create things, to dream, to plan, schedule and search, but it is also what reminds us of our mortality and those dreams and plans that need to be achieved before there is no more sand passing from one end of the proverbial hour glass the other. We have enough time. I'm out of time. What time is it? Where did the time go? Statements and questions I would hear every day in my working life. Every little thing we do seems like a race against the clock, a chance to try and beat something that we can't see, feel or touch, yet our lives depend on it, literally.

Love and relationships require time, then again they can all to often consume time, time that will never be returned. These lost moments we so often refer to the "lessons of life." What rubbish. It's completely and utterly lost time that will never be recovered. Bitter? No, realistic. The only lesson that is truly learnt in these moments is to ensure that our clocks are set to "never again".

Death is the one frontier that no one has conquered or been able to quantify where time is concerned. Is there really an eternal after life? What would one do with all that time? One thing that I do know for sure is that the never ending search for whatever it may be you are searching for, will continue as long as that very curious luxury we know as time, prevails. As a matter of fact, I never really thought of it until today, but time truly is the most precious thing any of us have.

(Don't be) Out of time.

I Can't Imagine A Day...

I can't imagine a day, in fact everyday that I am alive, that I wouldn't love you, even if the time should come that you should stop loving me.

I accept the many changes that life and love have in place for me, but the gift of you has far exceeded sex, romance and all the other cliches, the gift of you is pure, honest and available, a rarity in this world.

An Angel not confined by the gates of heaven, whose boundaries are the universe and beyond, you picked me to cherish and love. Just me.

Thank you.

That four letter word...

If only it was as easy as hitting the "love" key.

Love. I often wonder what it is that has the majority of the human race on a never ending search for this four letter word that seems so elusive and for many, so unattainable. Well, elusive in the beginning, then after a few years of love, most seem to be running away from the very thing they had been chasing for so long. Strange, huh?

I have found myself yet again, at a crossroads as to what and how I feel about love. I mean I couldn't have asked for better role models than my Grandparents, married for some forty years, but then on the flip side, it went pear shaped with my own parents, whom I think lasted maybe five years all up. Got to give it a good Aussie go I say! Or not.

Sure, people break up all the time, that is the easy part I have come to realise, but actually getting someone to commit is the hard part. Who am I kidding, getting someone to do something other than fucking your brains out, or something that requires you to both leave the confines of your bedroom together, now that is the hard task these days. Boo, fucking hoo I hear you say about getting "some", well sometimes, just every now and again, it would be nice to have a conversation clothed and devoid of things like, "Deeper", "Harder" or "Slap it!". I digress.

So why then, am I confronted with a group of single (gay and straight), amazing friends that seem to be forever single or have trouble staying with someone longer than a hot new york minute? I will tell you why, fear. That's right, another dirty four lettered f word, F.E.A.R.

All I ever hear from people dating is what they want, someone real, someone who will make them laugh, a good lover, someone independent, someone financial, well hung, tight as a clam out of water, oh my god!! Shut the fuck up, please! What they REALLY need is someone to give them a god damn reality check. The minute you are "real" or "honest", many, if not most people run for the hills screaming. Seriously.

This love revelation has lead me to believe that a) there are not that many fish in the sea (cause if there were, I would be the stream and all those Salmon would be swimming against the tide to be in me - no pun intended) and b) learning to love yourself is the best revenge you can give yourself. That, and the fact that there is only so much "crazy" a relatively sane person should have to deal with in their life. Lord knows I have more than had my fair share of crazy and I am done with my community service for the mentally unstable boyfriend seeker(s) that seem to be so prevalent these days.

I found a quote that sums up exactly how I feel about love these days and what it should always mean, "Our first and last love is.... self love. Always." And I thought loving someone else was the easy part, how wrong I was...

The exception to whose rule?

I thought I had it all, I thought that I was the exception to the "rule". You know the rule, the one that forbids gay men from staying together for longer than a year and if you do, your relationship then needs to turn into an "open" one. Who made that rule, I am not entirely sure and I guess that I did break the rule in many ways, but maintaining it for eternity seemed a very real and likely possibility. That was until recently.

I grew up with very religious grandparents who had very strong ideas on what a relationship should entail. A man and a woman court (I LOVE that word, so ye olde), fall in love, get married, have children and stay together until the day they should both leave this world. A beautiful ideal and for their generation, a very real and attainable ideal. For my generation, my parents and everyone born after my generation, this kind of notion doesn't seem to exist too much anymore, or so I've heard.

Don't get me wrong, my Grandparents were quite liberal in all their religious views (Jewish and Catholic, Catholic dominated though) and my Oma even went so far as to speak of Gay marriage way back before it was fashionable to support it. However, when I came out to my family, the one thing they wanted for me the most was to have a long lasting relationship with ONE person. Easy peasy. Man, was I in for a shock when it came to relationships and what my expectations of a relationship were to be met with by those that were meant to mean the most to me, my partner(s).

I dated a slew of guys when I moved to Sydney that just wanted one thing, sex. I was the naive and innocent guy from the country town known as Adelaide, (over a million population mind you, one hell of a country town) the guy that evidently had no idea about the hustle and bustle of Sydney and all its harshness and reality on how life was to be lived. The guy as one person so kindly put it, had "outdated, archaic and ridiculous views on gay relationships". I was supposed to be grateful that someone just wanted to fuck me and that I shouldn't expect anything more. I tried it and sure, it was fun as sex usually is, but it wasn't what I wanted and more often than not, left me with a massive void. 

Finally, I met someone who, although I did not fall for instantly, showed me so much love and kindness that it blew my mind. Almost as if it jolted me back to earth and awakened something that I had been suppressing for years, my long lost values. He was so caring and obviously yearning for the same thing I was, love. It wasn't long before we shacked up together, got a cat and plainly put, "set up shop" as a duo. Years passed and so did the many highs and lows, the good times and not so good times and then the one thing that I never thought would happen, happened. Death.

I was young when he passed, 29 years old to be precise. I was discussing his death with a new friend the other day, not as morbid as you may think, more remembering the way people treated his illness. Being gay and ill meant that he had HIV according to all his friends, some of mine and the usual pitying passerby. Actually, he had Leukaemia, but no one cared about what he really had, it was just assumed that we must have had an open relationship being gay and someone "slipped up". Couldn't have been further from the truth, we were in many ways the exception to that rule.

I never thought that I would ever meet another person as kind and generous as him, but as fate would have it, I did. A mutual friend introduced me to this new found handsome intellect and from the moment I met him, I was smitten. I was nervous though, I never prided myself on being "brainy" and knowing he was, made me so anxious on how he would receive me when he realised I was a crazy, emotional loon that loved hard. All my ridiculous insecurities were to put to rest and some 9.5 years later, I look back on the longest relationship I have had and can honestly say that I have had the best time of my life. I have been loved and have loved with all my heart.

There were lows, boy were there lows, none lower than what was to erupt a few weeks ago, but the highs were the greatest of highs and are something that I feel very fortunate to have shared and experienced. Relationships are complex things and more often than not, things that people would rather quit than work on, no matter what form they come in, sexual, friends, marriage, family, they all require great amounts of listening, loving and learning. I guess when I look back and read what I have written, it just reinforces to me that I am the exception to the rule, my rule, whatever that may be. I will continue to write my rules, learn from others rules and adapt them where necessary.

The future is bright. Very bright.