Loving Men (Artem Stories)

Over the course of my lifetime I’ve learned a thing or two about loving men.

If you’re a gay man or a woman that’s attracted to men you know precisely how intoxicating they (we) can be. But it wasn’t until the unfortunate end of my relationship did I fully comprehend to what an extensive degree I love loving men.

I love everything about men. Everything. Their kindness and their silliness, their arrogance and their humility, their tenderness and their rough-housing. I love their smiles, their laughter, their belly’s, their shoulders. I love their deep eyes and their crooked mischievous grins. I love their devote sexual, political, and religious views. I love their unwavering commitment to their husbands, their wives, their lovers, their boyfriends, their girlfriends, their children, and their pets. I love their softness. I like their hardness. I love everything about men including being a man. And I love everyone that loves loving men.

Loving men isn’t easy. Ask any gay man or woman. But loving men has rewards beyond the imagination. For me, this goes well beyond the sexuality and delves deep into the sensuality and intimacy. Of course sex with men is hot, but hot lasts only as long as someone is stoking the fire. What happens before the brush fire is struck by the tortuous lightening of longing? And what happens after? I think that sensuality precedes sexuality and intimacy outlasts it. I especially love loving men when their desire has cooled and what remains are the warm, calm embers of strong hands entwined around the others’s like a fleshy creeping ivy. The dampness of eyebrows which now produce the small dots of gooseflesh which erupt on the naked torsos which peek from beneath the coiled sheets. I love the whispers which quietly replace the gnawing and growling of congenital passion.

Last evening I watched the final scenes of “Brokeback Mountain” where Ennis (Heath Ledger) visits Jack’s (Jake Gyllenhaal) boyhood home. Ennis discovers a couple of shirts belonging to Jack tucked in a nook. Those shirts were the shirts that Jack wore when he was with Ennis on Brokeback Mountain. Ennis clutches that pair of shirts and inhales deeply Jack’s scent and you can just feel Ennis’s anguish.

That’s what it’s like loving men.