Deja Woo

Suppose you could pick one of your relationships and do it all over again — all of it. Would you?

When I was 33 (or thereabouts) I met a man. We dated and fell in love. Eventually we moved in together. We lived, or tried to, the American dream: We pursued careers that both interested and supported us. We spent weekends enjoying brunches, shopping, theatre, concerts. We figured out, or tried to, what it took to build a home, share responsibilities, and plan for the future while enjoying the present.

But of course life is never that simple. Things didn’t work out, and after ten years of living together we split up.

Flash forward three years. I am seeing another man, age 33 (or thereabouts). In many ways he is at the same stage of life that I was then. He has been staying at my home and many ways fitting into the role filled by my former companion (but, fortunately, with better communication).

Last weekend we went clothes shopping. It was a pretty routine shopping trip, I suppose. But when we got home and unpacked the spoils of our consumerism, I had a moment of deja vu. Buck, my beau, had bought his first pair of black motorcycle boots. (Yeah, yeah — how very gay. So sue me.) They were exactly like the ones my ex-partner and I had picked out for him a decade ago. And chances are these new ones would occupy the same place in the same closet.

That's when it hit me: I was starting the same life all over again. A similar companion, in the same home, sharing the same feelings, and doing the same things. Hell, we had even bought the same items!

But the problem is this. Although my new lover is 33, I have continued to age (51 and counting). So much of his life is still in the formative stages: His career; his understanding of mortgages, investments, home ownership, long-term commitments; his ability to balance work and love and art and social activities — all these things are part of an exciting life journey that for him is still on its first leg. To me, they are old news as I struggle with my own issues of retirement planning and relating to the world as a late middle ager.

A lot has been written about May-December relationships. Many therapists and authors say that differently aged partners have as good a chance as any couple of succeeding in the relationship game.

But what if I don't want to relive my thirties and forties — not even vicariously? This is the part of May-December romances you seldom hear about. The older partner is forced by circumstances either to play the role of the mentor or at the very least spectator to a life he or she has already lived. It's a state of permanent deja vu.

Mentoring is all well and fine for some people, especially parents, teachers, uncles, and even (some) lovers. But I'm not looking for a pupil. I don't want to be Ben Kenobi to his Luke Skywalker. Instead I was hoping to find a companion of the heart and the road, someone who was on the same path as me that we could explore and discover together. I don't want to be scouting out new territory alone, all the while looking over my shoulder as my mate follows behind at a distance of many years.

I'm sure that embedded in this viewpoint is a great deal of oversimplification, presumption, and arrogance. How do I know that his life will look anything like mine? Or that he can't help me sort out my own life as we move forward together? Clearly I don't have all the answers.

But I still have my concerns.

Which you didn't ask for.

Anyway...

Whither Nakedness?

We are here to be men and to be naked and to DANCE!” exclaimed “Nexus,” host of last night's Romp Naked, introducing an overture of tribal drumming and initiating the rhythmic pulsings of 70 odd naked men ranging in ages from their twenties to fifties. This was probably my fifth visit to these semi-annual dances, held in the art studios of Jeff Hengst underneath the Eastlake stretch of Interstate 5 in Seattle.

At previous events, I careened flirtatiously through the naked bodies, schmoozing and carousing the night away. But this time was different. Last night I came to the dance with a date, what organizers would call a Romp Virgin. Like most adults, Buck was no stranger to naked fun, but a nudist dance, one prohibiting clothing as thoroughly as it prohibited sex, was new for him.

But men will be men. At one point during the dance I couldn't help admire a certain playfulness going on in one corner of the dance floor. Two dancers were getting a rise out of a third gentleman, and my own body began to respond in kind, my strategic dance movements encouraging the onset of tumescence.

“You shouldn't be getting hard here,” Buck chided me. “People already have a lot of body shame. How are they supposed to feel good about themselves when you make yourself so much bigger than they?”

It wasn't our first conversation on the subject. In the run-up to the dance we had discussed the propriety of taking ED drugs like Viagra, Levitra, or Cialis to help encourage any physical reactions at the dance in the hopes of looking a little more, well, manly.

It got me thinking. Was Buck right? Was I celebrating the body or only satisfying a visceral itch? The more I thought about it, the more questions I discovered:

• Faerie host Nexus had alluded to letting go of body shame in his opening speech. But does a setting where everyone is naked actually encourage body acceptance? Or does it do the opposite by creating a setting where everyone can compare the parts they’re most insecure about?

• Is nudism trying to teach us to be less concerned about our personal appearances by shedding the clothes in which we invest so much time, energy, and money? If so, are drugs like Viagra an inappropriate way to “dress up”? Where does this lesson stop? Should I stop shaving or combing my hair?

• Why do so many American nudist organizations want to strip nudity of any erotic overtones (so to speak)? Why is nudity okay and sex bad?

• Does ignoring the erotic aspects of the nude body encourage acceptance of a clothes-free lifestyle? Or does it just take naked people out of one closet (literally the clothes closet) and put them into another (a metaphorical sex closet)?

• Not all nakedness is erotic and not all eroticism is about nakedness. (Indeed it’s generally accepted that a little covering is far more titillating.) But where do you draw the line between nudism and eroticism? Can such a line be drawn?

• The law certainly makes distinctions between nude and lewd. But what about between erotic and lewd? Is the distinction the same as that between thought and action?

Romp Naked does not address these questions. If anything, it revels in ambiguity. As the Web site states, the event “is not a sex party and definitely a sexy party.”

And perhaps that’s the point. Just as Romp proclaims itself “an event that ebbs and flows,” maybe the swirling interactions among body acceptance, shedding clothes, erotic perceptions, and sexual expressions are a series of moving targets as complex and idiosyncratic as the individuals who experience them.

And what better metaphor for that interplay than a dance?

Stopping by Martin's on a Sunny Afternoon

It’s a beautiful sunny, if cold, day in Seattle. I was on the way to the bank but wanted to make reservations at a neighborhood restaurant for Valentine’s Day.

And so it was that I stopped by the sad little Martin’s Off Madison. Martin’s, for those not up on Capitol Hill’s ever-changing food and beverage industry, is the latest incarnation of a building that has housed a series of gay bars, changing ownership several times in the last decade. The newest approach is to convert the bulk of it into a modestly upscale restaurant whose muted decor is so cutting edge that it was out of date by the time the remodel was completed. Three-quarters of the area that once housed a fireplace and pool tables is now a dining room whose centerpiece is a gas-jet flame rising up in a glass tube resembling a warp core reactor from a low-budget Federation starship. Midway up along the large east wall is a small moat hidden by plants but whose submerged spotlights cast a watery effect on the wall above. These touches of extravagance are rescued from excess by the open, airy size of the room and the simplicity of the remaining furnishings. All the elements are there: air, fire, water, and on a good day, the earthy clientele.

The remaining portion of the original bar is a bar still, small and separated from the dining room by a windowed wall, its exposed ceiling fixtures and dim lighting telling a story of renovation interruptus.

Which brings me to sad part.

Sad because when I dropped by, the entire restaurant was entirely empty except for the tiny bar, inexplicably chock full of men. Of course, it was 2:30 in the afternoon and you wouldn’t expect anyone to be in a restaurant at that time of day. (Personally, I think the owners might be able to extend those afternoon hours if they made it more of a coffee house atmosphere, offering pastries and free wi-fi between the normal meal times.) Was the dining room closed? Maybe. After all, some restaurants close the dining room between meals. But there were no signs to that effect and you have to pass through the dining room to get to the bar, so I doubt it.

I had to enter the bar area to speak to the bartender (the only help visible). I didn’t really look at the customers — hell the place is so small that even a glance could be misconstrued as cruising — but my peripheral vision detected manly men with facial hair. Maybe construction work is going on in the neighborhood? If so, isn’t it a little early to knock off? Or maybe it was a hardcore alky bunch like you’d expect to see in a bar at that time of day.

I dunno. I don’t want to judge. It was just the juxtaposition that was so strange: A big, welcoming room with tables, chairs, and a fire and lots of windows letting in February sunlight that is so rare in Seattle. But where were the customers? Huddled in the dark corner, walled off with a glass partition as if they weren’t good enough for the main dining room. Are bar stools really that comfortable? It was the exact opposite of behavior you see on a bus or in a movie theatre, in which people spread out, find their own unoccupied place to squat until space limitations force them to huddle closer together in the less desirable sections.

I can’t help seeing the whole thing as a metaphor. For so many things, really: The way the gay community has historically holed up in the darkest, cheapest part of a town instead of spreading out into the larger community, taking advantage of all the neighborhoods. Or the way many of us — for example unemployed people like me — stick to our own limited professions because they are familiar rather than risking moving out into the big empty world we’re not used to. Or the way cockroaches ... — just kidding. Not gonna go there.

Just my impressions.

Which you didn’t ask for.

Anyway...