30 years ago, I was in a fraternity at the University of Michigan. For two of the three years I was part of that house (TKE), I was the only black guy and I can honestly say that I was never once alienated, left out, discriminated against, or in any way socially maligned. On my junior year of college, I realized I had to finally come to grips with the nagging stirrings of sexuality that were not in line with the culture that I worried that I was posing in, so I dropped out of the fraternity and later that year, out of school for a brief spell, to confront and contend with what I had suspected was different about me all along. For the vast majority of my frat brothers and lingering friendships from high school with all straight friends, I was supported and encouraged and in every possible way helped along in my new and unfamiliar social habitat, which back then revolved around the Necterine Ballroom, Backstreet and Menjos gay bars. I was the wallflower who stood in a corner, not sure how to strike up conversations that didn't involve books or sports or alternative music or mutual friends. I had no idea what I was getting into, but I had my straight friends when I left that bar and even a couple of straight friends who went with me when I was tired of going alone. I didn't have any problems getting laid, thank goodness. In fact, I didn't even know if I was good looking or not before I came out because it wasn't something I spent a lot of time thinking about. (I honestly still can't tell if I'm good looking or not LOL.) I knew I was smart and artistic and a little goofy and nerdy, but I quickly realized that, in this milieu, none of that really seemed to matter. Because I had an athletic body and I was considered "masculine" and that was what people wanted to go home with. The first guy I ever slept with was a guy whose beauty I admired at the Central Campus Recreation Center (the gym) for years before I had any idea he was gay. He was the most beautiful man I had ever seen and I went home with him on my second night going to the Necterine Ballroom in Ann Arbor. I'm not so sure it got much better than that guy, at least not until I moved to NYC, even if he wasn't ready to settle down and I would later realize I was just one of his lucky guys. After sex with subsequent hookups and suitors became de rigueur and expected and even banal, I was in a relationship with one particular guy who pretty much lived up to every single stereotype of gay manhood that I had ever encountered. Unknowingly racist, deceptive, over-the-top, possessive, and fetishizing, I dated a guy for two years who really believed he loved me but I'm not sure that he ever regarded me as a real person. He was in awe of me in a way, and perhaps I was flattered by it. We had a violent, tumultuous three year relationship and I have always been weary of anything that gave off the same scent that he did: forward, possessive, predatory, jealous, envious, profoundly materialistic, devious, deceptive, catty, arrogant, obsessed with his own and others' appearances, and generally unstable as hell. Meanwhile, he was also considered one of the most desirable men in town and I was supposed to feel lucky to have him. I was actually lucky to leave him. But yet...I continued to meet men like that. After 27 years, I am tired. If that's the best there is to offer, or the best the I can do, I have resigned that the safest thing for me is to be alone. I have fallen in love with users, abusers, addicts, rich men, poor men, black, white, artists, professionals, and everything in between. And every single one of them is in some way a reshuffled version of that first lover. Well, I'm over it now. I will not accept this way of life as the only way to live. Thank you for enduring what amounts to reading my journal. It is helpful to me to broadcast these feelings so if that annoys you...well, there is a button for that. At the very least, I'm glad I never abandoned my old world completely. I still have my "brothers" and my high school friends and I still listen to the Smiths and the Cure and the Pysch Furs. I'm still Brandon. Thank God.