for the past two months i have been seeing (and slowly falling for) a man who is fifteen years my senior and white.

for the past two months, i have been so self-conscious when it comes to talking about him and being affectionate with him in public. there was always this fear of what other people (even those closest to me) would think. from the outside looking in, it is so easy to think that one of us (or both of us) is fetishizing the other. It is so easy to assume that i, being the minority in the situation, have some sort of issue with black men and or my own self-image. i just didn’t want for people to think that he was some dirty old man and that i was subscribing to a certain mindset. it’s one thing to be in a homosexual relationship, but an interracial homosexual relationship? that was just too much for me to bring up in a conversation with my black (and in many ways homophobic as well as age sensitive) friends.

but fuck it. seeing him a few days ago and talking to him since, has made me realize i dont owe anybody a goddamn thing but i do owe myself happiness. and he makes me happy. not the fleeting surface kind, but the kind that sticks and nurses me to sleep at night while i lay in my empty bed. though he is not there, i am able to find comfort in the fact that someone thinks im as wonderful as i think they are. it feels good to feel safe. and not in a protective way, but a way which gives my the freedom to express my full range of emotions no matter how uncomfortable that may be. (sidenote: he even spoke to me about the whole interracial/age thing and was more understanding than i think i could have been had the tables been turned) it feels good to have the option to be sensitive and vulnerable and no other man that i have dated has given me that before.

i don’t wonder about him. i dont wonder how he feels about me or anything else because he tells me. he is direct and bold and it’s so fucking refreshing.

so fuck it. i feel how i feel, i am what i am and he is what he is. and if anyone (whether stranger of friend) has a problem with it, they can shut up and suck a dick. my apologies for being vulgar, but i have had to fight to long, and i have cried too long to deny myself everything i have ever needed and wanted simply because the wrapping might make people (including myself) uncomfortable.

its a new decade and the last ten years i have spent worrying about everybody else’s opinions has not served me. as long as he continues giving me what he has been giving and we progress, im staying.

i don’t give a damn and im finally going after what i want. and what i want is him.