A few days ago I did something on my webcam that I never thought I'd do: I cried.

Last week was a doozy. For starters, there was Ex. After two months of mostly avoiding all but the most rudimentary contact with he-who-shall-continue-to-remain-nameless, last week I found myself in his presence for hours on end during technical rehearsals for the college's spring production of Shakespeare's The Tempest.

I knew this week was coming; in fact, I brought it on myself. Shortly after I left teaching - and was left by Ex - I asked that he allow me to stay on as sound and playbill designer for the show, partly because I wanted the money and partly because I simply couldn't bear to quit the college and my old life cold turkey. But I was prepared, especially after reading an e-mail he'd sent me a few days before.

Dear Steve,

I really want to respond to the questions of a few weeks ago [Note from Steve: I can't remember what exactly I asked or when, but I'm sure you can guess what about.] I honestly still don't know how to answer your questions. What I do know, at this very moment, is I don't want some angry email in response to this email. [I'm good at writing angry e-mails. What can I say?] Also, I feel like there are just certain things I cannot tell you because I don't want to lead you on.

All I feel that I can tell you at this moment is I'm always on the verge of tears. You may think, as others have to, that everything is just honky-dory [sic] for me - that I somehow made some quick recovery. Truth is I have not. I feel as though I did the right thing for both of us in the moment; I believe I still feel that way.

Therapy has been brutal and continues to be so, and it is painstakingly slow. I feel torn to shreds and God knows when I'm going to be put back together. I'm not Humpty-Dumpty thankfully [note the fairytale reference here - okay, the nursery rhyme reference], so I know I will come back together at some point.

I'm trying to do the best I can within the circumstances I've created for myself.

I hope this email makes sense to you.

Ex

His e-mail did make sense to me, especially the parts about feeling "torn to shreds" and, clunky syntax aside, "trying to do the best I can within the circumstances I've created for myself." (In my case, substitute "circumstances I've created" with "circumstances that were created for me.") I was genuinely glad to learn he was in therapy and relieved that he hadn't, in fact, made "a quick recovery." It's not that I suddenly thought we were heading towards a reconciliation. I was happy and relieved because, for the first time since December, I recognized him. I knew the man who had written this e-mail, sympathized with him, even. My tango-dancing, twentysomething-chasing, biceps-measuring gay-bot of an ex-partner was becoming a Real Boy again.

Or so I thought. Over the course of three rehearsals, my sympathies quickly faded, as did my patience. Among the indignities I suffered those nights were:

1. Learning that Ex had brought Sven to a rehearsal to serve as "Lift Consultant" on the show. This meant Sven had worked with my former students - the same students I'd shared with Ex, the students who knew more than they should about the breakup thanks to Ex's extensive Facebook posts. I felt humiliated enough knowing they'd seen Ex's "hot" new boyfriend on Facebook. Now I had the pleasure of knowing they met him in person as he consulted on their lifts. (Lest you think I was snooping, I discovered all this when our Stage Manager sent me a list of changes for the playbill - changes that included Sven's name and "Lift Consultant" credit. Granted, Ex was kind enough to take me aside and prepare me for what I was about to see, but... Oh wait, that's right. Ex said nothing.)
   
    
2. Learning that I no longer had auto insurance. I was setting up at the beginning of our second rehearsal on Easter Sunday when Ex informed me that our insurance policy was being dropped because his license had been suspended for an unpaid parking ticket. "Don't worry," he said. "I took care of my license and got new insurance. Mine was only one-seventy a month, so yours should be even cheaper." How long did I have until I needed to buy a new policy? "Tomorrow." How many insurance companies are open for new buyers on Easter Sunday? Turns out, none.
   
    
3. Being caught offguard by a Sven sighting. Our Stage Manager - who is also my friend, and who apologized for having to send me the playbill changes, as she knew too well how I'd react upon seeing Sven's name - our Stage Manager poked her head out of the lighting booth and asked if I'd seen her phone, which she'd misplaced. I scanned my sound table, saw a phone, and held it up to show her - "Is this it?" My fingers brushed against the keys, causing the screen to light up. And there was Sven, shirtless, his underwear-model-abs on full display. It was Ex's phone, and Sven is now his wallpaper in addition to being his lover. Ex has a habit of leaving his phone unattended and/or entrusting it to a student, along with his keys, to prevent it from getting lost. My first thought upon seeing the "Sven theme" he'd installed on his phone? This man's torso will be the death of me. My second and third thoughts? How many of my students have seen this? How many of them are counting this as karmic retribution against a bad grade they earned in one of my classes?
   
    
4. Watching Ex give the world's most convincing performance of "everything's hunky dory." In his e-mail Ex wrote that "others have to" think he's okay, as if the vision of a happy Ex were so deeply important to so many people that for him to appear otherwise would crush their tender sense of the cosmic order. Imagine Oprah Winfrey confessing to being a child molester, or Kylie Minogue committing hari kari onstage during a techno-infused encore of "The Loco-Motion." Too many lives would be destroyed, too many worldviews shattered. Oprah's disciples would doubt the very existence of God; gay men at dance clubs everywhere would dissolve into tears at the first chorus of "la la la" from "Can't Get You Out of My Head." As with Oprah and Kylie, so too with Ex. Such is the curse of celebrity.

To use a term from my new test-development career, I had "black-boxed" this piece of Ex's e-mail the first time I read it - meaning I'd simply read past it without thinking. During rehearsals, however, I realized that however much Ex might have been crying on the inside, he was determined to chirp out his "Loco-Motion" to its effervescent end. So effervescently did he chirp that it was hard to imagine him crying on the inside at all. He "hardy-harred" with his students; he swung gayly on one of the swings installed on stage for Aerial; he gabbed with the nicotine-addicted among the cast and pulled a drag from one of their cigarettes, then giddily fled his Assistant Director, also a student, who called after him in delighted shock, "I can't believe you smoked!!! How could you do that? Oh my God, [insert Ex's name heeeere]?!" A less honest man might have dimmed the wattage a bit. But Ex would suffer no dishonesty on my behalf. As he's proven time and again, he is nothing if not honest.

(It occurs to me that I forgot to insert a kvetch alert at the beginning of this post. I promise to put it in the title.)

By the end of the second rehearsal, I felt powerless to the point of tears, as though every muscle had grown four legs and been kicked like a dog. That night I received a message from my Robert-Blake-lookalike, Manhunt "dom." Was I ready to continue our lessons in person, to learn how to be a good boy? Maybe I was a cutter aching to break skin. Or maybe I was a dog seeking the protection of a much larger dog. I honestly don't know what I wanted or who I was just then. Either way, I answered: "Yes, sir, I'm ready."

I took precautions. I said I would give his address to a friend so that someone would know where I was (I was lying, but he didn't know that). I had my trusty hangnail clipper in my pocket in case I needed a weapon. I made eye contact with the security guard who buzzed me into his condominium complex and even considered preparing an SOS text - "I'm at [X] address and need you to contact the police NOW" - to be sent at the push of a button should circumstances demand it. (I'm still alive and writing, so obviously Dom's resemblance to Robert Blake stopped short at the murder charges.)

The evening began tantalizingly enough: Dom instructed me by phone to enter his condo, proceed to the third floor, strip, then wait for him, kneeling in the middle of his living room facing the television. I heard him coming up behind me, his shoes making whispery footprints in the zebra-print carpet. He pressed his palms against my skin, dragging his hands and fingers from my ribs up to my neck. He nudged my knees apart with his foot, cupping me in his hand and stroking me. Finally he came round in front of me, showing me his face. Still on my knees, he ordered me to hug him - tighter, tighter. Did I want to be his boy? Yes, sir. "Show me." I grasped my arms around his waste as tightly as I could. Robert Blake or no, I felt protected.

This feeling changed, however, once it became apparent that Dom could not stay hard. He ordered me to "suck it" and I sucked it. It softened in my mouth. He said, "good boy," which was my cue to stop sucking. Then he jerked it until it stiffened again, thrusting his tongue down my throat all the while. Then, back to "suck it." And I sucked it. And it softened in my mouth. And he said, "good boy," etc. At one point during the sucking he shoved it so far down my throat that I gagged. By now I was beginning to feel like the cutter.

Next he commanded that I "eat his ass" and "suck his balls." I have no problem doing either, but one thing I learned that night is I have an internal timer, an intuition for how long I can tolerate spending on these activities. The same goes for blowjobs. I can suck cock with the best of them, but only for five minutes at a time. I can eat ass, but my fear of bacteria means I prefer to restrict it to a sort of sexual punctuation - an ass-eating exclamation point here, a salad-tossing comma there - rather than making it the substance of the foreplay. But Dom liked his ass eaten and suffered no slackening of my tongue. As for his sucking his stubbly balls, he would not excuse me from that until "my whole face was covered with my saliva." I gagged a second time when he said that. I gagged a third when he ordered me to hock a loogie on his dick and lick it up. (Here I drew a line, peering up at him squeamishly and cautioning that I would probably puke. Mercifully, he ordered me to clean up my spit with a towel.)

Between the ass-eating, the ball-sucking, and the "red light, green light" fellatio that dragged on long enough to outlast the royal wedding, I was privately thanking God in whatever Hebrew I remembered when he finally jerked himself to completion on my stomach. I didn't need to come. I was so grateful for his orgasm that my own would have been redundant.

I hung around for another half-hour as Dom showed off his collection of vintage film noir posters. The walls were covered with them. He pointed at one and remarked in his flat, nasally voice, "that poster is worth 6,000 dollars." Then he pointed at another: "that one is worth 25 dollars, but I bought it because I enjoyed the movie. I only buy posters of movies I enjoy." He said this to imply that most collectors are concerned only with value and are idiots because of it. In fact, nearly everything he said sounded like an insult. "I'm an arrogant person," meaning the humble among us are idiots. "I don't read books," meaning those of us who do are plainly stupid.

When it was time for me to go, he offered me a soda. I politely declined; he said I could show myself out.

The next night after rehearsal, I drove from the college back to my cousin's apartment where I've been staying two or three days a week. (He lives fifteen minutes from work, where he is also a test developer, and charitably allows me to crash at his apartment to cut down my commute.) Rehearsal ended at midnight; my cousin was asleep by the time I got back, and all was quiet and dark. I inflated my air mattress, kicked off my shoes, and plopped down with my laptop, logging onto Manhunt and switching on my webcam.

My memories of rehearsal were weighing on me, and my ass was still soar from the spanking Dom had given it. I was sad and alone in a dark, empty room, but I wasn't aware of this, and I didn't start crying, until I clicked into Manhunt chat and glimpsed this posting from one of the men in the chat room: "Jersey City guy looking to fuck or cuddle." My heart sank. How long had this man been trolling these chat rooms? Did he draw a distinction between fucking and cuddling, the one so stark, so easily anonymous, and the other so tender and intimate? Or had they somehow become interchangeable, one just as meaningful or meaningless as the other? He must have been so jaded, so lonely...

That's when I realized: I am that man, or at least I'm in danger of becoming him. I scanned the sea of profile pictures of the other men in the room - one extreme close up after another of hard-ons and assholes. Once in awhile, a torso. Once in a very great while, a face. Here we were, a legion of men 90-something strong, showing off our genitals via computer on a Wednesday morning. Before that night, I'd told myself I was here to liberate my sexuality, to expunge my shame. I was the male Isadora White Wing in a gay retelling of Fear of Flying, wresting my authentic sexual self from the jaws of a homophobic culture, fucking my way to clarity as I'd once scornfully accused Ex of doing with Sven.

On the one hand, becoming sexually liberated is precisely what I've been doing, and if you back-read even as far as a month ago, I think you'll agree I've made progress. At the same time, what became clear to me that night is I'm lonely, as are most of the men on Manhunt and OkCupid and Grindr. You might be thinking, "duh!," but somehow I'd managed to "black-box" this truth until that night, and once I finally realized this, I started to cry.

I doubt anyone saw I was crying. At 1.3 megapixels, my camera is too fuzzy to show tears. I didn't sob or gasp, didn't bury my head in the pillow or wring my hands at the heavens. I simply stared into lens of the camera, my lone physical companion that Wednesday morning at 12:47 AM. I imagined Ex with Sven - out dancing, perhaps, or sharing a bed in what used to be Ex's and my apartment. I decided to feel sorry for myself and for random, chat-room pleas for fucking or cuddling, and the tears simply came.

I haven't sworn off Manhunt or my webcam, but I'm conscious now not to overuse them as buffers against loneliness. The same goes for face-to-face sexual encounters. Dom was a mistake for many reasons, most of all because when I went to him I was lonely, angry, and sad. I can't say I've sworn off being a slut, but the next time I share fluids with a stranger, it will be because I'm horny and happy, not horny and sad.

Meanwhile, nature has finally stabilized. It was 78 degrees today, 67 degrees yesterday, and the 18 cats that live in the alley below my kitchen window are spending the afternoons sunbathing in the neighbors' backyard. I'm gradually surfacing from my "meh" (there's nothing like a minor Tempest to get the blood flowing). And I have a new auto insurance policy. It's a hundred and twenty dollars a month - in New Jersey, that's practically free - and written in no man's name but mine.