The finale of my dating life

From the point I realized what was going on and thinking that I had just witnessed D dying there were others around me but I was on my knees sitting beside the car holding D’s hand. The next thing I knew the ambulance and police had arrived and cleared the area. The police were asking me questions and all I could do was stare through their eyes and see emptiness.

The little town we lived in is such that everyone knew each other and someone had called D’s mother and she arrived at the accident. This part of the whole ordeal was a complete hell to have to suffer through. D had crossed the yellow line and basically hit head-on by the dump truck. The truck had hit his brakes but there wasn’t enough time and it was as if D had no idea he was going to get hit. The truck basically pushed the motor into the front of the car and D was pinned in. The accident happened closely to 2:30 in the afternoon and he was not taken out of the car until after 6:00pm. That was the tough part knowing there wasn’t anything we could do but stand there and glare at all the lights and listen to the noises.

After the shock wore off of what had happened, I started the process of trying to deal with the tremendous amount of feelings I was going through. The toughest part wasn’t going to the funeral but dealing with his family. They all wanted to talk to me when they found out I was the first person to him and his mother had many questions. The only thing I could tell her that would give her any comfort was that I didn’t think he suffered at all.

The police determined that a car was turning into my neighbor’s driveway and D must have not seen the car stopped to turn in and thought he would miss the car by getting in the other lane of traffic. They speculated he didn’t see the truck and I have to say this is the only thing that really made any sense to me at all.

With the funeral over it was time to move on with my life but I had a tough go for a while. I couldn’t stand turning into the driveway because there were stains from the accident months later. I had always wanted to be in sales for the company I worked for at the time and put in for a sales job. I knew this would take me to some other part of the country and would get me away from everything that reminded me of him and our time together.

By the end of the year, I got a job in sales covering the entire state of South Carolina. I was in a place that I knew no one and I felt as if I were starting over. In South Carolina I made friends with my neighbor that was gay as well and we had some time to just go out and have fun. The apartment complex had what they called “rock parties”. The complex had moved these huge rocks in front of each of the 8 buildings and the peeps that lived in that complex were responsible for drinks/finger foods for one hour and then we would move on to the next one. It was a day long party that really helped ease the pain.

In late 1990, I was approached by my company with a position I could pass up. I was offered a product manager position back in Tennessee and I thought about it for a weekend and decided I could return but I didn’t want to go back to the small town I once lived. One of best friends at the time needed a roommate and he brought one of his friends to help me move back. The friend? The UPS guy I dated for 5 years…however we didn’t start dating right away and it took me a while to get back into the dating scene (about 2 years to be exact).

After that relationship I was ready for some fun and no drama so I took about 2 years to just go out and party my ass off. I think I did a good job of it and lost many brain cells in the process. At a party I met the attorney that I mentioned in my first post.

That is the story of my dating life except for one-night stands I have been getting into over the last couple of years. I have found that I really don’t want the drama attached to many gay men and their unstable lives. I am not saying that all gay men are this way but damn it seems there are more (as a percentage) than drama in straight relationships. But maybe that is just from my point of view.