Cary Brothers

I have found another Duncan Sheik.

Older

The older you get, the harder it is to share your life with another person. I miss the unreserved exuberance with which Geoff and I decided to share our lives, literally weeks after we first met, all those years ago.  We were young, unencumbered with financial responsibilities, each living with roommates we disliked. Our careers were just starting, the world was young and full of potential.  I don’t think I can decide to move in with anyone after just knowing them for weeks, not anymore, not at 42. The bar is way, way higher, the path to happiness is so much rockier. I have much respect for people aged 50 and beyond that fall in love and dive straight into a life together. If life is a loose-leaf binder, then adding blank pages is a lot easier than combining pages from two different books and wishing a coherent narrative emerges. Yet we must try.

I succumbed to the gay obsession: gym-going.

I was the guy who used to mock gay guys who obsess about their bodies and work out at the gym three or four times a week.  Muscle Marys, or Gym Bunnies, we call them.  But since July, bar the occasional week or two that I was traveling for business or pleasure, I had been exercising at the gym three times a week.  I even had a personal trainer.  There’s still a part of me that loathes the prevalent, superficial body-worship that so rules our subculture today, but another, larger part of me takes pleasure in observing that I have slimmed down, grown some muscle (not a lot), and in general look healthier.  And the occasional compliment about losing weight doesn’t hurt either. A love-hate situation with  myself.  That’s the person I wanted to punch when I took this picture.