t.r.u.t.h.

(That's not an acronym, I just wanted to connect it to the previous entry.)

The kind of thing that I want to write about with regards to movies I see is what things they bring up for me, the conversations they ignite between me and whomever I see the with, which is why I like going to movies mostly with S; he and I understand each other, know each other better than anybody else knows us -- even better than ourselves in some instances.

L.I.E. brought up a conversation about pedophiles. S and I have had this conversation before. I don't know if it's because of our upbringings or what, but he seems to have a much healthier relationship to sex and sexuality than I do. He has a fairly active sex life, says he's not willing to give up that part of him, whereas I feel my sexual life waning, and I'm not even forty-five!

For me, I think a lot of it has to do with who I'm attracted to. I'm not generally attracted to men my age or older. Men my age, even men a couple of years younger than me, seem so much older than me, out of shape, over the hill, not sexy, and so I find myself not generally attracted to them. I have met a couple of men in their thirties whom I've been attracted to, but nothing has come of it. I also have met a few twenty-somethings whom I am very attracted to, and they seem attracted to me, but not necessarily in a sexual way (it seems), more in just a kind of I'm a cool older guy giving them a lot of attention and they like that, so they like me. I guess.

I wouldn't force myself on anyone. I struggle a lot with my attraction to younger men. But I don't think I could ever have a bona fide relationship with anyone younger than thirty, mostly because of societal views on it, I suppose. (An interesting aside: When I was twenty-three, I was in a relationship with a woman seventeen years older than me, so that's kind of my cut-off age; I guess because it wasn't looked on as so freakish by my family or by society at large.)

S thinks it's not so black-and-white. I agree with him, but I don't think I could deal with the responses of people, regardless of the situation. Sometimes I get the feeling that people are whispering "pedophile" when I'm just hanging out with a young guy. It must be some kind of fucked up Assembly of God religious guilt. Still, it's different for straight people, and I suppose I could work on changing my views (of myself, of It), but I don't think society's views will change.