I changed the names. The rest is all true.
The love of my life, not like any other man I’d ever met. He was shy, goofy and socially awkward; a total nerd, which is a wonderful thing in my book. “He doesn’t smile, he BEAMS,” crowed a friend. His kind, easy manner evoked trust I’d only ever given one man in my life, my Great-Grandfather. Animals and kids loved him. Hell, everyone loved him. He had the kind of gentle manner that set people at ease.
Early in our relationship, he unintentionally left an erotic story up on the computer. It was a “first time” tale and I thought it was kind of sweet. Not terribly long later, I walked in on him beating off to porn. It was two very young guys having sex. He said “they need to look like they’re in love.” I thought that too was sweet and mentally hooked it into the first-time story thing. He had what appeared to be a healthy porn habit, but he was a young guy, 24 when I met him.
“The worst thing Kellan will do if I go out of town is beat off to porn and I can live with that,” I said. I knew I had it good with him. I once said of my first love Fernando and my going on trips, “he’ll be fucking a twink before the captain turns off the fasten seatbelt sign.”
I trusted Kellan enough to shed my mistrust of men, for him anyway. In a lesbianesque move, we shacked up not long after we started seeing each other. I’ll never forget his shining, innocent eyes and irresistible smile the day he told me he loved me. We were sitting in front of the gas fireplace at his apartment in Las Vegas…I knew he was going to say it. And I’d already fallen for him.
Fairly early in our relationship, Kellan said “we need to have a discussion about porn.” To this day, I’m not sure what the discussion was supposed to accomplish, beyond him finding what I’d been looking at via the browser history and vice versa. I became angry and punched the refrigerator, frightening the innocent Kellan who’d never been exposed to such things. I apologized profusely. There were tears. All over porn.
Twinks, twinks, twinks, twinks said the searches. And once I saw Asians. There was never anyone who looked remotely like me. This planted a seed of insecurity. “This is just one thing, he loves you. Don’t fuck it up,” I told myself. I once asked him about this and he responded “I have a few types.” So I nodded my head and pushed it to the back of my mind. I decided that it was only fantasy and I had the real man in my bed. And he loved me, of that I was certain.
When we’d been together three years, we moved to Hawaii. Kellan’s business had failed and I was experiencing some PTSD from nearly being shot by the police in front of our business. I wanted to do something fabulous and it was the only thing I could think of. Two hours into the plane ride, I knew I’d made a mistake. But Kellan had fallen in love with Hawaii and all I could do was play out the game.
At first, I escaped through work. I’d put in up to 120 hours a week, obsessed with my real estate career. I did my best to make enough money to buy some income property and set us up for the future. Kellan spent money as fast as I could make it, fixing up a house we lived in and didn’t own yet. I wanted to go back to California but Kellan loved it there. I pushed and pushed, to no avail. This hit the manic button in my bipolar brain.
I became desperately unhappy and sought relief through porn. I joined a couple inappropriate sites, watched videos and ultimately asked guys for x shots, exchanging a few nasty messages. I never did “real time” cyber as I considered it cheating. I felt guilty about the sexual messages.
The porn I watched was exclusively Latinos. Over the course of my manic porn binge, I convinced myself that I couldn’t go the rest of my life without ever fucking a Latino guy. How would I break it to my Caucasian partner? I couldn’t fathom hurting him, yet the porn altered my perceptions so much that I convinced myself I wasn’t attracted to him. During this time, I’d also put on a tremendous amount of weight and rejected Kellan sexually.
I realized what I was doing and made a decision to stop the porn and the websites cold turkey. Moving to our beach house and ultimately back to L.A. was the catalyst. During the several weeks I was porn free, my brain re-wired itself. Back to normal, I saw Kellan in a whole new light. He was the most beautiful man I’d ever seen and I couldn’t believe I was about to throw it all away…for sex.
Kellan’s porn compulsivity was developing a larger appetite. What he was consuming had taken on a raunchier flavor…and the boys got younger. There was a scene, I said ugly things, and used one of the videos he was watching to point out boys who looked under age. His voice, facial expressions and demeanor suddenly changed. I was speaking to fifteen year-old Kellan. I’d never seen this person before. He insisted that the boys in the videos were over eighteen because of the disclaimer saying they were. I did my best to forget it, tucking it away in the place that I hide all the ugly things in my life.
One afternoon, Kellan asked me to marry him. We’d been together eight years. He’d grown from a boy to a man. And I loved him more than ever. I’ll never forget us sitting on the antique green sofa in our Spanish Revival apartment in Los Feliz, him begging me to commit myself to him for life. I’d been reticent but he won me over. That day, I couldn’t resist his beautiful smile. And he was the best man I’d ever met…besides my grandfather. Gay marriage had just been legalized in California; he used this as one of the reasons. But it was really time to cement our love. We’d had a wonderful life together. He asked before and I’d turned him down. I didn’t believe in marriage. But he was the man I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. So we got married.
Shortly afterward, my nephew came to live with us. Kellan took to parenting like nobody I’ve ever seen. He was a stellar Guncle. I never thought I had the parent gene, but in fact…I did. I was doing my best to keep my real estate career on low flame and be a parent at the same time. Kellan was off making money, everyone was happy. It was one of the nicest times in our life. Our sex life was really good during this period.
My mother and sister conspired to remove him from our lives in a way that we’d never see him again. And we never did. I spent weeks in bed. Kellan broke. He’d never experienced the kind of viciousness my family dished out. He’d always been more sensitive than others. He changed after this, in more ways than I’d know until later.
I’ve learned that the progression of sexual compulsivity and addiction cannot be caused or prevented by any external event or events. Kellan would later pick this and one other even as the catalyst, which is total bullshit. I can say without a doubt, that after our nephew left…a light went out in our home. Kellan and I became like zombies.
Kellan’s porn compulsivity grew. I’d had problems with him going limp, finding him later jerking it to twink porn, but things got worse. His interest in me all but dried up. One night, I walked in on a porn session again. The teenagers were younger than ever. I already knew that we were close to the place that he’d cross over into live partners. I tried my damndest to shock him out of what he was doing and failed miserably. I chose words I never should have said, although they weren’t the ones he claims I used. The truth was, the bottom in the scene looked like he was fifteen at the most. He cried gutturally. I cried “oh God, what have I done?” He said through tears “what we have is magic and a few more words like that and the magic will be gone.” He told me recently that the magic left that night and that it was the launch of his sexual addiction with live guys.
After this, I tried to get Kellan’s attention, get him to make love, connect with him spiritually…and it didn’t really happen. Over time, he developed a sneer that I knew too well, but somehow failed to connect with the men in my past…who were also sex addicts.
A couple months after our respective collapses, I decided to put myself back together. I started working out again and got myself into pretty decent shape. I also figured that my improved physical attractiveness might entice Kellan. My self-confidence shot up enough that I did something I hadn’t done in ten years: I posted torso pics of myself online to show off my progress. I felt good and wanted him to feel good. My attempts at sex with Kellan usually ended up him either losing his erection, followed by an hour-long taffy-pull of him trying to get off. I’d often find him in the bathroom a little later, beating off to porn. Yes, I took it personally. I felt old, ugly and fat. At the time I didn’t know any better. Sometimes, we’d have really good sex, but it was hit and miss.
(continue to part 2)
The love of my life, not like any other man I’d ever met. He was shy, goofy and socially awkward; a total nerd, which is a wonderful thing in my book. “He doesn’t smile, he BEAMS,” crowed a friend. His kind, easy manner evoked trust I’d only ever given one man in my life, my Great-Grandfather. Animals and kids loved him. Hell, everyone loved him. He had the kind of gentle manner that set people at ease.
Early in our relationship, he unintentionally left an erotic story up on the computer. It was a “first time” tale and I thought it was kind of sweet. Not terribly long later, I walked in on him beating off to porn. It was two very young guys having sex. He said “they need to look like they’re in love.” I thought that too was sweet and mentally hooked it into the first-time story thing. He had what appeared to be a healthy porn habit, but he was a young guy, 24 when I met him.
“The worst thing Kellan will do if I go out of town is beat off to porn and I can live with that,” I said. I knew I had it good with him. I once said of my first love Fernando and my going on trips, “he’ll be fucking a twink before the captain turns off the fasten seatbelt sign.”
I trusted Kellan enough to shed my mistrust of men, for him anyway. In a lesbianesque move, we shacked up not long after we started seeing each other. I’ll never forget his shining, innocent eyes and irresistible smile the day he told me he loved me. We were sitting in front of the gas fireplace at his apartment in Las Vegas…I knew he was going to say it. And I’d already fallen for him.
Fairly early in our relationship, Kellan said “we need to have a discussion about porn.” To this day, I’m not sure what the discussion was supposed to accomplish, beyond him finding what I’d been looking at via the browser history and vice versa. I became angry and punched the refrigerator, frightening the innocent Kellan who’d never been exposed to such things. I apologized profusely. There were tears. All over porn.
Twinks, twinks, twinks, twinks said the searches. And once I saw Asians. There was never anyone who looked remotely like me. This planted a seed of insecurity. “This is just one thing, he loves you. Don’t fuck it up,” I told myself. I once asked him about this and he responded “I have a few types.” So I nodded my head and pushed it to the back of my mind. I decided that it was only fantasy and I had the real man in my bed. And he loved me, of that I was certain.
When we’d been together three years, we moved to Hawaii. Kellan’s business had failed and I was experiencing some PTSD from nearly being shot by the police in front of our business. I wanted to do something fabulous and it was the only thing I could think of. Two hours into the plane ride, I knew I’d made a mistake. But Kellan had fallen in love with Hawaii and all I could do was play out the game.
At first, I escaped through work. I’d put in up to 120 hours a week, obsessed with my real estate career. I did my best to make enough money to buy some income property and set us up for the future. Kellan spent money as fast as I could make it, fixing up a house we lived in and didn’t own yet. I wanted to go back to California but Kellan loved it there. I pushed and pushed, to no avail. This hit the manic button in my bipolar brain.
I became desperately unhappy and sought relief through porn. I joined a couple inappropriate sites, watched videos and ultimately asked guys for x shots, exchanging a few nasty messages. I never did “real time” cyber as I considered it cheating. I felt guilty about the sexual messages.
The porn I watched was exclusively Latinos. Over the course of my manic porn binge, I convinced myself that I couldn’t go the rest of my life without ever fucking a Latino guy. How would I break it to my Caucasian partner? I couldn’t fathom hurting him, yet the porn altered my perceptions so much that I convinced myself I wasn’t attracted to him. During this time, I’d also put on a tremendous amount of weight and rejected Kellan sexually.
I realized what I was doing and made a decision to stop the porn and the websites cold turkey. Moving to our beach house and ultimately back to L.A. was the catalyst. During the several weeks I was porn free, my brain re-wired itself. Back to normal, I saw Kellan in a whole new light. He was the most beautiful man I’d ever seen and I couldn’t believe I was about to throw it all away…for sex.
Kellan’s porn compulsivity was developing a larger appetite. What he was consuming had taken on a raunchier flavor…and the boys got younger. There was a scene, I said ugly things, and used one of the videos he was watching to point out boys who looked under age. His voice, facial expressions and demeanor suddenly changed. I was speaking to fifteen year-old Kellan. I’d never seen this person before. He insisted that the boys in the videos were over eighteen because of the disclaimer saying they were. I did my best to forget it, tucking it away in the place that I hide all the ugly things in my life.
One afternoon, Kellan asked me to marry him. We’d been together eight years. He’d grown from a boy to a man. And I loved him more than ever. I’ll never forget us sitting on the antique green sofa in our Spanish Revival apartment in Los Feliz, him begging me to commit myself to him for life. I’d been reticent but he won me over. That day, I couldn’t resist his beautiful smile. And he was the best man I’d ever met…besides my grandfather. Gay marriage had just been legalized in California; he used this as one of the reasons. But it was really time to cement our love. We’d had a wonderful life together. He asked before and I’d turned him down. I didn’t believe in marriage. But he was the man I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. So we got married.
Shortly afterward, my nephew came to live with us. Kellan took to parenting like nobody I’ve ever seen. He was a stellar Guncle. I never thought I had the parent gene, but in fact…I did. I was doing my best to keep my real estate career on low flame and be a parent at the same time. Kellan was off making money, everyone was happy. It was one of the nicest times in our life. Our sex life was really good during this period.
My mother and sister conspired to remove him from our lives in a way that we’d never see him again. And we never did. I spent weeks in bed. Kellan broke. He’d never experienced the kind of viciousness my family dished out. He’d always been more sensitive than others. He changed after this, in more ways than I’d know until later.
I’ve learned that the progression of sexual compulsivity and addiction cannot be caused or prevented by any external event or events. Kellan would later pick this and one other even as the catalyst, which is total bullshit. I can say without a doubt, that after our nephew left…a light went out in our home. Kellan and I became like zombies.
Kellan’s porn compulsivity grew. I’d had problems with him going limp, finding him later jerking it to twink porn, but things got worse. His interest in me all but dried up. One night, I walked in on a porn session again. The teenagers were younger than ever. I already knew that we were close to the place that he’d cross over into live partners. I tried my damndest to shock him out of what he was doing and failed miserably. I chose words I never should have said, although they weren’t the ones he claims I used. The truth was, the bottom in the scene looked like he was fifteen at the most. He cried gutturally. I cried “oh God, what have I done?” He said through tears “what we have is magic and a few more words like that and the magic will be gone.” He told me recently that the magic left that night and that it was the launch of his sexual addiction with live guys.
After this, I tried to get Kellan’s attention, get him to make love, connect with him spiritually…and it didn’t really happen. Over time, he developed a sneer that I knew too well, but somehow failed to connect with the men in my past…who were also sex addicts.
A couple months after our respective collapses, I decided to put myself back together. I started working out again and got myself into pretty decent shape. I also figured that my improved physical attractiveness might entice Kellan. My self-confidence shot up enough that I did something I hadn’t done in ten years: I posted torso pics of myself online to show off my progress. I felt good and wanted him to feel good. My attempts at sex with Kellan usually ended up him either losing his erection, followed by an hour-long taffy-pull of him trying to get off. I’d often find him in the bathroom a little later, beating off to porn. Yes, I took it personally. I felt old, ugly and fat. At the time I didn’t know any better. Sometimes, we’d have really good sex, but it was hit and miss.
(continue to part 2)
