His camping trip with Brodie behind him, and after a brief stint hitting the books back in Owen Sound, Jonny began preparing for his last big summer of fun adventure, Bear Week in Provincetown.
Perhaps the single largest gathering of gay bears, cubs, muscle bears, daddy bears, bear chasers, and the just plain party-prone, Bear Week in Provincetown is the must-do-at-least-once-in-your-life event on the Bear social calendar.
Eschewing the stylish, coiffed, toned six-pack, smooth gym-bod look so prevalent among club crowd gays, each summer this popular Cape Cod resort town plays host to somewhere around ten- to twenty-thousand (depending on who you ask) men who never met a pair of jeans three sizes too small they didn’t love to button up below the belly.
Whether heavily muscled or just plain heavy, Bears give a whole new meaning to the phrase, “letting it all hang out.”
“I thought we covered this whole jealousy thing already,” Brain said following a conversation with Jonny.
“It’s not jealousy,” I said in exasperation. “It’s fear plain and simple.
“After the five days we had together, the idea of him spending a week wading through a sea of handsome, hairy, hot, horny men sends chills down my spine.
“I felt something with him that I’ve never felt before and I want to keep feeling it.
“Given the circumstances,” Brain said, “It seems to me a little worry and doubt are in order,”
I shot him a quizzical look.
“You said it yourself,” he continued. “We’ve never been here before. It’s not like you’re an expert at these things or that you thought this out in advance.
“You meet a man on a hookup app, fly him a continent, not to mention different country, away from everything he knows, spend a passionate and emotionally vulnerable weekend together, put him back on a plane to the Great White North, all without the slightest idea of what to do or where to go next, and now you’re worried that a thousand half-crocked, half-naked, sweaty men might make him forget about you.
“I’d say doubt is perfectly in order.”
I hate the logical side of my mind.
I spent most of Bear Week torn between hoping Jonny was having a good time and hoping I wouldn’t see him popping up in summer-fling Facebook photo posts, which threatened to choke my Wi-Fi signal each time I logged on that week.
Whether heavily muscled or just plain heavy, Bears give a whole new meaning to the phrase, “letting it all hang out.”
More than my feelings of uncertainty were having on me, was the impact of Jonny continuing to directly message me occasionally during his trip.
“Why don’t we just have an eeztrogen pump installed,” Brain said in his best sarcastic British accent the morning I awoke to a good morning message and cheery photo from Jonny.
Griselda and I were awash in a sea of warm wonderful feelings the like of which I had hardly ever known.
Once again, the fact that anyone had or would take the time from a fun filled holiday to think of me overwhelmed me with an extremely pleasant response the like of which had, until recently, lay dormant within me for decades.
“You do recall,” Brain pressed on, “that when you and Mr. Wonderful talked about his doing this sort of thing, he told you that he often messages his friends to update them on what he’s been doing.
“He is after all…”
“NOBODY,” Griselda abruptly interrupted, “is that fucking Canadian!”
Attracted to me or Canadian, it didn’t matter. It just felt good. My whole summer was beginning to feel like I was finally emerging from my own personal five-year long shit storm. Sure, I’d lost two subsistence level jobs since moving to Palm Springs but I’d never been happier.
Go figure.
Bear Week ended and Jonny returned to Owen Sound. I can’t recall who messaged who first, it was probably me, but within days of his return we fell right back into our familiar pattern of overnight messages, text chats and of course video conversations.
It was abundantly clear, during our video chats, Jonny’s return to college was a combination of sustained joy from his Bear Week adventure, anxiety over his pending semester exams, and anticipation over successfully completing his first full year of studies with 4.0 GPA.
…each summer this popular Cape Cod resort town plays host to somewhere around ten- to twenty-thousand (depending on who you ask) men who never met a pair of jeans three sizes too small they didn’t love to button up below the belly.
Once again I found myself in overthinking overdrive. Did all his exuberance stem entirely from stimulation overload brought on by the trip, his exams, and end of term, or did I play some part in in his willingness to share all this joy and desire to stay in nearly daily contact.
“Would somebody please tell me,” I shouted in frustration at Griselda and Brain one evening following a perfectly delightful and completely meaningless chat with Jonny, “what the hell good a Mensa level IQ is if you can’t even figure out something as seemingly simple as how another person feels about you!”
“Well,” responded Brain calmly while stirring a cup of tea, “one thing is certain, you’re never going to be able determine his true feelings with twenty-two hundred miles of mountains and open country between you.”
Have I mentioned how much I hate the logical side of my mind?
I looked at Griselda, still aglow from our earlier chat with Jonny. “Don’t look at me,” she said. “You know how I feel.”
I shrugged in frustration, “Will no one rid me of this uncertainty?” I cried out to the heavens, or least the bedroom ceiling.
With no assignments due or exams pending, the following evening Jonny was relatively free to video chat. Having finally exhausted his trove of Bear Week stories and close enough to the end of the semester that he’d already begun packing some of his things up, I asked him what he had planned for the weeks between summer and fall sessions.
To my surprise, aside from the occasional workout and hanging out with Brodie, he didn’t seem to have anything planned for the remainder of what had otherwise been, by any measure, a season full of high adventure and higher learning.
“I mean there’s always coming back out to Palm Springs,” Jonny said with the same degree of enthusiasm he had when talking about Provincetown. “I know August is the hottest and most humid month out there, but it’s not like there aren’t ways of dealing with the heat.”
Griselda and Brian snapped to attention. We’d only briefly talked about the possibility of his coming back to California near the end of his earlier visit and the subject hadn’t been mentioned since Griselda dropped the L bomb.
It was nearly the end of July, I knew my youngest brother George would arrive for a visit in mid-August, and given Jonny’s seeming eagerness to get together again I did not want to wait until the end of the month to see, ah, be with him again. I asked him to give me a minute to check flight deals.
Having used my AARP membership to secure a deal on Jonny’s earlier trip to Palm Springs, I logged into their travel site where I was greeted with an amazing offer.
“Well either before, during, or after George’s visit—I’ll make him sleep on the sofa if needs be—it looks like we won’t have a problem booking another low cost package,” I said and then added, “I’ll do my best this time not to route you through San Francisco again.” Jonny laughed, recalling his earlier travel odyssey.
“In the meantime, though,” I continued. “How’d you like to play tour guide for a weekend in Toronto?”
Edited by
Kenneth Larsen
Next Up: Fly The Karma Skies
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