Do Hostels make for hostile people? I think not.
A recent email to a former limited acquaintance is found below. Why is it significant enough to blog
about it? Once I learned something important from a complete stranger I happened to find sleeping next to me. Now, I wonder again if it's possible to learn something or even teach him some valuable again. Let me try to explain...
I met JH (not his real name or initials) and really thought he was cool guy. He was masculine, athletic, and rather good-looking, but he was down-to-earth and a good listener, too. We were sleeping in adjoining bunkbeds in a youth hostel while we were both on business/pleasure in Honolulu several years ago. We enjoyed talking and did spend some time doing touristy things. Nothing much really happened that was truly important, but I could not get out of my head that this was a time that my two normally completely separate lives - my alternate personal identities - straight father who is university professor and gay blogger who travels the world to stay at gay nude resorts - would come together for a brief time.
To explain that significance, it might help the readers to understand a bit more about me and my second life as Kelly Lewis (sunbuns / sunbuns99 / sunbunz). Below is excerpted from JustUsBoys
profile.
Being careful about self-disclosure comes easily to a self-exposing naturist, I love travel, being naked, enjoying new experiences, and helping others reach their potential. Sex is pretty good when thrown in the mix. I am not always 'gay' or truthful about being straight either - but I'm never dishonest. My real age and real name are not disclosed - I don't look a lot like Orlando Bloom now, even though people have noted the resemblance(s) to him. He's my archetypical hero.
If sex were just simply a bodily function or loving the beauty of the male face or form was recognized a wholly human artistic endeavour, or if we only recognized having sex as a way to manufacture new human
carcasses (receptacles for our brains) then I'd not have to hide part of my identity - the gay one.
'The Web (virutality) is not a windbreaker or umbrella as much as it is a sail. It's not even waterproof or certainly not a fullproof shelter from the storms of existence, but I find it a wonderfully wild set of habitats.
I found a photo of JH on a hard drive where I had downloaded it months earlier, and then his name and a MySpace page recently in a pile of notes and papers, so I decided to google him to see if he had emerged somewhere.
Sure enough he was found on Facebook (his 'straight' or regular guy self), but he also figured somewhat prominently in another person's life-story. Based on what I read in the following blog http://wackyonensf.blogspot.com/ That blogger describe his long-running problems with a series of gay roommates, and what he disclosed about JH was not very flattering or nice because they had been some kind of financial problem with getting his share of the rent paid.
JH was very likely 'escaping' from the wrath of this irate roommate during the very time that I met and spent a good many hours with him in Honolulu. I believe is was during the month of November, which is also his birthday. What I found rather attractive about him was the unusual way he slept, it was manly and erotic, but so cute too. His nightly acrobatics made me have a several night's of fitful sleep, where I was furtively jerking my dick while straining to see up the athlete shorts he slept in each night.
Just the night before he (or was it I) was to leave the next day, I confessed to him that I thought he was a really handsome guy who must be hit on my a lot of women and men. He shocked me by telling me that he preferred it when
guys hit on him -- instead of the females. It floored me to think I had been laying in my bunk bed next to his all those hours (over 3-4 days) wondering about his body, and thinking of something nasty I'd like to do to it, when all I had to do was simply ask him. No, he wasn't really interested in a man old enough to be his father. But, the next morning, he briefly explained that he was moving out because someone guy he had just met had asked him to stay at his place - obviously for a romantic sexual encounter. Like.. Damn!
[This is his own photo from a old MySpace page. I had saved this photo in order to help me remember having met JH in Honolulu.]
persona, and that I was very envious of him for being able to do so right now. We parted that day and I had not heard from him until my re-discovery of his existence just today.
That incident revealed to me that today's young gay men have a incredibly different perspective on what being gay means to them. One large reason may be because the way that gays are perceived nowadays is so different than when I was growing up into manhood. I even told JH about this realization and commented that I would someday like to be able to be myself - a gay father, professional academic, happily married without living in a disguised
So I wrote to him today (via Facebook) and wonder if he'll even reply and what he'll say.
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Dear JH
We met in Honolulu a few years ago when you and I stayed at a hostel in Waikiki Beach there. Sorry - that's not my real photo in my Facebook profile. So I won't be friending you here. I just thought of you recently when I happened to come across some old notes, and decided to look you up on Facebook.
As you probably won't recall, it surprised me to discover (thanks to your being forthcoming) that you are (were) gay.
So am I - but also happily married to a woman for over 30 years. Your life (what little of it I know) was a very different experience from the time when I grew up.
I know you may not want to be 'reminded' of being gay or of that time in HNL. Perhaps you won't appreciate my having purposefully 'run-into' you again. However, it is only to wish you well, and because I respected you - although I don't have much reason to do so. But I think we did have some good conversations in that short time. By the way, I have been back several times to that hostel and have made several friends and new acquaintances from around the world - both gay and straight.
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I just wanted to say that I wish you well, and hope you're finding life good or making of it what you want. One of my sons was living in the Bay Area for the last two years, but has now returned to Tokyo. I know at one time, you had intended to come to here for skiing. Did you make it or have you been back again since then? If you do and have time to spend, I'd be glad to show you around, or at least have some food or a drink. I'm not stalking or wanting a date - and no even interfere, but if you'd like, I'll send you a message via my 'real' (and ostensibly straight) persona here on Facebook.
Cheers,
David (alias Kelly)
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Here I sit now.. waiting and wondering what kind (if any) response I will get back. In reality, I had written to him several times (with his old Yahoo email address) but never got a reply. I suspect that if
what the blogger (link above) has written is true, then TH may be very revealing about only some aspects of his life (or even lie by others). Perhaps he would not feel safe and secure to disclose some of this past mistakes and problems. Eventually, we all get older and certainly don't want mistakes in our past to ride herd over our lives. However, it takes a man to admit that he has learned from what he did in the past. So I wonder if TH was half the man that he seemed to be at the time. Perhaps, I'll never know but it is important for him to recognize that his life did and does affect other around him - even when only knowing each other for a brief moment in time.
Added Note by author: Just
the next day, I received a welcoming message from JH. He was glad to hear from me, and owing to his new business venture, he'll be coming to Japan next year a couple of times. So we'll probably have a chance to meet at that time. It's not such a small world and small minded planet after all. I will contact him subsequently via my 'real' email address and Facebook profile.
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