"This week marks my one-year point since the last time I slept with a guy. Hell, it’s been a year since I even smooched another man! The only thing making this harder is the realization that I have 15 more months to go in my service before I am scheduled to come home. Thankfully there is a big push by the current volunteers to start including sexual health among physical and mental health on the list of topics we need to discuss with volunteers in training. I mean, you cannot go two years without any type of sexual contact and not expect some sort of retaliation on your psyche, right?"
Zachery Scott writes: Let's Get It On!
Letters from Southern Africa: Let's Get It On!
By Zachery Scott |
Article Date: 9/29/2008 12:00 AM
I miss sex. A lot.
And not just sex, but cuddling, making out, spooning, holding hands, general affection; the whole shebang.
This week marks my one-year point since the last time I slept with a guy. Hell, it’s been a year since I even smooched another man! The only thing making this harder is the realization that I have 15 more months to go in my service before I am scheduled to come home. Thankfully there is a big push by the current volunteers to start including sexual health among physical and mental health on the list of topics we need to discuss with volunteers in training. I mean, you cannot go two years without any type of sexual contact and not expect some sort of retaliation on your psyche, right?
Ever since I started having it in high school, I am ashamed to admit that I have never gone, at most, more than a few weeks without engaging in some sort of sexual activity. Even during what I considered my worst dry spell in my freshman year of college, I don’t think I made it a month before I eventually hooked up with someone. Whether it was serial monogamy or a series of hook-ups, sex for me, like for most people my age, has never been that far out of reach.
Going into Peace Corps, I had prepared myself for the possibility of celibacy for two years, but this is showing to be much more difficult than I had expected.
It’s not like I’m back in the States making a conscious decision to resist temptation. I don’t have any temptation! Instead I’m left with memories of past boyfriends and ridiculously concocted fantasies of attractive men that I have encountered in my travels.
“That’s right, Matamba, protect me from the lions. It’s so hot under the African sun, why don’t you slip out of those tattered clothes. Here, we can hide in this cave together till the pride goes away (literally)…”
I look around at the heterosexual volunteers, some of whom have boyfriends or girlfriends, and I am a little jealous. It makes me wonder how much easier would this experience be if I had someone with which to be intimate. How would I view this country and my time in Peace Corps if I had someone who was from here to share my highs and lows and to help me put them into a cultural context?
Several months before leaving to come to Southern Africa with the Peace Corps, I broke up with my boyfriend after having spent a little over two good years together. I now have the opportunity, not to mention a lot of time, to reflect on past choices, missed chances and future opportunities. This period of isolation without any real intimacy has made me realize that it’s really the relationship I miss, not necessarily the physical closeness. I miss the companionship and the special times between you and another person, who when all else fails can always make you smile. I also miss those shared moments that gradually build upon each other to form a relationship of substance and meaning. It sounds hokey, but it’s true.
So when I finally broke into the gay ExPat circle in my nation’s capital and met a fun group of guys with whom I can sit and have a laugh (preferably with a cocktail), I was thrilled. I now have my own gay friends to enjoy whenever I am in the city for meetings or long weekends away. I know that through them I could meet people who could provide that physical companionship that has been lacking, but I have resisted up to now.
Sex is sex, and messing around is just that. I don’t know what the future might have in store for me in the love department, but I figure I can hold out a little longer till something worth my wild comes along.
Please God, let it be soon.
