I think what I miss the most from last year’s summer love story with my queer European “ex” is how I felt. How I felt in that precise moment of my life and how I felt with them in particular.
As deep and special as it was, that love story was circumstantial.
Spring and summer are seasons in which I feel alive, I come alive, and want to be alive, wild, minimally dressed, out — outside, outdoors, out there. And last spring & summer were the first “season of aliveness” for me in my “new” body, post-gender-affirming-surgery, in the body that finally felt aligned to my identity. So I was both yearning to be out there even more than usual but also scared and worried and shy and vulnerable in my “new” body, in my new presentation.
It was in this context that the love story with my queer European “ex” happened. A special context for both of us, albeit for partly different reasons.
Having known them from the previous spring and there already being a familiarity and liking and closeness between us, helped me feel instinctively safe and comfortable with them — as they did with me. So I could come out with them slowly into the world as the non-binary gay boy that I was, that I am.
It was with them that this non-binary gay boy started blossoming.
And it was with them that I once again, after years, almost decades, opened my heart unconditionally to love, letting myself be in love, letting myself be loved and loving back with abandon.
And that’s one of the main things I miss now: that aliveness, that enthusiasm, that blissful abandon.
I knew it back then, a year ago, that our love story wasn’t going to last beyond the summer, beyond their summer visit in Colorado. And yet I let myself consciously and willing fall in love, I let myself love with abandon. I chose to let myself feel and enjoy all of that NRE (“new relationship energy”) along with all the pain and difficulties.
And despite the pain and difficulties it was worth it, totally worth it, and I would do it all over again (hopefully just not making the same mistakes).
And I wish I could do it all over again now. With someone else, of course, but let it happen again. Meet someone with whom I could let it happen again. I want to feel that way again.
I am a gay boy. A non-binary, transmasc gay boy but a gay boy nonetheless. Even in this period of renewed sorrow there are moments where I feel alive in that particular way that mutual attraction with other gay guys sparks in me. I want to feel that aliveness, enjoy it.
The circumstances would be — are — partly different now. I am more comfortable in my body and even somewhat more confident in my masculine presentation (although the latter is still mind-boggling to me): these are big differences, important differences. But the seasonal aliveness, the seasonal yearnings, and my authentic identity as non-binary gay boy remain unchanged or, rather, more awake and conscious and open than ever.
I am yearning for some “summer lovin’” again, some “gay boy summer lovin’”…
The Little Prince and the Fox 