The alarm clock wrenches me out of deep sleep. It’s 10 AM. In an hour, I have to hop on Zoom for a work training. Back to the reality of the daily grind, I drag myself out of bed, my mind still full of the emotions from the past five days and my body still store from all the intense climbing.
On Saturday morning, my buddy Bert came to pick me up and we drove to Wyoming, where that afternoon we hiked and scouted out the Devils Tower National Monument in preparation for our climb tentatively planned for the next day. Our first multi-pitch climb together, ever: high stakes (literally as well as figuratively) for our first climb together just the two of us with no other climbing partners.
When we got up at 4 o’clock on Sunday morning, it was still dark and we could barely make out the darker shadow of the Devils Tower a few miles away from our campsite. It had drizzled around 3:30 that morning, making the last, precious minutes of my sleep even lighter. I think I must have got about three hours of sleep total that night but the excitement was high and kept me going.
We signed the safety register for climbers at the parking lot of the Devils Tower at 4:50 on Sunday morning and by 5:45 AM, as planned, we were climbing the first of half a dozen pitches. It took us less than four hours to reach the summit, 867 feet higher up, where we spent over half an hour basking in the sunshine (before it got too hot) and the exhilaration of our feat — or, at least, the first part of it. Two hours later, after four rappels and two down-climbing/scrambling sections, we got back to where we had left our extra backpack with the stuff we didn’t need to carry up the wall. We were exhausted, sweating buckets in temperatures that by that point had reached the high 90’s (Fahrenheit), thirsty and hungry. But mostly, we were two of the happiest people on the planet: we had done it, and we’d done it together! (And we had survived!)
This is what I live for.
This is what Bert lives for, too.
For these feats, for these moments of exhilaration, for the physical and mental challenge, for the risk involved, the danger even.
There are two aspects of this trip with Bert — the five days & four nights we spent together climbing, camping, and hiking to scout out our climbs — that are important and special to me in ways that fill me with joy mixed with other intense emotions.
First of all, there’s the fact that I’m actually doing this again. Finally, I’m in a mental (& physical) space where I am once again able to face and endure and enjoy these risky feats, these adventures, pushing myself to limits that were familiar and natural and desirable to me for most of my life but that had seemed beyond my capacity recently. During COVID, first, and then again after my father’s death, my tolerance for risk seemed to disappear or go down to levels that for me weren’t “OK”, that made me feel like I had “lost myself”, I could no longer recognize myself. And that was heartbreaking for me. Now, for the past few months, those parts of me, of my identity, have been coming back as if I had finally gotten over the worst of the grief and burnout that had somehow “turned me into someone else”, at least partially, for the past couple years. This rediscovery of myself, literally finding myself & deeply ingrained parts of me again, has felt wonderful.
Then, there’s the fact of sharing these adventures (& emotions) with someone else. Part of my shutting down or slowing down had also been caused by the lack, or unavailability, of adventure buddies. And this lack has also been heartbreaking for me and compounded the grief that I had from my other personal sources.
The result is that now, mixed with the deep and exhilarating joy from this recent trip with my buddy Bert, there’s also an intense craving and with that, of course, the fear of losing this.
For my entire life, my strongest desire has been to go on adventures with an adventure buddy who’d also be my life companion.
I had that with my Italian sailing buddy, a boy I met at the end of high school with whom I spent four blissful years of sailing together, exploring, sharing adventures and experiences, and even being sexual partners. To a limited extent, I had it again, on & off, with my Californian sailing buddy almost a decade ago. And now, I crave having it with my buddy Bert. But now, it’s so much more complicated because I am a trans guy.
My friends tell me to protect my heart, to be patient, to not rush things, to not make assumptions, to be careful. And I know they’re saying this from a place of love & care for me, and I know they’re right. And I can see my “pattern” and “my type” repeating themselves with/in these three (cis) guys. But what is hard to explain — to my friends and to the world in general — is the depth of this craving for me.
I am aro-ace. This is the way I experience “attraction”. I don’t feel “romantic emotions” or infatuation, I don’t care about “romance”, I don’t get crushes or fall in love. I never dreamt of getting married or having a “family” or even buying a house or “settling down” with someone. I don’t feel attracted to, or interested in, anyone when I go to parties or clubs or out dancing or meet people out in the world. I’m not attracted to physical beauty or “sexiness”. And even the desire for sex that I do eventually come to feel with these very particular, or special, adventure buddies has nothing to do with “romance” or “sexual attraction” but, rather, stems from a need to co-regulate and/or a desire to connect more deeply while also to just relieve a physical urge in a shared, consensual, safe, and fun context.
What I crave — and, fortunately, was able to have with my two sailing buddies — is, on the one hand, to be seen & treated both as a boy and as a girl, and on the other hand, to bond or connect through shared adventures as shared experiences/goals (rather than “romance” or sharing a house or “building a family”). I want an adventure buddy who’ll also, at least to some extent, be a life companion. That can include sex, but not monogamy. It would involve regular, frequent trips and experiences together, but not living together in the same house/apartment. It would require or entail trust, love, commitment, respect, and honesty, but no romance.
This is hard to find because it’s not only non-normative: it’s also beyond, or different from, what lots of queer people have or seek because of the adventure aspect. Not only am I seeking a non-normative type of intimacy (aro-ace, polyamorous, no marriage, no children, no cohabiting); I’m also wanting, or needing, it to involve risky adventures together.
So, I’m seeking someone who’ll be both adventurous AND open to non-normative relationships — AND open to, or interested in or attracted to, a nonbinary trans guy like me. This is the kind of person, the type of relationship, I’ve craved my entire life: an “adventure buddy / life companion”. Something like a unicorn, maybe, and something that’s being awakened again by these recent experiences with Bert.
The Little Prince and the Fox 