Keep your hands to yourself when you follow me home.

Sex has turned into a chore lately, a forced combustion of two heated bodies, desperate for a five-second release to fill some vapid void in time. The aftermath- the constant ringing of my phone from random hook-ups who, for some reasons I cannot fathom, think I might be interested in whatever dreamy and starry-eyed episode might come after orgasm- has left me dog-tired the only recourse left is to block them from my phone and forget they never existed. Except I cannot get myself to do that. I need the validation, the gratifying satisfaction of knowing that someone out there yearns for me and seeks for my solicitude- whether it's just for another quickie or a cup of coffee.

Maybe its envy, or just some evanescent pang of want to be needed, like the curves of  your body craving the fit of my hands, but I look at people holding hands in the gym , the park, the inconspicuous alleys of Malate, and think of all possibilities.

But no. I cannot get myself yet to enter another passage of early morning texts and irresolute caring where I am stuck in some maze constantly trying not to sate myself from all the dissatisfaction of this world. This is the biggest crack in this plastered and self-bandaged persona I construe as my self. I can hold your hand when we fuck, whisper breathy incomprehensible words in your ears while I caress your back, look you in the eyes when your tongue explores all the nerves and edges of my dick, smile at you when I know I hit some banal spot which your moans cite. But no, I cannot, I am not able, not now, maybe never, find myself satisfied with this fleeting moment and be compelled to bottle the woes and discontent intrinsic in my fucked-up mind just so I can have the pleasure of being affirmed by this society as whole, as normal.

It's no longer a constant tug-of-war between black and white. The greyscale does not even seem to be a perfect spectrum to stay. I don't know what I want anymore.