About Chris

It has been a very full day today. I had the day off and I had scheduled a new furniture delivery for today. However, in order to have the new furniture in my bedroom delivered, I had to go about getting rid of the old furniture, some old junk and doing some very deep cleaning to get ready for the new.

It's definitely been out with the old and in with the new around here. So, as I write this, I am sitting up in my new bed..new mattress that provides massage and it tilts head and feet.

I've been able to talk with Chris a number of times today...and the neat thing about this is that although he currently lives in Wisconsin, I feel as close to him as ever. Within two to three weeks, he will be here and we will officially be together and ready to explore life as a full fledged couple.

If you have read this blog for any reasonable period of time, you know that I have been on a long quest to find my mate. With an fits and starts to my credit, I have to say that what I have with Chris has far surpassed those other relationships on a number of fronts. But, before I start talking about all that, I promised a few days ago to write a piece about how we met...something a bit more in depth than what I have written previously about him... I do this to actually fully document our meeting because as time marches on, some details become lost and I really don't want to lose any of this remarkable story.

Up until June of 2016 I had been dating a man named Stan. He seemed to be the closest thing to a full fledged relationship that until that moment, I had run across. He was attractive, seemingly emotionally available, and he said that he had been looking for a good partner to marry and to settle down with. He was the first man that I had seen that seemed to be on the same track as I. We had, from my perspective, a very close and passionate relationship that showed the promise of much, much more. We had discussed marriage, but all those were were discussions. To me it felt way too quick and I felt a "check" in my spirit. It was like this little tiny voice said, "you've got plenty of time, just proceed slowly..." I'm glad that I did.

In late June, (he told me much later), that he had decided it would be fun to hook with some stranger on GROWLR and to be the recipient of anal sex -- bareback. He in fact did the deed and literally afterwards as he was getting dressed afterwards, the stranger told him, "Stan, I forgot to tell you...I'm POZ, but undetectable." Stan literally went to the emergency room to receive treatment. In turn, this opened the door for a 6 month window where he could seroconvert and become positive himself. (Thankfully, that window has closed and he has remained negative.)

As if this were not enough, one week later, he hooked up with a stranger on SCRUFF. Whatever it was that they did must have been totally indescribable, because the next morning, they went to the county courthouse and got MARRIED. Needless to say, this played with my head because I felt like I had issues...or that I wasn't good enough....and he'd been with me for 7 months..but whatever happened that one night with this other man had made him run and get married.

After much soul searching and discussing the matter with my pastor, I learned that this said far more about Stan than it did with me. So I spent the remaining part of the summer and the entire fall, recovering from the shock and the hurt.

By Thanksgiving I had given up on the concept of ever finding love from another gay man. In fact, I told friends that it was time for me to fold up the rainbow flag and put it away...and turn in the gay card. By mid-December I was looking forward to the holidays.

In early December, Lovey contacted me and wanted me to consider having the family celebration at her house this year in Newport News, VA. This meant that my son and grandson and my daughter Jessica, and me would head down to that area on Christmas Eve morning.

At the appointed day, we loaded up our vehicles and headed to Lovey's house for a wonderful holiday celebration. We spent the time upon our arrival, getting last minute tasks taken care of before church that night. Lovey is a minister and pastors a large church in the area and so we were planning to attend the late service that night.

We got back to her place late. The grandson needed to get into bed. We needed to wrap a few presents and put them under the tree for the morning and then crash ourselves.

Having finally finishing all our tasks by around midnight, we all said our good night and found our respective beds to crash into. I had the couch in the living room. With the house very quiet, I decided to open my IPad and open SCRUFF to kill sometime before i got sleepy. I enjoyed looking at all the fine men, knowing confidently that I would never find anyone who would ever take me of any kind of interest.

As I scrolled through all the nice looking specimens, one man caught my eye. It was a selfie of a very attractive man taken in his car. He had on a black t-shirt that was sleeveless and showed quite a muscular arm. He was listed as CMW. He was listed as white, 6'0, 195 pounds. His profile said he was muscle, daddy, guy next door. His profile indicated that he was into muscle, daddies, and guys next door. His interests were that he was an outdoors guy, and he works our 5 days per week. It said that he lived in Wisconsin, but that he was a very few miles away at that moment.

I did not focus on the fact that he lived in Wisconsin...only that he was in very close proximity to Lovey's house.

So, I did what any red blooded american gay man would do on this app -- I woofed at him!

It has been my repeated experience that when I woof at men who are gym rats and into muscles, they generally ignore me when I woof! Still, I swallowed my pride and Woofed to let this stranger know that he had made an impression on me!

With that, I turned off my phone, and went to sleep, fully confident, the CMW would ignore my attention.

On Christmas Day, I awoke very early because of the grandson's excitement about seeing what Santa had left. So we spent a long time opening presents and watching the grandson with his toys. As breakfast was being prepared, I looked on my IPad and was amazed that I had a new message on SCRUFF.

It came from CMW...and was written early that morning at 7:36am. It said, "Great profile and handsome face! Merry Christmas!"

I had just had some nice photographs taken by a professional photographer friend, one of which showed me in a pair of nice underwear. So I sent him that shot...with the message, "Back Atcha!"

Shortly thereafter, he sent me a similar shot, to which I responded, "Nice. Merry christmas!"

A quick response happened. "Didn't think it was sent. Have a merry day too. Yours was nice btw too! Fixing breakfast for my son."

So my curiosity was piqued. The man has children. Obviously gay...but lives a ways from here...interesting man I thought. Didn't want to come off too nosy, so I wrote to quick messages, "Cool. You're very nice. So you're not from Va?"

He responded with the same underwear pic he had sent before. I responded with, "Love that pic."

He then responded with a slightly longer message: "Yes, I've been over in the Virginia Beach area for 40 years. I just relocated to Wisconsin to do some work last November. So I live in the Milwaukee area of Wisconsin. There's a strong possibility I will be back here in 2017 when my contract is up. When I leave here tomorrow I'm headed up to Colonial Beach where I had an office for 20 years. I see you live in Northern Virginia."

Well, as I thought about this, the man is friendly...he is asking me leading questions...so he must be open for at least a pen pal friendship...

I continued. "Visiting here now. Yes, live in Alexandria."

He responded, "Ahh...well I'm getting ready to do Christmas. My daughter is coming in too. Chris here btw. You are a handsome man."

Well gee...he has said I'm handsome twice now. Perhaps there is some modicum of interest perhaps? How do I respond to that? I got flustered.

"I'm Frank. Headed to church." Sent him another one of my professional shots. He responded, "Enjoy and Merry Christmas!"

So to make sure he knew that I was enjoying this conversation, I said, "Chat later?"

"Absolutely!" he responded.

I gave him the wrong phone number when I responded and told him to TEXT.

He said, "Sexy. And I will text you later!"

"OK" I said.

It didn't dawn on me that I had given him the wrong number...but the next day I texted and said, "Good morning! Never heard from you!"

We we got all that sorted out...and made arrangements to meet at Bob Evans Restaurant in Fredericksburg on the Wednesday following Christmas. It was magical.

Will write more next time...