Two entries in one day? Yes.

Reading over old blog entries, I saw how much being Single bothered me last year. But working on 'relationship issues' or whatever New Age Sensitive Male terms you want to call it, is not going to be a resolution this year. I've come to a wall of sorts, and am not sure if it's really a wall. How existential is that?

Oh, it's true I have problems. Maybe I've reached the point where I cannot even live with someone else. But how much of a problem is that really? I have friends and a few hobbies -- what more do I need?

I had coffee with a guy recently who asked me, "But don't you miss the intimacy?"

(That would be intimacy with a capital "I".) What I said, to the growing disbelief in his eyes, was: "I don't miss intimacy at all; I've had a lifetime of it." (Hah, that showed him, huh? Chased Mr. Intimacy right out the door. No second coffee date there!)

Of course, what I now realize I believe is: Intimacy = Pain. (Didn't I see that on a t-shirt?) And how I should have responded was: "Intimacy can be faked, just like everything else."

What is intimacy? Perhaps I should be ashamed or something to admit that at age 42, I'm not sure I've experienced Intimacy. But I could give a rat's fat ass.

I can certainly provide plenty of examples of what it is not.

So before I leave you readers to go dig out your Camus and Neitzche for a little lite New Years' Eve reading, it's not as all bad as all that with me, your ole buddy Hugshyhermit.

You see, I've come full circle. With the right guy, I am ready, yes! ready! to Experience Intimacy. I think I always have been ready, actually. Just in the wrong place at the wrong time and with the wrong guy. So many wrong places, so many wrong guys.

(heh heh.) Now off I go, to Washington DC, and maybe yet, to experience intimacy -- it's never too soon! But it's not a resolution, no. It doesn't make sense. It will happen when it happens, whether 2005 or never and I think this is probably a good place as any to wrap up my entries for 2004.