I don’t share my inner emotions very easily, especially those pertaining to love. I’ve always been able to share my body freely, easily, and comfortably, but there’s not usually a whole lot of emotion attached to the sexual act for me, beyond that of sharing pleasure with the person I’m with at the time.

Yet I am capable of love, and of being in love. It doesn’t happen often, but it does happen. Very few people in my forty-six years have seen that side of me; indeed, many of my lovers probably think that side does not exist. But it does -- I’m just not as indiscriminate about sharing that side of myself as I am with sharing my body.

Perhaps it’s a trust issue, perhaps it’s one of privacy, I don’t really know, but the reality is that few people have ever known me completely. Taking stock of all my relationships, I’ve realized that there’s really only one person who knows my emotional side, what she calls the “little boy” in me. She’s the only one who knows how I felt when I lost my mother at thirteen, the anecdotes that illustrate how proud I was of my father, how I coped with raising a child alone.

Though she’d like me to be monogamous like most of us were raised to expect, she loves me, anyway and accepts me as I am, though I know it‘s not an easy task. It is no small thing to her that she is probably the only one who sees my emotional side; that I am emotionally loyal to her, if not physically monogamous, which is fidelity of another sort.

Thank you, J, for believing that I’m worth it.