Virgin to the Life I've built up walls for protection with only one entrance -an impractical, artificial, invisible force field per say. I'm wondering why we as black gay men feel lonely seventy percent of the time, why we go through our "coming out" alone, worried about how we'll be perceived and received. Many of us, me included, keep our friendships and relationships to ourselves unable to share ourselves with our family, recreating new family members we label friends, whom at times we treat as strangers because of our own demons. So once again you grapple with the spirit of loneliness... Then you meet "him" and your world changes for a moment. Nothing else matters as you lose yourself in this one person. You lose yourself - never thinking that one day tragedy will strike and you will lose whom you thought was the love of your life. That dude, your rib, that one guy that has you so open, you disregard the use of latex... But who can you turn to like the straight folk when things go sour, when you have talked your best friend's ear off about it pretending to be so over it, when you are all prayed out, when you've listened to every single sad song in your music collection, where do you turn when you really want to reach out to your mother - the one who held you, kissed your "boo-boos" and made you feel better but now can't because she doesn't agree with who you are? Why has that unconditional love become conditional? Once again, you find yourself in this too familiar place of loneliness and despair. What the hell happened? Then you remember. It all comes flooding back to you... how you met your boys, and how you met his black ass...