There is the usual shaking of the head. And the usual “you’re not jealous?”, said with an incredulous voice.

“No, why should I be?”, I normally reply, continuing with “and anyway, I trust him”.

Of course, this is so. I do trust him. I think this relationship is more important to him than anything else. He expresses things by actions, as he has always pointed out. He doesn’t go down to his home town because of me and the dogs. I get invited to almost anything he goes to. He stays at my messy place even if it must irritate him a lot – his place being so perfectly tidy and all.

He doesn’t really do words. He’s a visual person. An action type of guy. Words, to him, are meaningless if the actions say something different – so he chooses to express everything by action rather than using words.

I keep it all under control. But, still, sometimes it’s difficult.

After all, the response I give is usually, 99% of the time, true.

But, occasionally it isn’t. But that’s a little like the exchange – ‘How are you?” – “I’m fine thanks”. It’s the way I am. I have to project happiness and be positive. Negativity annoys me.

But, as you, my dear reader, will know by now, what goes on inside is not the same as the projected Andy. The inside Andy is full of doubt and insecurity and, yes, jealousy!

“Some people said ‘But what about Andy?'”, he reports.

Yes, indeed. What about Andy? Do you honestly think he feels nothing? Do you think that comments like ‘It’s only sex and as long as he comes back to me and doesn’t fall in love” or “I don’t care” make him feel better?

The other thing is – what did he see in them? Or is it that I am just the different one? I am a reaction to the ‘norm’.

“No, he’s not in fashion. That’s good”, he tells someone last night. They all agree. It’s much better if I have nothing to do with the fashion industry or art or something ‘gay’ like that.

But, then, that means we have even less in common. That means that he has plenty of opportunity and I don’t. Or something like that.

I was jealous of Si, his colleague. Si is very nice. He says things to me like “He loves you very much”. He says the things that F doesn’t. Si is straight, apparently. But this is the fashion world. Worse still, it is the Italian fashion world with the men who are Italian and who think that being married or having a girlfriend doesn’t exclude them from having casual sex with other men! But I’m no longer jealous of Si. He is a really nice guy. I know that he and F are close. But I don’t think there is anything else.

Again, I wonder what he sees in them. Unattractive, camp, over-effeminate guys.

I dislike a lot of gay people – because of this and their seeming inability not to involve casual sex in their conversation at some point or other.

The guy says; “I love Gay Romeo. You can chat and then you have some nice guy come round and have sex”

Actually he didn’t quite say that. The person he was chatting to, in this story, which happened two days ago, had a girlfriend and wanted money for the sex. Apparently they negotiated. He was explaining how this was the first time he had paid but how it was so much cheaper in the long run because he didn’t have to buy the cocaine and the drinks that would have been invariably required. And, apparently, the guy smiled and was nice all the time. He told the guy to keep every Wednesday free.

It’s not that I feel that I’m missing out – I just have never wanted that type of life. Nor, really, do I want to hear about it. It’s not that I want to shut my ears to it. It’s that it is, for me, quite depressing to hear. It worries me that I would end up like that. It’s the same with homeless people. After all, the sex part is not important, it’s the lack of real emotion, of intensity between two people that’s important (even if the sex would be ‘intense’ – it’s not the same). Surely?

And then I think – maybe it’s not jealousy. Maybe it’s insecurity? Yes, not being sure, perhaps? Maybe?

I’ve never understood why, when people get really jealous, all their rage is taken out, not on their partner but on the person their partner is with (or they think is with). That has never happened to me. If I got jealous in the past, the only thing is that I don’t want to see the other person. But I’m not angry or anything towards them but towards my partner.

Perhaps it’s not actually jealousy. And perhaps that’s why I don’t understand it?

Perhaps I should have kept the original subtitle to the blog. The one about coming here to find the passion and that it is here, all around me but that it never really touches me inside.

Perhaps I just can’t get the same feelings and I am mistaking one for another?