Sorry I didn’t write, I was getting married. I am now a husband to my husband. I didn’t think I needed to get married. Growing up, even before I knew I was homoseksual, I couldn’t picture it. Not with a woman, or a man, or anyone. The molecular desire watered down by shame and confusion. And in the funhouse maze of my twenties: my decade of pissing the bed, of empty magnums of wine rolling around my Chernobyl of a bedroom, of asking bewildered first dates if they wanted to get cocaine, or rocketing myself to tropospheric levels of druggy hope in the face of a guy I’d met hours earlier at an after hours and had limby sex with in some apartment in Queens, never knowing his name and never seeing him again… I wanted love. I wanted to be loved. But after I got clean and the sun baked my brain till I could finally see straight, I felt like the oldest person who ever lived, at the age of twenty-seven. I was a no-nonsense wharf hag, charred and endearing, running a tavern for fisherman after they returned from a days-long jaunt into the watery void. I decided, then accepted, that I would be alone, and that I could love me as best as I could, and that would be enough. Then I met him and I unbuilt myself.
***
The first time I ever saw you was from the side. I saw your beautiful nose and mouth, and your side-eye after I dropped my phone loudly in an AA meeting and laughed at myself because no one else did. I was embarrassed and wanted to be unnoticed. I was new to LA, and not sure where I fit in. And any attention, other than attention I sought, was not welcome. You smiled, though. I noticed that. You kept your characteristic, supernaturally perfect seated posture, maintaining your quiet power, as you always do. But there was a flash of a grin. Sly and mischievous. Which is your core. Playful, curious, one step ahead. At first I thought it was a pity-smile. Casual solidarity another gay gives to a gay stranger in public. But a part of me knew you wanted to make me feel at ease. You were already caring for me. Accepting my klutziness. My lack of spatial awareness. Which is what you do every day. You make me feel cared for. You take care of me.
I saw you a few days later in front of me in line at 7-Eleven— the same 7-Eleven that just weeks before, a person was attacked by an ax-wielding maniac. A true Los Angeles meet cute. You turned around to introduce yourself, and I took you in for the first time. You were handsome in way that shot directly into my heart and tore through my blood. And you were mysterious. Not an unknowable mystery, but a mystery that made me feel certain, for just a flicker of a moment, that you were going to change my life. I wasn’t sure how, and that made me excited. You made me feel hope. I think that’s as good as love at first sight.
Love came quickly for me, too. I wanted to tell you so many times. And I knew that you knew I loved you, and that you felt the same. But you were patient, and took your time. So I followed your lead. We took our time. We let our love blossom into something healthy and functional, which I wasn’t used to.
Sometimes it felt like too much time. I am a very impatient person. I tried not to let you see that in the beginning. Instead, I tortured my family and friend. I remember when I told my best friend about you for the first time, he simply said, “Don’t fuck this up.” Because patience was not something that comes naturally to me. And it still isn’t. But you have rubbed off me. You show me how to be patient and gentle. And real love is patient and gentle.
When you are near me, even across the room, I feel at ease, just like I felt the first time I saw your grin in the meeting. A feel easy because just knowing that you love me means I’m doing something right. And sometimes that’s all I need to know, especially on days when I don’t know anything else.
What a beautiful piece of writing! Love and congratulations to you both, Carey!
so beautiful, so happy for you both 💖