Hello again! Maybe you remember my 2022 Los Angeles Affairs essay that described my relationship with Ruben. We got married in Mexico in 2019 when I was 74 years old, my first marriage. But Covid-19 and the pneumonia knocked him down in November 2021, and I was a widow at age 76.
I am really in my best time when I am coupled. Therefore, it did not spend much time before my association desire began to begin. I exchanged contact information with several types, but without any serious follow -up. At my age and living with HIV, I suppose it was not what most homosexual men sought as a possible romantic candidate. I had almost resigned to a lonely life.
Then I went to see and write a review of a remarkable show of Haitian artists at the Fowler Museum in UCLA on March 25, 2023, the night of the opening of Myrlanda Constant, and was waiting in the row for the previous conference. I had to talk to the little woman stopped in front of me. He was there with Olga and Tanya, two friends from his condominium building who had gone to the ladies room. When they returned to join the line, they saw how Lori and I were involved in an animated conversation. When the line began to move, Olga said: “You will sit with us, right?” And I did.
After the conference, Lori and I wandered together in the galleries, commenting on the spectacular art of accounts and sequins and opened with each other. He spent about eight years after his divorce and had two children, one of them with two his own children. We promised to keep in touch.
I invited her to the theater shortly after, in turn, she asked me to her brother's house and sister -in -law for a spring dinner as a kind of secular wink to Easter. She told her brother and copied me in the message. She thought she would really enjoy knowing me, but not as if this were a “appointment” or nothing.
Then, I wrote to thank him for the night and added: “But do you know what? I would actually like to go out with you. “And then we started. He took some time to negotiate the HIV part, which turned out to be less complicated than any of us had imagined. I had to remember that U = U, or undetectable = not assumed. One of Lori's children is not binary, and they were delighted to know that his mother was now dating a queer man!
Lori and I consider ourselves “separated”, a word that we learned about a year in the relationship to mean a couple committed to each other, but still retaining their separate homes. I am in Lori's usually from Thursday to Sunday night and return home during the week to continue my writing. She could stay in my house, but I have three housemates and without a private bathroom, so it can be a bit uncomfortable. My favorite moment of the week is Thursday night when I act in your bed while I wait for a long weekend together.
Lori is my first girlfriend in 52 years. The last one was in 1971, just before he came out like a gay man. I have had a series of love relationships with men. Being a romantic couple is not strange to me, right now, again, with someone of a different genre. I would never claim to have “gone heterosexual” or that my love life with a woman is morally or, in any other way, better. I am not turning or proselling. It is not a term that I have used often for me in the past, but I think “queer” looks good now.
Interestingly, I learned that my three brothers had speculated about what could be of me, and they laughed with disbelief when my brother said he finally saw me establishing me with a “communist woman of curled hair.” Well, Lori is not a communist, but we are certainly on the same page when it comes to politics.
An old friend of mine reacted in this way: “Do you remember the Kinsey scale? Zero is exclusively heterosexual and 6 exclusively homosexual. Well, I have a total of 6, but most people are at some intermediate point. And it seems that includes. “
The 25 of each month, Lori and I celebrated another month along with flowers or a good dinner. On our first anniversary, we exchanged “Apartment” rings: Lori selected one of my jewelry (which gave me a rabbi lover more than 50 years), and chose one of it (which was given in Mexico for a partner who met on the street one day one day that only his lovely one found).
Now we are approaching two years of being a couple. We have met the families of the other. It turns out that we knew many people in common, and we both work in the same non -profit organization at different times. Our paths had crossed so many times although we had never met. We have traveled nationally and abroad and survive the rigors of the 24/7 Union. We celebrated the 70th of Lori with a family getaway last April, and we just fuck my 80º with a reading and game dinner for 40 of our friends in Los Angeles.
When I first went out in 1971, I believed that in a culture dominated by male like ours, an equal heterosexual relationship was almost impossible and that if you were looking for an association equally, your best opportunity was with someone of the same genre. There may be something really in that, but I have realized that everything is always much more complicated.
As Lori and I make our lives in evolving, shopping, prepare food, wash the dishes, plan events, make love, play Rummikub or spelling, I see that the genre is rarely the determining factor. We love each other regardless of our personal team.
We know that the days are becoming shorter, but I hope they never finish. And thanks to the myrlandia constant of Haiti for introducing Lori and me.
The author is a cultural editor for Peoplesworld.orgA biographer and translator. Can be found on Facebook in Facebook.com/eric.a.gordon. 585.
Los Angeles Affairs Chronices The search for romantic love in all its glorious expressions in the Los Angeles area, and we want to listen to their real history. We pay $ 400 for a published essay. Email [email protected]. You can find presentation guidelines here. You can find past columns here.
