25 years ago today
(edited version of a post I share periodically)
Where was I a quarter-century ago? Right here, pretty much - but that, in itself, was new. I was starting a new year in a new life after a reboot. In the past few months, I'd:
- turned 30
- moved to New York City and started to figure it out
- left behind (and apologized to) a man I loved very much, but had no future with (although I did then take him down to my parents' for Christmas)
- started a new, albeit hideous, job
- joined a new musical group
- seen several Broadway shows
- had some dates, middling at best
and here it was, the new year, somewhat settled and wondering what to do next. I'd had vague plans of spending each weekend exploring the city, and figuring out where I really wanted to live, because my small one-bedroom apartment in Inwood, at the very tippy top of Manhattan, felt a bit like exile.
Oh, and I'd also reconnected with one of my best friends from college. Vance and I had maintained a hilarious and entertaining snail-mail relationship that had faded in and out over the years. After a couple of years of silence, he'd sent me a Christmas card that got forwarded from my Philly address - and included his e-mail address. This was at a time when the Internet was an exciting and new thing to most of us. The only fun part of my hideous job (tech support and training at a law firm) was to actually explore the internet, with email and the World Wide Web and things we don't talk about so much any more, like Archie. I now had my own email address at home, and of course the dial-up modem used to access it. So Vance was now in Detroit, but we were emailing each other and getting caught up and he was telling me all about this MUSH he helped run (and what the heck a MUSH was) and sent me instructions on how to get to it.
So, here it is, Friday the 13th, and work is slow and I'm faffing about on the computer and was trying to follow his instructions on getting to the MUSH. Newbie that I was, it took me several false tries to finally get it - but I found myself finally logged on. I was so excited, I was literally trembling. I looked at the instructions and "paged" Vance's character and he showed up and was all like "who are you" and I was like "It's me!" and we were all like OMG. So I 'chatted' live with him for probably the first time since graduation.
Yeah, so? I know, I know, we all text with everyone constantly now, using little devices that are a thousand times as powerful as the PC I was using, but in 1995, chatting via text with someone, particularly someone far away, felt like landing on the moon. In college, Vance and I used to IM each other across campus on the old Prime system - and here we were doing the exact same thing in completely different cities! So we blew off the rest of the afternoon chatting away, sending texts over our dial-up modem lines and that brought me great joy.
So in a giddy mood and with no plans in this strange town, when work was over, I decided to check out a gay social group that met at the community center on Friday nights, just to see if it was worth going back to for real. I'd noticed the flyer on the bulletin board, it was called "Gentle Men". Ooo, I thought, that sounds nice, very suited to this vanilla man. The meeting didn't start until 8 or so, so I went to see "Bullets over Broadway" at a nearby movie theater and then went to the Center. The facilitators were setting up the meeting room, so a bunch of us were waiting out in the hall. The gentle man that caught my eye was a very well dressed handsome man (WDHM) with a receding hairline and a bushy moustache, but he seemed stand-offish and I chatted with some other guys instead until we were invited into the meeting.
Gentle Men is a neat idea (I don't know if it still exists) and it was sort of like an encounter group or group therapy in a touchy-feely (but deliberately non-sexual) way. The room was completely clear of furniture except for pillows around the parameter, and we (I guess about forty of us?) sat on the pillows and introduced ourselves in order. It was somewhat structured, and I think we had to say our name and what we were feeling at the time. Then we did an "intimacy exercise" that was really cool - non-sexual (ostensibly) and you didn't have to do it if you didn't want. You picked a partner, hugged front-to-front for one minute and tried to match your breathing so that he exhaled while you inhaled and vice-versa. After a minute, the facilitator rang a bell and you switched partners. This went on for a half an hour, so everyone got to 'meet' many other men this way. With some men, you couldn't click at all, some were perfectly nice, and with some, the simple act was so bzzt with energy that your glasses fogged up. The WDHM had not seemed to be into it during the first round of talking, but I did get to hug with him and it was very nice indeed.
After the exercise, we sat on pillows again and went around in order and talked about whatever we wanted. I talked about how excited I was to make contact with Vance via this newfangled internet thing and how that had just made my day. Everyone else had different stories, and everyone was really nice. WDHM for some reason really did not want to share and declined a couple of times, but talked a bit. I was like, "hmmm, why is he here if he doesn't want to do this?" Although I did have my eye on him because he was the most handsome thing in the room, and the whole point of this group was to meet other men, I'd pretty much ruled him out, he seemed like a grump. Several of the others were obviously very happy to meet me, and I was very much enjoying myself.
Eventually, the session ended, we're invited to all go to the local diner for coffee and there were lots of handshakes and some exchanging of numbers and I got quite a few "I hope we see you again - it was wonderful to meet you!"'s (*preen*). So I'm out in the hallway again fiddling with my backpack and getting my coat on. and WDHM approaches. I said, "Hi - that hug we had was really nice!" He said, "yes, would you like to get together sometime?"
Holy crap, I did not see that coming. After picking my jaw up off the floor, I came up with some version of "why, yes, WDHM, I would!" and we exchanged numbers. I asked if he was going out to the diner with everyone else and we could have coffee right then, but he said no, he had an early Saturday appointment. I did go out to the diner with the others and had a very nice time. But WDHM and I talked on the phone on Sunday night - a phone call that ended with me meeting him for dinner - a date that only reluctantly ended the next afternoon because I had to go to a rehearsal.
I used to claim that I still had the sheet of paper with his number on it - in fact, have a memory of putting it in a little frame to go on a bookshelf - but it seems to have disappeared with all the renovations and stuff we did over the last few years. No matter, we have our own phone number now. We also have wedding rings with each other's name inscribed on the inside, and the word "love".
---
This is what WDHM looked like about that time. Can you believe how cute he was/is?
Also, Vance now lives in Connecticut, an hour north of NYC, so I get to see him now, although not enough.
Where was I a quarter-century ago? Right here, pretty much - but that, in itself, was new. I was starting a new year in a new life after a reboot. In the past few months, I'd:
- turned 30
- moved to New York City and started to figure it out
- left behind (and apologized to) a man I loved very much, but had no future with (although I did then take him down to my parents' for Christmas)
- started a new, albeit hideous, job
- joined a new musical group
- seen several Broadway shows
- had some dates, middling at best
and here it was, the new year, somewhat settled and wondering what to do next. I'd had vague plans of spending each weekend exploring the city, and figuring out where I really wanted to live, because my small one-bedroom apartment in Inwood, at the very tippy top of Manhattan, felt a bit like exile.
Oh, and I'd also reconnected with one of my best friends from college. Vance and I had maintained a hilarious and entertaining snail-mail relationship that had faded in and out over the years. After a couple of years of silence, he'd sent me a Christmas card that got forwarded from my Philly address - and included his e-mail address. This was at a time when the Internet was an exciting and new thing to most of us. The only fun part of my hideous job (tech support and training at a law firm) was to actually explore the internet, with email and the World Wide Web and things we don't talk about so much any more, like Archie. I now had my own email address at home, and of course the dial-up modem used to access it. So Vance was now in Detroit, but we were emailing each other and getting caught up and he was telling me all about this MUSH he helped run (and what the heck a MUSH was) and sent me instructions on how to get to it.
So, here it is, Friday the 13th, and work is slow and I'm faffing about on the computer and was trying to follow his instructions on getting to the MUSH. Newbie that I was, it took me several false tries to finally get it - but I found myself finally logged on. I was so excited, I was literally trembling. I looked at the instructions and "paged" Vance's character and he showed up and was all like "who are you" and I was like "It's me!" and we were all like OMG. So I 'chatted' live with him for probably the first time since graduation.
Yeah, so? I know, I know, we all text with everyone constantly now, using little devices that are a thousand times as powerful as the PC I was using, but in 1995, chatting via text with someone, particularly someone far away, felt like landing on the moon. In college, Vance and I used to IM each other across campus on the old Prime system - and here we were doing the exact same thing in completely different cities! So we blew off the rest of the afternoon chatting away, sending texts over our dial-up modem lines and that brought me great joy.
So in a giddy mood and with no plans in this strange town, when work was over, I decided to check out a gay social group that met at the community center on Friday nights, just to see if it was worth going back to for real. I'd noticed the flyer on the bulletin board, it was called "Gentle Men". Ooo, I thought, that sounds nice, very suited to this vanilla man. The meeting didn't start until 8 or so, so I went to see "Bullets over Broadway" at a nearby movie theater and then went to the Center. The facilitators were setting up the meeting room, so a bunch of us were waiting out in the hall. The gentle man that caught my eye was a very well dressed handsome man (WDHM) with a receding hairline and a bushy moustache, but he seemed stand-offish and I chatted with some other guys instead until we were invited into the meeting.
Gentle Men is a neat idea (I don't know if it still exists) and it was sort of like an encounter group or group therapy in a touchy-feely (but deliberately non-sexual) way. The room was completely clear of furniture except for pillows around the parameter, and we (I guess about forty of us?) sat on the pillows and introduced ourselves in order. It was somewhat structured, and I think we had to say our name and what we were feeling at the time. Then we did an "intimacy exercise" that was really cool - non-sexual (ostensibly) and you didn't have to do it if you didn't want. You picked a partner, hugged front-to-front for one minute and tried to match your breathing so that he exhaled while you inhaled and vice-versa. After a minute, the facilitator rang a bell and you switched partners. This went on for a half an hour, so everyone got to 'meet' many other men this way. With some men, you couldn't click at all, some were perfectly nice, and with some, the simple act was so bzzt with energy that your glasses fogged up. The WDHM had not seemed to be into it during the first round of talking, but I did get to hug with him and it was very nice indeed.
After the exercise, we sat on pillows again and went around in order and talked about whatever we wanted. I talked about how excited I was to make contact with Vance via this newfangled internet thing and how that had just made my day. Everyone else had different stories, and everyone was really nice. WDHM for some reason really did not want to share and declined a couple of times, but talked a bit. I was like, "hmmm, why is he here if he doesn't want to do this?" Although I did have my eye on him because he was the most handsome thing in the room, and the whole point of this group was to meet other men, I'd pretty much ruled him out, he seemed like a grump. Several of the others were obviously very happy to meet me, and I was very much enjoying myself.
Eventually, the session ended, we're invited to all go to the local diner for coffee and there were lots of handshakes and some exchanging of numbers and I got quite a few "I hope we see you again - it was wonderful to meet you!"'s (*preen*). So I'm out in the hallway again fiddling with my backpack and getting my coat on. and WDHM approaches. I said, "Hi - that hug we had was really nice!" He said, "yes, would you like to get together sometime?"
Holy crap, I did not see that coming. After picking my jaw up off the floor, I came up with some version of "why, yes, WDHM, I would!" and we exchanged numbers. I asked if he was going out to the diner with everyone else and we could have coffee right then, but he said no, he had an early Saturday appointment. I did go out to the diner with the others and had a very nice time. But WDHM and I talked on the phone on Sunday night - a phone call that ended with me meeting him for dinner - a date that only reluctantly ended the next afternoon because I had to go to a rehearsal.
I used to claim that I still had the sheet of paper with his number on it - in fact, have a memory of putting it in a little frame to go on a bookshelf - but it seems to have disappeared with all the renovations and stuff we did over the last few years. No matter, we have our own phone number now. We also have wedding rings with each other's name inscribed on the inside, and the word "love".
---
This is what WDHM looked like about that time. Can you believe how cute he was/is?
Also, Vance now lives in Connecticut, an hour north of NYC, so I get to see him now, although not enough.