A gay old time

As Guy and I were taking pictures of a wedding party in the park this morning, a familiar feeling came back to me. It was the feeling that he and I are an old gay couple.

When I went to to visit Guy in Charleston earlier this summer, we went to a wine tasting on the bank of the river and later ended up at Vandalia Lounge, the town's hippest hangout. It was a fun atmosphere and a pretty upscale clientele. Guy was drinking some specialty house drink with cream and mint and I was wearing my new dress shirt with pink stripes. As we're hanging out together and chatting, a crew of drunkdrunkdrunk girls with hippyish tendencies showed up to hear the surprisingly good band Magic Bronson.

Time passes and the girls consume more drinks, and before long one of them approaches me to ask tentatively, "Are you two a couple?" Without actually saying the word "yes' we indicated that, yes, we're a couple. The rest of the evening was a blur of hugs and stories about gay relatives and even drunken challenges to our newfound non-masculinity. (Translated, this means one of the drunk girls tried to dance seductively while claiming, "You think you don't like this, but you really do.") Openly gay couple are apparently rarer in Charleston, because in Charlotte we couldn't have attracted attention if we'd French kissed out on the infield of the Lowes Motor Speedway.

So, fun times had and great story for friends. Flash forward to today where we find ourselves in Charlotte, walking past an outdoor wedding, and we're drafted into taking pictures of the 12-person wedding crew on each of 8 different cameras. And as we're standing there, each fiddling with a different camera and each admonishing Jake to stay clear of the shot, it occurs to both of us: here we are again. The old gay couple with the wedding bands and the black lab out for morning walk together. If only Guy had said the comment he was thinking at that moment: "Back when we were getting married, the photographer forgot to put film in the camera...".

It's odd neither of us finds ourselves in these situations with anyone else -- only with each other. I guess we just have that look.