A Queer Life

  I suppose you could say it was a whirlwind romance. You could also say it was a long time coming. But since I don’t trust romance, whirlwind or otherwise, I’m pretty uncomfortable with all of it. There is a term for these giddy feelings: NRE- New Relationship Energy. New relationship energy frightens me. I have always run from it. But here I am, at the ripe old age of forty-three and I decided to give it a shot for the first time. Tyler was gone for work again. He had been gone for seven days so far and I needed some adult companionship. So I invited my friend, Ariel, over. I met Ariel over a year ago at the Pride parade. Ariel had a kid who liked our kids. She had two partners, a guy and a non-binary partner. Poly people in the house! Tyler and I became friends with her and her family. We didn’t see them a lot, because we lived an hour away, but they felt like family right away. I remember meeting Ariel’s husband, Charles, and how his voice and his energy felt like a warm hug. A...

I saw him the first time when I was shopping, not applying for a job. I applied for a job a few weeks before and they hired someone else. But I liked the store, I liked the whole damn company, so I kept shopping there despite my bitterness at not being hired. So there I was, in the store, browsing, when a door to the back opened and for a brief second before it closed again I saw the inner company workings, but mostly I saw him . I had seen enough videos, I knew who he was. He was the company president. This store was a small extension of a company that created a lifestyle (and sometimes, an obsession) for women that encompassed principles of clothing, hair, makeup, personality, relationships, child-rearing (and more!). They created videos, wrote blogs, and held events educating their customers on their system. I knew all the company’s main players. Aleiah was one of the mainest and he was Tom, her husband. That moment of seeing him struck me like a holy vision. Our eyes didn’t meet a...