Cancel The Jet

I doubt I will be spending a week at Bruce’s boyfriend’s house in the Hamptons this summer.  Bruce’s relationship with the guy is going down in flames faster than the Hindenburg.  I didn’t expect this man to be long-term, but I thought he would be around until fall.

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The New Generation

When I moved into my house many years ago, there was a 16-year-old girl living across the street.  Andrea was a cheerleader and one of the popular kids in her class.  She was also a bit of a wild child.  Fast forward to currently times.  Andrea runs a foundation, is married to a lawyer and has two teen age sons.  Her oldest son, age 14, came out two months ago. 

Yesterday, I attended our Pride Parade with this young man and his mother along with many other family members and a few close friends.  For two and half hours we cheered and clapped as the various groups and floats passed by.  The young man was amazed.  While at the parade, the young man’s friend, also 14, came out to his mother as bisexual.  If that wasn’t enough, a family friend was at the parade with her three teenage daughters.  One daughter has come out as bisexual, and another has started transitioning to male.  It was the first Pride Parade for all of these teenagers.  While not a perfect world, these teenagers have come out in a much more accepting environment with loving parents who take the time find out what they need to do to support their children. 

I felt proud to be an older gay man watching the next generation enjoy their first Pride Parade.  It’s not going to be an easy journey, but many doors have already been opened by the generations who fought the battles before them.  The new generations are being trained to continue the quest for equal rights, and to make sure those rights are not taken away by future Supreme Court decisions.

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Rainbows and Muscle Cubs

Monsoon season has started here.  Rain started in the late afternoon and continued into the evening.  I attended a friend’s art opening in the western suburbs before stopping by Bruce’s Pridefest party.  The rain stopped while I was in the gallery.  Mother Nature rewarded us with a double rainbow over city.  A fitting way to kick off Pride weekend given the recent Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe, which seem to be providing the catalyst for throwing same-sex marriage under the bus next.

I arrived at Bruce’s party a little before 9.  I was the last guest to arrive.  As expected, Bruce’s boyfriend and I were thirty years older than most of the other guests.  The guests were mostly gay men and straight women in smart outfits.  I met the most adorable muscle cub with hair in all the right places.  He, along with his husband, were sporting military type haircuts and masculine dress along with black lace-up platform boots with 8-inch stack heels.  Quite the contradiction!  These guys must have been really short as even with 8-inch heels they were shorter than me. 

I had a cocktail and socialized a bit before heading home.  I passed on playing beer pong.  I was home before 11 and in bed soon after.

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Trashed At Dinner

Last weekend flew by.  One minute I was at a gallery opening with JP on Friday night and the next thing I knew it was Sunday night.  Along the way, I did laundry, yard/garden chores, hit the gym a few times, watched Netflix and attended Bruce’s birthday dinner, which turned into a most interesting event.

Bruce hosted cocktails at his house before dinner at a high-end fish restaurant in the heart of downtown.  When I arrived for cocktails, the boyfriend was already there with his long-time friends, a married couple who split time between Atlanta and Los Angeles.  CJ was running uncharacteristically late so he met us at the restaurant.

Over dinner, the boyfriend and his friends managed to work their PhDs into the conversation. The husband was giving a lecture the next day on the Russian invasion of Ukraine which included a warning as to why Putin’s replacement may be worse than Putin.  The conversation shifted so I never heard his assumptions.  The wife, who is now a potter of some acclaim, got trashed at dinner and proceeded to spill the contents of her handbag on the floor in the middle of dinner.  She pushed her food around the plate while continuing to drink. At one point I thought she was going to puke so I moved my chair away from her.  She didn’t barf but left the table and walked out of the restaurant during the dessert course.  The dinner soon ended as the husband ordered an Uber to whisk his wife away.  The boyfriend paid for dinner which was a relief as the bill was most certainly close to a grand. 

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