Two Lucky

Tonight I had dinner with a good friend of mine, R. To be more specific, I made dinner for the both of us. In my head the night would play out flawlessly: a perfect five-course dinner, starting with a warm potato persillade (garlic and parsley), a seafood risotto, lamb stew with fennel, a simple salad, and chocolate mousse. We would eat and imbibe, laugh over drinks, and at the end of the night, fall asleep in each other’s arms. R is straight, so I knew the last chapter of my fantasy would be unwritten, but in fact, something worse happened. I burned my lamb stew.

I met R during my sophmore year in college. It was also the year I came out. I was 22. We were in the same first-year Japanese class, and even before we got to arigato, I was in the maws of a major crush. There is a reason why crushes are called so. And when you’re young and unskilled yet in the ways of seeing the forest for the trees, a crush is generally what you (and all your sympathetic friends in tow) feel under the weight of your magnificent melodrama. I couldn’t help myself. In the end, our friendship, which had been good and honest, turned into a right mess, a mess which I compounded one night after I chowed down some imported creminis and told him I loved him.

In the years to come, we would slowly find our way back into each other’s lives, and our friendship now is one of the most solid and good things that have come from letting time temper our emotions.

But the fact is I do love him. And even though he will never love me in the same way, it’s okay. I can honestly say I want nothing save for him to be healthy and happy. It may not be a tested love, or even a reciprocated love, but in that this feeling, like love, swells in my heart and brims to my tips - who am I to call it otherwise?

As I wondered about my feelings for R, it led me to think about my feelings for Rusty, and how others have persisted in de-valuing our love, doubting its validity, as if there were a threshold, or a specific mark it has to reach before it is legitimate - be it a certificate, a ceremony, or a child.

In the time Rusty and I were together, and even now, their voices continue to ring from the calamitous “All gays will rot in hell (see comment in previous post),” to the more perplexing, but no less injurious “But you were only together for three years…” Some others even refuse to acknowledge our relationship, and send me cards saying they are “so sorry for the loss of my friend.” Seeing that the words “husband” and “wife” are already rapidly losing currency in today’s world, you would think “partner” would not be quite so hard to utter.

“To have and to hold, for better or worse; for richer, for poorer; in sickness and in health; to love and to cherish, till death do us part.”

Where have I been found wanting?

There are so, so many ways I can defend my love, but the true test is a simple one: I feel it. I know it. I trust it. This is what love feels like. In the aftermath of Rusty’s death, while he is no longer here to fill my heart, I need only to look at his photograph, to feel this ache inside, to know again what love feels like.

Many people have asked me if I would, or could love again. My first reaction is that I haven’t stopped. My second reaction, more to the point of the question, is yes. Could I love again? Yes. Could I love anyone more than I loved Rusty? I don’t know. That would have to depend on so many other factors, factors which I really have very little control over. I am not even sure if I care.

All I know for sure is this: That one cannot truly live without love. That love is vital to life as oxygen; it is its muse. And that if one day I should be so lucky to find another man who loves me, I would definitely take care to keep an eye on him, and on my lamb stew.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 26th, 2007 at 3:09 am and is filed under New York. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.