My Gay Comrades

Last evening was the one year anniversary of my asking my Fiancee to marry me. I took her out to dinner at a fabulous little restaurant. We were seated next to a large table with a family of eight or ten celebrating what looked like their mother/grandmother's birthday. Sitting facing us was a woman in her mid-to-late-fifties with very short gray hair, a beige blazer and a red collared shirt. I poked my Fiancee, telling her to check out our lesbian friend (as I always do when I see "one of us" in public).

We forgot all about her as we enjoyed our amazing meal (mussels in a mustard wine sauce, duck for her, lamb for me), but as this woman's family filed out to leave she was the last in line. On her way out she stopped at our table, nodded and said "Evening, ladies" before following her wife out the door.

That is what I love about being gay. Gay men tip their hats to us when they walk by the coffee shop we're lounging at. Lesbians honk at us on the highway, waving excitedly. The butch girl who sweeps out the back of the tiny grocery store in Nowhere, Maine nods and says "how ya doin'?" The gay manager of the Au Bon Pain gives me extra bread for free with a wink. It's like being in a secret club - out of a room full of people only the gays are aware of the silent camaraderie.

It makes me feel like I'm not quite so alone when I drop my Fiancee's hand walking through the common because there are a bunch of guys hanging out by the basketball court. Like if that bitch in the Market Basket parking lot screaming "DYKE" at me really chases me, there will be people around to help. And most of all, like I don't just get snickered at in the mall for being recognized as gay. I get respect from the old school men and women out there who remember switching partners when the red light flashed and running from the cops when the door you had to knock on exactly five times got busted down. They look at us, young, in love, planning our wedding, with pride and pain and hope. I may still get spit on and told I can't see my wife in any hospital outside my state, but I've never gone through what they did.

As much as I fear losing all my rights to a nation-wide ban or on the Massachusetts ballot of '08, as much as I get gay bashed and live in fear of really being beaten while alone one night, I have to remember that from '69 to now, it has gotten better. It really has gotten better.

Of course, we still have a long, long way to go.