Beth remained in the hospital a little longer than usual for a pregnancy simply because the doctors wanted to be sure that her blood pressure returned to normal (she had always had excellent blood pressure), and that there was no evidence that she had developed diabetes. We had lots of visitors over those few days. Everyone came to see Thalia,  officially known in my family as the Thanksgiving Baby. They finally released Beth and Thalia, under the orders that Beth was to take it easy for a while so that her body could recover, and that a visiting nurse would monitor her at home for a few weeks. That meant that I would have most of the baby duty. It wasn’t a problem because I was out on family leave for eight weeks.

We had already been discussing pediatricians and had decided to choose one near home rather than traveling to Boston. I do not really remember how I found Dr. Paula Heimberg, I only know I’m glad I did. To this day, she’s not only Thalia and Aaron’s pediatrician, we consider her a family friend. She works out of Garden City Pediatrics in Beverly. She’s the embodiment of how a doctor should be. I called her, and she scheduled an appointment with us before the baby was born. Because Beth was bedridden, I went alone and she spent an hour talking to me. We decided that she was the right choice for us, and were very happy to have her on board before the delivery.

Life with baby begins

Thalia’s room was all ready when we got home, and it was pretty cool. The room was bright and sunny, and the crib was decked out in colorful bedding. There were great mobiles hanging in her room. We had purchased a combination changing table/bureau and had moved a small pull out sofa into the room because Beth was going to breastfeed and I wanted her to have a comfortable spot. Of course, there was a small TV too since we’d be spending a significant amount of time there, particularly in the wee hours of the morning when Thalia Assuras was on.

Okay, I don’t want to say that Beth was OCD about Thalia, but she was. Thalia spent the first week in our room, but we were concerned about our two cats being able to jump into the bassinette so we moved her to her room because we had a cat tent over the crib. To say that they were curious was an understatement, but Ling Ling, our Maine Coon, was the most curious. She was only six months old when Thalia was born and had been the center of attention up to this point. In fact, Ling Ling took up residence at the very top of the cat tent so that she could see Thalia. We called her “watch kitty.”  Oh, yeah, did I mention that there was a pretty amazing camera attached to Thalia’s crib? Still, that wasn’t enough for Bethie. No sir!

We moved into the room with Thalia, spending nights on her floor in our sleeping bags. This didn’t go on for just a couple of weeks. It went on for just about three months. Beth sometimes reads more than she should. This time around, she got herself all wound up over SIDS. Now, I don’t want you to think I’m cavalier about SIDS. I am not. It is a real problem for newborns, and it was a frightening prospect for me as well because nobody really knew why it happened. However, being shaken awake every three hours to check if Thalia was still breathing took a bit of a toll over three months!

We had also decided that Thalia would not go into daycare until she turned six months. There was no real deep reason for this; Beth simply wanted the opportunity to bond with Thalia. So did I. However, we were both big believers that socialization was important. (We checked out many daycare settings, but settled on The Children’s Workshop in Waltham because it was close to where I worked.) I had met several mothers who were dead set against daycare, but in my mind they didn’t have very good reasons for their attitude. Basically, these women didn’t want their children to pick up germs and get sick. I wasn’t worried about germs and illness. Unfortunately, they are facts of life with children. Sooner or later, Thalia was going to be going to school and it was going to happen. My attitude was that the earlier the children are exposed to them, the better their defenses down the road when they do get to school.

I returned to work at Millipore after eight weeks, leaving Beth and Thalia alone during the day. Because Millipore had ‘flex’ hours, I was able  to change my hours so that I went in earlier than usual and returned home earlier than I normally would. This worked out really well. Thalia had lost interest in breast feeding after three or four months, and I took early morning feeding duty. I would sit in Thalia’s room on the sofa watching World News Now while I fed her.  Then, she’d immediately fall back to sleep and I’d leave for work around 4:30 a.m. Beth would handle the days and I took over when I came home, giving Beth an opportunity to nap. Beth still seemed to be suffering fatigue from the pregnancy. One day during my first week back to work, I came home to a very wierd scene.

I walked in the door and heard what I thought were pots and pans banging together. I figured something was going on in the kitchen (even though Beth was never really the cook in the family), but I was surprised to hear the banging coming from up in Thalia’s room. I walked in the door to find Thalia laying on her back on the changing table while Beth banged two pans above her head. I had to ask. “What the fuck are you doing?” Beth picked her head up with an utter look of terror on her face. “I’m trying to see if she’s deaf, Deb. I think she’s deaf.” I looked at her in amazement. “Beth, if she wasn’t deaf before you started this, she could very well be now!” I knew I had my work cut out for me. Bringing up baby was going to be a challenge.

Plenty of clouds on the horizon

I had promised Beth that she could return to school when Thalia was a few months old. She wanted to update her science degrees, so she enrolled in a cell biology class at the Harvard School of Public Health. It was an evening class, so I was on baby duty anyway. I remember those nights. Thalia and I would lay together on the bed and I’d place her on my stomach to sleep while I watched television. It was great. I’d talk to her and she’d smile like she knew what the hell I was saying. One day when I returned from work and Beth was getting ready for her class, she confessed that she had fallen down the three stairs to the landing while holding Thalia.  She was fine and the baby was fine. Beth had managed to keep hold of Thalia even while falling. She had landed on her back with the baby perfectly positioned on her stomach. We made jokes about what  klutz she was, but we would soon be in for a rude surprise.

A few weeks later, Beth came home from school and told me that she had difficulty completing her sentences in class because she seemed to run out of breath. She wasn’t feeling well and was still having problems with fatigue. Given her ill health during the pregnancy, I thought it would be prudent to check it out. We called her primary care doctor and made an appointment. We went in, she had an examination that included an EKG right in the office and things looked normal, at least from a cardiac perspective. We were relieved, and we returned to our lives.

However, the symptoms continued and Beth was feeling weaker and weaker. She didn’t even have the stamina to care for Thalia during the day anymore. So, we enrolled Thalia in daycare at The Children’s Workshop in Waltham two months earlier than we had originally planned. We remained insistent about Beth’s not feeling well and saw the doctor yet again. Nothing was resolved. According to her, Beth was fine and the exhaustion would eventually abate. Of course, part of the problem was the stigma of mental illness. Frankly, this particular primary care doctor had known Beth for many years. She knew of her past and her issues in the present. I could see what was happening: Because of these issues and because the illness is not immediately apparent, her doctor assumed the illness was “in her head.” The one thing I know for certain about Beth is that she is not a hypochondriac. She knows when her body is telling her something, and she absolutely knows and admits when something is “in her head.” I became adamant about looking further. She had not been back to school because the smallest physical effort on her part was exhausting her. On the third visit, Beth’s doctor scheduled an echocardiogram at the Beth Israel Hospital. Of course, her doctor was confident this would prove she was just fine.

The other shoe drops

Within a few days, we got the call. Beth’s doctor was stunned. The result of the echocardiogram was not good, and she had scheduled an appointment for us at Beth Israel with a Doctor Joe Cannon. She had given us some basic information, but I truly believe she knew she had blown it and she was just too upset to tell us how serious it was. Dr. Cannon, on the other hand, had no problem doing that. While he didn’t have much in the way of bedside manner, he told us straight out that Beth appeared to have viral cardiomyopathy and congestive heart failure (CHF). Her ejection fraction was at 15 (normal is in the 55-65 range), accounting for her fatigue and shortness of breath. The prognosis was not good, and Dr. Cannon offered her the heart transplant list.

This news was devastating. We had a baby at home that was less than six months old, and now we had a very uncertain future ahead of us. I was going to have to balance taking care of Thalia with taking care of Beth. I admit I had no fucking idea how I was going to get through it. I only knew that Beth was emotionally falling apart over it, and that I had to let that happen as hard as it was for me to watch. I would have been the same way had it been me. The one thing in Beth’s favor is that she’s a fighter. That’s how she managed to survive her ugly and violent home life. After the appropriate amount of grieving, and after deciding that Beth and Dr. Cannon were not a good fit (mostly because he was a pompous asshole), we decided to get a second opinion.

Speaking of television, let me tell you a little story here that I probably should have told sooner. Beth and I decided early on that we wanted a combination Greek-Italian name for Thalia, given the fact that Beth was Italian and the donor was Greek. We had narrowed it down to two names: Thalia and Elektra. We had been leaning toward Thalia, however.

While Beth was pregnant, she often had insomnia, but she couldn’t take any medication for that little problem. She used to meditate, and that helped. As she progressed into the pregnancy and the health complications began to multiply, sleep was at a premium. We would end up either watching television late into the night or waking up very early in the morning. The TV was always on, even if the voice was turned down. One of our favorite shows was World News Now and the anchor on that show was a woman named Thalia Assuras. If you do nothing else, just kick back, grab yourself a beer, martini, doobie or whatever might be your particular poison, and spend seven minutes watching this link. You won’t regret it.

The show was great. It was informative, but the anchors covered some offbeat news stories and were extremely irreverent. Thalia Assuras had long been a favorite with Beth and I, and that is — in large part — why Thalia got her name. However, what really clinched it for us was when we researched the name and found that Thalia was the eighth of the nine Greek muses. She was the muse of comedy and idyllic poetry. The name fit Thalia Assuras and I can tell you now — with Thalia almost thirteen — it fits her as well. She’s a piece of work.

As I said, Beth chose the first name, and I chose Thalia’s middle name, Francesca, in honor of my mother. By the way, you will learn somewhere down the road that there’s also a whacked out connection between Aaron’s name and World News Now. For that, you’ll have to wait.

There’s nothing routine about pregnancy anyway, but most people can fall into a pregnancy “routine.” Not my bride. No sir. Before this pregnancy was over, Beth would emerge as the Medical Marvel. That’s what I called her. That’s what her health care providers called her. Of course, we laughed the whole time we were doing so. Dr. Weiss, who had turned out to be a great infertility specialist, recommended an ob/gyn he did his residency with. Her name was Dr. Susan Hellerstein and she was at Beth Israel.

Susan Hellerstein comes from an impressive medical family. Her dad was a cardiologist, and five generations have produced 14 doctors. The Hellerstein family is also the subject of a book written by David Hellerstein, who is a research psychiatrist at the New York State Psychiatric Institute. The  most important thing for us, however, was that Susan was sensitive and caring and had a great sense of humor. I wouldn’t give you a dime for BI now, but at the time we were seeing Dr. Hellerstein, it boasted one hell of an Ob/Gyn Department. We knew that, even if there was an emergency and Dr. Hellerstein was not immediately available, the other doctors there were just as capable. We signed on with Susan immediately. Prior to moving down this road, we were sure to set up a safety net for Beth on the psychiatric side. We knew it would be touch and go.

That being said, I don’t think either of us appreciated just how much havoc pregnancy hormones would wreak on her panic disorder prior to the pregnancy. There would be days when she was perfectly calm. Not many, but some. The rest of the time, she was busy fighting off panic attacks — which became worrisome for me because of the physical toll it took on her if they got out of control. We had to learn a whole new way to distract her when panic set in. Pregnancy meant that medication had to be either cut back or changed to new medication that was safe for pregnancy. Both Dr. Fames and Dr. Emory carried pagers, and you can bet your life they both got a workout during this nine-month span.

Let me give you a little example of what we were dealing with here. I came home from work one night and everything seemed to be perfectly normal. We had decided on amniocentesis, mostly because Beth decided she was older and did not want to take a chance. I honestly do not think Beth could have handled a child with problems like birth defects. Not with her emotional situation being so  raw. (I also confess that I’m not sure what I would have done had we been confronted with the possibility of abortion. I think either situation would have or could have been emotionally disastrous for Beth.)

At any rate, she made a comment about the upcoming amniocentesis and I commented back that I believed that there would be nothing to worry about. Of course, Beth interpreted this as placating her and trivializing the process of amniocentesis. Of course, I knew that amnio can cause miscarriages. However, I wasn’t trying to trivialize. I simply saw no reason to dwell on it because she gets into trouble when she dwells on negatives. I was trying to be supportive, but it was not received that way because she was uptight about the upcoming amnio. Whatever it was, it was certainly enough to generate great strength in my bride because with one flick of the wrist, she managed to flip over on it’s top the solid teak dining room table. I remember my reaction. It was definitely, “W-T-F is your problem, woman?” She was mortified, and became totally frightened of her own strength thereafter.

The amnio was to be the least of Beth’s pregnancy problems.

The physical conditions mount

Migraine headaches are common in the first trimester. Therefore, Beth’s first pregnancy problem was migraines. What we would learn on this excursion was that Beth was in the 1% of people who would develop every complication and would suffer every drug side-effect. After her morning sickness passed, nausea from her migraines would take over. They were brutal. She could lay for hours in the dark, but it would not alleviate the problem. She was prescribed Tylenol with codeine. The first time she took them, she went into respiratory depression and we had to call 911. I remember, we were in the living room in Beverly and Beth was laying on the sofa. The EMTs were helping her there. After that episode, we went in to see Dr. Hellerstein. It was determined that she had an allergy to codeine and they would have to find another medication safe for pregnancy to help with her migraines. I know they did find an alternative and it worked. I’m not sure what medication it was, however. All I know is that the migranes stopped sometime in the second trimester.

The amnio, however, was definitely a bright spot. It came at about fifteen weeks and went just fine with Dr. Hellerstein performing the procedure. There was no miscarriage, although there was some scary moments with spotting after. The wait for the results was excruciating, but it was worth the wait: The baby was going to be fine. We hesitated when they asked us if we wanted to know what we were having, but then we finally gave in. It was going to be a girl. And that may have been the last bright spot we had. It would be hairy to the end.

Beth was carrying huge, despite the fact that she really was taking care to eat properly. We found out why when she went for her diabetes test. She was borderline gestational diabetes, but strongly leaning in that direction. That meant even more of a change in diet for the rest of the pregnancy. Again, compared to what was coming, this too would be a minor blip on the radar screen. Beth was saving the best for later in the pregnancy.

The plot thickens

Sometime around week 28, Beth developed pre-eclampsia, or pregnancy-induced hypertension. This condition is dangerous not only for the mother, but the baby. There was no big event surrounding it. No ambulance to the hospital. It was discovered on a routine check up with her primary care doctor, who then called Dr. Hellerstein. In no time, we were on our way to the BI pre-natal emergency room. Beth not only had an elevated blood pressure, but she also had the protein in her urine. She had rapid weight gain as well, but this could also have been attributed to the gestational diabetes. This would be a scene we’d repeat over and over. We’d make the drive from Beverly and they’d be waiting for us. Beth would be put on a monitor and the baby would be put on a monitor. It was tough enough worrying about Beth, but listening to Thalia’s little heartbeat was maddening. Any little blip made me jump through the ceiling.

The original goal was to get Beth to week 40. Realistically speaking, the desire was to get Beth as close to week 40 as possible. She went on complete bed rest with three months left in the pregnancy, with daily monitoring by visiting nurses to check her blood pressure. If her blood pressure went above 140, we were instructed to drive in to the ER. They would be waiting for us when we arrived. The routine would be the same. Beth and Thalia would be hooked up to monitors, and they would go about bringing down Beth’s blood pressure and the protein level in her urine. After a short stint in the hospital, she’d be released to complete bed rest.

Somewhere in the process, Beth was given steroids to help Thalia’s lungs develop more quickly. This would be crucial if Thalia were to be born prematurely. And that’s just what would happen. One night we made our routine run into BI. We expected that we would be back home a bit later that evening, but it would not turn out that way. Beth’s blood pressure was not subsiding, and the protein level in her urine was climbing, if anything. This was not a good sign. Susan Hellerstein was not on call that night, but we had a terrific doctor there anyway with Susan on the phone.

We thought they were coming in to send us home, but they announced that they thought it would be a good idea to take the baby right away. I’m sure that was Susan’s decision, and Beth was disappointed that Susan wouldn’t be handling the delivery. Beth was also disappointed that it would have to be a C-section. However, Thalia was going to be a big baby and they could not let Beth deliver naturally with her blood pressure where it was. She was in immediate danger.

Everything seemed to move in fast motion. There was no delay. The anesthesiologist was already there, so we met with him for a few minutes. Then, we met the ob/gyn that would do the C-section. I wish I could remember her name, but I cannot. Beth is generally very uptight about residents handling things like this, but this woman had made her a believer by the end of the procedure. Beth was betting that I was going to pass out when they opened her up, but I was fine. [Frankly, blood I can handle. Vomit is another story.] It went smoothly and fairly quickly. The resident held Thalia up for everyone to see and said, “Hey guys, here’s your daughter. She’s ready for college!” Thalia Francesca was born four weeks premature at 8:33 p.m. on November 27, 1996, weighing 9 lbs./6 oz. Her nickname in Neonatal Intensive Care was “Bruiser.”

I made sure Thali was okay and then ran back to Beth. Her blood pressure was in the danger zone. They put Beth in a private room in the maternity ward and gave her magnesium sulfate in an attempt to lower her blood pressure. It took a few hours, but it finally came down and the protein in her urine also worked its way down. She had dodged a bullet. By the time she woke up, little Thalia was already in the room with us. She hadn’t needed more than four hours in neonatal ICU. The next morning, Dr. Hellerstein stopped in to check on Beth and to see Thalia. She picked Thalia up and said, “Jeez, Beth, I haven’t held a newborn this big since I volunteered in Samoa.”

I had taken family leave and was not due back in work for a while. I spent my days and nights at the hospital to help Beth out.  Then, we brought Thalia to her new home in Beverly. We thought everything would be just picture perfect from here, but the plot was about to get even thicker.

Beth’s backward slide and panic attacks caused us to shelve our baby plans for a while, but she was determined to forge ahead once she felt we had found the right combination of medications and was stable enough. We were hunting around for reproductive endocrinologists, and someone recommended Dan Tulchinsky who was working out of the Malden Hospital. This guy was no lightweight. He was pretty accomplished. He was also an incredible homophobe who clearly had a problem with same-sex couples having children. I cannot recall exactly what his comment was, but it had something to do with refusing to help unless we had counseling first. While I don’t remember the exact conversation, I do remember two unspoken words that kept running through my head as he spoke. I believe they were, “Fuck you.” In spite of his credentials, Dan Tulchinsky was a totally negative experience (something that Beth did not need at this time). I brush assholes like that off, but Beth does not. It turned her off to the process for quite a while, like maybe two years.

By the way, I suppose this as good a place as any to relate the family response to our decision. There were really no issues on my side of the family, other than how some of the elders would take it once they found out. By elders, we meant good old Auntie Buddy and her sister, Auntie Muff (don’t ask, don’t tell on this one — for now). My sisters told me to do it and not worry about it. When we told Beth’s mother, her only response was, “Gay people shouldn’t have children.” Actually, she pretty much felt that gay people shouldn’t even draw a breath, so we just shrugged that one off and moved forward.

Going it alone

Our post-Tulchinsky foray back into baby making started at The Fenway Community Health Center, which has always been a great resource for the GLBT community. We were readers of Bay Windows and there was an ad there about an information session being given by a woman named Jennifer Firestone, who runs an organization called Alternative Family Matters. She was nothing like Dan Tulchinsky. She was positive and upbeat, and taught us how to deal with the negativity we’d come up against down the road. We have fallen out of touch with Jennifer now and I have been unable to find her organization on the web, but we were in touch with her for many years after.

After our visit to the Fenway, we were definitely ready to go. We left with all our ovulation charts and instructions for taking basal temperatures. All we needed was a physical and a letter from Beth’s primary care doctor stating that she was healthy enough to move forward. We had no problem getting that. Then, it was a question of deciding where to order the sperm and what kind of donor we would choose. There are many more sperm donor sources now, but back then there were just two reputable sources — the California Cryobank and one other somewhere in Virginia. We decided to go with the California Cryobank.

One other important decision we had to make was whether or not we wanted a donor who wanted to be involved, or one that wanted to remain totally anonymous. We chose the latter. What is right for each couple is different. We knew we wanted to build a family together and that we did not want to have to consult a third party for every decision. We also did not want the headache of dealing with the biological father should we disagree on certain issues. (By the way, Jennifer had chosen differently. She and her partner knew the donor and he was involved in the child’s life.) Now all we had to do was look for Mr. Right. Because we are both 100% Italian, we decided that we wanted a donor of Mediterranean descent — preferably Italian or Greek.

We had access to short bios online. If someone looked good to us, we could pay $25 to get a very detailed, multi-page report that would tell us everything about the donor: physical characteristics, education level, work history, ancestry, genetic diseases — the whole nine yards. We chose a Greek donor. Hey, what could be better — Greek and Italian. Can’t beat it. We registered with California Cryobank and sent in the required paperwork, including the letter from Beth’s doctor. We were all set and ready to go. All we had to do now was chart, order dad and break out the old turkey baster.

I do not know how it works now, but we literally had to make three attempts on our own before Beth could qualify as infertile and a candidate for artificial insemination. That meant $1,500 worth of “dad” right off the top, one of the expenses in the equation not covered by insurance. We would have no problem getting there. From the first attempt, Beth’s temps were all over the place. We couldn’t figure out if she was actually ovulating or not, but we pressed on. We’d take the temp. We’d order from California Cryobank and it would arrive via FedEx. [The first order had to go to the doctor's office as a confirmation that it was a legitimate approval. The rest were shipped to our condo in Beverly*.] Then we’d try the insemination at home and Beth would stand on her head for a while. The next step was the inevitably disappointing ept pregnancy test result.

Time to choose a new doctor

By the time our third attempt had taken place, Beth had moved on from her therapist in Cambridge to a new therapist in Newton. We’ll call her Laura Fames, even though I’d prefer to call her something quite different. In spite of my opinion of her as a therapist, she did turn us on to a great infertility specialist — Robert Weiss at Boston Medical Center. We made an appointment and brought all of our charts and bits of information with us. Beth and I both liked him immediately. He had no issues with lesbians having babies. Dr. Weiss had helped others. After looking at the charts, he determined that Beth had not been ovulating. He prescribed a round of clomid, an oral drug that induces ovulation.

The statistics we saw at the time showed that clomid was pretty successful, with pregnancy occurring within the first six cycles. We tracked temperatures again and when the time was right we went in to Boston Medical for artificial insemination. The one thing we didn’t want to do was hang around just…waiting. Then, inevitably, you start looking for signs…evening imagining them. We had a trip to Washington, D.C. planned and we stuck with it. It was one of our favorite places. We were going to drive down and hang out for a week, so we did. It kept our minds off what was hopefully going on in Beth’s body.

We stayed at the Omni in DuPont Circle because it has a large GLBT population. We did the Smithsonian in its entirety; my favorite at the time was the Air & Space Museum. We visited the Lincoln Monument and walked around the mall. We went by the White House several times, but never went on the tour. We could live without that. We visited some coffee shops. Yes, that included Starbucks. There was one right there in DuPont Circle. We ate dinner one night at Trumpets, a gay restaurant on Q Street. I remember we also ate at Nathan’s in Georgetown (now gone), but I really don’t remember any of the other restaurants we visited. We kept busy and kept our minds occupied. Because I was the Massachusetts 6th Congressional District coordinator (a fancy term for gay rights lobbyist) for the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), we paid a visit to our contact at their D.C. office. Before we knew it, it was time to drive home!

A triumphant return

On the ride home, Beth wasn’t feeling that well. To be honest with you, we didn’t put much stock in that because we figured it was way too early. Before we left on vacation, we had set up a time to go back to Boston Medical Center for a blood test. It was at least a week away so, again, we tried to put it out of our minds. Over the remaining waiting time, Beth complained about her back hurting and some nausea. We chalked it up to the fact that she was a chiropractor’s dream anyway and nausea was a way of life with someone who had ulcer issues in the past and who was presently saddled with panic disorder.

Our routine continued, and we went back for a blood test. The next day, we received a call from Dr. Weiss himself with the great news: Beth was indeed pregnant! So much for routine. Nothing was going to be routine anymore. Beth’s reputation as the Medical Marvel was about to be born. The fun was just beginning.

*Here’s a funny little story about one of our sperm shipments. One Saturday morning, we waited for the delivery to arrive. It didn’t show up at the door. We waived FedEx signature requirements and it had always been there just about the same time every time. We decided to track the shipment, and the records showed that it had been delivered. I was just about to call the toll-free number when our bell rang. The little old lady in the end condo was standing there with her son, who was holding the FedEx box from the California Cryobank. She said, “I don’t think this belongs to me.” We all just started laughing.

One night (after we’d moved in together but prior to our commitment ceremony), Beth and I went to dinner at my sister Mamie’s house after work before heading home to Gloucester. It was a great night and dinner was delicious. On the way home, Beth spoke to her mother on the cell phone. At the time, I didn’t have an idea about what the conversation was about. Frankly, I wasn’t paying attention. However, Beth seemed disturbed by it. I wasn’t surprised by this in the least because I knew there was basically a love-hate thing going on.

When we got home, she talked to her mother again. Not long after that, Beth became ill with vomiting and diarrhea. I really didn’t know what it was, but it wasn’t my sister’s cooking. That much I was sure about. Beth really didn’t know what it was about either. After a few hours, it passed, and we assumed it was a stomach bug. A couple of people at work had been sick, so we assumed it was a question of spreading the wealth around. Beth was exhausted and went to sleep. The next morning, she didn’t feel great. She was tired from the night before, but the nausea had definitely passed.

A few weeks passed, and life went back to normal. We didn’t give a thought to that night. We went to work, came home, struggled with the freezing cold Gloucester house, and moved on. Then, one night after dinner, it happened again. This time, however, Beth became ill and had the added symptom of chest pain. That’s usually the sign of only one thing — a heart problem or a heart attack. I immediately took her to the Addison-Gilbert Hospital in Gloucester. Because of her symptoms, there was no delay. They took her immediately. I was left in the waiting room alone to worry. Finally, the doctor — who looked like a troll — came out and shook my hand. He introduced himself and said, “I don’t know what it is, but it isn’t her heart.” I was relieved and, within an hour, Beth and I were on our way home.

Third time’s a charm

The third time was a charm. We were about to find out exactly what Beth’s problem was. We decided to go to Provincetown and stay at the Bradford Garden Inn. Originally we wanted to stay at Normandy House (now called Aerie House) and we wanted the top floor because we had stayed there before. It wasn’t available. Neither were any of the other places where we had previously stayed (alone and together). The Bradford Garden Inn had a vacancy and it sounded good. We would be staying across the street from the main house in a condo. That made us happy. We figured on privacy. We unpacked and put everything away. Then, about twenty minutes after we had arrived, a party started right outside our room in the courtyard. It was loud, and I mean it was literally just outside our room. You could pull up the shades and just look right at the party. Right there.

That set off whatever it was that Beth had. Sweating, chest pain and nausea. We immediately packed up everything we had just unpacked. We knew we had to leave, and I knew that I had to get Beth somewhere to be evaluated. She was adamant about not going to the Cape Cod hospitals, so we made a beeline for the Mass General Hospital. It was a really long ride, more than two hours, and it would have been longer had I not been speeding all the way home. There was a logic behind my speeding. I, of course, wanted to get Beth to the MGH. However, had we been caught speeding, I knew that at the very least Beth would end up somewhere getting some kind of medical attention in short order. She was close to a meltdown (and keep in mind that I still did not know whether all of this was physical or emotional), and I have no idea how she held on for that long a period of time.

We did indeed make it all the way to the MGH emergency room. By now Beth had already been rushed to the hospital twice, had had numerous tests, and was pretty much given a clean bill of physical health where these symptoms were concerned. She ended up seeing a psych resident named Dr. Baldasari who, as it turns out, was pretty sharp. We told her about the times she had previously been rushed to the hospital, and she met with Beth alone as well. She diagnosed these incidents as panic attacks. She gave Beth some klonopin and gave her names of two psychiatrists to call, one male and one female.

We had planned for a long weekend on the Cape. We had left on Thursday night but by the time we headed back to Gloucester it was the wee hours of Friday morning. I phoned both of these doctors on the ride home while Beth slept and left messages. The very next morning, before ten, one of the two doctors had returned the call. Dr. Baldasari had recommended Dr. Ann Emory, so we were glad it was she who returned the call. Beth sees Dr. Emory to this day.

The truth comes out

It did not take long for Dr. Emory to diagnose Beth with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) with resultant panic disorder. I knew several things about Beth from the beginning. First, she was honest about the fact that she had come to our first date fresh out of a bankruptcy hearing. That stuff doesn’t bother me. Never did. Second, I knew she was seeing a therapist because she had family issues, and those issues were fairly serious. She had been abused by her father from the age of about five to the time she left for school at Berklee at the age of about seventeen or eighteen. What I didn’t know was that this abuse had caused serious emotional problems for Beth at a very young age (pre-teen, in fact). She had also been hospitalized as a teenager because of a suicide attempt.

I’m often asked why I didn’t walk away. My response to those who have ever asked me that question is always the same, “Are you fucking kidding me?” Is it actually possible to just walk away from someone you love when the chips are down? I ask this question because I’ve never understood that mentality. Seventeen years later I can say with absolute certainty that, had the shoe been on the other foot, Beth would not have walked away either. When we met, Beth was in a pretty good place emotionally. She was coping with the issues. She was afraid to tell me about her past because she was afraid I wouldn’t stay with her, and Beth didn’t think it was necessary to tell me right away. I can understand that. I might have done the same thing out of fear and under the same circumstances.

Prior to these panic attacks, Beth had never had panic attacks. Not being particularly savvy about mental health issues, I decided I’d better ask questions and learn. So, I did. The first question I really needed an answer to about Beth’s manifestations was, “Why now when she was supposedly the happiest she’d ever been?” In other words, did it have something to do with me? Was it something I was doing that caused it? The answer was, “Yes.” What the relationship did was provide Beth a safe haven to let down. She had been on her own. Her mother was, for lack of a better word, useless to her. She had never taken care of Beth. She had always pushed Beth aside, particularly when the going got tough. On a personal level, I have no use for her mother because, for all those years, she knew Beth was being abused and left her in that situation. She had never been a real mother.

The only time Beth had her mother’s support was while she was at Berkeley, and that’s probably because she envisioned Beth as a “star” some day. When Beth’s issues kicked in and she realized that Beth was agoraphobic and would never perform in front of an audience, things changed. When Beth realized she was a lesbian and admitted it, things changed even more. The invites home for holidays stopped. In spite of that, Beth was on a never-ending quest to gain her mother’s approval. She still is all these years later.

Plans interrupted

Nothing that I learned about Beth dissuaded me from making a life together with her. By the time our commitment ceremony came in December of 1992, we were working our way through all of this. Beth was still in therapy with the woman she had been seeing in Cambridge. She had been medication-free for a bit, but now that she was back on medication, she was also seeing Dr. Emory. She had left her job at Blue Cross, but I had not seen that as the warning signal that it was. It was a signal that she was having difficulty dealing in the real world. I did not see it because I was not trained to see it. Beth has never returned to the work force.

We did not stop living because of this. Beth worked hard to keep on an even keel and live as normal a life as possible. It went in spurts and Beth was very unpredictable. Her moods ran the gamut from depressed to very angry. On top of all that, she was trying to control panic attacks. There were times when she was successful and could control them. When she was not successful (sometimes she can wake up in the morning in the middle of one), her panic attacks were (and still are) completely debilitating, replete with vomiting and diarrhea. Afterwards, it’s complete exahustion and sleep. It took quite a while to stabilize her. We took some trips together. We made a home together. However, there was one thing we absolutely put on hold until Beth was on more solid ground: Having a baby.

I’m willing to state that I was once a certified party animal. I still can be under the right circumstances.  When I am in that particular frame of mind, I am very adventurous. It’s not like that is something I like to do every single day or night (anymore), but I was up for it in my younger days. And that included experimenting with mind-altering substances.

People who know me won’t be surprised by this: I am absolutely psyched about the fact that Massachusetts has decriminalized marijuana. And I support Barney Frank’s nationwide effort to legalize marijuana. Why? Give me a break. I’ve been in the business world for nearly 30 years. I’ve been out for lunches with both clients and suppliers. I have had drinks at lunch to the point where returning to work would be a joke. Many of my compatriots choose to go home from work and have a martini (or several, in fact). Me? I prefer to go home and smoke a fatty (or two), and I’m not alone in this sentiment. It’s as simple as that. Anybody remember Prohibition????? Legalize it. That’s what Bob Marley would say. Just frackin’ legalize it. NORML has it right.

The true believers in the drug war have no problem spreading the bull that marijuana is a gateway drug. It leads to bigger and better things (read: addiction to stronger drugs) because people become bored with the high and need continuously stronger highs to be satisfied. I’m here to tell you that is pure bullshit. I’m the living testament. If you do not have an addictive personality, there’s never a need to progress past the ganja.  If you do have an addictive personality, drug addiction may be just one of your problems. Hear me?

Pushing the envelope ever so slightly…

Okay, so I did push the envelope just ever so slightly. Forget the heroin and that garbage. I was never adventurous enough for that stuff. I could never in a million years understand how anyone could derive pleasure from something you simply cannot live without. It ceases to be pleasure at that point. I never entertained touching the stuff and I never did, even though several old friends did. I went as far as coke, and that was more than far enough for me.

I went on a coke bender for about six months. I was young (probably in my mid-to-late twenties) and working in high tech advertising and public relations at that time. Had I been a different type of person, this is the one drug I could easily have succumbed to. No question. This stuff was amazing if you were partying and dancing. There was no limit to the energy it generated. We used it freely in the bathrooms of the gay bars, and it was readily available. Two of my neighbors — a Boston jeweler and his beeeotch wife — had it whenever we wanted it, and there was no question that this crap dictated when that was.

It got to the point where we would be out all night. The bars would close at about two in the morning, then sometimes we’d stop and have breakfast, usually at Carroll’s Diner in Medford. After breakfast, we’d head home. It was common practice for me to jump in the shower as soon as I got home (usually about five in the morning), then do a line and immediately leave for work…without sleep. By noon, I’d be suffering like a dog and I’d swear I would never do it again. But I did. In fact, I’d usually somehow make it through the day. Then, I’d come home and crash for a few hours. By about nine or ten, it would be time to go out and do it all again.

Like I said, this went on for about six months. Then, I came to that magic moment when I immediately halted my use of coke. We were all wiped out after a week of partying, so we decided lay low for a night. I was alone at home listening to Bonnie Raitt. I decided to use what I had left in my latest stash. I did two lines. The effect wasn’t the same as when I was out with a bunch of people partying. I got into this introspective mode. This was immediately followed by the notion that I was having a heart attack from using coke. Of course, I wasn’t, but that didn’t matter. The long and short of this story is that I swore I’d never touch the stuff again, and I didn’t. That was the end of it. Although we all didn’t stop at the same time, my friends pretty much did the same. It was too damned expensive anyway.

Partying at the bars wasn’t adversely affected because we had POPPERS! Yes, people, amyl nitrate immediately took over the job coke was doing. It was cheaper. There are no addictive issues and the effect is about the same in a bar situation, albeit lasting a much shorter period of time.

Welcome back, my friends, to the show that never ends…

Of course, there were other little experiments along life’s pathway. One summer a work friend of mine, Ellie, asked if I wanted to try blotter acid. Oh, yeah. We decided to go for it. I was really young when I did this. I was probably about 22 or 23. We took a day off, and believe me when I tell you it was a glorious summer day. I drove over to her house in Peabody about nine in the morning. The plan was for us to go to the beach in Gloucester and do it there. We never made it.

I wish I could tell you exactly what kind of trip I took, but I can’t. All I can tell you is that it wasn’t unpleasant. I had been hearing about how LSD trips can go bust if you have a “bad” trip, but that was not my experience. What I remember vividly, however, is what Ellie did. We were sitting on her porch when we took the hits. Time passed, but I really have no idea how much time passed before we started feeling the effects of the stuff. When it did hit, I was feeling very three dimensional and what I was looking at was very surreal. I can tell you one thing for sure. Nobody was driving to Gloucester on this shit.

I caught some movement out of the corner of my eye, and it was Ellie. We had been sitting on her porch, but she got up with a purpose in mind. I watched her walk down to the sidewalk, then over to a Volkswagen Beetle (she had no idea who owned the car) that was parked on the street roughly between her house and the neighbor’s house. Suddenly, she was trying to pick it up and move it. I am not kidding. I actually watched her for a few minutes before asking her just what she thought she was doing. I remember exactly what she said, “This stupid car is ruining the painting. The bumper is in my painting.” Sure it was.

This is one old memory. I do not remember much detail about this day except that it was just plain out there. We did some more blotter acid and just hung out listening to music. I know I was safely back in my apartment for dinner, none the worse for wear. And that was the only time I did blotter acid. Ah, but there were other little forays into mindbending.

My friends and I went to see the movie Network with Peter Finch and Faye Dunaway and made the mistake of taking THC before going into the theater. By the time Peter Finch got to, “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not gonna’ take anymore!” I can assure you that was the last place we wanted to be. We made a beeline out of that theater, laughing like hell all the way. We never did finish watching the movie. Another time, Greg, Jack and I met up somwhere and decided to go back to my place in Melrose to cook dinner. On the way home from Boston, we took purple microdot (mescaline). I have no idea where we got it, but it was just peaking by the time we got to Garniss Market to buy some food to cook. We never bought any food and we never cooked dinner.

I have no idea what I was looking at, but I happened to be going up the cereal aisle when something on the Captain Crunch box made me take a laughing fit to beat all laughing fits. I was sitting on the floor in the store laughing like hell. Greg and Jack found me and literally carried me out to the car. We spent most of the night laughing. All I know is that we all woke up on the living room floor sometime in the morning. As I recall, I never went to work that day. Since I pretty much felt as though I’d been hit by a train, I called in sick and spent the day sleeping.

There have certainly been other magic moments during this phase of my life, but you get the idea here. Here’s something to think about: While law enforcement has been preoccupied with stopping the flow of recreational drugs, the nation’s pharmaceutical companies have created a nation of zombies addicted to prescription drugs. Wacky, isn’t it?

Every once in a while, I slip in a character study of people invading my life for better or worse. This is one that falls on the “for worse” side. We may call her Auntie Buddy, but she ain’t nobody’s buddy. How would I describe her? Well, let’s see…unyielding is a good word. That can be followed by dictatorial. Self-righteous works well also. Resentment should be her middle name. And for a woman who is a devout Catholic, she is decidedly un-Christian. But that’s not so far removed from most of the outwardly devout/inwardly nasty Christians I’ve come into contact with over the past, say, five years.

Her real name is Aurora Ann Catanzano, but she never used the Aurora. She hated it. She called herself Ann. She was named Aurora because supposedly the Aurora Borealis was visible the night she was born. Personally, I think it was one of those times in history when Lord Voldemort was making a return. That’s what they saw in the sky the night she was born.

Auntie Buddy is a resentful person because she never did what she wanted to do with her life. She was in love with someone, but her Catholic brainwashing caused her to walk away from that relationship because he was divorced. She never found anyone else. Auntie Buddy never escaped the fate of the unmarried youngest child in a large Italian family: You are there but to serve. Iron your brothers’ clothes. Do your mother’s errands. Take care of whomever is sick. You know, responsibility with that old world charm.

Only the good die young

She is living testimony to the old addage that “only the good die young.” She’s the last in her family at 93, and she’s as ornery today as she was when she was 50, 60, 70 and 80. You can never do enough for Auntie Buddy. And when you do go out of your way for the eightieth time, she’s always got something to complain about. There’s always something you just could have done ever so much better. She brings new meaning to the word ungrateful. I believe I may have left that descriptor out of the first paragraph. That belongs there as well.

I was unlucky enough to have to live with her after my father died. My mother simply could not afford an apartment on her own. It was like living with all three of Cinderella’s evil stepsisters rolled into one. As I got older, her nagging got more offensive and harder to take. By the time we moved to Riverside Avenue in Medford, I was prepared to take extreme measures. To spite her silently, I used to back her 1964 Chevy Nova out of the garage and drive it around the block. This wouldn’t have been bad, but I was only about 13 or 14 at the time. Finally, I got bagged by a neighbor, who came over and blew the whistle on me. That was ugly, but I eventually ended up owning that very car. It was a great car, but I never really took care of it. I was a student at the time. On the way home from an overnight party, I managed to seize the engine (which usually happens when you don’t pay attention to the oil and water). That was a sad day.

Crossing the line

You know, I could handle all the stuff as a kid. I admit that I do have a resentment toward sweet, little old Auntie Buddy. However, I bear that resentment for something she did to me much later in my life. When my family was teetering on homelessness, she could have helped. Auntie Buddy, the cheapest person on the planet, has plenty of money put away. Her plan is to leave each of us $25,000 when she dies. My oldest sister approached her, told her what was going on, and asked about helping me. And Miss Happy said, “All she has to do is ask.”

Well, I did ask and I have to tell you that is the toughest thing I’ll ever have to do. I hate asking for help; it is not in my nature. I’ve been on my own for a long time. Instead of helping, however, she turned me down. She gave me $200 that day but said that was all she could do. She was determined that she was not going to give anyone the money before her death. Not long after that, we were evicted.

Dereliction of duty

When my mother was dying, we promised that we would take care of Auntie Buddy when she was gone. They had been friends (although I don’t understand how) as well as sisters. It wasn’t that my aunt didn’t piss my mother off. It was more that my mother didn’t take any shit from her. I have to tell you that — although it is not very Buddhist of me — I have no desire to caretake her. I’m trying to get past this little issue, but for now there is no getting past it. In fact, I’ve considered voodoo in the past, which is decidedly un-Buddhist. However, I have resisted my darkest thoughts to date.  There are other complicating factors, like I neither have the time nor the financial freedom to drive down to Wakefield from Amesbury to do her food shopping or anything else. I leave that torture to my sisters.

Haven’t seen sweet, kindly, old Auntie Buddy for a while. Missed her at Easter. Dang it. Didn’t go to the fourth of July cookout at my sister’s. Dang it. I’m just striking out all over. I hope the trend continues.

I said that love can make you stupid. Sex can make you even more stupid. There’s no question about that. I was going along my merry way, thoroughly enjoying my coming out party (it went on for three years, I have to tell you), and then something happened. It started at a gay bar called Darts, as I recall. I know the original Darts was, of course, on Dartmouth Street in Boston, and I believe it was in the site that Paparazzi eventually took.

I met Greg there after work one night. I can’t remember for sure who else came. I’m sure Joe must have come after work, maybe Steve, but I’m not sure. What I am sure of is that two of Greg’s lesbian friends, we’ll call them Lucia and Sal, were there. Yes, they were a couple. I can’t remember exactly how Greg met them. Maybe it was from work. Not sure. Anyway, we were sitting at a table having drinks when Lucia started running her foot up my leg. Of course, at first, I’m thinking it was unintentional and the result of shifting positions.

No such luck. When I moved my leg away, she looked at me as if to tell me she was disappointed. Greg and Sal were busy talking away about something (that’s why I think Greg knew Sal from work), so I obliged Lucia. Lucia was older than me, and I’m not sure by how many years. I think I must have been about 25 or 26 at the time. She was from Honduras, very sexy and very mysterious. While she was rubbing her foot up my leg, we were making small talk. This remained a flirting situation until the night I went to a party at Greg’s place in Allston.

On that fateful night, I chose to bring a bottle of Pernod. Looking back, I have absolutely no idea why I chose to drink that vile greenish liquid on that particular night. Now, this is not the new Pernod Absinthe that is coming out. This was the Pernod anise liqueur. A couple of shots would have sufficed, but it turned into a party of shots with three or four people participating (someone even went so far as to suggest someone go down the end of the street for another bottle). As I recall, we were drinking something else in between the Pernod shots. That’s not a good situation for me. I’m always up for the challenge. So, here’s where we ended up with this one:

The last thing I remember is swallowing a shot. The next thing I remember is waking up the next morning — at Jehova only knows what time — in one of Greg’s bedrooms with Lucia in bed next to me. She was smiling. It must have been fun. I don’t remember what sound must have come out of my mouth, but I am sure it was a real W-T-F moment. Because did Sal come to the party? Was she there? Do you know that I have no freakin’ idea to this day. Can’t remember. But I do know that the liaison did not end there.

I’m going to interject here because Greg was just so funny. I cannot put this incident in at the precise moment it happened but at some point, he got himself involved in this thing I was having. Greg was younger than me, but he was like a big brother. He was worried that I was becoming ‘emotionally involved’ with Lucia and it was just a fling for her. So, I remember that he asked Lucia just what her intentions were with me. I do not know what she said to him, but I remember that the fling continued on.

Let’s fast forward to the next snippet. We were sitting in someone’s apartment. I know it was not Greg and Jack’s apartment, because I can picture the room we were sitting in. It was on a second or third floor and it had all white walls with big windows minus curtains. It was beautifully sunny outside and the sun was just pouring into the room. I believe we were in Coolidge Corner, and I have a feeling it was probably Lucia and Sal’s place. I was on the sofa and I was on the end. There were two people next to me. Jack was on my immediate right, Sal was next to him and then Lucia was on the other end of the sofa.  Greg was on the other side of the room in a chair. That I can remember.

I can’t remember what the subject was. I can’t remember who was talking, but we were all having drinks and talking away. I had my right arm spread out across the back of the sofa so that it went behind Jack and part of the way behind Val. That’s when Lucia decided to put her arm across the back of the sofa and start playing with my hand. Okay, so here I am, with my hand right behind Sal, and Lucia — her lover — is diddling with my fingers. I froze. I wanted to move my arm away, but I froze. Then, I looked at Greg. I mean he was looking at it and he was freaking out. Quietly, of course. It was at the moment I saw his face that I just wanted to burst out laughing, but I managed to control myself.

At the beginning, I figured Sal had no clue what was going on. However, by the time I got to the arm across the sofa incident, I had to believe that she knew. She was absolutely not a stupid person. Far from it. I’m thinking that this was probably a pattern for Lucia, and Sal had been subjected to this stuff before. Greg had also been working on me, not from a guilt perspective, but because he thought I was getting involved and he knew Lucia wasn’t about to leave Sal to be with me. That, combined with how bad I suddenly felt for Sal, was one of the reasons it ended.

I know that I spent one day with Lucia somewhere in this mix. I picked her up somewhere and we spent the day hanging out. I don’t think the opportunity for sex presented itself again. It certainly didn’t on that day, and I’m thinking that was the day we mutually ended it. Lucia and Sal stopped hanging out with us. I’m not sure if Greg stopped inviting them, or if Sal finally put her foot down. As I recall, our parties continued on unabated.

As one of my lesbian friends would put it, albeit most graphically, “We have places to go and people to…” Well, nevermind. You get the idea.

People always ask how Beth and I met. To be honest, there weren’t many avenues open back then except the bars and being introduced to potential dates/mates by friends. I had gone that route a couple of times with disasterous consequences. And by the time Beth and I met in 1992, the bar scene had seen its best days in Boston (unfortunately). The only place around was Club Cafe (still there) which is a combination restaurant and video dance bar. (To this day, Beth calls it Club Khaki.)

That was also before the days of Craigslist (where there are more certifiable whack jobs per byte than anything else) and Internet date sites that want you to pay a monthly fee to be tortured. So, the main avenue for meeting was a newspaper called Bay Windows, which is still New England’s largest GLBT newspaper. As it turns out, both Beth and I placed ads in the personals that week and, as fate would have it, we responded to each other’s ad. But it isn’t that simple, you see.

I had also met Miss Headcase through Bay Windows, so I was a bit gun shy, especially after having been single for a few years. I also had plans with a couple of friends to go to an Annie Liebowitz exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Art the night Beth responded, so I told her I had plans and would contact her the next day. I had also been set up to go on a date through a gay dating service (which has now gone out of business). As it turns out, I was being set up with a woman at Staples who had the Millipore office supplies account. But there was something intriguing about Beth, and when I finally realized that we had responded to each other’s ad, I cancelled the fix up and decided to go for it with Beth. I remember calling her Bay Windows box and saying, “Listen, we just have to meet. It’s as simple as that.” I admit that I was trying to keep it casual. I was determined to not get immediately involved, especially after what I went through with Miss Headcase. Well, we see how that played out: We’re coming up on a seventeenth anniversary. We met on July 22, 1992. As you will see, however, we have a few anniversary celebrations in our relationship.

Before I go any further, however, there’s one other thing I should mention about Beth’s ad. Her ad was the “personal of the week” when I responded to it. At the time, however, I didn’t know it was because the newspaper had fucked up the type. Instead of it reading “Grown up lesbian,” it read “Ground up lesbian.” Now, I was feeling pretty ground up myself after Miss Headcase, and misery loves company. Why wouldn’t I want to meet the person who ran that ad?

Of course, we met at Club Cafe for dinner. I stopped at Winston’s Flowers on the way to the restaurant and bought her a single yellow rose. I knew immediately that it was Beth when she turned the corner and walked up the restaurant stairs. I can’t remember exactly how the night went from start to finish. I do know that we drank a bottle of Moet in the lounge before we even got to dinner. I also know that we laughed like hell over her ad. I knew right from that night that we’d be together, but that didn’t mean I was going to be easy about it. Beth didn’t stay that evening. Then, the first night she did stay, I wouldn’t allow her to take a shower there in the morning. That was really fucked up. I admit that. You know, that was like my last gasp before succumbing totally.

Not long after that, Beth and I were on the common in Wakefield. It started pouring rain, thunder and lightening, hail — the whole bit. As we were trying to make a run for the car and head back to Melrose, Beth said, “You’re just going to have to get used to the fact that I want to be with you.” Okay. Game. Set. Match. Sayonara, people. It was a done deal. She stayed with me that night…and she took a shower. It was that night that we started splitting time between Gloucester and Melrose. Eventually, we’d move to Gloucester together and live right near the Wingaersheek salt marsh. [To read more about this fun-filled, lively experience, go here and here.]

In spite of the fact that we were already talking about looking for a place to live, I continued to romance Beth. Once a week, I’d send her a huge bouquet of flowers at work. She loved it, and pretty soon all her friends were nagging their boyfriends to do the same.

Living proof that opposites attract

Beth and I are both Italian. That’s where the similarities end. Beth has spent most of her life in school learning. She has the degrees to prove it, including one in Music Composition from Berklee. There are only three instruments that Beth does not play. I’m not sure what they are, but I know she was playing piano in quite an accomplished manner at the age of three. The other degrees she has are more in the medical field, like Counseling Psychology and Biochemistry. She even did a stint studying at Cambridge University in the UK. When we met, however, she was working for Blue Cross, Blue Shield, helping to convert their computers over to a bigger, more shiny system.

I’m the exact opposite. I really did not like school, and that’s probably because the presenters of the material didn’t do much to make it interesting. I like to learn as well, but I do it other ways. By the time I met Beth I had been at Millipore for eighteen years and was the Manager of Marketing Services (advertising, public relations). I also spent a considerable amount of time writing. I had moved up consistently every two or three years and I was on a path. I was well-respected and was at my peak during this time. I was running two departments for the Analytical Division, Marketing Services and Technical Writing, and at one time had as many as a dozen direct reports. And yes, I was making excellent money.

When we met, Beth and I were both in very good spots in our lives. There’s no question about it. Time and circumstances would take care of that, however. The real test of our relationship’s strength and our commitment to one another was yet to come.

Making it legal

Beth and I did not make it legal until 2006, even though same-sex marriage was legalized in Massachusetts in 2004. Other events would come into play before that could happen, and that is for another post. However, we did take several other steps to honor our commitment to each other.

We moved into Gloucester together in September of 1992. On December 5, 1992, we had our commitment ceremony at the house. One one of our trips to P-town, we went to city hall and registered our domestic union. That was largely symbolic, but it did recognize our union in that town. That was more than most towns were doing back then. Then, the state of Vermont moved to have same-sex civil unions legalized in 2000.

Beth and I applied for a license in Vermont as soon as we could — August of 2000. We had to drive up to Vermont and apply, then go home and wait ten days give or take) for the license. We chose to have our civil union in Brattleboro.  Thalia was not yet four years old (Aaron was not born until 2001) , and we did all this via day trips while she was in daycare. We drove back up for the civil union ceremony. We decided to get married on the gazebo on Brattleboro common, rain or shine. We figured we had one opportunity to make this happen. It was the fall of 2000 when we returned, and it was pouring rain and cold on that day. We had an arrangement to meet the judge at the gazebo at a specific time. We waited for an hour before deciding she was a no-show. We even called her office, but got a machine. So, we pulled out the list of judges that was given to us at town hall the day we came up to apply for the license.

We had driven a long way to get this done. We didn’t want to go home empty handed and have to return a third time, but we accepted the possibility that this might be the way it turned out. We just plain lucked out. We got hold of a judge who was available and was only too happy to help us out. She was at the gazebo within about twenty minutes, and our civil union was official within twenty minutes of her arrival. She signed our paperwork, took it back and filed it right away. Before we knew it, we had our certificate in the mail. We blew it up giant size and put it on the door leading to our playroom/office in Winchester.

Beth and I have had our ups and downs over all these years. It’s for sure that you will be exposed to both the good and the bad. It was after a few particularly bad years that we made it legal in the state of Massachusetts (on May 4, 2006). It was simple and uncomplicated. We were married in the chambers of the Reverend Harold E. Babcock, pastor at the Unitarian Univeralist Church in Newburyport, Massachusetts. The only others present were Thalia (then about eight) and Aaron (then five). Aaron was running around (and “goofing off” as he puts it) through the whole thing. After the ceremony, we took the kids out to eat.

There was one particularly funny moment on the ride to the church. Aaron had been thinking about this for a while, I could tell. Finally, as we were parking the car, he said, “Ma, I don’t think this is such a good idea.” Beth and I just kind of looked at each other, but I had to ask why. I owed him that much. He replied, “Because you’re going to have to kiss a girl. Why do you think?” We all just started laughing like hell, and I told him not to worry about it. Someday he may come to appreciate kissing girls. Or maybe not. Who knows.

Both of these were pretty low key affairs, I’d have to say. The really big event was our commitment ceremony in Gloucester back in 1992.

A party (and a honeymoon night) to remember

Our commitment ceremony in Gloucester was a huge party. Yes, as you saw in my earlier posts, it was the winter of our discontent in Gloucester, but we had no such problems on this evening. The wood stoves had been going for two days straight and we had plenty of cooking going on at the house during the day which helped to keep it warm. About sixty bodies giving off heat helped throughout the night as well. My best friend at the time, Sally, came up early in the morning to help me and Beth’s mother (she arrived the night before) get the place ready. (Sally was very valiant to come so early. She was sick as a dog from undergoing fertility treatments.) I had to run into Cambridge to pick up our wedding cake at Rosie’s Bakery. Believe it or not, the morning of our wedding, Beth was missing in action. She was in Boston taking the LSAT for law school and would not be home until sometime mid-afternoon.

By the time Beth arrived home, we had about an hour and a half before guests would begin to arrive. We both still needed to shower and dress. Convinced that things were under control, Beth and I went upstairs to get ready. I was feeling fine. Beth was really nervous. We smoked a joint. Then, I was still feeling fine and Beth got really stupid. Stupid is better than nervous in Beth’s case. We were both feeling pretty good by the time guests began to arrive, and what a motly group it was. We had a lot of people from Millipore and Beth’s friends from Blue Cross, including Frank and Mark, two of the biggest flamers you’d ever want to meet. My sisters, nieces and nephews were there. My very gay Melrose landlords (you’ve yet to actually “meet” them, but you will),  and Beth’s rock climbing partners, Barb and Bill, were also there. I don’t need to keep on here. The place was packed…and jumping.

The ceremony was presided over by the Reverend Wendy Fitting, fellow lesbian, and the extension minister of the Independent Christian Church, Universalist, in Gloucester since 1989. We had been meeting with her for the two months leading up to the ceremony. While she performed the ceremony, Bill Evan’s piano was playing softly in the background. Then, it was time to party and someone — I’m not sure who it was at the time — switched the music to “Signed, Sealed, Delivered” by Stevie Wonder, our chosen wedding song.

The party went very late into the night, I’m told, but we started saying our goodbyes about 10 p.m. We were headed to the Copley Plaza Hotel in Boston, where we would spend our wedding night. Beth’s mom was going to spend the night and care for the cats. We’d be home the next day as we were still undecided about where to take a real honeymoon. (We actually never took one, although we were initially talking about Quebec City.)  We grabbed a bottle of champagne to bring to the hotel with us. By the time we got to the car, it was freezing out. But with the help of Beth’s mom and my sisters, the members of my Millipore staff managed to sneak away from the festivities to decorate the Camry with toothpaste and shaving cream. We have photos of their handiwork somewhere, but we have yet to find them. They had also tied clothes hangars to the back of the car, which we really didn’t know about until they started sparking as we drove down the highway.

We pulled up in front of the Copley Plaza about midnight in our well-decorated vehicle. The porter was gay. He walked up to the car as we rolled down the windows he said, “Good evening, ladies.” We smiled. “Good evening,” I said. He asked if we had reservations and I told him we were checking in under the Honeymoon Package. He looked at us and laughed. “They’re going to love this at the front desk!” Check-in was actually quite pleasant. We were up in our corner suite within fifteen minutes. There was a bottle of Moet and some mutant-sized, chocolate-dipped strawberries waiting for us, compliments of the hotel. Since it was at the time of original ownership, and before it became part of the Fairmont chain, the room was full of the most incredibly beautiful fresh flowers. (On a return trip a year later, the hotel had been purchased the flowers were tacky plastic.)

We had a hell of a private party. We ordered some food. We danced a little. We watched television. We made love. While we were doing this we killed off two bottles of champagne, and we did not even think about how bloody cold it probably was in Gloucester. It was the perfect ending to a perfect day, and a perfect beginning for our life together.

Some people know they’re gay from the womb. That’s me. Now, that doesn’t mean that I acknowledged it from the get go. Knowing and accepting are two very different things. When I was really young, I didn’t necessarily have a word for what it was. A few things stood out, though. First, I played ‘doctor’ exclusively with girls. Never boys. Second, I never spent time looking at other girls’ boyfriends, but I spent a lot of time looking at a lot of guys’ girlfriends. Third (and this was as I grew older), I never thought about dating — or anything else for that matter– with the opposite sex. Never. I mean it. To this day, I’m the world’s oldest virgin in that respect. I’m not curious. I don’t feel as though I’m missing anything (as some of the more unwitting have asked). I’m not interested in going there.

Now, all of this being said, there’s nothing easy about being gay. I have this argument with conservatives every day: It’s isn’t sexual preference. It’s sexual orientation. People do not just wake up on a Thursday and decide to be gay. People may very well wake up one day and realize that they are gay, but I can assure you that they’ve been gay for a long time.  I also propose that nobody would choose this life. Why? Because they have to put up with the assholes who argue differently. Like they know better. In spite of the fact that coming out now is easier than it was when I came out, I feel like I came out at the greatest time. And I feel as though I came out at the greatest time because there was a social support system in place that has all but been replaced by the Internet. Only, the Internet isn’t a very good replacement because it takes away the human element. The gay bars are what I’m talking about here people.

The best of times

Like I said, coming out in Boston was a freakin’ blast. It had the best bars, and not one was the same as the other. We always used to tell each other, “You don’t want to get involved with anyone hanging out at a bar.” But that didn’t stop us from taking them home (or going home with them). We just knew they weren’t ‘relationship’ material. Frankly, we all went out in a bunch just to have a great time. If we met someone, so be it. However, that wasn’t the goal.

In fact, it is here that I will tell you about my friend Lida, as straight as an arrow, who loved the bars and came with us whenever she could (much to her husband’s chagrin, as I recall). I remember that I used to be her cover in case anyone tried to hit on her.  There were a couple of other straight women who used to come out with us as well, but I cannot remember their names — although I can see their faces.

Boston had great bars, no question. For a general good time, there was Buddies. There were more men than women, but it certainly was a mixed bar. Great dancing. Loud. Wild. Crazy. I have this image of dancing to that frackin’ Patrick Hernandez song, “Born To Be Alive,” and the image is on the Buddies dance floor. I know I went off on this in a previous post about the tie between gays and disco. My guy friends used to love Sporter’s for a men’s bar. This was definitely a cruise bar; no question about it. I only went a couple of times. It was definitely not mixed.

For women, the best damned place in Boston was a bar called Somewhere, which was in the Financial District. This place was perfect. If you went upstairs, you could dance to the loud pulsing beat of the music. Downstairs, you could sit at the bar and stare at Jackie (the bartender that just about every woman that walked into that place was in love with), play pool or sit in the comfy area (complete with sofas, chairs and a coffee table) and just plain old shoot the shit. The music downstairs was provided by a juke box. Even the guys liked it here, although this bar was definitely for women and they got ADHD pretty quickly without the sight of men other than each other.

There was one other bar worth mentioning. It was a place in Allston, Massachusetts, called Our House. I have fleeting visions of this place, but they are always good visions. I remember it being a restaurant/bar set up — not like today’s Club Cafe in Boston. It was more a laid back environment. The place was really cool. If any of my friends are reading this post and remember Our House, I’d love you to comment and tell me what you remember about it!

My point is that we had a place to go. Now, places are gay on certain nights. The only problem is that we’re gay every night. Know what I mean? More than anything, the bars gave us numbers. They showed us we weren’t alone. We had our space where we felt absolutely safe being ourselves. I’m pretty open. I really don’t worry about what people think anymore. Times have changed in that regard. Gay people are now a part of the mainstream. But I still miss the bars. I miss the cameraderie. I miss having that space or zone. Back then –  during the 70s and 80s — the bars were critical to us and we spent plenty of time there.