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.

The winter dragged on. Our fifth and final cord of wood was delivered. The house was freezing and, perhaps spurred by guilt, Mr. Flashback suddenly took it upon himself to come into our house during the day when we were not there and start the stoves. Nice touch, but we were very uncomfortable with that. We felt violated, like we had no privacy with this guy working here. What really pissed us off was that his portion of the house — the workshop — was heated by propane, and we were paying pretty steep rent and freezing our butts off.

When February rolled around, it got even colder. The deep freeze made it impossible for us to have any kind of intimate relationship in the house, and we were still like little lovebunnies. We took to the Camry. I had a great 1992 Toyota Camry that became our lovenest away from our original lovenest. We’d sneak out to the car late at night, turn on the heat, crack the windows, turn on the stereo and lay the seat back. The car was parked in the driveway way back from the road, and Beth’s Honda Accord was always parked behind it. Plenty of privacy. We actually had a lot of laughs and made it a pretty good time. That car went 341,000 miles and lasted until 2003 before it died. We’ve never had another car like it.

Then, mercifully, the weather started to moderate. March and April passed with Mr. Flashback still coming in to start the wood stoves. I finally had to ask him to stop. I told him that it was a real invasion of privacy and it needed to stop immediately. He did. The warm weather brought a new set of problems. We had spiders you could saddle and ride. I mean, these things were huge. Here was Beth’s technique for killing them: She’d stand on a chair, drop a piece of cardboard on top of it, and then jump on it. Then, she’d leave it there for me to pick up when I got home. These things were so big that the cats and dog were afraid of them. They were all over the basement.  It was like visiting Aragog and his clan. I can’t believe that this guy allowed his son to sleep down there among the arachnids.

Then, Muffy (I didn’t name her) developed an odd habit. She’d jump up on the kitchen table and sit there, looking up at the ceiling for long periods of time. I used to laugh at her, and tease Beth about the cat losing her mind. Then, one day I opened the pantry door and saw that the cereal boxes had been eaten through. That was a bit unnerving. It was then that I realized that Muffy wasn’t crazy at all. She could hear the squirrels in the walls. We also had something that looked like a prairie dog running around the back yard. Regardless of whatever it was — to us it was part of the rat family. For all we knew, they could be in the house too. We began to see that the house had holes in it and that nothing really fit together structurally. That’s because Mr. Flashback must have had several flashbacks while he was building this place. No wonder these things were getting in the house.

One day, I got a frantic call at work from Beth. She was taking Simone and getting out of the house and going to the beach because Mr. Flashback was out in the backyard picking off squirrels with a handgun. She wasn’t worried about the cats because they were laying low. I called the Gloucester Police Department, told them who I was, and reported what Mr. Flashback was doing. The policeman I spoke to said that he couldn’t do that even if he had a permit. They said they were heading over and would take care of it. By the time I got home from work, Beth was back and things had settled down. And Mr. Flashback had gone home, probably pissed at us for turning him in.

Things continue to deteriorate

I have to say the summer in that house was wonderful. There were no temperature issues like there had been during the winter. We were dreading the summer because none of the windows, except for the attic room, could take an air conditioner. But we really didn’t need one that summer. We had other issues, however.  For example, Mr. Flashback was told to fix the wood stoves. He had no intention of doing that. There was still no permit hanging by the front door either. Our downstairs bathroom was a problem as well. It was made of plywood, including inside the bath tub. It was nasty and unhealthy. When we brought our first-last-security payment by, he promised he’d have the bathroom done before we moved in. It was now June or July and it was growing nastier by the day. We were at the point where we stopped using it and closed it off.

In spite of the multiple issues, we were never late with the rent. We paid as expected on August 1. Throughout the month of August, we called him about several things. He wasn’t even returning calls, and he certainly wasn’t showing up at his workshop where we could catch him face to face. I finally decided to give it up and called an attorney. He came out and met with us and we told him what had been going on. He told us not to pay the September rent, and to tell Mr. Flashback that we were not paying any more rent. In addition, the attorney was filing against the landlord so that a portion of our rent would have to be repaid.

In the meantime, the lease was up in October anyway. We had been looking around for a while. We really wanted to stay in Gloucester, but we were having a difficult time finding anything that we really liked.  The only place we found that we liked was in Beverly. We really wanted out of there badly, so we ended up taking it for October 1. The case against the landlord was still moving through the courts, and living there was not easy. One day we were putting some stuff in the car to bring to Beverly, and Beth was really aggravated at Mr. Flashback for refusing to talk to us. She began to walk towards his workshop as it was the first time he’d shown up in a couple of weeks. I yelled at her to leave it alone, but she insisted. Then it was us who got into a huge fight. What happened next was like something you see in a movie.

Somehow, the woman across the street decided to become involved in our fight. If there’s one thing you never do, it’s come in between two fighting (Italian) lesbians. She made some kind of comment about our fighting as she came up the driveway, and Beth and I turned toward her at the same time and yelled, “Shut the fuck up.” The woman immediately turned tail and left, while Beth and I burst out laughing. That was the best thing that could ever have happened because it took Beth’s mind off Mr. Flashback and re-focused her on moving.

The final day

We had help from my niece and her husband on the final day. By then, we had some kind of weird jumping fleas in the living room. We’re sure they came in with the wildlife because none of our pets were outdoor pets. The cats never went outside and the only time Simone went out was when she was walked. We never took her into the woods because we were worried about ticks. Because of the fleas, we had to leave all the carpets we bought behind because we didn’t want to bring them to Beverly with us.

We had been enjoying some party material in the back of the U-Haul truck when I remembered there was one more box of books upstairs. We ran in to get it. We ran up the first landing and turned the corner. There on the landing was a squirrel. He didn’t look any too friendly. In fact, he looked as though he was standing guard. You know, he wasn’t going to let us go upstairs. My niece’s husband turned to me and started laughing. “Screw the books. Let’s get the fuck out of here.” We laughed all the way back down the stairs. We blew out of there and never looked back.

Beth and I still talk about going back to Gloucester someday, but it probably won’t ever happen. Unless it has changed drastically, the school system sucks. Beth was living in a second-floor duplex that looked right out over Gloucester harbor. It was an  unbelievable view every morning. We should have just stayed there. But things like that usually happen for a reason. I guess.

About a month or so after we moved into the condo in Beverly, Mr. Flashback settled out of court. We got about $6,000 back.

Love makes you do stupid things. It’s as simple as that. I met Beth not long after my mom passed away. She was living in Gloucester and I was living in Melrose when we met.  Every self-respecting lesbian has heard this joke (written in the 80s by Lea DeLaria):

Q: What does a lesbian bring on a second date?

A: A U-Haul

There’s a reason for this joke. It’s pretty much true, at least that’s been my experience. Lesbians couple up quickly. I knew right away after I met Beth that we were going to move in together. However, after my experience with Miss Headcase, I was bound and determined to fight this urge for as long as I could. So, for a while we split our time between locations, four days a week in Melrose and three in Gloucester. We met in mid-July and I held out until October 1.

Because we both loved the ocean and because we wanted to try to rent a house, we decided that Gloucester was where we wanted to live. It was going to be a long commute for both of us: At the time, Beth was working in Quincy, Massachusetts and I was working in Bedford, Massachusetts. Beth’s commute was much more grueling because she actually had to go through Boston and further south. It was a great area, though, and we felt it was worth it. We found what we thought was the perfect place right near the Wingaersheek Beach salt marshes, on Concord Street. It was a contemporary, with lots of glass and heated with solar and house-burning — oops, I mean wood-burning — stoves.

Our bedroom was awesome. It was big and had a balcony that overlooked the back yard, which had a clearing where we used to play frisbee. Behind that were some beautiful bushes and trees, and directly behind the bushes was an impressive rock wall. It was just beautiful when it snowed.

Our landlord was a unique kind of guy, definitely lost in the 60s. We’re going to call him Mr. Flashback. He and his family had been living here, but now he was moving them above his retail shop, which was in Essex. So, he was renting this place. The only rub was that his actual workshop was attached to the house we were renting. He seemed like a nice enough guy, so we decided to take the place anyway. This was the beginning of the Nightmare on Concord Street.

An idyllic beginning turns sour

It was still relatively warm when we moved in. The first couple of months were a blast, really. The upstairs level became our little lovenest. We’d buy champagne on Friday nights and hang out up there — like all day on Saturday and Sunday. We had no children, just two cats and a dog,  and no other commitments. We were both working 9-5 jobs. We had the whole weekend to ourselves every weekend.

The Flashback family displayed some odd behavior. First, they hadn’t been able to catch their cat to take it with them. It was hanging around the house and was nasty. They actually set a trap for it on the back patio with a can of tuna fish and, when they finally caught it, the thing nearly ripped one of the kids’ arms to shreds. Lovely animal. I was glad to see it go since we had two peace-loving kitties (Muffy and Leni) and one very mellow Miniature Schnauzer (Simone) and didn’t want the thing accidentally getting into the house.

That wasn’t all. One morning we opened the shades covering the sliders in the kitchen. The sliders looked out on the back yard. We were eating breakfast one morning and had our backs to the sliders. We were talking, but then I stopped dead with a feeling that someone was looking at us. When I turned around, his children (the ones that were mobile) were plastered against the sliders looking in at us. I turned back to Beth and simply asked, “What would happen if I suddenly decided to throw you on the table and make love to you right now?” She burst out laughing. I made a mental note to talk to Mr. Flashback about this little oddity.

Then, the winter set in and it was freakin’ cold. Mr. Flashback said it would only take one cord of wood to heat the entire place for the winter. Mr. Flashback was either hallucinating or full of shit. We blew through that first cord in no time, and we ordered another and blew through that. In the meantime, we couldn’t seem to get the wood stoves to much affect the temperature in the house — we couldn’t seem to get the thermostat out of the fifties. And seriously, on the nights we’d meet in town and go out to Club Cafe, we’d get home late and we couldn’t get the house up out of the forties.

We bought -20 degree sleeping bags and space heaters, and camped out in the living room for the winter in front of Beth’s huge projection television. This room was largely glass and it was freezing in the winter. The bags and space heaters made it tolerable. On the other end of the spectrum we had the room where our stereo was. There was another wood stove in there, but the room was completely closed in except for the entry way. The room got so fucking hot that nobody could sit in there. In fact, the furniture got so dried out from the heat that we had to get rid of it because it splintered. In between we had the kitchen. If Mr. Flashback had thought to put a window in between the kitchen and the stereo room, the problem of extreme hot and extreme cold would have been solved.

We also had our third cord of wood delivered and this time the idiot who delivered it forgot to pull the tarp on top of it, and it got soaked in an ice storm while we were at work. One day Beth came home to find me atop the wood pile chipping away at it with her ice climbing pick and muttering more swears per minute than she could count. I had been at it for days and drying it out. The thing is, it never burns right after that no matter how much you allow it to dry, and this fact brought about the night I lost it.

“We’re having a chimney fire at 274 Concord Street”

One night we got home from work late after a day-long snow storm. The house was freezing. I went to the basement and got the stove going down there. It took forever because the wood was still damp, but I finally got it going. I left the basement door open in the hopes that some of the heat would rise. Then, I headed for the teeny room. There was no amount of paper or kindling I could burn that was going to get this wood going. It was just smoking and smoldering, generating no heat whatsoever. It was at this point that I lost it.

I immediately stood up and took the photos off the wall. I took out the photos and began burning the wooden frames. Beth came in and saw me and really tried hard not to laugh, but that was impossible. She decided that the best bet would be for her to get the hell away from the area, get under the sleeping bag and watch some Monty Python. I continued to burn decorative wooden items. Then, it happened. I remember Mr. Flashback’s words exactly:

“You’ll know you’re having a chimney fire because it will suddenly sound like a freight train is running through chimney.”

That’s exactly what I heard, but I was hoping that wasn’t what was actually going on. I turned to look out the window and the entire back yard was lit up orange. Beth came running in wondering just what the hell was going on. “Oh, I said, it was a chimney fire, but it looks like it’s stopped already.” Then the back yard lit up again and the sound resumed. I grabbed the phone and dialed the fire department. I simply told them there was a chimney fire at 274 Concord Street. They told me they were on the way.

Then I called Mr. Flashback, who had a unique response. When I told him what was going on he said, “Oh, well, we’re going to dinner. If anything bad really happens call us at this number.” Then, he proceeded to give us a telephone number to call in case we needed him. After he hung up, I looked at the phone in total disbelief. No real concern. No worry. It wouldn’t be the way I’d react if it were my house. The arrival of the fire trucks snapped me out of my stupor. Some of the firemen went up on the roof. About five or six filed into the house, tracking mud and snow everywhere. Two headed for the wood stoves. Bringing up the rear was the Fire Marshall.

He walked around the house for a while looking things over, then he walked up to Beth who, of course, rerouted him to me. He asked who I was and I gave him my name and told him we moved in October first. It was now January. Then he said, “I take it you’re not the owner.” I explained that we were renting and I gave him the owner’s name. He began to write it down and as he was writing a light apparently came on inside his head. He repeated Mr. Flashback’s real last name again. “Oh, yeah, I know this guy.” He shook his head. Then, he proceed to tell me that the wood stoves were installed improperly and that he’d have to fix them. They should be 36″ from the wall, not 12″ from the wall. He also told me that there was supposed to be a rental permit posted on the front of the house. Then he proceeded to ask me about the back-up heating system. I told him there wasn’t one. His response? “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.” I wasn’t. He told me that he was going to be contacting Mr. Flashback. After a three-hour visit, the firemen went on their way and I proceeded to clean the house. We both called in sick the next day, and I had a cord of dry wood delivered.

Things were getting curiouser and curiouser, and the situation would soon come to a head.