Current mood: blissful

Hi everyone,

Today I want to talk about love.
I am going to a wedding tomorrow and last night, our friends celebrating this happy occasion met for dinner. That's not so unusual, but the circumstances surrounding this beautiful event are historical.
My friends Chris and Tracy have been together 24 years and as I surveyed the crowded table of well-wishers last night, I reflected on how they are the glue that have held most of us together.
I moved to California from Australia in the summer of 1984 and Chris and I met at Paramount Pictures where we both worked and became instant best friends. Chris and I did everything together. I moved in to his apartment when his room mate moved out and my life around this guy was amazing. Then he met Tracy. Tracy brought so much light to Chris's face and then I heard the immortal words, this is the one.
I met Tracy...the one, for sure. They fit together so well and Tracy became my other best friend. When they bought their first house together, Tracy insisted I should still have a room and when I finally manned up and bought my own place, I was still a welcome visitor in their lovely home.
When I started the internet dating thing, it was Tracy who helped frame my profile on Love At AOL. On many dates, I arrived with Chris and Tracy who, owing to my "colossally bad taste in men" insisted on chaperoning me.
There was one memorable night they went all the way over to Marina del Rey with me and we had the world's most expensive, horrible meal at the Pelican Club as my latest man played the worst guitar music ever, swinging his hips in a bad Elvis impersonation. They were unfailingly supportive, even if they surreptitiously laughed into their napkins a lot.
When Tracy became chilled and Chris removed his jacket and lovingly placed it over Tracy's shoulders, I saw the way they gazed at each other.
24 years later, they still look at each other that way.
Over the years we have helped one another through various personal disasters.
When I got mugged at the Beverly Center, it was Tracy who came and brought me to their home, nursing me back to reality with Buttery Nipples and an awesome pasta meal. I never, ever wanted to go home. I felt safe with them and I felt safe in my room in that house filled with love.
When Chris's mother had a heart attack, it was Tracy who shipped her into my room and cared for her.
In the early 1990s when I fell on hard financial times, it was Chris and Tracy who fed me, lent me money and even found me a new job,
Chris and Tracy wanted badly to have a baby and gave a lot of thought to how they would do this when natural means were denied them. They thought about sperm donors, surrogates...and then they thought about adoption. After being scammed a couple of times, they adopted a little girl from Russia. What a beautiful day when she came home, their traumatised nine year old girl who couldn't speak and just stared, haunted after years of living in a horrible orphanage of Dickension proportions.
But I saw that light come on again in Chris's face and I knew this little girl...she too, was the one.
Illiana is now a divine, brilliant, bubbly girl of 15 who loves her parents, Hello Kitty and watermelon bubblegum. Last night, she told us all that God has answered her final prayer.
"God is listening to me tonight," she said. "Now my parents can do what they have been dying to do for 24 years. They are getting married on Saturday!"
Yes, Chris and Tracy are a gay couple, two men in love who shower the brightest lights on everyone around them. What strikes me in their story is the longevity of their union and that of the hundreds of others who will gather on Saturday at West Hollywood Park to exchange vows.
These are not frivolous people who will be divorced by Monday night. These are wonderful, warm, loving people who will far outnumber the protestors on Saturday in the fifth day of this historic event.
When I look at my friends and know how deeply they have been anguished over not being able to be marry, I know it's the fulfillment of a long, long dream that began one day in an inauspicious way in the checkout line at the (now defunct) Alpha-Beta supermarket.
I hope in November, that when the same sex union marriage bill goes before the people of California, that Chris and Tracy's story and all the others who have waited, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years to say, "I do," will persuade them to live and let live.
I hope these weddings will not be voided. I hope Illiana's prayers, Chris's mother's prayers and those of all their friends will count for something.
For the protestors who showed up at some of the nuptials this week with ghastly signs, please do something better with your time. We should be celebrating love, not condemning it.
And to Illiana, my darling Illiana...hurry up and go to college, so I can move back into my room.
Aloha oe,

A.J.

Currently listening : Moe`uhane Kika: Tales From The Dream Guitar By Keola Beamer Release date: 1995-08-29