Here are a few posts from the old Holiday Stories blog, my first from 2002. (I transfered them here because I coudln't seem to get the original blog to re-publish) They are followed by the original Stories of Love posts including the one about how I fell in love with Bill.

What is it about Christmas?

When does that little bit of melancholy begin to creep in?

For me, it was the year that I played the pipe organ for the Christmas Eve service at a little church in a neighboring town. As everyone left saying "Merry Christmas", the snow started falling and everything started looking like the picture inside of one of those snow globes. After a while, I was all alone on the street; my father wouldn't be able to pick me up for 15 more minutes, the time it would take him to get from the church where I had always spent a part of Christmas Eve to where I was standing, waiting.
It was the first time I had spent any time, even a minute, away from my family on Christmas Eve and as I stood there, I felt it; that first little twinge of mortality. I felt really alone for the first time.
It's all part of leaving childhood and growing up. A very natural process. But somewhere inside there is still that kid waiting for his Dad to pick him up soon on Christmas Eve, knowing that the rest of the night will be wonderful, standing and waiting with tears in his eyes and wondering why he's crying.

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Gay people are perhaps lucky in that they can have two families; their biological family and the family that they make out of their friends.
Today, I spent time on the phone with my "sister" Sue in Austin, (she is the sister of my lover that I lost to AIDS 7 years ago), and then I talked to my cousin MaryAnn in Orlando, an older cousin that I've been close to for many years. After that, I called my Dad's house in upstate NY. My sister and her lover were there, and my brother and his daughter, my lil' niece. (Her Mom had to fly back to Boston Wed. to work in the hospital). My Dad put me on the speaker phone, and my niece, Emma, yelled "Bunny!" when she heard my voice. It was so sweet! She is not yet two, but she knows me and thinks about me! (I spent a lot of time on that; there's a web site I made just for her and me... I have been visiting every three or four months even though they live 1500 miles away. I live a bit far away from my biological family, but I want this child to know me, and she does.)

After all this, I went next door to my friend Robert's house to celebrate the first Thanksgiving without our friend Margaret. She was a great story teller and a maker of holiday traditions, a wild straight woman who took in all us gay boys and made us feel at home for the holidays. We lost her to cancer this winter and this was our first shot at going on without her. We did a good enough job, and her Dad was there; another great story teller, no wonder where Margaret got her sense...

These are my two families: the one I was born into and the one I grew into. I had a reason to give thanks today; most of the people in my two families have met and really like each other. We weren't all in the same room today for a Thanksgiving meal, but if we had been, it would have felt natural. Time and distance kept us apart today, but we all ended up sitting down to eat in our separate locations around the country at the same time with out really planning to do so.

I know we all talked about each other at our respective tables, and spent some time remembering those who are no longer with us. We told each other stories about when this one did that and do you remember...

Ah... to me that's family.

So, I tell this story to you.

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For the last two decades I haven't been with my biological family for Thanksgiving; the 1200 mile trip and the lack of enough time off just didn't allow it.

For most of those years, I had Thanksgiving with my gay family. My good friend and neighbor Margaret would cook and people would bring a dish, her Mom and Dad would come and anywhere from 10 to 50 friends would show up. The year we had 50 people was unusual; there happened to be a lot of people visiting from out of town. Normally there were 10 - 15 of us there. It was always a nice group with people of all ages getting along and having a good time. Margaret's parents treated us with respect and kindness; it was especially nice for those people who didn't get respect from their parents at home. Some of these people, I only saw on Thanksgiving, but it felt like family, like parents, aunts, uncles, cousins, sisters and brothers.

This year we lost Margaret to cancer, (her Mom passed three years ago) and we lost one of our older regulars; his lover of 30 years won't be coming. A week ago I realised I had no where to go this year; Margaret was the center of this holiday tradition.

My friend Robert and I were talking and he said, "I want to do Thanksgiving" and I agreed to help. Robert lived in the other half of Margaret's house and took care of her during the two years that she was sick. She left the house to him and this is the first time we have tried to pick up one of the many traditions that Margaret had started and try to carry it on.

The menu will be "traditional" in the sense that it's mostly the stuff we've been having all these years. There will be a chicken and sausage gumbo to start, (that's a New Orleans thing), turkey, dressing, mashed potatoes, gravy, cranberry sauce (the jellied kind), that green bean casserole with onion rings on top, corn pudding (a Carolina recipe from Margaret's family), sweet potatoes with marshmallow topping (which I've decided I will turn into something really fabulous somehow), baked butternut squash and peas with pearl onions (which neither of us really like, but Margaret did so I'm doing it and with fresh pearl onions). For dessert, there will be pumpkin and apple pies and a brioche banana bread pudding with golden raisins and dried cherries with a bourbon cherry sauce (the bread pudding is new, but I wanted something new and fun to do).

So we've got the menu set; there's a lot of food. The guest list is another problem; so far there are only six, (Margaret's Dad will be there). I told Robert that what we really need for this year is some "new meat", we've lost so many of our gay family... We need some new family members, some new people to celebrate with and be thankful for.

I think I'll go out tonight and see who I can adopt...

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I used to love X-mas.

For Bill's last Christmas, I forced all his brother and sister's, nieces and nephs, cousins to come visit for Thanksgiving. I put up about ten thousand lights; I had a 15-foot tree decorated in the back yard, several in the house, and garlands everywhere. With lights!

The next year, I did it again, but Bill wasn't there. I went so over board trying to make up for that fact, and Christmas Eve was the worst. I was the "Binch Who Hated Fuking Goddam Christmas!" that year.

But when I was a lil durlx, I loved Christmas soooo much. At the age of ten, I had already started; I was a lil durlx/martha stewart. I put the first tree up the day after Thanksgiving; there were three more trees after that. I made angels out of paper mache and wire, and painted them. We were fortunate to have so many pine trees on the farm; I made so many wreathes and garlands. (Poor trees!)

I HAD to have candles in every window! And lights!

My parents let me do it; they were so nice about it. They put up with the remarks about the electric bill because there were so many lights, "It must cost a fortune, Margaret!"

But they knew me, and accepted me for what I was...
They came home early one July night when I was ten. I had pulled out all the Christmas lights and decorations and put them up. They had come home early because one of the neighbors had called them to tell them that our house was "lit up like a Christmas tree!"
My Mom and Dad tried to tell me why I shouldn't have done what I did, but they kept looking at each other and laughing. It made me so happy; I wanted to make them look at each other and laugh like that again and again.

This is a story about how I learned what love is.
This is way before I met Bill, but it's part of the story.

It's funny. After reading Kyle's post, I remembered something from my child hood. I was 8 or 9 years old.

It was a little after dark on a late fall evening when I decided to disagree with something that my Mom told me to do. I told her that I didn't love her anymore, that I hated her and that I didn't want to live there anymore!

I confidently expected her to just totally cave in and beg for my forgiveness.

Instead, she laughed and did a lil dance and said, "This is great!" as she slapped a hat on my head, pulled a warm coat around me, handed me my shoes and pushed me out the door. As she slammed the door shut I heard her yell, (for my benefit...) "it was very expensive to feed you, you know! Your sister will eat better now!"

(Of course, this was all nonsense, we had plenty of food on the farm and enough money, everyone ate well.) But at the time, I was crushed.

I tearfully put my shoes on and started walking in the chilly night air in the only direction I knew; down the road towards the other farm. Maybe my grandmother would take me in, even though I had been really bad.

Maybe I had walked 5 minutes before I saw the headlights. It was my Dad coming home for dinner and he stopped the pick-up truck and got out and picked me up in his arms. Why was I walking on the road, he wanted to know, and I tearfully confessed my words of hatred to my Mom. He hugged me a little closer for a bit, then looked at me and said, "I think I'll be able to get you back in, but you are going to have to apologize to your mother." I promised I would, but I didn't miss that glint in his eye that said that this was a little funny to him and yet very sweet.

He brought me into the house and asked my mother very calmly if she would let me come back if I apologized, and she very calmly and seriously said that she would if I did. I did, but I saw that same glint in her eye.

They were both in on it, of course... and that is one of the times when I knew that my parents really loved me, knew it for sure, because they loved each other first and then gave that love to me.

It hurts me to think that a kid should grow up without that glint of love.

I was coming back to New Orleans from Vegas a few weeks ago

...and in the DFW airport I saw a guy boarding the plane, couldn't see him that well, but he looked so much like Bill that it was like getting an electric shock. It was so visceral and intense! It was like he was really there and not dead, like he didn't really die in my arms. We were on the same plane to New Orleans. I finally got a closer look at this guy at the baggage claim, and well, it wasn't Bill, but up to six feet away, it could have been: the baseball cap, the long red hair in a pony tail, the jacket, the jeans, the shoes, the shoes were even tied that wierd way... The guy picked up his luggage and went over to his wife and young baby...

I picked my bags up and started thinking maybe it's time that I began to try to tell the story about how we were in love.



This is how it started. How Bill and I fell in love.

I was working as a chef in a fairly hot New Orleans restaurant and I needed more talented cooks. My good friend introduced me to this guy, and I proceeded to seduce him to work for me. It wasn't about love, it was all about getting another cook.

He came to work for me. One night after work, we were talking over a few drinks and we crossed the border between employer and employee. Kind of suddenly, everything changed and we started dating and it seemed to me that we were fast becoming real close. I couldn't stop thinking about him.

One Saturday afternoon at work I asked him, (Bill) about Sunday, like what we might be doing together. He said that he had a date to meet this guy in City Park. (Talk about not seeing it coming! I felt like such an idiot. He obviously wasn't as into the situation as I was...) I thought that I handled it pretty well; I said "O.K. See you later" or something like that. He told me later that I looked like I had been stabbed in the back. (I thought I had hid it so well!)

Well, I was stunned, but I pulled myself together and ran the kitchen for the night, closed the place down and went home. I got up in the ayem and went to a bar where my friend worked and started having some serious sorry for myself cocktails. After an hour or so, I was joined by several of my best friends; it was nice to be with them and I started to feel better.

Then Bill walked in, came over to me, put his arms around me and hugged me. My heart was racing, I said, "I thought you had a date."

He whispered into my ear, "Yes, I did. I met him in the park, we talked for a few minutes, but then I realized that you were the one. I left him and came looking for you. I love you. I love you."

We kissed like really deeply and held each other for a while. I looked up over his shoulder and saw my friends looking at us and smiling, so happy because we were so happy and I thought "this has got to be one of the best moments of my life".

This was Bill and I was so helplessly in love.



It was funny for a while after that. You see, Bill was still working for me... I was the chef in this restaurant and he was one of my cooks... Well, of course we had to keep our love a secret from the rest of the staff. Somebody was bound to get jealous, and that sort of thing just isn't done; very bad management practice indeed. So there we were, rightously in love, but having to sneak around. It was exciting and wonderful, and it made everything so hot!

We were so golden, it showed, and little by little other people started to know at work. Soon almost everybody knew, but they all wanted to keep it a secret for us, like I said we were golden. I made plans to quit and look for a little business that we could run together with the money we both could put up. When I finally gave my notice, even the two owners of the restaurant knew, but they were the last to find out. I know this sounds hard to believe, but everyone was just so happy for the both of us.

I left the restaurant and worked full time on buying a business. Bill stayed there working as a cook; they liked him so much, they didn't wan't him to leave. We ended up buying the lil grocery and deli on the corner where I lived and moving into a huge apartment across the street. We didn't get married, we formed a corporation! hehe!

Bill really loved having a deli.


And I really loved having a deli with him. We worked together every day and we were together everyday and it worked very well.

There's about eight years worth of story that comes next, but i'm not going to try to tell that now. It was hard enough to get this far, the rest of the story will have to come later... For right now, I'd just like to think about the beginning.

The beginning of love.


The beginning of a long and happy love.


Oh, how I miss this man.