[Continued from "Alex & Brendan (Part 1)."]

Alex wore ugly shirts and sweaters.  Think Bill Cosby in his ugliest sweater days.  I talked to him about this, and he didn’t deny it.  He said he knew what ugly was, but that he didn’t know what looked good, so he figured he’d just be the ugly shirt guy.  That makes a kind of beautiful sense that is so Alex.

He determined shoes were good based on their country of provenance.  Made in China?  Not so much.  “They must be good, they’re Italian,” is how he described a pair of new dress shoes he had bought.

Alex was obsessed with airplanes.  He could identify the make and model of a commercial airliner as it flew over the “beach” (outdoor area nowhere near a body of water) at our school.  He was particularly interested in cases that involved plane crashes, especially if they crashed on international borders (both Alex and I had international law concentrations in law school).  He had model planes, and books about planes.  He schooled me on the possibly inferior composite material used by Airbus.

After law school Alex and I stayed in touch.  He started seeing a guy, Brendan, who was at the time himself in law school.  The two-lawyer couple is incredibly common, probably because there’s nothing sexier than civil procedure whispered during the act of lovemaking.  Also, lawyers don’t seem to take it personally when someone argues for the sake of arguing.

Then Alex’s roommate moved out and Brendan moved in.  Little Alex with a live-in boyfriend?  So cute.  We were all hoping there would be a positive effect on Alex’s wardrobe.

There was a positive effect on his entertaining.  Alex, because he loves airplanes had to have a place with a view that would allow him to see planes in flight.  The apartment in Twin Peaks had a large living room and a big dining room, both of which had great views.  From the balcony one could see about 270º including downtown and far enough south that it was easy to spot planes to and from SFO.  The apartment should have been shown off!

When Brendan moved in he brought with him his cooking, bar tending, and entertaining skills.  Every time I was invited over I knew I’d have a great time.  Alex was always social and fun; Brendan had the skills; together they threw a great party, both sit-down and more informal.  They complimented each other quite well.

Alex was content in a way he wasn’t when he was single.  Brendan was clearly a great guy.  When I found out that when Alex’s mother would come visit from Salt Lake City, Brendan would have to pretend the spare room was his own bedroom so Alex could keep up the ruse that he wasn’t gay, I told Alex that he was very lucky that a gay man in San Francisco in the 2000s put up with that, that Brendan must really love him.

Apparently Alex’s mother really wanted grandchildren, which is why she kept asking Alex about girls.  Gay people can have kids, but that probably didn’t occur to Alex’s mother, who was born and raised in the Soviet Union.  Eventually, the problem was solved by Alex’s older brother, who fathered a child.

I don’t know if Alex came out by saying the words, “I’m gay” to his mother, but eventually it became clear that Alex would not be dating any girls, and that Brendan was not merely a roommate.

Alex said he and Brendan were going to have a commitment ceremony of some sort.  Perhaps it was pre-Prop 8 when they originally planned to do so, so they could actually get married.  And perhaps some day, after the challenge to Prop 8 is upheld (even if it has to go all the way to the Supreme Court) they can get married if they want to (though of course I’d advise against it).  For now, they would have to be happy with being domestic partners.

I received the invitation.  It looked gorgeous.  Great paper, classy pattern, lovely wording, even a cool address label.  I know some of you don’t think that matters, but it does.  There was nothing feminine about it, like most wedding invitations.  No flowers or doves or any of that bullshit.  Just a simple symmetrical band of pattern across the bottom.  Embossed, of course.  And in brown, which matched the envelope.

The Viking consented to be my date, so I sent back the RSVP and we marked our calendars.

I swear.  True story.

[To be continued.]

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