Andrew Q. Gordon

Today marks eighteen years I’ve been with Mike.  Or as I sometimes joke, eighteen long years.  We often ask each other, “When we met did you think. . . . ” I can’t say when we met I ‘knew’ we’d be together this long. That’s just being honest. Eighteen months can be forever in the gay community, so eighteen years almost doesn’t have any meaning, or didn’t at the time. But I can say I hoped we’d be together this long.

Mike, ‘lil q, me and Governor O’Malley at a Marriage Equality Rally last October

Eighteen is also the year we get married.  There is no date set yet, but it will be before the summer.  We’ve talked about getting married, but we wanted to do it where we lived. Now that Maryland has not only passed the law, but the voters of the state upheld it in a referendum, we can finally get married.  Bout time he made an honest man of me. 😉

I could bore you all with talk of how he’s my best friend and that we compliment each other is so many ways. Or the standard, ‘we’ve had our ups and downs’ [though being honest that would be a very short chapter on the ‘downs’], but honestly, that’s the stuff you’d expect from someone writing about their anniversary.  I mean how many people would take the time to write a blog entry saying, ‘yeah, it’s our anniversary and, well, you know, it’s kinda okay being together, but it’s not that great.’?  No one bothers to write that stuff. I suppose some might use the occasion to announce they were going to break up with their partner, but if you tuned in expecting that, wrong blog, sorry.

But since I’ve started let me just say that in eighteen years, I can honestly say I’ve never met anyone I wanted to be with other than Mike. Now we have ‘lil q and if we were a couple before, we’re a family now. It was always a dream to be parents – mine more so than his at first – and now it feels like we have a whole new life to look forward to.  In fact, as part of our ‘new’ life, we’re going to take our first ‘family’ vacation soon. That means we’re going away but not to a family or friend’s house and we’re even taking the dog.

There is a lot I could write about, but most of that is personal and the rest would be boring, sound cliche, or just be too much like everyone always says at these milestones.  So I’ll just say I’ve had eighteen wonderful years so far and as our ‘new’ life continues, I’m looking forward to all the new adventures we’re going to have.