jamie and kirk’s story

it all began, innocently enough, with an email.i had gone to see hedwig and the angry inch , an off-broadway play in new york. my march 1999 trip to the jane street theatre came at the end of an intense week of playgoing on a job-related “business trip” to new york. the trip was, of course, just an excuse to get myself to broadway shows.before leaving for new york, i had decided that my job as a sales rep in south florida was…um…unfulfilling. i put 50,000 miles a year on my car and hated every inch of crowded interstate. ft. lauderdale, to me, had all of the drawbacks of urban sprawl with none of the advantages. and finding friends who came without the south beach circuit party attitude was difficult, to say the least. i loved my clients but hated “going door to door with this incredible offer” (apologies to pee wee herman….) so i had resigned effective in june, and had really no idea what to do next. i had previously taught high school english, but really didn’t want to go back to it. fourteen trips through a school year were enough. and i had dated a whole string of, well, “unsuitable suitors.”

as you can probably tell, i was kind of at odds with myself.

in new york, free on what i thought was a personal spree before getting down to the business of getting my shit together, i saw a lot of requisite broadway…the lion king…rent…miss saigon…you get the idea. i decided to get myself to something a bit funkier. hence my saturday sojourn to the west village.

sometimes, i think, your life gets shrunk down into a kind of microcosmic sneak preview. on this particular evening, though i didn’t know it at the time, i got a partial glimpse into my future. i and my friends stopped at a place called a stray cafe to get a pre-show drink, but it was too busy. so we went down and over a couple of blocks to the theatre.

i can’t adequately describe the show itself in words…you’ll just have to see it for yourself or at a minimum, visit the site to get a taste of it. suffice it to say that it moved me enormously and encapsulated my life and my feelings in a way that no piece of art ever had before.

upon my return to south florida, i found myself constantly thinking about the show and its impact on me. i then (much like you just did) surfed the web for a while. i wanted to see if i could find out more about something i was interested in. on the site, among the scads of pictures, stories, and games, there was a message board on which i posted a brief message. just a brief note saying how much i enjoyed the show, with a reference to my website url.

as you might have noticed, the url www.queerspace.com leaves little doubt as to the orientation of the occupant. the hedwig webmaster noticed this as well, and dropped me a quick email commenting that it was nice to see someone out and queer posting on the board.

i returned an email, just a few lines, something light and witty. it went back and forth a bit, evolved into a phone conversation, then another, and finally into daily contact.

disclaimer.

i’m pretty much an old-fashioned guy when it comes down to it. i believe that you just live your life in a good way, and good things will eventually happen to you as a result, happening at the time they are supposed to. as diana ross said so eloquently, “you can’t hurry love.” I also believe that sometimes you get certain windows of opportunity, a time of convergence of things that can pass if the moment is not seized.

what I came to eventually realize, through my growing affection for kirk, was that this was the end point for the sum total of my various life experiences, good and bad. everything that had happened to me in the past was preparing me for being able to truly appreciate this wonderful man.

uprooting, hauling all my possessions 1500 miles, and reestablishing your life all for the sake of a man may seem, to many, to be a completely immature and idiotic move. if you believe that is true, so be it. but, after spending a few weeks with kirk in florida and new york, that’s the move i made. all i can tell you is that, as it says on my “boyfriend” page, i have found my true soulmate. i had nothing to lose, really, and as it turned out, i gained everything. i live in new york, where i always dreamed of living. i work in the time-life building at rockefeller center in a fantastic atmosphere with incredibly talented people. a stray cafe turned out to be a marvelous place with many attitude-free people i have come to know and love. and i have the man i love, sharing it all with me. all because i didn’t let convention and fear rule my heart.

they say that in new york, you can have a great boyfriend, a great job and a great apartment, but you can’t have all three. ok…fine…i have a good apartment.