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Mothers and sons have a special relationship that make all others seem to pale in comparison.  I’m sure all of the guys that read this will surely attest; I’ve seen all of the tributes my friends have posted on Facebook it’s obvious who are mama’s boys out there…. No offense meant.

    In fact, I was one of those boys who wore that badge of honor, The Mama’s Boy award, proudly, and everybody knew it!  I was Lillian’s boy, as so many in the small town of Providence, Ky used to say… she had another son, but I, being the youngest and the most well known of her kids, well I had a monopoly on the attention.  It was a wonderful place to be… mama’s boy… until it wasn’t.

    As time moved on, I started to realize that things were changing…  in fact, everything was changing.  As a young boy I knew I was gay, and that this wasn’t something that would earn me any points anywhere… and that was ok, as long as I had mom… I’d be fine.  I just had to keep that little secret in a box buried as far down as I could cram it.  The funny thing about that little secret was it wasn’t a secret at all.. It was pretty much a given, much to my downfall back then. Picked on by my peers, snickered at and made to feel badly about something I really had no point of reference….  I had no, and I mean no idea what the whole thing meant.  Just words with stilted tones and dark clouds on the horizon.   And that was fine, as long as mom was there I’d be cool; but as I grew up, the sky opened up and it and I cried for what I was about to lose.

     Coming out to my mother was THE turning point in my life concerning being gay that I wish I could have a “do-over”.  Not that I would change anything about my life now.  In fact, I have everything I ever wanted.  But… always the never ending “but”…  I wish I could have waited to come out to mom.  

    I came out to my mom in an incredibly heated argument.  We were in a two bedroom apartment in 1987.  I was about to graduate from high school and all of the cracks had started to show about my relationship with a (much) older man.   I never dated in high school, but I made up lies about different girls I supposedly liked to my mother… lies that anybody with an IQ of 30 could see right through, but of all of the proof to the contrary, my mom believed me.  I thought that if I could fool her, then that made what I was doing alright… that I would spare her the humiliation of having a queer for a son.  Of course, the pressure of living such a preposterous lie was too much.  Lying to others could be easy, but I couldn’t lie to myself.  The guilt of what I was doing and the lying was too much and one early morning I had enough pills in my hand to end all of this… permanently.  It seemed like the only option left.  

     But something made me stop… fear, mostly… but something told me to reach out to someone before it was too late.  So before I would swallow the pills, I called the pastor of Diamond Baptist Church.. Robert Hardwick.  3am calls aren’t the norm and I know he was surprised to here me in tears on the other end, just wanting to talk.  Mom and I had been members of the church for a long time… and honestly, the pastor and I really weren’t that close.  However, this was my last stand and I had reached what I guess you’d call my “bottom”. 

    I remember calling his house and his wife answered, and after letting her know who I was, Robert got on the phone.  In a panic, I told him about the pills, what I wanted to do with them, and that I needed to talk… could he and I talk for a while??  He told me to sit tight, and within 10 minutes, we were in his car driving around at 4 in the morning around Webster County, while my mom was working in Madisonville on 3rd shift.  He listened to me intently as I told the truth, once and for all. He was the first straight person I had ever come out to and as painful as that was to do, it was the strongest medicine… to say the words “I’m gay” to another person was as frightening and as liberating as you can imagine, and even more so to a Baptist preacher at 4 am in 1987.  

     He pulled the car over, and grabbed me in a hug and told me something I hadn’t expected… “Noah, thank you for telling me.  Now let me tell you something.  I love you.  You haven’t changed in my eyes one bit.  You’re still the same loving, caring person you were when you got in this car, and nothing is gonna change that.  God made you, and He loves you.  Stop hating yourself for what God has made you to be.  You are 17… You don’t know what God has in store for you… but if you end it now, how will you ever know?   Your mother will always love you, and that won’t change.  So what makes you think killing yourself will solve anything? It won’t… it will only take you away from what God has planned for you.  So please stick around… OK?”  We drove around the town til my mother came home… and she was terrified that I wasn’t home. 

    I went home and wanted to crash.  Too much emotion and being up all night wore me out and I told mom we’d talk later.   That didn’t work out so well… we started talking, but soon the conversation became very heated and before we knew it, we were screaming at each other.

    When all was said and done… and I had told her I was gay, it was as if something inside her had broken, as if some mooring had given way and a landslide of dreams and hopes for me had collapsed.  I was Mama’s Boy no longer… in fact I still remember EXACTLY what she told me that horrible day.  “I will NOT have a gay son.  If that is what you are telling me.. Then you are NOT my son. Get out.”  By the end of the week, I was gone… I went to Berea College for a semester, but I left school in 1988 to live with the man who would be my ex.  

  There is so much more to the story… but the part that I wanted to talk about today is about what Mother’s Day has come to mean to me, lo these many years.   It used to mean handmade gifts, Sunday dinners where we went to my Grandma’s house… cards and hugs.  After I came out, Mother’s Day was a day of no cards, certainly no hugs, and assigning blame… and of course no more dinners at 1902 New York Ave.  In fact, coming out meant cutting out most of my family.. On both sides of the cloth.  Mom and I both took turns cutting each other out of our lives, but as Rod Stewart would say, the first cut is still the deepest.  

    In 2000, my mother Lillian died. She died before I had arrived at the hospital, before I could say just how much I had to thank her, and of course how much I still was my mama’s boy.  I’d love to think we patched up the messy quilt we’d made of our relationship.  I really would.  But in dealing with the truth instead of lies, like so many I had told to her and to myself…. There are still holes.  We talked before she died… very stilted conversations, but conversations nonetheless.  THAT, of course is the greatest regret.  I had such a stubborn streak in me that precluded any thought that she may have been right about the man I was in love with… that he would hurt me in ways I’d never see until it was too late.  You were right mom.  You were right that I was too young to fall in love, that I should go to school, that I should get my education, and wait for what would surely be the love of my life.

   You were right about so many things Mom… but so was I.  My biggest regret is that I didn’t give you a chance to come around… to see and know just how good my life has become, and that I didn’t have the chance to come to you when things were so, so very bad.  With all of that.. On this Mother’s Day, I would love to tell you that I am STILL my mama’s boy.  I love you more now than I ever did before, now that I truly know what love really is.  You’d love Michael… in fact, I think you already do.  I am convinced you brought him into my life, or at least was on the ground floor with the decision making…. Love like this isn’t created by accident, but is always Heaven sent.  

Just like you mom.  I love you!  Happy Mother’s Day.   Your son,  Noah

Tonight I got a message from a friend I hold in very high regard telling me to ask my employer to retract my resignation.  Basically my friend said that I had spent too much time there and throwing it away, quitting now would not be good.  Staying on, even as part time, would be better than leaving.  And you know…. my friend might be right; except for a few minor details that aren’t apparent to the casual eye.

    For so long, many people in my life were just so willing to allow me to keep to the status quo.  Stay where you are, do what you’re doing, and no one gets hurt.  The bitch of that is.. you don’t grow.  You don’t change… YOU DON’T LIVE.  For over 2 decades I stayed too long at the fair…. I was trapped, and miserable.  I was abused, I was manipulated… I was robbed in so many ways.  Worst of all… I allowed it.  I. allowed. it.  You hear?  All because I wanted to have the status quo, uninterrupted. But that was a fantasy.  Status quo on Total Drama Island was hell personified.  Imagine not being allowed to open your own mail if you will… imagine not being allowed to learn to drive a car… not being able to buy your own mother a tombstone, all because you are told you should be happy doing what others want… or what’s best for you.  Imagine having people in your life that use you, lie to you, and would do whatever they could to keep you where you are, and how you’re living… and being happy with less. With being less. Now imagine finding the only solace, the only place you have ANY control of a facet of your life is where you work…. how pathetic would your life be?  Self respect is a gift you only find within, and it’s not found on Isle 9 amongst the flour and the sugar at Wallyworld.

     I love this friend of mine, never doubt that.  But, I have to make people understand.  This is MY life.  Being a nurse is MY dream.  It’s what I want to do with my life, and I have to do what I want with my life.  My time at Walmart, as good as it was to me, and at times was good for me, is done.  I have to let it go.  I am not happy there anymore.  Staying there, working there, is a mistake I can’t afford to continue to make.  The personal cost far outweighs the monetary costs.  

    Sherri Shepherd last week said something that resonated with me, and is so apropos to what I’ve been thinking lately and how I plan on living with this decision to change my direction.  She was voted off DTWS this past week, and was in tears knowing she was leaving the competition.  But she said this then and I am still hearing it today:

“…I want to say to every person out there, that the thing that scares you the most … run toward it, because it’s so amazing on the other side.” 

    This was not an easy decision for me to quit.  Not by a long shot.  But, as someone so wise said a long time ago:

“I believe that everything happens for a reason. People change so that you can learn to let go, things go wrong so that you appreciate them when they’re right, you believe lies so you eventually learn to trust no one but yourself, and sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together.” God bless Marilyn Monroe for that little nugget of wisdom.

      I am so very happy!  Moving on with my life, getting married to the man I love, having my own home, my puppies, my friends… now going back to school and working towards a nursing degree is just a continuation of all the good things that life has to offer.  I am unafraid, undeterred, and most of all… I am loved.  The bird called Fear has no roost here anymore.  The State of Independence is now where I reside, and it’s a wonderful place to live.  Love to all, Noah 

What a fabulous experience last night was. Elton and his Band put on an amazing show… 3 hours of sound, light and emotion. To paraphrase Crocodile Rock, I’ve never had a better time, and I probably never will. The best part of it all was having someone I love there to share the experience. Michael, thank you so much for making last night possible. You are The One, and the love of my life.

There was someone else there with me last night, in spirit anyway. My sister, Nancy was THE biggest fan of Elton, and one of the reasons I am also a diehard devotee’ of the Rocket Man. But last night I felt her presence many many times… a few times it became painful. I will never listen to his song Daniel in the same way ever again… the lyric:

“Daniel my brother

you are older than me

Do you still feel the pain of the scars that won’t heal

Your eyes have died

but you see more than I

Daniel you’re a star in the face of the sky”

made me so emotional… my sister wasn’t in Vietnam as Daniel is portrayed; but she was a warrior nonetheless to me. She suffered so many times and throughout her life that it was like a war. I was a witness to some of it, but throughout so much of her life, the pain of it, she carried in silence. I missed her so much last night, God I miss her still. Hey Danny boy… give my sis a hug for me while you’re up there, will you? Knowing that she’s a star in the face of the sky helps me to this day.

The set list of the Evansville Show started with Saturday Nights(Alright For Fighting), which kicked all of us into high gear. The concert was titled “All the Hits” tour, and it is well named…. nearly all of the biggest hits were visited, and some of the better album cuts as well; All The Young Girls Love Alice was a standout performance last night. I knew all of the words to every single song he performed, every “laaa, la,la,la,la laaaaa” in Crocodile Rock, every “Yeah, Yeah, Yeah!” in I’m Still Standing, and felt every single beat Nigel Olsson layered onto Funeral For A Friend/Love Lies Bleeding to my bone marrow. His band, like the Spartan Army in 300, unmatchable! But Elton, Elton was spectacular…. commanding his troops on the stage and out in the audience with such swagger and purple prose. I was rooted to the spot for 3 hours… no potty break for me!! Madman Across The Water interpolated with Beethoven’s Fur Elise… masterpiece! There was NO WAY I was unbuckling my seat belt on THIS rocket ride til we touched down on the tarmac. The only, and I do mean ONLY song that I wish he’d kept on the setlist was Take Me To the Pilot; but then again, I’ve been in his cockpit for so long now, it didn’t matter that he skipped it last night.

Now that I’ve come down from last night’s trip to the stratosphere, I am left with my pictures(nobody said I was a good photographer, guys…) my program from the concert(a treasure I will never part with), our tickets(looking for a way to frame them as we speak) and a slight headache from the amplifiers… but most of all; the absolute joy sharing a night with all of the people who “get” Elton, and sharing it all with my husband Michael. I felt every bit of the love coming my way from the stage, but it’s nothing like the love and support I feel from his side of our life together, and how he has helped me to be a better man. He’s the one, like the Sun, shining all his love around me. You’ll ALWAYS be the one for me sweetheart. I love you Michael

    So much of life is waiting… finding what you want to do when you “grow up” seems to take much longer than it does to actually do it.  It’s a big deal when you finally decide to begin a new chapter in life. To do that, you have to END the chapter you are currently residing. This long and winding road I’ve been walking has been fraught with mountains and rivers and my personal demons… to say nothing about the trolls under the bridge and my life as a castaway on TOTAL DRAMA ISLAND. 

    After a entire screenplay of soul searching, 2 plus decades in retail, marrying the man of my waking dreams, and having unconditional support from my friends, I am going to school…soon in fact.  I am going to get my degree in Nursing.  My long term goal is to become a Nurse Anesthetist… but first I have to get all the money and grants that I can to make that dream a reality and to pick a school that’s not only going to fulfill my needs but also allow Michael and I to move to a state where our marriage is legal.    I refuse to pay for my education in a state that doesn’t recognize my rights as a tax-paying citizen…. I refuse.

      I am so excited and more than a little apprehensive.  Changing careers, moving to a new place, leaving friends… daunting isn’t the word but it’s a first cousin to it.  I have a goal.  Plans to excel and grow into a life, new and improved and to help others.  To serve the greater good and to finally do what I have always wanted to do.  I know I can do it, and I will.   Life is change, for good, for bad… easy or not so much, ready or not! Here it comes… I have learned from so many experiences from work, past relationships and all the little endings that came and went that above all else, Change is our mandate and our greatest chance to live.

    So here’s to new beginnings.  I am looking forward to my enrollment in school,  to all of the late night studying, to the growth of my understanding of how to help and heal people, but most of all, to the growth of spirit I know I will feel when faced with all that I didn’t know, but came to understand once I walk down that commencement hall.  Wish me well and as always… Love to all.  Noah

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     We get a chance every day we wake up to find a new way to reinvent ourselves… and I woke up today with a decision to reinvent myself.   For a very long time I thought dreams were for sleeping; it was when you woke up that the dreams were to be set aside and move to the practicality of real life.  

     I decided today that things that I once interested me were old hat and not important anymore… specifically my career and the lens I use every day through my job to see myself.  Too often I use my success in my job to define my personal satisfaction with where I am( or was ) going with my professional life.  That is about to change… Reinvention is a scary thing; the safety of the status quo is warm and safe but it’s a blanket a foot too short.  The time has come to shed the covers and get out of bed, shower off the limits I impose on myself and get dressed for a new day.

    I am going back to school.  I decided to do this for the most important reasons that you can imagine.  I want what I do everyday to improve the life of others.  Selling laptops and TV’s is a good job; can’t knock it and I am proud to have had the chance to do it and have no regrets.  But dreams… dreams of going back to school and getting my BSN have been calling me, and the demands of those dreams have made themselves clear.  I know I was supposed to get my degree in nursing. get my nursing license, and work for the betterment of patients, but more importantly.. the betterment of myself.  

From very early on, my interest in the medical field was obvious… from my Anatomy class in high school in which I didn’t have a textbook for the class, I had missed out on the first semester, but I knew so much more about the human body than those who had been there the whole time.  To my fascination of medical terms and the desire to learn about how people get sick, and how they get well.  To the people I hold very dear to me telling me that I would make an excellent nurse… and deep down to my bones they are right… all 206 of them.

      So now that I have decided to get out of bed, and move into a new chapter of my life, I want to find my path… to make the difference I was born to make.  I’m sure there will be some obstacles and tough times for someone like me to overcome but I know for sure that the biggest hurdle I had has been removed from view.  I know that my success is only determined by me and it will only look and feel a sucess once I make my dreams come true.  It’s up to me to get what I want and no one can stop me but me… once I get out of my own way.  

     Nursing is a calling, and a noble and honorable career. One I will be making my mark on as soon as possible.  So now is the time to get up to the plate, make my preparations to take all the bases, and to finally make my mad dash for home.  Wish me luck in this new endevor.  Love to all.  Noah

 Easter Sunday.  We all know what it’s all about… Jesus is risen, the Easter bunny hoppin’ down the bunny trail.. all of the good stuff.  We know the story, read the books, and O.D’d on Peeps and those GOD awful Cadbury eggs.  The story that follows isn’t about any of that stuff. This is a story of love and discovery; of a couple of guys looking but trying desparately not to look as if we were looking for someone to love.  In all of the melodramas and soaps and all of the “So, how did you meet?” flashback montages you’ve seen, our story is a little unique.  I’ve talked about Michael a bunch over the past year; you probably have the impression that I see him as the Second Coming.  Much as I’d like you to think I was sleeping with a deity, that would diminish what I remember so well about how my life(and I hope Michael’s) changed for the sublime.    So, I think it’s about time I share some of the details on how Michael and I found each other.  I haven’t heard a better story; maybe ‘cause it isn’t one… it happened.

     Flashback a year ago:

  I was living in a small one bedroom apartment that I had moved into when my life imploded for the better.  I had been there since Sept but I only made a (according to Michael) half hearted attempt to make it more than a place to crash after work.  Very little artwork, no real personalization..not what most people think a gay man’s apartment should or would look like.  Very beige… certainly not the cleanest place either!! More like a dorm room than any homage to style.

   Michael was living in Milwaukee, WI trying to decide what he wanted to do after taking a nasty fall on an icy Wisconsin sidewalk and healing after 11 surgeries on his ankle… he had a profile on a gay dating site that his best friend Garrett had created for him.  It had been inactive for some time; Michael is not one to sit at a computer screen for hours…. but after the accident had left him immobile and wondering what he was going to do after he got better, he did what lots of people do… they check out people online.  Now, here’s where it all happens…

    It’s Easter eve… I’m in my apartment.  I am online bouncing back and forth from Facebook and Myspace and my TV screen watching something that wasn’t catching my attention.  I click over to my profile I had on a gay dating site to see if I had any messages from anyone.  Now I ain’t gonna lie… I have met some good people online.  Some were just good for the three “get’s”…. and some were just one “get”.. get OUT! (insert laugh track here).  But on Sat night a year ago, little did I know that things were about to change and change BIG.

    In my mailbox was this picture of this handome man with big facial features in a recliner and a crocheted blanket covering him…. followed by a message that proceeded to blow me away..

“Hi! Michael here.  I saw your profile and I really liked what I saw… love the T-Shirt and most of all your forethought to let other’s know where to get one… if you aren’t busy can I call you later tonight?  I am watching the Ten Commandments right now, but I’ll call you once it’s over.”   Great pickup line huh??

  I was just amazed that this guy, this handsome as HELL studmuffin guy wanted to call me; but only AFTER the seminal Cecil B. DeMille chestnut was over…. I was smitten to say the very least!  So I messaged him right back, giving him my number… and TRYING to be cool and collected and as butch as possible. I flipped the TV over to see Charlton Heston part the Red Sea and see all of the late 50’s cheesy special effects in their glory.  The phone rings….and the show isn’t over.  He couldn’t wait to talk to me he said. and I was so happy to hear Michael’s deep but cheery baritone voice for the very first time.   

    We talked for nearly 3 hours that first call…. and the next call it was nearly 7 hours I think… our cell phones would have to be plugged into the wall off and on during our conversations thereafter.  Then I suggested Skype… well that was it!  We logged lots of Skype time from there on in; we talked forever from our PC’s… the new millenium version of Sleepless in Seatlle.

    Then when the need to meet got the better of us we both split the cost of a plane ticket so that we could meet… our friends were not a little freaked to put it mildly… his BFF wanted to know what his “exit strategy” was… and my friends thought I was a little crazy..  My BFF the exception.  She told me that I needed to take a chance and she was right.. but to be careful; to go slow.

   Little did I know that I would meet Michael online… or that I would fall in love, or get married or any of the many things that’s happened when I first put my profile on that site… the most I thought would happen was a few dates, and lots of chatting… but I believed…. and I hoped.. and I prayed that Love was out there.  I just had to show up.  

   Our wedding day was 1.28.2011.  We “met” on Easter eve 2010.  There isn’t a speed limit on falling in love or finding happiness; but you have to start somewhere and you have to be willing to go with it if you’re gonna go anywhere.  I fell in love with Michael in stages… starting with the Red Sea and it continued with each call, each Skype session, every email… and when he “surprised” me on his second visit (haha, nice try Michael) I knew I was going to marry him.  I knew that he with his goofy grin, his love of real butter, his beautiful and generous heart had captured mine.  

    We watched The Ten Commandments last night, right at the scene when we first met.  Today, Michael made Easter dinner with turkey, mashed potatoes, dressing, gravy and corn… and celebrated Easter together with Jack and Molly; our first Easter together as a family.  Michael put his heart(and his wedding ring) into the turkey dinner… thank God I bought Tungsten Carbide wedding rings.. he found it as he was slicing the bird for dinner! Michael, you put so much of you into our lives… For Easter I want you to know that it doesn’t go unnoticed, and Jack & Molly, Yankee, Blessing, and I love you more than you will ever know.   

    You know, the biggest thing that I learned today is that I love my life and the biggest reason is Michael.  But it’s time to see us through another season of love.  The rain is pouring outside, the yard outside is flooded and storms are coming in the distance.  We are inside our house tonight, TV on, life is ours and it’s evergreen… just like our grass on our lawn, we have to tend it to make it grow and flourish.  I can think of no one I’d rather tend a garden with than you Michael.    

Well, it’s time to say good bye to Peter Cottontail and the Messiah for another year.  But like all seasons, we remember them all as time goes by, leaving our past as signs to where we were, and where we hope to go.  Love to all.  Noah

I just have to say it’s a thrill to start this new blog here…  haven’t written any blogs for some time.  The last one was right before I got married.  Been really busy and I haven’t had time or inspiration to write much more than my name on the dotted line.  So why now? What’s changed??? Well for one thing I felt compelled to write about what I’ve learned in the past few months as a married man.  You know, I never thought I would have walked down that isle until I did this past January and I am very happy.  Michael is more like his angelic namesake than a human being… but he’s still a human being, and I am just as fallible as I ever was.  

     Changing our  last names… NOW that was a pisser!  Out of all the things that our marriage has meant to us; the one thing that I get asked about by other people (and maybe it’s because we live in the Bible Belt and gay marriage isn’t recognized in Indiana) is the name change.  It just makes some straight peoples eyes gloss over… kinda like reading War and Peace to 1st graders; they hear it, but it’s just way over thier head.  Oh, people are polite… I’ve really not had any straight up haters to my face; but, you can see the film slip over the eyes, like a nictitatingmembrane, but one to protect the heterosexual dignity than the actual eye as some people I know or have met realize that… OMG!! I’m talking to an honest to GOD man who got the “gay marriage”.  I pretend not to see it and just say to myself “oh it gets better… it gets better… ”  and IT IS getting better by God.  But really, isn’t all marriage pretty gay???  So what! We hyphenated! It’s not that bad…. The Moore-Goad’s from Wisconsin and Indiana.  We wanted our last names to match and we both wanted to change our names.. and since we had the marriage license and we were able to change it we did the most logical thing… we shared our names with each other.  To a few people that I’ve met though, it blew their MINDS!!  You can almost see theWTF in the expressions on a few(thankfully a very few) people.  I say to the straight readers out there… all that should matter in a marriage is if you love the one you’re with, and not who gets to carry on the family name.  Michael and I are a family… and our last name may have been homogenized, but no more so than any woman who’s ever gotten hitched.  It’s not that deep.  Love multplies; it doesn’t divide.   And we love our life…. strange last name and all.  

   The other thing that blows some people outta the water is the fact we met online… SHOCKER!!!!!!!!!!! Whattayamean???  You met online?? Like, weren’t you scared?? (Sometimes delivered in a whisper.)  Was I scared? No. I wasn’t scared; at least, not in the sense that Michael was going to tie me up and serve me as an entree’.  I was more scared of not taking the chance at finding someone who I’d spend the rest of my life loving.  All life is a risk and if you don’t look around and see the sights you will miss the point of living.  I wasn’t going to miss out on the opportunity of my own life for one more day.  I wasted nearly 2 decades of my precious existence on this earth and I wanted and will always want to improve what’s left of it.  To do that I had to get on with it and once I did, I got more than I ever could have wanted.  So we met online…  it happens. Thank God and HTTP (that’s for all the geeks in the audience.)  

    Being part of a “gay” marriage is special and wonderful thing… now take out the “gay” and you will see what you should see… being part of a marriage; it’s not about the wedding cake(we had one) or the veil(didn’t have one) or the bridesmaids(do our schnauzers count?)… it’s about commitment and love.  There is a quote from a movie I love called Shall We Dance  that I feel sums marriage up for me… 

“We need a witness to our lives.  There’s a billion people on the planet, what does any one life really mean? But in a marriage, you’re promising to care about everything.  The good things, the bad things, the terrible things, the mundane things, all of it, all of the time, every day.  You’re saying ‘Your life will not go unnoticed because I will notice it.  Your life will not go unwitnessedbecause I will be your witness.”

 God bless Susan Sarandon… she delivered that line perfectly.  And out of all the billions of people out there, I am so blessed that I witness Michael’s life every day… his good things, his bad things and all the things in between that make me love him more and more each day. Nothing he does escapes me because I am his witness… and I love him.  And he knows so.  

   So this is the maiden voyage of my blog as a married man with the hyphenated name…and I am ecstatic to share the waves with you all.  More to come in the months ahead to share and it’s gonna be a fun ride.  Here’s to all of my friends who get it and to the people who don’t: get with it. Marriage is so gay!  Love to all… Noah 

Tomorrow, at high noon, I will wed my boyfriend Michael.  As I lay on a king sized bed in a hotel in Davenport, Iowa, my partner is laying at my feet with pillows propped against my leg channel surfing.  He pauses as the local news has briefly captured our eye.. the failed attempt by the “conservative” groups here in Iowa to put same sex marriage to a vote; the goal was to garner enough votes to stop the forward thinking progressive movement that helped pass same sex marriage here in this state… kinda like the Klan trying to put the rights of African-Americans up for a vote.. pretty strange on the face of it.  How can these people sleep at night?  

     What can be said about this journey that Michael and I have only just begun?  A few words come to mind… joy; a sense of peace, hilarity(Michael makes me laugh all the time), adventure.  But the most important feeling I feel; the most intense emotion I feel tonight is a deep and abiding gratitude.  I have never loved or felt such love for anyone before. Ever.  I was writing my wedding vows last night; now, I usually have words spilling out of my keyboard.  But how do I write the words… words to express completely the immense gratitude, love, adoration, and admiration for this man… this angel on earth who I can’t even imagine how he and I would have ever even met, much less fall in love if it hadn’t been for God?  Some of you out there may not believe in a Higher Power.. I can’t help but believe.  

     As a kid, I never thought that I would ever fall in love; much less get married.  I knew very early on that I was gay and matrimony didn’t even seem possible.  For those of you who read my earlier blogs know that right now… this moment that is upon Michael and I, would never have happened if two things hadn’t happened.  The first was my loving myself enough to walk away on 8/3/09.  The second was letting go and letting God find a way.  This may sound a little Church Lady I know… believe me, when Michael reads this he will roll his eyes and say “Do you really think JC has time to worry about this kinda crap?? Really? I mean, Really??”  My response to that is a favorite hymn.  The lyrics are as follows:

Why should I feel discouraged, why should the shadows come,

Why should my heart be lonely, and long for heav’n and home,

When Jesus is my portion? My constant Friend is He:

His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me;\

His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me.

I sing because I’m happy, I sing because I’m free

His eye is on the sparrow, and I know he watches me.

 I know that God is alive and well.. he answers prayers and is a good and loving God… I know because of the man laying beside me, with no clue that I’m typing this love letter but all of this came about through the will of God, Allah, Yahweh or whoever is up there.  Who am I to question?  God put this wonderful man named after an angel in my life.. I only hope that our journey through life is as long as it has been beautiful.. tomorrow our world(and our names) will change forever.  

•   This journey into bliss… dreamed of all my life, but brought to life on the 28th of January 2011… and all I can say, and what I will say at high noon is: I do.  I really really do.  Love to all.  Noah