Time Is Having Its Way With Me

By Todd Craig

As of April 29, 2013, I am 42 years old. 

For as long as I’ve lived, being gay has been a young man’s game made up mostly of drinking, dancing, and sleeping around.  At yes, at 42, I’ve discovered that age has its trappings.

My hair is thinning, and what hair I have left is graying.  I work out like crazy - not to get swoll, bruh - but to keep from being swollen from that one carb that I ate last week.  To wit: a few weeks ago, after a ridiculously tough workout, I slumped over in the steam room afterwards, exhausted and frustrated at my lack of progress.  There protruding from the middle of my unchiseled pecs was a bright white chest hair.  I didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry.

There are other indicators that time is beginning to have its way with me, and they’re not all physical.  I can’t think of a single movie in the theater that I want to go see right now.  To tell you the truth, I don’t even know any of the titles, what any of them are about, nor even know who’s in them.  I really only want to see movies with Meryl Streep, and I’ll wait until they come out on DVD so I don’t have to wait in line for an overpriced ticket, thank you very much.

Harumph.

I can’t even pretend to be young either.  I look better in a button-down and slacks than I do in a designer t-shirt and jeans.   I drink vodka, not beer. Taco Bell doesn’t sound good anymore, and besides I’d need three days to work it off again at the gym.  Saving for retirement is more important than driving a new car.  I buy shoes on clearance.  At Kohl’s.

At some point in the last ten years, I turned… middle aged.

And as hellish as it sounds, I don’t think I’d trade it for anything.

First of all, I’m married. I have been with the same man for almost a decade now, and we make a pretty impressive team. The whole dating scene is long since gone, and I don’t miss it in the slightest.  Being young and single has its perks, but not one of them is equal to waking up with my husband draped around my body, snuggled up all warm and cozy as he does every morning.   When we change the sheets, we’ve worn ruts in the mattress where we sleep.  After eight years we laugh at the same jokes, and we know how one another thinks.  We exchange glances so nuanced that we have entire conversations without using words.  Long gone are the days of wondering what he’s thinking about.

Good riddance.

We also have a family in a little six year old boy who is full of energy, love, hugs, and farts – not necessarily in that order.  He bounds out of bed at 7 on Saturday mornings excited for breakfast and cartoons and the new day and his Star Wars Legos.  Sure, when I was single, I could sleep in until noon, but now I stumble out of bed, pull on some jammy pants, and start making pancakes.  It’s what we dads do.

Who needs sleep when you have blueberry pancakes?

And now, instead of weekends of drinking and dancing, I mow the lawn.  Sometimes, I sneak out of bed early to watch CBS Sunday Morning and read the paper in the quiet of the morning.  That’s about as exciting or sexy as my life gets anymore.

What my life is though is fulfilling.  Together with my husband, we’ve built a nice home, a beautiful family, and with apologies to Jimmy Stewart, a wonderful life.

The generations before me weren’t so lucky.  AIDS killed too many before they even reached 42; being gay was a young man’s game because very few lived to see middle age. Before that, an unhealthy mix of discrimination, fear, hatred, and societal expectations forced others into trying to live straight lives based in deceit and dishonesty.

So here I am, a gay man age 42:  husband, father, career man.  I live a rich, beautiful, life rooted in openness and love in a way that weren’t really possible for those generations before me.  For that, I’m grateful.

Certain aspects of gay life are best left to the young, I suppose.  The dancefloor is a place for twenty-something hardbodies.  I’ll let their plates be full with looking good, expensive fashions, and trying to get laid.  

My plate is full enough already with these blueberry pancakes for my son. 

And shhhh…  don’t tell anyone, but I kinda prefer it that way.

In Defense of Fems

By Todd Craig

My husband rocks a Coach purse.  He loves his Capris.  His last mani-pedi featured a brilliant red paint on his toes and French tips on his fingernails.

Yes, my husband is unapologetically feminine.  He often times uses feminine pronouns to refer to himself.  He swishes into a room and put the flame into flaming gay.

And I love him for it.

Too often, I hear my single gay friends talking about how they want someone who’s straight-acting.  They want someone who’s a man’s man.  Someone with whom they can drink beer, watch sports, and have manly raunchy sex with.

What they don’t know is what they’re missing out on.

See, I used to think the same way.  The two men that I dated before my husband were both ex-Marines.  I told myself back then that same thing I hear so many other gays say: No fems.  And while I bounced from man to man, date to date, relationship to relationship, I held fast in that stance.

It never occurred to me that the reason I hadn’t found “the one” included my own prejudices.

Dating is tough.  You’re constantly putting yourself out there, trying find someone with whom to connect, make friends, laugh, dance, and fuck all night while spending too much money on expensive drinks, leaving your emotions open to heartbreak, and trying to avoid STDs.  Sometimes it can feel like Mission Impossible.

So why would I have been so stupid as to limit my playing field and make dating even more difficult?

After nearly a decade with my feminine husband, I’ve learned just how silly my personal discriminations were.  As we were dating, his mother surprised me with a question one day.  She asked me what I thought her son’s first job was as a young teenager growing up in the back country of South Carolina?  The answer?  He caught and gutted catfish by hand at a catfish farm. 

And I was going to guess Mary Kay representative.

Turns out that my husband has a little Field and Stream snuck in the depths of his Vogue self.  Who knew?

True Story #1:  When we moved my possessions to Colorado Springs after a whirlwind six months’ worth of dating, we rented a rather large truck and filled my car with whatever else didn’t fit.  I offered to drive the truck, but my fem husband-to-be politely declined.  On the trip down I25, my Honda Civic struggled mightily to keep up with the U-Haul for the first few miles.  By Castle Rock, the truck was long gone.  When I pulled into the parking lot of our new apartment, he was leaning against that big truck with his arms crossed.

“What took ya?” he asked.

“Umm… highway safety?  Reasonable speeds?”

“Man, fuck that,” he said smiling ear-to-ear and patting the hood of the U-Haul, “I made this big boy my bitch!”

"Huh," I remembered thinking.  The fem likes to barrel down the highway driving a loaded-to-the-brim mass of metal at ridiculous speeds.  Who knew?  Turns out that there’s nothing sexier that a fem boy with a bit of manly swagger.

 

Don’t think for a moment that my husband wishes he were a girl.  Yes, his favorite color is pink.  And yes, he’d rather plan a wedding than a Super Bowl party.  But trust me, my feminine husband is all man when and where it counts.

True Story #2:  During a financially tight month about three years ago, the power windows on my husband’s car quit on us.  It was the third or fourth such catastrophe to hit that month, and there wasn’t money left in the bank to pay for an expensive car repair.  I told him it was going to have to wait until next month. 

That next day while I was at work, I received a text from my husband.  He had sashayed his way into a local auto parts store, told them his problem, and bought a new motor for his window.  Apparently, the auto parts store employee walked him out to his car and showed him how to take apart his door and explained how he could wire the new motor into place.

I came home to find tools spread out on the garage floor and grease on his white undershirt and under his French tips.  “Look at this!” he exclaimed, hitting the button and making the window go up and down.

"Huh," I thought again.  “How much did this cost us?”

“Just $45 for the motor.  I took the door apart and installed it myself,” he said with more than a hint of pride.  I gotta admit the surprise of his automotive prowess, his white undershirt, and grease-stained manicured hands was a contradiction of masculine and feminine that was an almost ridiculous turn-on.

 

I’ve learned a lot from my husband over the last few years.  The biggest lesson is that what makes us male and female has little to do with what comprises masculine and feminine.  When I was single and dating, I was indeed one of those who didn’t want anything to do with overly feminine guys.

Then I met my husband.

Turns out that the living personification of swish can gut a fish.  He also drives a truck like a bad ass and doesn’t mind a little grease under his French tip manicure.  Had I not let go of my no-fems policy, I’d have missed out on the most amazing man I’ve ever known.

Of course, that would have saved me a few thousand dollars on Coach bags and nail salon visits over the years, but believe me, I just chalk those expenses up to the cost of happiness.  For I know now that sometimes in order to find your prince, you just might have consider a queen.

Marriage Equality: Feeling the Earth Move Under Our Feet

By Todd Craig

What a crazy couple of weeks, huh?

The Supreme Court finally heard the challenges to DOMA and Prop 8, gay marriage once again firmly took control of the news and social media, and now…

Now we wait.

But while we’re waiting, was it just me, or, with apologies to Carole King, did you feel the earth move under your feet?

Evolution doesn’t happen overnight, nor does it happen over the course of a couple of weeks, but I’ll be damned if it didn’t feel that way.

I woke up the morning of the hearings primed and ready to go. I logged in, monitored the live twitter feeds and Supreme Court blogs. I dutifully changed my Facebook profile picture to the HRC equal sign logo and donned red for the morning’s festivities.

By midday, my Facebook was a stream of pro-equality memes. By the afternoon, everyone’s profile picture represented equality. By evening, my gym was filled with guys wearing red workout clothes. By nightfall, I felt something very strange.

I felt equal.

The Supreme Court should rule on both cases sometime in June. Sure, I’ll hope for widespread rulings, but I doubt that will happen. Who really knows?

But a better question might be: Who really cares?

Rush Limbaugh

Seriously, there’s no way to lose here. If the Supreme Court’s ruling is wide ranging, hooray! We’ll get married as soon as possible. If the Supreme Court’s ruling is narrow, the outrage that will occur will only inspire the momentum into further action. We’ll go out there and earn our rights the hard way, state-by-state, election-by-election.

After what happened this week, I’m not sure there is anyone who can stop us now. Momentum is on our side. Even Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly came out in support of gay marriage, while uber-right-wing-blowhard Rush Limbaugh acknowledged that gay marriage was inevitable. I mean, c’mon, for those two to be saying things like that, well, that’s not just the sound of evolution, that’s the sound of the other side admitting defeat.

Sure, there are still haters out there. But they’re sounding more alone and more shrill by the minute.

What I do know is that for the first time in my nearly 42 years of life, I didn’t feel different. I didn’t feel like a gay outsider in a straights-only America. I felt like my concerns were heard. I felt understood. I felt like my friends, my family, and my country stood up and said that they really did feel like all men were created equal. I felt that someday soon, I wouldn’t be getting a commitment ceremony or a civil union; I felt that someday soon I‘d get married.

That’s huge.

There’s no other explanation for the evolutionary leap other than the earth literally is moving under our feet. The sky is tumblin’ down.

After seeing all those news reports, after seeing all of those equality signs, my heart - again with apologies to Carole King - really begin tremblin’.

Because soon, gay marriage will be around.

Meet the MileHighGayGuy Bloggers: Todd Craig

Todd Craig is a freelance writer, teacher, husband, and father to his five year old son, Joshua. He enjoys making ends meet, golfing poorly, and writing about life's experiences from his home in Colorado Springs.

Meet the MileHighGayGuy Bloggers: Todd Craig

Todd Craig is a freelance writer, teacher, husband, and father to his five year old son, Joshua.

He enjoys making ends meet, golfing poorly, and writing about life's experiences from his home in Colorado Springs.

Denver Broncos Fever Dreams: Matching the Broncos With Their Pop Culture Counterparts

By Todd Craig

My father, as avid an athlete and sports fan as there has ever been, raised his boys with sports in the backyard and sports on TV.  And while I never mastered any specific athletic endeavor with any degree of proficiency, I did grow up with a passion for sports, athletes, and their stories.

More specifically, I grew up a fan of the Denver Broncos.

I was six the first time Denver went to a Super Bowl and lost.  I was a college freshman the last time they went to a Super Bowl and lost.  Broncos fans suffered for their cause. We were mocked. We were seen as lesser.  It was not cool to be a Broncos fan.

And then, just as time was running out on the career of the greatest Bronco of them all - John Elway - the Denver Broncos went and won two Super Bowls in a row, sending their fans into the stratosphere and sending Elway into immortality.

But success doesn’t last forever, and for the last dozen years or so, the Broncos have returned to their also-ran status.

Until now.

You may not have noticed, but Denver is again crazy for their Broncos.  The signing of thoroughbred quarterback Peyton Manning has brought the team back to the top in the NFL, and as a lifelong Broncos fan, I’m thrilled.

My husband, who doesn’t give a shit for anything that involves balls (well, almost anything),  just rolls his eyes whenever I dial up the NFL on Sunday afternoons.  But with the playoffs fast approaching and a Broncos team that is clicking like Dorothy’s ruby red shoes, now seems like the perfect time to get my husband to watch and appreciate them the way I do. This season has been so magical, so filled with great stories, that I should be able to find a way to translate them to fit his gay lexicon.

And that got me thinking, if these Broncos were famous figures from pop-culture, who would they be?  Let me know what you think about these, and if you have further ones, make them in the comments section below.

John Elway is Cher.  In the gay world, no one is bigger or lasted longer than Cher, and for those reasons alone, she and Elway make a good pairing.  But there are other reasons for this comparison as well.  Cher started off a skinny teenager with a big talent – just like Elway.  She had early success and her career spanned decades – just like Elway.  She was dead and buried and written off as washed up – just like Elway.  She’s known for her comebacks – just like Elway.  The Broncos were a mess just two years ago, and when Elway reinvented himself one more time in the role as the team’s highest executive and brought forth one more renaissance, well, the results proved almost Cher-like.   He’s ba-a-a-ck!

Peyton Manning is Tony Bennett.  Who is that old guy singing with Lady Gaga and Michael Buble, you ask?  The timeless Bennett, who like Manning, has surrounded himself with a new team of talent and brought his timeless class back to the forefront.   My husband likes to say that Peyton Manning has cat-daddy swagger, which he’s picked up on from any of the three-million commercials he’s featured in.  But there’s something special going on with this old guy Manning this year.  Given up for dead and cast aside like yesterday’s news by the Indianapolis Colts, Manning has teamed up with a bunch of youngsters in Denver’s receiving corps to make some pretty sweet music that spans the generations and is as timeless as it is classic.  Bennett, like Manning, may not be a gay icon, but a little cat-daddy swagger appeals to us all.

Champ Bailey is Beyonce.   Isn’t Beyonce like the perfect songstress ever?  Well, the same goes for Champ Bailey as an NFL cornerback.  They’re both thoroughbreds in style and performance.  They’ve both been around forever and have constantly delivered the goods year in and year out.   Beyonce’s Destiny’s Child years can be compared with Bailey’s years as playing for Washington.  But stepping out from those early successes carried both risk and reward, and neither has disappointed in the years since, pumping out hit after hit and classic performance after classic performance.  Both Bailey and Beyonce are the gold standard at what they do.

Elvis Dumervil is Lil’ Kim and Von Miller is Nicki Minaj.  Denver’s pass rushing defensive end and tornado of a linebacker have been wreaking havoc on the Broncos’ opponents all year long.  Dumervil has long been a beast to contain, and like Lil’ Kim, has had a scrape with the law in his recent past.  Miller is the fresh, younger version that’s seemingly everywhere, much like Nicki Minaj.  Sure, there’s a bit of a rivalry as to who is Denver’s top blitzer, but as with any rivalry, we fans are the winners after every rap they make.

Eric Decker is Channing Tatum.  Denver’s young wide receiver from the University of Minnesota equates nicely with Tatum.  He’s fap-fap-fapulous.   Seriously, google image search Eric Decker, take four to five minutes for yourself, and thank me later. 

Honorable Mentions:

Willis McGahee is Madonna.  Probably washed up, and there’s a fumble here and there, but still producing better than most.

Demaryius Thomas is Adele.  Holy shit!  If this is how you start off, we’re looking forward to many, many more years of amazing!

Dishonorable Mentions:

Tim Tebow is PSY.  Wow!  That was an insanely catchy tune that made no sense and was as improbable as it was addictive.  Yet even as it was happening, it was obvious that this was a one-hit-wonder to everyone.  The same goes for PSY.

Josh McDaniels is Milli Vanilli.  A greater fraud has never been perpetrated.

Jay Cutler is Rupert Everett.  So much talent.  So much potential.  So much whining.  So much a douche.  I’m embarrassed that I ever had anything to do with you.

Sleeping Together: Fantasy Versus Reality

By Todd Craig

When I was single, I had these Cinderella dreams of life as a couple.  I romanticized growing old together.  I imagined snuggling up and drifting to sleep in the arms of my man on cold winter nights as if life outside were a Thomas Kincade painting.

The reality is that Thomas Kincade is dead, and his paintings, like those dreams of snuggly sleep, weren’t real either.

The ninth anniversary of the first date with my husband will be here in a few days.  Nine years, man.  That’s a pretty good start on something special, and it’s definitely enough time to have learned a few things along the way.

The biggest myth these past nine years exposed is this: We don’t snuggle up together and fall asleep in each others' arms.  We’re a couple.  We love each other deeply.  We’re deeply devoted to one another, too.  But for us, sleeping together has nothing to do with those single-person idyllic dreams of drifting off to slumber amidst nightly cuddles.  Instead, the reality has been a bit of a rude awakening, pun intended, for us both in that regard.

Sleeping Together Reality #1 –The first sign reality differed from fantasy was when I learned that my man has cold feet.  They’re colder than the damned sidewalk, and they’re unnaturally cold twelve months out of the year.  In the depths of winter, those footsicles are the first things that greet me upon getting into bed. 

You know those idiots who do the polar bear plunge of jumping into an icy lake on New Year’s?  They have nothing on me.  They do their little jump once a year.  Me?  I do it nightly.  Honestly, the temperature of his feet hovers somewhere between Canadian cold front and Absolute Zero.  Probably closer to the latter.  It’s gotten so bad that I flinch when I pull back the sheets.   My testicles have withdrawn so many times that they’re on a first name basis with my kidneys.

My spirit has been so broken that I recently bought a heated mattress pad for us.  It has twenty different settings of heat with Level One being a gentle radiating warmth and Level 20 being enough to take a frozen pot roast to medium rare perfection in less than three minutes.  Even at that setting and after a few minutes of thawing time, there is still a nightly negotiation between his feet and my body that I always lose. 

Sleeping Together Reality #2 – I’ll be the first to admit, I love snuggling.  I love to pull my husband close to me, drape my right arm across his bare torso, and hold him close to me.  Sounds good, right?  Not to him.

In his world, my arm weighs about thirty pounds.  The weight of my arm is uncomfortable and confining to him, so there’s no possible way he can get to sleep like that.  Every time I reach across with my arm, in his mind I might as well be laying a sandbag across his chest.

Turnabout is fair play, for as much as I like to snuggle with my arms, my husband likes to get a leg up on the competition, pun intended again, by snuggling with his legs.  He has this weird thing about not wanting his knees to touch, and his solution to this problem is to throw one or both of his legs over me once I’m asleep.  I don’t know if anyone else in the world has ever had this done to him, but let me inform you, having half of a person draped over you twists your spine in some rather unnatural positions that even the Karma Sutra would take a pass on. 

Sleeping Together Reality #3 – Never in all my years of dating did any boy ever tell me that I snored.  There are probably a number of reasons that I never heard this, including the fact that many times we didn’t actually get to the whole sleeping part of the night, but regardless, I’ve always believed that I was a silent sleeper.

To hear my husband tell it, however, my breathing is the perfect combination of the whistling winds in a canyon, the roaring engine of a 747 taking off, and a truck downshifting on the interstate.  A couple of weeks ago I was in a deep, dark sleep when all of a sudden, WHAM! I got an elbow in the ribs.

“What was that for?” I mumbled.

“You were breathing out of your mouth funny.  You were making this weird clicking noise!  Shhhhhh-pop! Shhhhh-pop!  Shhhhh-pop!  Over and over and over again.”

I began to comment that I was probably laboring to breathe due to the fact that I had his legs draped over me when I was elbowed in the chest a second time.  He suggested that I should keep my mouth shut while I was both asleep and awake if I didn’t want any more pointed elbows heading my direction.  That harsh reality was colder than my husband’s feet, and it was enough to convince me to roll over and keep my smart ass comments to myself.

All in all, there’s nothing quite like falling in love with the man of your dreams.  The Cinderella story is well known to us all, and when you’re single you cling to those relationship dreams and all of the idyllic images that go along with them to get you through the challenges of dating and the single life.

Reality isn’t always perfect, however.   Sometimes Prince Charming has cold feet.  Sometimes Prince Charming snores.

And the reality of sleeping with someone, like those elbows to the ribs, can be a bit of a rude awakening from what you hoped it would be.

I love my husband with all of my heart, and marrying him is the best thing that I’ve ever done.  Would knowing that we wouldn’t be snuggling blissfully to sleep every night for the rest of our lives change my single mind about marrying him?

Would his cold feet have given me cold feet?

Nah.

Am I A Bad Gay? Miserable About 'Les Miserables'

Todd Craig

My husband wants me to take him to go see Les Miserables.   

Sure, the movie has earned great reviews and has garnered Oscar buzz.  Yes, I know that it’s the first blockbuster Hollywood musical since The Sound of Music.  And I’m well aware that my Twitter feed has been clogged with twitterpated gay friends all chirping about how fabulous it is.

Am I a Bad Gay for not wanting to see it?

Am I a Bad Gay for thinking that Les Miserables might be the most appropriately titled movie ever?

True Story #1:  My Uncle Jim, the family wit in a family full of sharp ones, after being dragged by my Aunt Becky to see the Meryl Streep classic Out of Africa, declared that he was “… glad to get out of Africa.”

Anyway, here’s my deal.  I’m a nerdy gay. I grew up on a healthy dose of Spiderman comic books and Star Trek reruns.  I considered last summer’s Avengers movie to be high entertainment.  Yes, I know that makes me a bit dorky, and yes, I know that The Big Bang Theory hits a little close to home sometimes.  As a nerdy gay, I’m the one wearing a collared shirt at the gay bar filled with boys wearing low-cut, V-necks. 

True Story #2:  One of the last times I was at a gay bar, I got separated from my husband who was there with his hag.  I was approached by a gay guy, who sauntered up and asked what a straight boy like me was doing in a gay bar.  I replied, somewhat amused and somewhat coy, that perhaps there was a chance that I was indeed gay.  His response?  “Oh honey, not possible in that shirt.”

All of which, on top of my distaste of movie musicals, might lend you to believe that I’m some sort of Bad Gay.

I guess that I just don’t see much appeal when it comes to these song-and-dance reviews.  Don’t get me wrong, I love a good drama.  I also love music.  But, like a picky six-year old eater, I just don’t like it when my peas get all mixed up with my carrots.  When you mix them all up, the meal’s just not palatable any more.

I’m beginning to wonder if my gay gene is missing the love-of-musicals DNA molecule.  While the rest of the gay world sees Hugh Jackman, Broadway star, I see Wolverine, mutant bad-ass who isn’t doing anything stabby.  Yawn.  

My husband and I have greatly varying tastes when it comes to movies.   In the past, I’ve indulged his every gay desire with such painfully unwatchable movies as Sex and the City 2.   

Side Note:  Why does the usually charming Sarah Jessica Parker make such shitty movies?  My husband loves her, imagines himself to be Carrie Bradshaw at least six times a day, gets all ramped up for her latest flick, and then is constantly left disappointed and slightly defensive of his movie star friend.  If Les Miserables has anything going for it, it might be that SJP isn’t in it. 

Side Note #2:  Another appropriately titled movie:  Failure to Launch.  Seriously, don’t put the word failure as the first word of the title of a Sarah Jessica Parker movie.  The same goes for words like doomed, awful, and bleh.

Seriously, if I end up going - and we all know that I will in the name of being the world’s best husband - I will have definitely have to fake my gay orgasm after watching Wolverine sing for two and half hours.  I’ll try not to look at my watch.  I’ll "ooo" and "ahh".  I’ll pretend it was awesome.  I’ll say nice things afterwards.

However, I won’t really mean any of it.

Of course, maybe I’ll be surprised.  Maybe, just maybe, my long-buried gay chanteuse of a conscience will stand up in a feather boa and deliver a soul-shaking, heart-wrenching lyric that will put me and those around me in a song-and-dance finale that brings down the house while my newly-liberated gay self soars to unheard of heights.

But that probably won’t happen while wearing this shirt.

Homo for the Holidays: The Gift of the Diva Gay

By Todd Craig

My husband likes to believe that he’s easy to shop for. After all, there is nothing he doesn’t want. After this Christmas, I beg to differ.

You see, I’m from the school of thought that believes that a present is a gesture that represents how you feel towards someone while at the same time giving them something to remember you, the giver, as well. I listen intently as the months approach for clues as to wants and desires of friends and family. I labor at nights thinking of ways to personalize gifts and give them in a heartfelt way. The challenge of Christmas to me is finding each and every person on my list something that they’ll treasure and love for years.
 
My husband, on the other hand, is a Diva Gay. What is a Diva Gay, you ask? Diva Gays are known for their love of fashion and style. They worship their goddess, Mariah Carey. They love labels. They sing bling. There’s no such thing as too flashy or too gaudy when a diva is involved. When it comes to buying a diva gay a present, you merely go to any designer store - whether it be fashion, jewelry, or whatnot - and purchase something outrageously expensive. Never mind the fact that the said item that you’re purchasing has little or no perceived value to the other 99.9% of the humanity. Never mind that the Visa bank who backs your card is burning up your cell phone with disapproving voice messages that say, “Are you REALLY sure you want to do that?”  

True Story #1: After dating and talking about marriage, the future, and the possibility of having kids, my husband once proclaimed that he’d be more OK with having kids if he didn’t have to put any macaroni and glitter homemade crap on his refrigerator door. For our first Valentine’s Day, I made him a four-foot heart out of red construction paper trimmed in – you guessed it – macaroni and glitter. Of course, I was no fool. I coupled that shit with some 1000 thread count sheets, too. (Heh, heh… see what I did there? Pitched to the diva’s expectations and worked in a little heartfelt, cornball romance. Smooth, huh?) The sheets are long gone now, but that first Valentine remains. Even a Diva Gay’s heart can be touched, as it turns out.

True Story #2: For Christmas this year, our kindergarten son made us at school a hand-painted snowman magnet out of popsicle sticks, cut-out pieces of felt, and googly eyes. It hangs proudly on our fridge. Even a Diva’s Gay heart is vulnerable, it turns out, to the handiwork constructions of a six year old boy.

Anyway, getting back to my Christmas shopping woes, back in October we were walking through the mall, running a few errands, when what should catch my husband’s eye? A shiny new red Coach bag complete with yellow metal hardware and a heart-attack inducing price tag. His gasp was audible from its beauty as was mine upon seeing the cost of that thing. You see, I’ve been to this rodeo before. Those f**kers at Coach don’t play around. So you get your man the purse of his dreams, right? But you’re not done there. Then you have to get the coordinating wallet, the mini-skinny, the key-chain, the scarf, the LoJack security system, and the rustproofing before realizing that you just spent enough money to purchase a small island or a year’s tuition at DU.

So, yeah … a new purse again, huh? I winced in pain as the thought took hold of me. But as Christmas grew closer, well, we had some fortune come our way. My husband started a new full-time job after Thanksgiving as the lead administrator for a high-end jewelry store. Then my teaching job unexpectedly gave me a December bonus. Those two facts, when mixed with a moment of holiday weakness, convinced me that maybe my diva did indeed deserve some indulgence this year. I figured that I’d wait until the weekend before Christmas, make my mall journey, and buy the perfect gift for the holiday.

But divas are nothing if not a bit demanding when it comes to their presents. And indeed my husband’s idea of gift giving and receiving goes a bit like this: I’ll give you a list, and you go buy it for me. 

To that end, a few weeks before Christmas I received a list of add-ons for his china pattern. Yes, the boy loves him some fancy dishes, and to that end, when we married, he of course picked out a wildly popular and expensive pattern that has roughly 5,000 different overpriced pieces that you only get to use on Christmas and Easter. Over the years, I have bought him enough gravy boats here and soup tureens there to the point where we really need a second china hutch to display it all.

And that’s what he wanted now? More dishes? Obviously the whole purse idea had been forgotten as the weeks had passed. As I perused his list, it did occur to me that the overall cost for his dishes was well under the cost of the purse, its accessories, and the obligatory Coach undercoating and extended warranty plan.

Yet the temptation to go big for my diva was too much. I ignored the list, despite my Mariah’s expressed interest in the china and its lower price tag, and stuck with my original plan, the purse.
Lying in bed two nights before I planned on purchasing the purse, my husband began his annual game of Twenty Questions with me about my Christmas plans for his present. This is an annual event which means two things: 1. He knows I hate shopping off of gift lists and was nervous that I was getting him something not-listed, and 2. The whole house had been turned upside-down in a quest to find his Christmas present only to find nothing.

True Story #3: For his birthday one year, I put notes throughout the house in all of the various and assorted possible present hiding places. He wasn’t nearly as amused as I thought he would be when he opened up our cooler on a present quest and found a note informing him of my superior present-hiding skills. (His present was in my closet at work that year. Divas are thorough, after all…)
Anyway, my husband and I were in bed when the questions started. "What are you getting me? What kind of store are you buying it at? How much are you planning on spending?"

I artfully dodged question after question, only giving him enough information to conclude that I was going to buy him a vacuum cleaner – because, well, you do have to tease a diva a little bit.

“Don’t you dare!” he exclaimed.

“But a Dyson is like the designer label of vacuums,” I argued in return, giggling to myself.

“Do NOT get me a f**king vacuum! That’s NOT funny! I don’t want anything practical! Don’t get me a vacuum. Don’t get me new pots and pans. Don’t get me a new purse either.”

No purse? Did I hear that correctly? Oh, shit! There went Plan A.

The next day, two days before Christmas, I pulled up his list on my computer. There was no way any of the china would ship on time and arrive before Christmas now. Two of the items on the list had even been sold out.

I felt defeated.

I went ahead and ordered what I could. I purchased a couple of movies so that he’d have something to unwrap. During Christmas I told him of the china, and he seemed very excited for what was on its way.

Lying in bed that night, I told him the whole story of my trials with his present this year. I told him that I was sorry that he didn’t have his present here to open on Christmas.

“You always take good care of me,” he told me before rolling over and kissing me. “I totally forgot about that purse until now, and it would have been a good gift. But I’ll like my china when it gets here, and it was a very good Christmas either way.

“Besides,” he added with a grin, “the purse will still be there for Valentine’s Day, right?”

Christmas In Colorado: Making the Yuletide Gay

By Todd Craig

My husband loves Christmas. No, seriously, you don’t understand. He. Loves. Christmas. If our six year old son’s birthday wasn’t on Halloween, he’d probably start putting up the tree before Walmart and Target even clearanced out their back-to-school stuff.

Christmas to him represents the ultimate gay holiday. First and foremost: Christmas offers unabashed amounts of decorating. His decorating itch gets underway when I’m asked to drag out our nearly ten foot tree and three six-foot long plastic totes filled with ornaments. Over the course of the next week or two, the ornaments are sorted and hung, with the memories of each causing him to get all misty and emotional. Mariah Carey sings, “All I Want For Christmas,” and our house transforms into the holiday-version of Thunderdome.

Before we had our son, he would always do two trees: a “formal” tree and a “fun” tree. The formal tree looked like something from Martha Stewart’s wet dream. (I don’t know if women even have wet dreams, but I’m guessing that Marty probably has a penis anyway.) In any case, the “formal” tree glowed in beautiful gold and glittered ornaments. Ribbons draped the tree, and ornaments by Waterford, Lenox, and Wedgewood added the perfect classy touch as quickly as their purchase added the perfect empty touch to my wallet.

The “fun” tree was where a lot of the ornaments I liked ended up. There were my Broncos ornaments commemorating their back-to-back Super Bowl victories. My Captain Kirk and Spock collectible ornaments from Hallmark also ended up there, usually placed somewhere on the back, oddly enough. It turns out that gay geek chic takes a backseat to good taste when Christmas rolls around.

But when we adopted our son, our trees merged. Next to the Waterford crystal ornaments hangs Broncos Santa. A bell made out of tin foil crinkled by our son’s pre-school hands over a Styrofoam coffee cup resides next to the Millenium edition Wedgewood ornament. And even though my husband’s inner Martha might not admit it, I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t have it any other way.

After the tree, comes the china and display cabinets. There he displays his Avon nativity scene, one of a few artifacts passed down from his side of the family. The Christmas pattern plates of his Noritake china are culled from storage and make their way to the front. Candlesticks take on red and green hues.

The dining room table gets covered in a red plaid tablecloth. In the center, you’ll find a handcrafted centerpiece made of pine, holly, and ribbon while gold chargers at each seat display both the season’s and my husband’s more “festive” qualities.

And we haven’t even gotten to the outside of the house yet.

My husband is a gay man whose flame burns brightly all year, but when Christmas rolls around, his flame is bright enough to attract wise men to our doorstep – too bad his tastes run more towards the thick-builds and think-skulls.

After all, when you stop and think about it, if I told you I was writing an article about decorating, sweaters, shopping, formal dinners, drinks made with healthy doses of peppermint schnapps, and reunions with even healthier doses of familial dysfunction, would you be able to tell if I was writing about gay life or the holiday season?

Imagine living both at the same time.

Now that our yuletide is sufficiently gay, it occurs to me that our ultra-gay Christmas isn’t all that different from everyone else’s. Both the lights and my husband are high-strung for the entire month. Our son dotes over toy ads in the newspaper and is rapt with all that is wrapped. We’re planning for in-laws, readying our guest bedroom, and preparing vast quantities of nog, a phrase that sounds dirty, but really isn’t.

So what is the most wonderfully gay time of the year? Go ahead with your Pride rallies in the summer, your Aspen Gay Ski Week, and the White Party. While they all have a number of packages on display, none of them quite brings out the gay like Christmas. At least at our house.

Should Colorado's Gays Settle For Civil Unions - Or Fight For Gay Marriage

By Todd Craig

Last summer, I wrote a piece that criticized some of Colorado's gay-friendly political groups for targeting state legislature races in the election. Not that, as Jerry Seinfeld might have said, there was anything wrong with that, but it appeared to me that the presidential election and the significant role Colorado might have played in the election's outcome seemed to be a lesser priority for them.

Turns out, I was wrong.

Those state legislative seats that were targeted after last fall's civil unions debacle flipped to the Democrats. Obama won, handily, in Colorado and pretty much everywhere else, too.

That's the type of wrong I always hope to be.

As an added bonus, the four state measures from around the nation regarding marriage equality all fell to our side, too, as Washington, Maine, and Maryland will now allow same-sex marriage, while Minnesota politely declined a constitutional amendment limiting marriage to heteros only.

Rep. Mark Ferrandino

The election lessons seem pretty simple: the tide hath turned – big time - in our favor.

To make matters even better, Colorado Democrats named openly-gay Rep. Mark Ferrandino to the Speaker of the House position. Most of us who followed the 2011 civil unions fight remember him for his valiant efforts as he pulled out all the stops to try to gain equal rights for Colorado's LGBT population.

With election results like this, Colorado's gays have learned that we can have our cock and eat it, too.

The Denver Post has reported that the civil unions bill will likely be reintroduced and passed into law quickly once the session begins next year.

But should it?

As recently as early November, a Denver Post poll indicated that the majority of Colorado's voters support same-sex marriage over civil unions.

So the question we need to ask is pretty simple, in light of all of the political victories this past election, should Colorado's LGBT population settle for civil unions?

New York created the template for using the state legislature to pass gay marriage. Considering that we have statewide support for marriage equality, and gay-friendly Democrats now in control of the house, senate, and governor's mansion, not to mention all of the momentum from the last election, why shouldn't Colorado be asking for gay marriage too?

Sure, civil unions were a good compromise last year when we needed every vote possible in the Republican-controlled house, but that's no longer the case. Civil unions are like getting socks for a Christmas present. Sure you're grateful, and yeah, you'll wear them, but there's no denying that you want something better.

I, for one, want to marry my husband of almost ten years. The word "marry" is important to us. I'm not the first one to feel this way, but I don't want to look my husband in the eye and ask him to enter into a civil union with me. I want to marry him.

So I hope, before our state legislature convenes for the first time, that Colorado's political groups sit down with those of us in the LGBT community who helped to elect them and discuss whether or not civil unions are what we really want.

In my mind, now is the time for us to cash in some of our political clout and ask for full marriage rights. Purple state Colorado won't stay all blue for long. My fear is that passing civil unions now might saddle Colorado's LGBT population with a separate-but-equal status for untold years to come.

Of course, then again, I could be wrong.

Face to Facebook

By Todd Craig

You gotta love Facebook.

Sure, it’s the bane of existence to employers, and it’s a distraction for those of us who are trying to get something done.

But recently, Facebook did for me what Facebook does best:  It connected me with the people and organizations that I know and love, and they in turn, have me smiling from ear to ear.

So what’s brought that smile to my face?  A cute-captioned kitten picture?  An obscene e-card forward?

Nope.  Wayyyyy better.  Read on.

The day started with a beautiful letter posted in the Matthew Shepard Foundation’s Facebook page.  It was a letter written by a young man, a junior at the University of Wyoming who attended a Matthew Shepard Foundation sponsored concert and was so inspired by what he heard from San Francisco’s and Denver’s Gay Men's Choruses that he phoned his parents and came out on the spot.

It was a thank you letter from this young man.  An honest and beautiful thank you letter for the inspiration he received, felt, and responded to.

How awesome is that?

Later that day, I discovered myself at the gym.  (Author’s note: Yes, I’m one of those annoying people who will check my email and Facebook on my smartphone between sets.  What?  You’d rather I stare vacantly into space while I catch my breath?)

Anyway, my cellphone's screen contained a post from one of my former students on his Facebook page.   I had taught him in an advanced reading class during his fifth grade year nearly a decade ago.  He’s a hockey player now and a student at the University of South Carolina.  His post today was a multi-paragraph letter that reached this conclusion:

“…my generation is faced with another civil rights challenge... So I have decided to take a stand, to reach out a hand and to vocalize my opinion. I may not be gay, but that does not mean the people around me who are are any less of "people". They deserve the same rights, the same opportunities and above all the same respect.”

Pretty good, eh?

I won’t be arrogant enough nor naive enough to say that I was the teacher here who made the difference here.  He’s had dozens of other teachers, mentors, coaches, and professors since I taught him in fifth grade.

But that doesn’t change the fact that I’m not damned proud of the young man he’s grown to become.  His statements put a smile on my face like no other.

And smiling is especially critical during weeks like these.  Recent weeks have been especially brutal for us gays.  Both Chick-Fil-A and the Boy Scouts of America took their backwards beliefs to new heights and proudly stood on the side of gay hate and flat-out stupidity.

We’re all familiar by now with the pathetic nature of these organizations' statements and actions.  But these words are still gut punches to each and every member our gay family.  Their words are still hateful.  Their words represent discrimination based on out-of-date fears and hypocritical moral righteousness. 

And yet …

As depressing and hurtful as these gutshots are from corporate America, I’ll put my faith in these two young men who crossed my Facebook path today.   Two college guys, one in Wyoming and one in South Carolina, found the strength, inspiration, and passion to step up today.

The gays of this world have a new member to our family and a new supporter to our cause, and I like our odds with them on our side - chicken sandwiches and merit badges be damned! 

That’s why I’m smiling.

Chick-fil-A: Picking teams when it's "us" versus "them"

By Todd Craig

This whole Chick-Fil-A controversy has induced a rallying cry by the religious right.  Recently, news reports have former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee urging like-minded Christians to support the company on August 1 in an effort to counter the recent bad-publicity the chain has received since its leader made statements that they are “guilty as charged” for supporting anti-gay organizations with their profits.

From Huckabee’s point of view, this is an us-versus-them moment.

But then I got to thinking about it?  Who really is on the anti-gay side any more?  And conversely, who’s on ours?

Let’s take a look, shall we?

For anti-gay team, their starting line up includes The Westboro Baptist Church and their leader Fred Phelps who has blamed the 9/11 attacks on gays, which is amongst their more timid of other stomach-churning statements.   And let’s not forget the other proud defenders of the faith they can proudly stand next to like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, who both stated that gays caused natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina.  Yes, they’ll have to be feeling proud to stand next to the intellectual forces of Fred, Jerry, and Pat.

But let’s not just pick on the religious crazies that make up their team.  Let’s talk about the world leaders gay-haters get to stand next to.  This list is pretty impressive, and their starting line up is pretty tough to beat.  First, there’s Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who insisted that Iran doesn’t torture homosexuals because there are none in Iran. Huh. Who knew?  I wonder where they all went, don’t you? 

Next, are the Ugandan warlords/politicians who, spurred on by U.S. religious wing-nuts like Rick Warren, have vowed to persecute, jail, and sentence the death penalty on same-sex loving people. Oh!  This is an impressive group, isn’t it??

And who’s that over there coming down the anti-gay red carpet?  Oh yes, gay-haters can rally along with Russian president Vladmir Putin whose government has recently cracked down on homosexual activity and messages in public. 

Russia, Iran, Uganda, oh my! 

They gotta be feeling pretty proud right about now.

Oh, and before we go, they also get to stand with Al Qaeda.  Yep.  Earlier this spring Al Qaeda threatened to turn the streets red with gays’ blood if a gay pride parade took place in Azerbaijan.

Feelin’ good about the company you keep yet, gay haters?

On the flip side of the coin, let’s look at who supports us gays.

Well, for starters we have the leaders of the free world on our side.  Yep.  We have the current president, vice-president, and secretary of state who are all for gay rights and gay marriage.  (I know, I know.  They’re all Democrats, you say.  But we also have the previous Republican vice-president, Dick Cheney, too.  Surprise!) 

I know you have the Boy Scouts and Chick-Fil-A and Wal-Mart's conservative leanings are well-documented.  That’s pretty sweet, I guess.  A quick glance at Wikipedia’s list of supporters of same-sex marriage page tells me our side is gonna have to be stuck with Apple, Microsoft, Pepsi, Coke, General Mills, Levi’s, Walt Disney, Amazon, Costco, J.C. Penny, Kraft, GM, Ford, Hilton, Home Depot, American, Delta, Southwest, and United Airlines, McDonalds, Applebees, Olive Garden, Red Lobster, Starbucks, UPS, Google, Walgreens, and Rite-Aid. 

Pretty much every major company on the Fortune 500 this side of Wal-Mart.  And that's just for starters.

Oh, and the Girl Scouts.  So take that, haters.

According to the Huffington Post, our side will also have to suffer a few radicals as well.  We’ll get Clint Eastwood, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, Charles Barkley, Steven Spielberg, Russell Simmons, Daniel Radcliff, and George Clooney for starters.

We’ll also have music from Eminem, Pink, Elton John, Queen, and the B-52s. 

We'll laugh heartily with Margaret Cho, Sarah Silverman, and Jon Stewart.  Yep, this is gonna be a killer party once it gets going, isn't it?

But how will we complete with countries like Russia, Iran, and Uganda in the gay-hate corner?

We’ll have to settle for entire countries that already have marriage equality like The Netherlands, Belgium, Canada, Spain, Norway, Sweden, Portugal, Iceland, and Argentina, and we’ll throw in Israel, France, Great Britain, Germany, New Zealand, Mexico, and Brazil that are all looking currently to expand the rights of their gay and lesbian citizenry.

We also get New England, Massachusetts, New York, the nation's capital, the cornfields of Iowa, and the west coast of the United States.  

So what’s the lesson to be had here?  If a person is supposedly defined by the company that he or she keeps, well, I’m guessing gays and their supporters will sleep pretty well knowing who their friends are and the direction that they're helping us all to go.

And for those who don’t support gay rights, they may want to look at that list of those who agree with them.  Fred Phelps, Ugandan warlords, and Al Qaeda may be extremists of anti-gay rhetoric and actions, but it's a microscopically thin line between supporting your religious beliefs and flat-out working to promote discrimination, hatred, and persecution.

To paraphrase the Italian proverb, when you keep company with good men, you’ll increase their number.

That’s why we gays and our supporters will always stand up against the likes of Chick-Fil-A, and it’s why we will win in the long run no matter how many people share a sandwich with Huckabee on August 1.

Because the good people are on our side, and they’re increasing in number.