Ray

I was outside surveying the garden today, not really working, but trying to plan for what I might plant and where. A neighbor walked by, one I didn't know, but still, I said hello. He stopped first to hope for rain (here in California, as you may know, we're in the middle of a serious drought, so we address it in most small talk). We talked about what measures we were taking to conserve water, and about letting our lawns die. He said that soon we'd have to not flush our toilets until we did "something serious." I mentioned that we already have a dual-flush toilet to help conserve. He expressed worry that his house was old enough that it wouldn't work well.

He indicated that his house was one of the oldest ones on the next block. Our two streets and one more form a sort of W with no real outlets other than the main cross-street. He mentioned that he has lived here since 1947. I said that my house was built in 1948, and he said he could remember -- that many of the lots were vacant when his parents first moved in. In fact, he gently chided a woman who I previously thought was the longest-residing neighbor for "thinking she remembers things that she doesn't really remember." After all, he remembers when she was born! (For the record, I think she's about 70, and she also lives in a house that belonged to her parents.)

We may have chatted a bit more than that, but not much. He started to walk on, and he glanced at the bumper of my car, which has a Human Rights Campaign equals sign sticker, the one that supports marriage equality.

"Oh!" he stopped. "You're gay!" (It's, uh, not an unreasonable conclusion to draw from the way I appoint myself on weekends.)
"Oh, no, just a supporter."
"Well, I'm gay!"
"Oh! I support you!" I laughed.

Apparently drawn to tell me a story, he then shared that he had first gotten married in 1965. His wife couldn't have children, and she feared that she faced limited marriage prospects because of it. He was willing to adopt (though he says that they did try the normal way), and they did. They had two children, a boy and a girl, and shortly thereafter, he was of no use to her anymore. He asked for a divorce, and by then it was the 70s, when it was a little more acceptable to be openly gay. He came out, and for a long time, his ex-wife and her friends accused him and blamed him. Why did he get married to her if he knew he was gay? He said that he didn't know when he married her, and he would have divorced her even if he was straight.

He didn't fill in a lot of the intervening decades, other than to mention that he has another "little old gay man" friend who is just a friend ("gayer than a peach orchard, though! You could see him coming a mile away.") I asked him if we was happy now, and he said he was. He had a very happy life.

He reminded me it was better for my car to keep it in the garage, he shared that he had gotten a bad case of the flu in November that lasted into December, we chatted a little bit about home sales and prices in the area, and then he continued on his walk.

He glanced once more at my car, this time at the only other sticker.
"'I guess I was punk once.' Huh. I guess I drank punch once."

There's no real takeaway from this story, other than that I'm so glad to live in the kind of neighborhood where people stop to chat. I love hearing people's stories.