Spare tires and spare thoughts

Damn M. and his decision to cash in on his 4 (but currently nine) free issues of Time magazine, the latest of which was waiting to greet me in our mailbox when I got home, demanding that I Lose That Spare Tire! Since when does Time magazine care about my spare tire? As if I weren't already consumed enough with my spare tire after bumping into my friend MB on the walk home from work and deciding that maybe we'd try to make the virgin 2005 voyage to Jones Beach this weekend, and joking that ha ha neither of us were quite ready for our sungas (look it up) and ha ha better do some sit-ups and ha ha I can't even suck my gut in anymore how about you and ha ha ha......

But then he walked down the steps to go to the gym, while I came home and sat in front of the computer in my underwear......and my spare tire.

M. and I drove upstate for the long weekend with our slightly older and more affluent home-owner friends, S&P. It was relaxing and my arms got some nice color while sitting on their lawn yesterday morning but otherwise, as usual, the weekend did nothing but make us rue our own dismal lack of a home, weekend- or otherwise. M. even pointed out that we could put a down payment on a house with what we're likely to spend on our wedding, and he had a point, but I snuffed that idea before it gained much girth, as I am still banking on the hope that I will massage both a wedding and a down payment out of my parents, like my siblings have all done.

It was strange, we saw some of S&P's friends upstate with whom we've become familiar, and I know I'm hyper-sensitive and intense about the whole thing, but with almost all of them, when I told them we were getting married, I got either no reaction or an indifferent one. These are all gay men in their late-thirties to late-forties, all of whom are in committed relationships of varying time spans, and all of whom are nice and open and friendly, and I guess I still expect everyone to jump up and down like our closest friends do, and spend the next hour talking about how exciting it all is. So maybe part of it is, as usual, my overwrought expectations. But maybe there's more? Maybe it's a generational thing? When I brought it up to M., who really didn't notice what I noticed, his opinion was that gay men of that generation aren't so into the whole marriage thing, maybe even to the point of being against the whole marriage thing. Like, they don't get it, don't get why we'd do that, or especially why I'd need to call it marriage. I, of course, analyzed it a little deeper and predictably entered into more sticky reasons like resentment and jealousy and insecurity, but maybe M. is right. Maybe it really is just a matter of Oh no, there they go again, these gay Gen-X-ers, slapping on their tuxes and running off to P'town and driving all of our hard-earned homo-separatism right into the ground.

I just editorialized, that's not really at all what M. meant, but the basic gist is still there - - maybe it's all just kind of foreign. Or maybe I'm just a hyper-sensitive freakshow whose feelings get hurt when relative strangers don't drool all over my hope chest. Or maybe they really are all insecure that they're not doing it, or resentful that we are, and maybe they'll pelt my Just Married sign with eggs.

In other news, I called my mother when we got home last night, and she is now supportive to the point of volunteering to accompany M. and I when we drive out to the Cape to check out the reception places at the end of June.

Maybe I should watch what I ask for.