Alon + Sam

Lalonie and Sam

This is Alon, my first gay boyfriend. We met, maybe 10 years ago, at the Second Cup at John and Queen. At that time, we were both ravers. He was sunning himself at an unstable metal table on the pavement terrace. In those days, you fought for a place on that terrace.

There is a comfort in Alon that you immediately get when you first meet him. He seems ready to tell a silly joke or turn into one of the muppets. But it's never in a loud way. That's one thing that's Alon: he's not aggressive. And so it was that upon first meeting that I liked him.

Anyways, so we started to go to a lot of parties together. The first time I did poppers was with him. The only time I cracked on mushrooms, he came over at 4am. I still remember the two of us, huddling in my miniature music box apartment, staring at the ceiling and crying over lost loves.

Eventually, after the first year, when we were inseparable, we decided to get a place together. We looked at lofts in the west end. At that time, the west end was still grundgy and uncool. But we found a three storey loft apartment, maybe 2000 square feet, and 30 ft high ceilings, and took it.

It should have been paradise. It started out that way. The space was too big. The kitchen was so big that we let mountains of dishes pile up all over the counters, on the stairs, and on the island. We threw a party where so many people showed up I started to introduce myself as the girl who's bed you're sleeping in. The worst part was that we lived right behind one of the best places in town to buy second hand clothing. Since the dryer didn't work, and we were too lazy to go to the laundromat, both of us got used to buying a new outfit everyday from the warehouse. Needless to say, my bedroom was knee deep in clothes and the cat almost suffocated under a stack once.

We even had this thing where both of us would censor our outfits before leaving the house. "Do you think this is too raver rodeo clown," he would say as I stared disapprovingly at the mixture of pink checked western shirt, creamy taupe big pants, and blue hiker boots. The shapes were disconcerting. In the course of the 6 months we were there, I'm pretty sure neither of us was ever on time for any appointment.

Probably the culminating stage of the first phase in our relationship was New Year's right before we moved in together. Both of us had gone to a party, a dance party of sorts, in some converted gigantic basement. At first we were ok, and everybody was laughing and talking. Suddenly, Alon sat down. Everybody around was fine, but he just crossed his legs and meditated. Soon after, I dropped down, and my eyes became heavy. I then stayed awake, but with eyes closed, and steadily hallucinated a series of mind-blowing images for awhile. Alia came over and started to rub my shoulders. At some point, Alon took over. And then, maybe an hour later, I opened my eyes, looked at him, and we kissed.

There are kisses you remember and kisses you forget. Perhaps the sharpness of this memory is enhanced chemically, but the kiss is still the kiss. Very soft, calm, without pressure. Very loving. We made out for a couple of minutes. I thought I was in love with him. I started thinking that I would become one of those characters that succeeds in converting their gay boyfriend and would eventually make a guest appearance on Donahue, or maybe even Oprah.

But, life is strange. We shared a brief two weeks of bliss, very sweetly, and then, as chance would have it, I fell in love with Yuri two weeks later.

Alon had to share an apartment with me the whole time I was going through the early throes of love with Yuri. If you've ever been a roommate to someone falling deeply in love, heart and body, you know what it sounds like. And keeping someone awake consistently, especially when they're single, by various muffled sounds can make anyone excessively grumpy.

After 6 months, the first phase was over. I moved out of the loft and into a converted California beachhouse. Alon moved to a cute 1 bedroom in an old Portuguese brick house. We didn't speak for several months after... such was the acrimony of the split.

And then... as things are with good friends, we kissed and made up. Alon became a regular part of my life, and probably always on the top three outgoing numbers from my phone. We ate a lot of dinners together, listened to a lot of R'n'B, giggled and cackled, made fashion, made art, got angry, forgave each other, bought each other rare Japanese ceramics, etc. etc. etc. Life went on. He fell in love with a man named Sam, a boy Sam, blond Sam.

And then, suddenly, I decided to move to France. Alon was doing a lot of fashion styling at that time, and he was suddenly busy. I saw less of him right before leaving, but he still managed to show up to my T-Bone Steak Going Away Bonanza at The Tulip. I came back briefly in the first year, and he had just broken up with Sam. I had broken up with Yuri. Both of us were in too rotten a shape to keep well each other's company.

But now I'm back and married, and he's dating a new man. When we speak, I know him so well. This is something I miss from France. Knowing your friends for so long that you barely have to know what you're joking about and there's a comfort in a certain body language being more important than what's said. Now he is a fashion editor for a national men's magazine, fashion editing being a job he was born to do. It's nice the good guys win every now and then.

He's still Alon.


Lost in his Private Jean Machine Commercial...