But luckily, I have lots of work to do. This time next week, not so much.

See, next Wednesday is my last day of school before seventeen days of Xmas break. My boyfriend doesn’t arrive till the 22nd, so I will have a full week with nothing on.

Oh right. I said I was going to tell you about him.

His name is Ross and we used to be roomies back in 1998. ^[1] That’s year I ended up in Silicon Valley, pursuing a relationship by moving to the opposite coast of this great continent for the second time in my life.

The first time it was Portland, Oregon, and that relationship around a  year. The second time, it was San Jose in Silicon Valley, and that relationship lasted less than a month.

So I was getting nowhere and gaining speed.

The odd thing was, in both cases I ended up living with the same two guys, Skylos and Wulf, or David and Dhugal in their secret identities. Both times, they were there to rescue me from my total lack of forethought and surfeit of trust and idealism by taking me in and giving me a place to live.

I can’t possibly hope to express the depth of my gratitude to those guys for housing and feeding and looking after me. They are high on my list of people who will get a big karma payout in lovely spendable cash if I ever get rich, or even just fairly well paid.

Heck, my lifestyle upgrades can wait. It’s not like I am wallowing in abject misery here. Paying people back for the kindness they have shown me would make me so happy, and relieve me of a debt I feel I owe.

Especially to D and D, because I was in my mid to late twenties and completely ignorant of my own mental illness when I lived with them, and I was not always sufficiently grateful or respectful to them for taking me in.

I guess when you have never been independent and employed, in the back of your mind, you feel like the world owes you some caretaking. And that goes triple for those of us with depression. It’s hard enough just making it through the day.

Looking back, I actually had a pretty good life with them outside the ravages of depression, which I didn’t even know I had.

Anyhoo, back to our story. So, the first time I crashed and burned, I lived with David and Dhugal. The second time I cratered, I lived with David and Dhugal… and Ross.

Ah, Ross. Such a sweet, eccentric, intelligent, gentle man. I never felt like a burden or a curse when he and I talked. I would gently prod him into taking me out for dinner because I knew he enjoyed it once he got there (so did I) and I liked seeing him blossom.

And I was definitely attracted to him. He was such an awesome guy. But depression takes such a toll on your self esteem that it literally never occurred to me that he could possibly see any worth in a worthless piece of shit like me. And if it had occurred to me, I would have rejected it outright because the last thing I would want to do would be to bring someone I loved into closer proximity to my radioactive toxicity.

I still feel that way sometimes. Like I am a blight on all who come into contact with me. I always find my way out of it eventually, but it still happens.

Recovery is a life long process. Maybe I will feel better about myself once I have something to show for my life, even if it’s just a degree from VFS. At least I will be able to say I did something with my life.

Ahem. Back to the happy.

So while Ross and I got along great, a relationship was not on the radar. Until recently.

See, Ross and I reconnected on Tapestries, the furry text environment where I hang out. He had been on the periphery of the Furry for a long time, and decided, at long last, to join us. Mua ha ha.

So we have been talking through Taps for a couple of years, and growing closer at a distance, and one fateful night around a month ago, one of us finally had the nerve to bring up the subject of romance.

It was him.

He told me he was always attracted to me, even way back when I was way more of a basket case and living with him and the other two in Silly Con Valley. At first I could not believe it. Not that I thought he was lying, I just couldn’t believe anyone actually wanted me, then or now.

Still struggling with that self esteem thing. He was just as surprised by my attraction to him as I was by his attraction to me.

So we both have issues.

Once the wall between us came down, things progressed rapidly. We are both middle aged men looking for a stable and comfortable relationship where we can dote on one another and settle happily into blessed domesticity. We are both highly intellectual, intelligent, liberal, funny, cute, and lovable.

We’re two gay nerds in love, and I am all a-twitter with happiness.

And the best part is, he is going to drive up to see me! He will be sharing my massive bed, with or without serious sweaty snugglebunnies, for around a week, and we will see where the relationship goes from there.

If things go very well, we might even consider romantic cohabitation arrangements. That might prove a little tricky, because I have no idea where I will end up living once I graduate from VFS and start looking for work in the TV biz.

Maybe I will end up living here in the GVRD, but probably not. Maybe (hopefully) I will end up in Toronto. Or, last resort, I might have to go to LA.

And it is rather hard to set up with house with someone when you don’t know where that house will be.

But no matter what the future holds for me, I know one thing to be absolutely true :

I have a boyfriend now.

And I thought that might not ever happen.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.