EDITOR’S NOTE: This article contains language and/or content that might be inappropriate or offensive to some. Reader’s discretion advised.
Day drinking in the Long Beach queer bars can be as disturbing as it can be enlightening. The depression of nothing-better-to-do at noon on a weekday mixes in with the wiser generation in retirement.
And I love it—truly, with a deep-seated appreciation of a knowledge nerd. (Think of day drinking as a hard knock school of fun since no one takes anything too seriously yet offer you tokens of life’s lessons). This day-drinking endeavor started for me in grad school, where I found myself hobbling around with my lumpy stack of underperforming undergrad papers and, unable to handle the empty looks of many students while grading at the library or on campus, I would haul myself to the Falcon midday to sit with a pitcher of beer and go about grading.
The tradition has surpassed my I’m-in-grad-school excuse and has become, at least when I have the time to do so nowadays, part of my normal social life. After all, I often can’t handle gaggles of gays who all sound eerily similar and are baffled by anything that isn’t glittery. (However, there are human highlights to making the owl trip out, particularly the ones who think they are in a music video: they do these Britney-like head whips and animatronic, look-like-they-hurt arm gestures that are epically awesome to regard, particularly when they lose balance, glance around making sure no one was paying too much attention, forget why they’re looking around, and go back to the video shoot.)
While many of these day adventures have brought about philosophical ramblings, many arguments, and even more pointless shots of the shots day drinkers do (the previous generation seems to understand that a shot itself is supposed to be sweet: hence why they shoot Tuaca but sip their Scotch), there was one particular day that was much more simple. There were no shots. No yelling. No rambling. Just cheap beer and an introduction that turned into an epiphany.
They weren’t from Long Beach, they were from San Francisco; a beautiful Latin and Black couple that seemed to have stopped aging at 38. After I had asked them how old they were (after some lengths at conversation, of course—I’m not rude), one responded eloquently, ’25 years with this one,’ gesturing to his partner as if their age was not measured by one’s own body, but their coupling.
It was both endearing and frightening to me; the idea of building a life with someone is, in and of itself, something I deeply want but, like all things we want, the execution of such an endeavor is different. Plus I am infamous for over-analyzing and immediately my mind jumped to a plethora of hypotheticals: I meet someone, when do we move in, do we get a dog, my fucking gods: what if he wants kids, what if I want to fuck other people but he doesn’t, what if HE wants to fuck other people but I don’t, what if we’re 60 and realize we despise each other, what if, what if, what if…
They saw the Mickey running the wheel in my head. I stupidly said, ‘Relationships frighten me,’ when I really meant to say, ‘Gay dudes seemed to be geared towards one direction: if you want it to last, you better be open sexually.’ Once I was finally able to get this latter point out clearly, they both looked at each other, that gleam that says, ‘Do you want to tell him or do you want me to?’
I cut them off before a response could occur: ‘You’re open, aren’t you? That’s how you’ve stayed together for so long?’
The Latino snapped his head past his partner’s line of view, his eyes coming in direct line with mine in a stare of incredulity.
‘Excuse me, papi?’ he retorted.
(No joke, he called me ‘papi.’)
‘This fool,’ gesturing to his partner, ‘was all about the open thing from the get-go and I was like, ‘Nada, you gotta earn that.”
Earn. What a fascinatingly simple way of putting it—and it spoke volumes. The partner smiled mischievously, shamefully admitting that he had indeed been the one to first ask for them to be open after a year of being together. But with an equal amount of self-regard, he continued for his firey Latin partner, ‘He was right. I didn’t get it at the time but you can’t just start sharing someone. It’s not fair for anyone. Ya gotta earn it.’
They had, after 25 years, just started being open for the first time for the past 8 or so months. The Latino was not quite as adventurous as the other, though he admitted he’s had his amusements on the side since the openness started. But make no mistake about them: the over-arching concept was that openness was a privilege to be earned, not one to be taken for granted or excused under the all-too-common mantra, ‘We’re men, we’re bound to fuck other people, get used to it.’
And for once, it all made sense. As life will always venture to inform you, oftentimes too late but mostly on time, that its story is never black and white. While it may not work for everyone—nothing ever does—there is something refreshingly progressive and forward-thinking in turning openness into a privilege that goes beyond STDs and jealousy: you establish trust with your partner so that, when the trust has been cemented in years and years of support and togetherness, the worry of the foundation cracking isn’t as imminent or stressful. What they’re doing on the side with one-night-stands becomes this deeply mature joke, as when the Latino mocked one of his partner’s hookups: ‘This bitch comes home all deathly at three o’clock in the morning and begins to moan’n’groan about how 22-year-olds don’t know how to kiss. MmmHmm.’
The last part was a confirmation of his point with a snap. I can imagine that, had this scenario happened 22 or 23 years ago, it wouldn’t have been met with such a laugh.
It’s a joke because, after all, sex is just that: sex. But like every joke, it can’t just immediately happen—timing is everything and so is trust in the comedian’s delivery. Trust is never just trust. I have happily found my middle-road and I can’t thank that couple more than enough for their perfectly simple way of displaying that the best option is to always embrace tradition with the idea in the back of your head that there are rules to that tradition which should and will be broken. Just in time.
For just like openness, breaking rules is also a privilege.