Mr. Wonderful, Part 1

     I've just spent an excellent evening out with my fiance (more on this anon). Volunteer Appreciation Night at the 519 Community Center, Church Street.  I've volunteered with the Senior LGBTQ Monday Drop-In for almost three years now.  However, this actually was the first time I've been out (socially) with Ian since he proposed.
     Hanging out with Ian's always been great but the evening was infinitely better with him at my side.  90% of the time we see things in a contextual way.  I don't have to learn a stranger's ways, I already know a great deal of this man and it's easy for me.
     I've avoided intimacy.  I feared that, if I didn't please the person I was with, in some fashion, they would leave me.  Obviously, I believed their departure would be doubly distressing because, not only had I lost a lover, I had also lost a friend.  And that's all it would take - my fear would consume me.
     I feel embarrassed.  I've spent three years learning to love Ian as a friend, warts and all, so to speak.  We'd go backwards and forwards.  Yet, we always got together again, sooner or later.  Till Ian proposed.  And now I find Ian's teaching me to let go my fears and learn to care for him in a completely different way..
     I was facetiously lamenting the lack of new men in the Village.  An acquaintance asked me what would happen if somebody of the village shows me facets of himself he's never shown others.  Well, now I have the answer.  If people say I'm a South Asian social butterfly, Ian's one of Scottish extraction, and then some! And, he's doing exactly what we were talking about.
    When Ian proposed, I thought it was a joke.  He was pulling my leg. Sooner or later, the other shoe was going to drop. It's taken just a short while to realize he's completely serious and he isn't going away.  Since I narrate in metaphor, he's chipping away at the citadel.   He's showing me things about himself that I've never seen.  I think my jig's up.
     Remember my line "I'm off on a new adventure"?  So easy to say, so scary to do.  Well, it's the only way I know to live life.  I learned from Phyllis.  She lived in the moment because she always believed that was all the time she had........ I am ever her son.  I jump off the deep end and see where the tide's  going.to take me.
     Nowadays, it seems to Mother Earth & homo sapiens are saying, "Where are we going? And, what's with this hand-basket?" Yet, we go on living our lives..... Ian's and I, it seems, will be traveling together.
     So, ladies and germs, I give you Ian Grant, my fiance, Mr. Wonderful! And I am NOT being facetious.