A Renaissance of Love

Alright, so that title sounds like some kind of hippie mumbo-jumbo. Whatever. It's the best I can think of right now.

So I performed at a Renaissance Festival the past two weekends. It's a smaller festival, only in its third season, and I've been there all three.

So this Saturday, there was a young gay couple sitting together at the end of the day pubsing. In fact, they were about my age and students at one of the smaller colleges in the same town as my unnamed Baptist university. One of them is a culinary student who was working food service for the faire. Anyway, so when I looked over and saw two young men sitting together and resting on each other, I just thought 'Aww, that's sweet. They're happy.'

But I could tell that they had become the curiostiy of the pubsing, attracting as much attention from the patrons about as the performers in the form of silent looks and whispered comments. Some seemed to feel the same as I did. Some seemed to be a bit uncomfortable. Others were just curious. Not really a lot to say about this incident. I just think it's interesting watching different people's reactions to a gay couple acting just like any straight couple.

I've said previously that at renfaires I neither broadcast nor make any real effort to hid my homosexuality. Not that I really mind most of the people there knowing that I'm gay, and I generally give people an honest answer if they ask, but if they don't ask, I generally like to remain a little ambiguous.

So there is this family - father, mother, and two daughers about my age - I knew from church many years ago when I was a child, but our church ceased to exist when I was 12, and we stopped seeing each other. Well, we rediscovered each other last year at this very renfaire, both being performers there. Well, actually, we had had a chance encounter one year before that at the first season of this faire, in which we were in complete darkness and sang back and forth, but since it was so dark, we never saw each other's face and so never recognized each other.

Well, they as a music group have joined the same music group of which I am a member for most of our shows, except this particular faire at which we perform separately. Anyway, so I have rekindled my friendship with the two daughters, particularly the older of the two, hereafter referred to as Lore. She liked me when we were children, and I knew, well kind of. I don't know if I knew then, but I know in retrospect. Well, that and she told me today, but that comes later in this story.

Today, she and her younger sister, let's call her Blueberry, just finally asked me. After a minute of trying to answer with subtle gestures, I eventually just said it. For some reason, people never seem to understand me when I'm trying to be subtle. Anyway, Lore then asked if I wanted to take a walk around the faire. I understood that that meant she wanted to talk, just the two of us. We had a nice, long talk about our pasts, our thoughts, my 'journey' if you will, and her tendency to fall for gay guys. I think we'll be just fine. In fact, we're IMing right now.

So that's what's been on my mind this weekend.

-PW