During the summer after my 34th birthday (I'm a Gemini, and how!), I was paid a visit to my big, bright studio on Molenpad in Amsterdam. The son of my parents' longtime friends from Stanford had grown up to become a fine actor. David was traveling with John, a playwright. They were scouting possible venues for a new play to be rehearsed and produced the following summer, first in California, then touring to Edinburgh for the Fringe Festival and, they hoped, to Amsterdam. I was able to help steer them in the right direction. And while they were at it, they invited me to join the company for this tour. The play was The Articulation of Andrea and I was to play The Introducer (dinner jacket, coiffed head of hair, long cigarette holder). I love acting.
This delightful enterprise brought me back to California for the summer of 1985. Another member of the company happened to be a good-hearted Dutch woman who had a room to let in her Los Altos bungalow. And we rehearsed. I hadn't been in a play not created by myself since I was Frank'nFurter's understudy in the Dutch-language version of The Rocky Horror Show back in Amsterdam. There wasn't much of a stipend, so I lucked out when, wandering back into the Palo Alto Children's Theatre where I got my start on stage in the mid-50's, I was offered a job teaching at the Summer Conservatory. I love teaching.
So the next summer and the summer after that, I came back to California to teach and play. I didn't think too much about being single. But by that third summer, again in a rented room on Chester Circle, I at least wanted some kind of male company. I love making out.
This was well before we had the internet, kiddos. As I've never much enjoyed cruising in bars for company, I was glad to see that The Advocate was running a full-page ad for a company called Comquest. That page was basically a check-the-box questionnaire for gay guys looking for a boyfriend or a date or whatever. The trouble I have filling out all these questions about what type of guy I'm looking for lies in the fact that I've got such eclectic taste. You should see my ol' CD collection. Just about every genre of music is represented. So what type of man was I seeking? Good sense of humor, for sure. Smart, oh yeah. But also, dark and fair, tall and short, tops and bottoms, hairy and smooth, etc.
My open-mindedness did not immediately translate into a slew of dates. After all, most guys do have a "type" and that computer in Chicago didn't include me on the lists of fellows who were looking for a short-haired, boot-wearing, muscled "clone" (as we die-hard hippies disparagingly called the look of the 80's). I dutifully called most of the guys on the list Comquest sent me. They typically lived 40+ miles from me, and when I hauled myself all the way to Richmond or Marin County, they usually bore only a faint resemblance to their self-description. After a number of date disasters, I learned to start with a coffee date. Then I kinda gave up. Fortunately, he did not.
On the evening of June 11, 1987, with a big full moon rising outside my bedroom window, my telephone jangled. What a voice on the other end! He had me on his list. We started to converse. He was kinda vague at first --- he did something involved with music. Well, I was/am a theater person. Any hesitation I might have had (and, hey, what can I say? I'm easy.) flew out that moonbright window when he 'fessed up that he was a composer! Now that's hot! So we proceeded to the let's-make-a-date part.
Was he gonna be from Guerneville or some other hours-away location? Well, no. He said, we seem to have the same area code. Cool. In fact, our prefixes are similar. Zowie! So I go, I'm living in Los Altos. You're kidding, so am I! I live near the corner of San Antonio and El Camino. Wow. I do, too! We almost got down to the "one green eye, one blue eye" Bald Soprano place (oops, it's actually one red eye, one white eye, but hey, that's gross) when we both realized at once: we're living right around the corner from each other. In suburbia, where we never would have met without that computer in Chicago.
I ran a brush through my hair and was walking through Alva's front gate within a matter of minutes. It didn't take long. Not at all. We fell utterly in love (photo above from our first summer) and have remained so ever since. He is funny and smart and cute and has a gift for music that makes my heart dance. He's my soulmate. He's my darling. He's my husband.
Thank you, full moon. Thank you, Ma Bell. And thank you, Comquest. Destiny!