Okay, so I should have written about this long ago. The wedding was in October.
When I first met Jorge I was shooting a tv show in San Francisco and flew out a week early to hang out with Tim and his new boyfriend. Tim and Jorge had started living together, along with some roommates. They let me sleep on the futon in their bedroom. Now that I have a live-in boyfriend I realize how truly generous that was. “Hey guys, how do you feel about not having sex for a week while I sleep, snoring and drunk, two feet from your bed?”
We drove up Highway 1 to a place that looked like this.
Tim seemed happy, Jorge seemed fidgety and they were in that early financial struggle phase. The next time I met Jorge was at Sam’s Fourth of July party in Lake Mills, Wisconsin. Tim and Jorge were wearing striped shirts, and as happy as elves.
Some local cops were breathalizing people as they left the parking lot near Sam’s parents house and I was freaking out that they would tow the car I borrowed from my parents out of the lot. Tim and Jorge were the only ones who listened to my neurotic mumbling and we set off through the woods to check on my car. Growing up in a rural area gives you a special fear of cops in situations like this. In addition to the possibility of hiding police, Jorge and I were petrified of the dark and the woods. We clutched our cell phones as flashlights and walked, clinging to each other, silently behind Tim as he swung his lit cell phone from side to side gesturing and prattling loudly. We kept saying “shhh!”, but he may have been drunk. Tim addressed the police by saying “Oh, hiiii there!” My parents’ car survived and I didn’t have to talk to police officers thanks to Tim.
The point is that Tim and Jorge are always there for me. They always call me back and they always say the right thing and I haven’t ever seen either of them in a bad mood. And if I have, I didn’t know it because their bad moods are like other people’s good moods. And every time a crazy homeless guy harasses (or attacks, that has happened too) me on the street or subway, I remember that Jorge helps guys like that everyday. Bless him, because truth be told, most of us want nothing to do with them. And I’m not apologizing for that by the way. Jorge is just better than most of us.
When they sent us their adorable wedding invitation I was stoked. 3 days in Guerneville, CA in two rented houses with some of the oldest friends I have. Evan and I flew Virgin America, which was pretty hilarious. Tim kept calling the wedding their “gay marriage”, among other less appropriate things, and the plane was like flying a gay club to the gay marriage. The interior lights were pink and purple, but they kept it dark most of the time, and they blasted techno whenever possible. They brought me a sandwich when I asked for it and I can’t explain how awesome that was at the time.We saw Jesse and his girlfriend Hanna on the plane and we knew it was going to be a huge reunion. Since I’m writing about the weekend in retrospect I’m not going to be very detailed. We drove to Big Sur the first day and stayed at Glen Oaks Big Sur Inn. It was like a little Motel on the outside and a modern stylish room with a fireplace on the inside. We didn’t want to leave.
We went to Esalen’s hotsprings that night. As a visitor, you have to go between 1am and 3am. It was one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever done. We got drunk on white wine at this wonderful place called Nepenthe overlooking the cliffs and the ocean, passed out at 10pm, napped until 1am, then drove 15 minutes down highway 1 to Esalen. The springs sit at the edge of a cliff overlooking the ocean. We filled big claw-foot bathtubs with the sulfurous spring water and just laid in the water and relaxed. There was no moon, so we saw about 15 shooting stars. And when we left our skin looked like vanilla pudding. I tried to capture it with my camera, but we looked way better than this.
The springs at Esalen…
I highly recommend the experience. Just be aware that it’s nudey friendly.
The next morning we pulled ourselves out of our big warm bed and took off for Guerneville. Traffic was terrible and our blissed-out mood post-hotsprings quickly dissipated. It was some government holiday and every citizen of San Francisco got on that two lane highway and drove to wine country. Ev and I were the first ones there of course, so we explored Guerneville. It seemed to be mostly gay bars with shoe polish on the windows and weird teenagers eager to become straight up crackheads. These were some scary River’s Edge-type teens. I was too scared to take a picture. The first familiar thing we saw was Gabe’s grinning face behind the wheel of a minivan. It was a good start. Within a half hour everyone started showing up.
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