Apr 24, 2011

[Technicolor Musings] How I Met The Man I Love

Today is an interesting day given its placement on the calendar. You see, yesterday was my second anniversary with my partner, Tobie Abad, and tomorrow is his birthday. So yeah, it's a pretty special day for many, many reasons.


rOckY and Tobie


So I thought it would be nice to share with all of you how I came to meet the love of my life, who is the same man who makes me happy every single day.

But where do you begin telling this kind of a story?

It's funny how events connect together and lead to unexpected consequences or results. It's Chaos Theory at work I suppose - you can never predict the kind of ripple effects that one single event can trigger.

The story of Tobie and me always begins with the geek group, the New Worlds Alliance. If you trace it back further, I only found out about the group after my biological father died in 2007 since a lot of the geeks showed up at the hospital and at his wake. Well, a lot of geeks except Tobie, since he didn't know my father very well. Irony, right?

Eventually this led to me attending my first New Worlds conventions for science fiction and fantasy fans. And eventually it led to this chance photo:


Tobie at NWA 5


I didn't know who he was at the time and we didn't even talk on that day. I just went around the convention area snapping random photos to sort of document the event. And I happened to take this one and just sort of moved on from there. I posted the photos online over on Multiply and the geeks found out and started adding me on that social network and leaving comments.

And then there was this comment:


First Contact


So this is the first time that Tobie and I had ever interacted online. And then nothing really happened after that for the year and a halt or so. Seriously - almost two years.


Tobie and Rocky


So how did we get from that random encounter to this? The story is weird and complicated, but I'll try to do my best to capture things.

First, I have to state that I wasn't exactly single at the time. I was in a long term relationship with someone else entirely and previously Tobie had a girlfriend who had migrated to Canada during that period. Yes, Tobie is a true bisexual and not just some gay guy who hides behind the bisexual label as a lousy way of saying they're butch. And despite my geek interactions, we didn't cross paths again until he accidentally found my profile on notorious gay dating site Guys4Men. We didn't flirt then - it was really just a moment for me to realize that he was in fact of a non-straight orientation and so it was someone else that I could talk to on that level. So yeah, nice welcome and all that.

And yet we still didn't meet up or anything. We would just talk occasionally with the random bit of flirting here and there online. It was a friendly degree of interaction where he'd tell me about his dating problems since by then he was single and I'd tell him about whatever I was into at the moment may it be a geek TV show, a potential trip out of town with my partner at the time or the random porn star of interest.

All that changed come February 2009 when we finally decided to meet up. And the reason we were going to meet up? To play a now defunct CCG called NetRunner, which I was surprised that he knew about. I mean seriously, I had a hard time finding players for the game during its height and here was someone who knew about it years after the game had been shuttered by Wizards of the Coast.

And so I invited him over that Thursday night to play NetRunner over a few beers and some pizza. I had gotten the night off from work since I had to consume my excess leaves from the previous years - a requirement that eventually led to a number of additional encounters of hanging out with Tobie.

The night itself was...something else. We were both surprised at how well we connected in person. Sure, our chats had been fun but they hadn't been too frequent or anything like that. But this felt more real that real. There was a spark or some instinctive recognition that we resonated on a similar wavelength. There were no words for it - so we just enjoyed the night and played game after game.

This led to us hanging out on Valentine's Day of all days. I wasn't in the mood to go to Bed, Malate with my partner and Tobie had an open invitation to have dinner with a friend. And thus I tagged along. And we got to know one another even more. Then came multiple lunches while I was at work. Hanging out with other geeks. Watching episodes of Battlestar Galactica together in a virtual sense since we'd do so online and share commentary over IM. All these crazy geeky things that we started to do together.

I'll gloss over the complicated extraction from my previous relationship and how that ended - that's a personal story I doubt I'll ever blog about. But needless to say, Tobie and reached a point when there was no denying the bond between us and just how RIGHT everything felt. It was as if everything that we had done before was drab and mundane compared to how amazingly alive we felt when together. And so in time we admitted how we felt for one another with the help of Wheelie, one of my first Transformers. And things have been pretty stellar ever since.


Rocky and Tobie


I haven't been this happy in my life, ever. And it's not a peaks and valleys kind of happiness. It's more like ever since we officially got together and started living together at our apartment, The Sietch, things just got crazy amazing. And now we're trying to find a house to purchase together and we're trying to map out the rest of our lives together. I don't want to say anything definite just yet, but I can't see myself with anyone else anymore. I'm finally thinking about the feasibility of raising a kid and I really, really wish that marriage was legal for us in this country.

But basically, that's how we met. And I've been luckier than a four-leaf clover ever since.

Thank you so much for making me the best man that I can be, Tobie. Thank you for being mine and I hope I'll continue to do my very best to be yours.

I love you, Tobie.
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4 comments:

  1. Oh you. I personally have never been this happy. Ever. You and I just click. Just alike and just different in the right ways.

    I love you.
    I love being yours.
    I love how you are mine.

    We deserve this.

    Happy second anniversary, my Love.

    ReplyDelete
  2. And I love you, Tobie!

    Here's to many more years of geeky happiness to come!

    ReplyDelete