As a Brit living in the US, I find myself wondering exactly what I am supposed to be giving thanks for this Thursday. But Hey, its another excuse to kill millions of turkeys! Let’s have fun! And its still warmer than the UK probably is right now – up to 18C expected later this week, but nights down to freezing at the weekend.

An interesting encounter yesterday as I was dropping Leo back with the girls. As I drove out of their road, I saw a guy with his head under the hood (I’d call that the bonnet) of a stalled car, and stopped to ask if I could help. Then I discovered he was the guy who’s been so mean to Leo over his friendship with his son – because Leo is  the product of gay parents. A bit of a ‘car-crash’ situation there, then! So I gulped, and decided that this was the time to have things out, once and for all.

I noticed immediately that a belt seemed to missing from the front of his engine, and then that one of the pulleys it was meant to go around was actually missing as well, presumably worked loose and fallen off. Alternator not charging, electrics went dead, fancy computer wouldn’t function, car totally immobilized. Ha!

Having done my ‘good deed’ to little useful effect, I decided to bite the bullet. ‘Can we talk about ****?’ I asked. That’s his son, who I’m keeping anonymous, and one of Leo’s great friends at school. But Leo is banned from their home. ‘They’re great mates all day, and then we have this silly situation. Leo’s not homosexual, you know, and anyway, it’s not catching from any of us either. Leo and **** spend all day talking about girls, you realise?’ I was fairly sure on that point, because Leo talks of little else with ALL of his friends (that’s when he’s not training). And, the guy may not know or chooses to ignore, his son **** sneaks around to our place a lot when his father thinks he’s somewhere else. I decided to keep quiet about that.

I got a sort of ‘Huh. well I don’t agree with it. I don’t want him mixing with fags.’ ‘Well,’ I countered, ‘that’s eight per cent of the population he has to avoid when walking in the mall. He’s more at risk from infectious diseases than from us.’

‘Why do you do it? It ain’t natural.’ Maybe he said ‘how can you do it?’ – I’m not sure now. I was uncharacteristically bold.

‘We’re made that way. We don’t have a choice. And, just like you, we need a place to put it when we need to.’

Oops. Foot in mouth, if not d*** in *** – oh never mind. There was a disgruntled silence as he put his head back under the hood, perhaps hoping to prove that my diagnosis was wrong.

‘I hope, Mr ****, that you will allow your son and mine to remain the very good friends they already are, and I can promise you that **** has absolutely no chance of being “converted”, or whatever it is you fear, by Leo or by any of us.’

There was another interminable silence. Then: “Thank you for your help, Mr Cavanagh.’ And then another long pause. ‘Maybe I’ll think about it’

Let’s hope he does. How he, and so many like him, can be so hateful of two guys (or, indeed, two girls like Karen and Clare) sharing their love, beats me. But them, I’, “one of them”, aren’t I? So bound to be biassed.

Yeah, Leo and **** check out each other’s muscles from time to time, but it doesn’t go beyond this:

**** is not one of Leo’s main weight-training pals – those are Chris and Billy. Chris is Leo’s age whilst Billy, just 15, recently and unexpectedly collected a local newcomer’s bodybuilding title. So we certainly find those three checking each other out as the muscles stress out:

Billy, I trust absolutely to be responsible for Leo and Chris’s training without our supervision. And, again, all three natter on constantly about girls. So where’s the ‘gay threat’?

Mr **** will never understand the love that two guys can share:

(Yes, I have been known to ‘tickle the ivories’ once in a while – another crazy ambition my father once had for me was to be a concert pianist, but we’ll let that pass!)

But, the closest Leo will ever get to his mates is to help measuring their gains:

**** is desperate to join in with Leo, Chris and Billy ‘legally’ instead of surreptitiously. Let’s hope that his father can, even if grudgingly, see that our training cabin at the Anderton home is not a den of vice.

Well, at least not for the underaged. We do, after all, have a great deal of gay “fun” in there, as noted here. When the time is right.

Click on one of the first two covers for more information: they are published already!

Meanwhile, as a set of gay couples who all work together, train together and play together in a loving relationship, we shall continue to take advantage of any training opportunity:

(no packet of Marlboros on any of OUR tables, by the way)

We shall continue to ‘play’ together:

…chill together:

…and, when darkness finally falls:

I’ve tried once before to explain to doubting friends how I feel about Dave and the others. It is ‘natural’ for men to be attracted to women. In the wild, the males fight one another for dominance. So, if you are ‘accepted’ by another male, whether it be for your skills, your body, your love, or whatever, that is something more. Something special. Something unbelievably fulfilling. I ‘desire’ other men to accpet that I am up there with them, not an also-ran, beaten by the dominant male and pushed out of the herd. For me, that recognition, by other males, is an essential element of my life. And to find one – THE ONE – who shares it and returns it in bucketfuls, that’s just WOW! So thank you Dave, my beloved Dave, for doing all of those things, and so much more. I have so much to be thankful about this Thanksgiving, but it will be to Dave, and to the rest of Tuan Jie that I’ll be sending my thanks.