Meeting Our People

When my sweety (wait, what are we calling him again? Right, The Englishman. T.E.) was here around the holidays we went back home to Hippyville and he had the joy panic-driven fear-fest experience of meeting my people. Practically ALL of my people. Family, the Royals, and even the ‘rents. I give him BIG credit for throwing himself to the wolves like that, and he passed with FLYING colors. Witty, friendly, classy and the snazzy English accent can’t HELP but impress.

The big worry was really meeting the parents. Because let’s face it – parents are scary. Even uber-cool parents like mine are scary because HELLO! They’re the PARENTS! And the funny thing was that my Dad, who has always been the very picture of “not your average guy”, went very much into average guy mode when he got the details of my relationship with T.E. He did ‘posturing’ and ‘glowering’ and even a little ‘he’d BETTER be worried about me!’ I honestly waited for him to grab his dick and spit, so dude-like was my Dad all of the sudden. So I was mostly worried that this new-found dudeness was going to spill out when he and T.E. met and I was going to have to splash them with perfume and a hose to break things up.

But to my “yay!!” everyone was on their best behavior at the first, and that segued nicely into just being the cool guys that they actually are after a day or so. No competitive hand-shaking or ceremonial dick-measuring necessary after all. I was very proud of both of them.

Since I don’t go to London (there’s reasons for that. It’s not like I don’t WANT to go to London. It’s LONDON! There’s rain and pubs and a place where words like “bangers” and “mash” describe FOOD! Logistically it’s just complicated is all. But I digress.) there isn’t the same opportunity or requirement for me to meet his people. So I’ve been sucking up long-distance. I sent his parents a Christmas gift – one that actually reflected what I’ve been able to glean about them from my sweety. This seemed like truly high-quality suck-upping! And it seems like it payed off, as I’ve been promised a “thank you” email in response. (yes, I am this excited at getting an email. Shut up.)

And then tonight T.E. introduced me, via crazy swinging Skype party, to his very best mate. After the ‘rents T.E.’s best buddy (who we will call The Romantic, or T.R.) is really the most important person in his world, so this was a big deal to me. It came w/out planning or warning, so I had all of about 30 seconds to consider the idea, prepare my most fabulous anecdotes, do the virtual breath check, etc. In the end it was pretty much an accent-fest, with these two FABULOUS-sounding voices bouncing back and forth like a sexy tennis match! A good time was had by all and according to T.E. I passed muster with the buddy too. If we like each other and our people like each other what else is there, right?