26 June 2011

The First Pancake

Gay Pride, Christopher Street
(This weekend is Gay Pride Weekend in New York, and, in celebration of equal rights for gay couples in New York, I've decided to change the usual food picture on top to something more appropriate.)
It’s been more than a year since I wrote something for the blog, and I’ve missed so many things: the blog’s anniversary, the requisite New Year’s and birthday posts, and celebrating the successes of many people I’ve met through this tiny corner of the blogaverse. But the last 365 days have given way to more important, life-altering milestones; so many firsts, which just like the excited parent with a camcorder I’ve wanted to write about, but hadn’t, because I was too embarrassed or because it was too personal (shocking, I know, that I wouldn’t share it anyway).

I fell in love for the first time last year. With it was my first date (at the overripe, blackened banana age of 28), my first kiss (the details of which are too mind-blowing to be expressed with my puny words, but you know someday I’ll try), and while no labels were being thrown around, the first guy I would call my boyfriend, or at the very least would have wanted to, had my first relationship not ended. It was devastating, and friends from all over the world physically and in writing rushed to comfort me, their friend in arrested development, well-meaning but utterly confusing. “Chalk it up to experience,” “You weren’t in love- it was just your first,” “There’ll be better ones, you just don’t know it yet.”