Brandon's Buzz

I recently (and completely unintentionally) offended — and to the very depths of his captivating, baying soul, no less — the love of my life.

He’ll no doubt post a comment under this — the inaugural post of my spankin’ new blog — and emphatically deny all of what I’m preppin’ to tell you, but you have to trust me here: he didn’t speak to me for a solid week over this incident.

Back up.

His name is A. (That’s a lie, of course, but in the choppy wake of said incident, I have been forbidden from using his real name, even though I’ve repeatedly (and futilely) insisted that the only people who are going to be reading this and taking it anywhere close to seriously already know and love him profusely, faults and all.) He is a fixed income analyst out in Calla-forny. Lives right in the heart of downtown La-La Land. Rollerblades from the boardwalk in Santa Monica to the southern edge of Venice Beach, and back, for fun. Goes to CPK and orders salad. Possesses the most gorgeous, most eminently kissable dimples on either side of his criminally sculpted abdomen. Is gorgeous and eminently kissable (Lord Jesus, can that boy buss!) in ways irrespective to his trunk and its musculature.

A is a genius, unqualified. Mathematics are his game, and he has the PhD to prove it. (I actually got to watch him defend his thesis two years ago, and wholly in spite of the fact that I was visibly and instantaneously confused, the presentation — complete with the inevitable third act confrontation betwixt the piece’s embattled hero and the icy villain — was as thrilling and suspenseful as a Bruckheimer film.)

Oh, but music.

Popular music is A’s Achilles’ heel. I love that man in the heart, but his taste in music hurtles to and fro between (at best) mystifying (see: his steadfast refusal to appreciate George Michael as one of the planet’s premier artists) and (at absolute worst) straight up horrific (see: his giddy practice of singing “I’m a get, get, get / get you drunk / off my humps” in the shower when he thinks only his Chinese neighbors can hear him). I’ve spent literally every second of the three year history of our relationship engaging all of the weapons in my vast arsenal, all for the sole purpose of making A a more discerning, more careful listener. (No joke, that: I took him CD shopping on our first official date!)

I like to think that my work on his behalf has been worthwhile, and, in actual fact, A has come a very long way. (Within sixty minutes of meeting me thirty-five months ago, he informed me with the straightest face a gay man can muster that country music was the wood shavings below the table of Satan’s workshop; now, some three years later, he not only listens to but principally enjoys the music of Sugarland and Martina McBride, and he no longer sighs and silently pleads for mercy whenever Patty Griffin and/or Trisha Yearwood songs show up in a shuffle.)

But, just like in a hot hand of Uno, when you’re so close to the finish line you can taste sweet victory until some no-good bitch hurls the Draw four card at your backsliding ass: just when I start to believe that we’re finally and forever on the road home, something like the aforementioned, um, incident occurs, and it’s chaos all over again.

names dropped with reckless abandon: A, George Michael, Martina McBride, Patty Griffin, Sugarland, Trisha Yearwood