Today is

our anniversary. Twenty-three years. Holy moly.

Ted and I met on the Sunday of Labor Day weekend on Fire Island in 1985. Actually, it was the second time we met... Earlier that summer in June we had been introduced at a party after the Gay Pride Run which we both raced in. Ted and I talked, but then he left to have dinner with friends. I said to myself, "I will see you again Ted Dawson."

And I did. On Labor Day weekend I was visiting my friend John Kelly in the Pines. We went to see some of his friends in a house on the ocean and up from the beach came one of the housemates, Ted. 

That time, it stuck. 

After that Ted and I went out to Fire Island together. One summer not long after he won a competition to design the Fire Island Pines flag. It is a joyful, simple Matissey design of stars, sun, pine trees, and ocean in swaths of bright colors. This was probably 1987, and you don't see the flag waving as much as you used to in the Pines but it is hoisted in the harbor. 

The house where we met on the beach was later destroyed in a storm and a new house was built in its place. On that site where we met twenty-three years ago, they still wave Ted's flag, seen on the right. 

That is so cool. I love to see it. I wrote about Ted in my first post on this blog. Over the last twenty-three years he has been a constant joy to me, and I hope I to him. It is something that I am profoundly grateful for in my life. Happy Anniversary TD.