Many years ago I used a smoking hot reference for working with children (from volunteering in a summer reading program where I and a couple of librarians did the work expected to have more like a dozen volunteers, also I hadn't volunteered until after every single volunteer flaked out and I took pity on the librarians which added to the sincere gratitude in their reference for me) to both babysit and work with a small business that specialized in "Princess birthday parties" for little & tween girls. And in the process of that I got exposed to Hanna Montana a lot and one day an episode pulled me in and I got to like it. So when I needed extra money I got some by taking kids to see the Hanna Montana movie in which a bunch of moms & grandparents in the neighborhood were grateful to hire me to sit their kids through it so that they didn't have to themselves over & over again. That lasted until the swine flu hit (I think it was the last week or two it showed at regular cinemas) in which it spread fast among kids and I caught it myself.
I'd pretty much bounced back when I got a strange phone call from a tween girl who said I'd taken her to the Hanna movies a bunch of times (so she found my number on her mom's phone) and I came to realize (it was a baffling conversation) that she and her brother had gotten swine flu, recovered, but then their mom got it BAD, wasn't getting better, wouldn't allow them to call 911, and no one else she called would help. And they were almost out of food among other problems. So I took some movies (for the kids) over and food and took care of things. Their mom was surprised I did this and said she couldn't pay me and I said all I expected was if I got as sick as she did that she do the same for me. She was too sick to argue (and I came real close to calling 911 myself she was so bad, but she convinced me not to so I instead stayed over and kept a close eye on her, sleeping in the living/front room).
Meanwhile, the girl's birthday was close and given my experience with birthday parties for girls her age I decided to arrange for one, and a Hanna theme one at that, and given how much money I'd made taking girls to the Hanna movie I even willingly spent some of my own money to make it happen (her mom did contribute). It was a big success and her little brother asked me to make a Transformers theme party for his birthday early next month, so I did (doing most of the work on that one as well).
During this time their mom recovered and we all went to see Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince with pizza after, and their mom and I got into a deep conversation about Harry Potter, cinema & literature, and other things, and she asked me to watch The Alamo with her as she'd like my Texan opinion on it. That time the kids were gone and she came onto me. I went along with it but figured it was just a brief experience since she'd been with mostly men. She also told me she'd known about me being gay for awhile as she'd seen me with my girlfriend (who I'd broken up with recently, one reason I needed money without her helping to pay rent anymore so that I came up with the Hanna job) at the fitness center we both went to back then (she said she didn't dare talk to me then as my then girlfriend was something of a rooster, part of how she knew I was gay). I was surprised by the whole thing, probably the biggest reason I went along with it as I was unsure what to do.
And she wanted to hang out with me a lot, whether it was talking or sex, she liked it all. She even gave me books to read just so we could have intelligent conversations about them, something she was starved for. We had some struggling in that she wanted me to stay overnight a lot but I didn't want to freak her kids out. She also wanted me to move in and I worried both about how the kids would react and also U-Hauling that soon is just begging for trouble (though many lesbians just can't seem to resist).
Meanwhile, my landlord got in trouble for spending too much, he'd just bought a brand new house he could no longer afford, and having noticed the improvements I'd made to the house he decided to sell it out from under me. I got a friend (and ex) of mine to get an inspector to look at it and he said the banks wouldn't give a loan for it as it was in too bad of shape and that it needed to just be torn down. I told my landlord who said he knew, that's why he'd rented instead of sold, but in its current condition he thought he could sell it "as is" (he also tried to raise my rent but backed off when I said if my rent got raised then not only would I look into rent control but his property taxes might be raised as well since the local tax office was notorious for raising property taxes if you so much as raised a post). But then the realtors he had trying to sell the place blatantly lied about the property in front of me which I couldn't let stand so I corrected those lies whenever I heard them. I quickly got an angry call from the landlord and the second time he gave me the minimum legal time to get out, immediate eviction.
And so I took my partner's offer of moving in together. She said she hated her house (too many memories) so she put it on the market and we rented a very nice apartment in the meantime using our combined incomes once I was sure the kids were ok with it.
And it worked great. Some fundies gave up problems at first but that just brought us all closer together. Then I went back to Texas to visit Granny who was hospitalized with a pulmonary embolism and stayed a couple of months before my partner and her kids all decided to come get me. And while I was in Texas her home finally sold (years after being put on the market) and she also found some likely places to move to (and get away from the fundies before they got riled up again) and had me look at them together. And this time we signed a bunch of papers, we're pretty much partners and if anything happens to her then I have custody of the kids. We're a family now.
Because we moved I lost contact with many people (at least I don't see most of them more than once a month or so now) and circumstances were such that I also had more free time at home, so that time and lack of social contact got me interested in joining a board and so shortly after I first arrived at GaySpeak.
mile:
Anyway, that's how it happened. As usual I was just a good person (I don't let people take advantage of me, however) with a life of my own and she decided I was a good person to have and perhaps my not making advances made me more challenging, I don't know (and maybe my ex girlfriend she'd seen being so territorial over me for years also told her I was a good catch), and so decided to take it to the next level. She told me that at the time she wasn't sure if it was going to be a brief fling or what herself, she was just very attracted to me when she came onto me. I just focus on being a good friend to those worth it, and in the vast majority of cases no romance (or sex) ever comes of it (and that's fine) but in a very rare case, like this it leads to something more.