1 year anniversary

Today I become JJ’s 1 year-old boyfriend. I say that I’m his boyfriend because he really did struggle to get me there. I tried to resist at the beginning, struggling to retain my independence and felt weird to changes in my personal space like here (the toothbrush incident) or here (dating can be bad for you).

I met ‘JJ’ online, like many contemporary gay couples do. I was moving houses and I also had my parents visiting at that time, so it took us more than a couple weeks of texting, exchanging mms before actually meeting. The very first moment I saw him my first reaction wasn’t the best. I thought that he’s not my type. I normally went for darker looking, geekier types and he was blond with blue eyes very smartly dressed with pointy leather shoes, nice scarf and skinny trousers.

However, I didn’t let that first impression get the worse of me and we went to a small Italian place for dinner. There, we started chatting and I had an amazing time. He introduced me to his weird (in a very good way) sense of humour, told me stories of his past and about his life in London. I was attracted to him. Thankfully he was attracted to me. We did end up in his place but I didn’t stay there the whole night since it was a school night. The next morning we exchanged text messages about when to meet again and history took its course.

Lot’s of things have changed since then. We had an amazing year. We only fought once during these 12 months. We are not the fighting types. He was working night shifts for a whole week and he was quite tired and slightly grumpy. We went to gm’s party and we also had some drinks. He didn’t have much to eat and in combination with the tiredness he was slightly drunk but moody. I had some drinks as well but I wanted to be left alone. That’s a difference we share. When I drink after a while I want to be left alone and go to bed. When he drinks he gets all excited and energetic. Combined all these things together…

Anyway, what I really like about ‘JJ’ is the fact that he loves travelling as much as I do. We rented a car on many occasions and we drove around UK (Stonehenge, Newcastle, Bath, Windsor etc…), went hiking at the white cliffs of Dover and went cycling to Cambridge. We also went to Brighton, Greece and Copenhagen. We’re already making plans on where to go next year. Most of all I love the fact that I found my new best friend and love of my life in him.

Tonight we are going out to a nice brasserie in Chiswick for dinner. He is working later in the night, so we don’t really have much time, but we’ll manage. Apart from a card, I printed out 12 of our photographs with highlights of the year to give him. I don’t know if you’ve tried but it’s not very easy to buy normal cards for gay couples. In stores outside of Soho, it’s practically impossible and inside Soho you’ll probably find mostly pornographic related cards…

I’m also planning on giving him his Christmas present today. Considering the tough times I live in (no bonus, no pay rise to do my Christmas shopping), I got him something that I think he’ll love, slightly over the budget but I don’t care. It will just be a combination of Christmas and anniversary gift. We’re not spending the holidays together anyway. He’s flying back to South Africa and I’ll go to my parents’ later this month.

He had mention when I did my scuba diving course that since he was a child he wanted to learn how to fly a plane. He repeated this wish on some other occasions, so I booked him a 60 minutes trial training flight in a four seated Cessna. A colleague of mine did that last year and he loved the experience. So, I got for ‘JJ’ a voucher that he can use in the next six months and he’ll be able to fly a plane…

I hope he likes it…