Monday, January 19, 2009

Boston 6.7.02: Museum Courtyards, Companionable Couples

At the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum. Two gay men sitting in the courtyard across from us. Obviously married (wedding rings on the ring finger of their right hands). I knew they were a couple before I saw the wedding bands. How?

It was somehow they way in which they were sitting companionably together, shoulder to shoulder. But not even that. Two straight men might sit side-by-side in just the same way, and I wouldn’t think they were a couple.

Was it the familiar, companion-like glance? I don’t think so. I think it was a kind of energy, an electric wave that ran between them and inhabited the space between them. I’ve seen—rather, felt—that energy (as sexual tension) running between ostensibly straight men who are obviously attracted to each other, and possibly not even conscious of the attraction.

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