Shetland Ponies

March 18, 2015
Day 322


I first spoke to Andy after he messaged me on a website for young gay men looking to meet each other.  It was June 7th, 2001.  I wrote about our meeting on December 1st of this blog, but I left a few things out.

I was 26, and Andy was 25, so we both felt like we'd aged out of the website anyway, but I still had a profile up, and thankfully, Andy found it and wrote me.  He told me he thought I was very cute, and when I saw the attached photo of him sitting in his dining room at home, I immediately thought, man, he's really cute!  And he thinks I'm cute?  Woo-hoo!

We spoke briefly, but then he had a trip to England planned to visit his cousins and aunt, so we lost touch briefly over the summer.

In September, I got another message from him, and by then I'd temporarily forgotten who he was.  My memory has always been horrible, especially in the online dating world where you talk to many guys knowing you'll never meet most of them...at least that's what my experience had always been.  Andy called me out on it in a fun way, saying he was hurt I didn't remember him, and though I knew he was being playful, I did still feel bad! 

Then he sent me a picture from his recent trip to England, a photo of him crouching in front of a few very small horses he told me were called Shetland Ponies.  I recognized his face then from the other photo, but there was just something extra special about this new image.  In the first photo I'd seen, Andy was sitting in a dark dining room with a large plant behind him, hardly any sunlight outside to be found, and he just looked...a bit uncomfortable.  He was obviously posing in that picture, and though he always looks cute, he didn't show me his personality.  So when I saw the "Shetland Ponies" photo, something very different happened. 

I saw sunlight, I saw nature, I saw beautiful animals unlike anything I'd ever seen before, and right there in the middle of it all, I saw this really beautiful guy.  I saw his face, I saw his pose, I saw his camera, I saw his clothes and even his shoes, and I was just smitten. 

Andy and I kept speaking then fairly frequently for the next two and a half months, and whenever we did, I'd call up that photo on my screen.  I'm sure I even made it my desktop background at one point!  I'd double click "ShetlandPonies.jpg", and look again at this cute guy who seemed so sweet and genuine every time we spoke.

I knew I really wanted to meet this cute guy, and see how well we got along in person, so finally, after a long time talking online and by phone, we met on December 1st, 2001. 

And the rest, as they say, is history.