I've been really down yesterday for a number of reasons, but mostly because of Vic's death.

I was having an early dinner at Mimi's Cafe last night and taking advantage of their free wifi to read Treb's post more thoroughly, along with all the responses, and to write out a comment on the announcement thread. I sat there afterwards, trying to subtly dab the tears away, when I looked up and saw this couple sitting in a booth diagonally from mine.

There were two young men there, probably in their early 20s. One was cute and thin, a real twink; the other guy was bigger, with bigger muscles and a beefier frame. They were in the booth but sitting next to each other, touching constantly. At one point, the twink rubbed his cheek on the beefy dude's chest in a playful way. They giggled, then the beefy dude leaned in toward the twink as if to listen to him say something, but the twink kissed his neck instead. They were so cute, it was hard not to stare, but they were so visibly entranced with each other, they never made eye contact with me. But what blew my mind was that they were doing this, acting all lovey-dovey, in a restaurant, and no one really seemed to give a shit.

Now some of you will note that that's not a big deal. Who the fuck cares. Well, I don't live in San Francisco or New York (we'll chalk that up to rotten luck on my part), I live in an upscale suburb of St. Louis, where people usually are required to have one SUV, and it should be foreign. Here in Missouri, the only way two guys are going to be able to marry each other is if they are able to prove they're guns and they get the NRA to support them. Yet here they are, these two guys, having this incredibly romantic interchange, right here in a restaurant in suburban middle-America. And no one kicked their asses, or tried to.

I've never seen that here before. I've seen it in other places, but not here. How ironic that I do on the day I find out we lost Vic.