I don't remember the exact date I first cruised onto David's site at PlanetSOMA.Com. I only know it was sometime in late 2000. I was looking up various things regarding my hometown of Fresno. First I was seeking out information on downtown. Then I started looking up the Tower District, my own neighborhood. Then of course, looking up info on local queer bars. Surprisingly, all of these searches kept popping up results with PlanetSOMA pages in them. I'm sure I'm not the only one who has found themselves amazed and almost mesmerized by the amount of information throughout David's sites.

I've never been one to shamelessly contact people I don't know. I only contacted Mr. SOMA twice until September of 2001. I always figured that most webmasters - especially those with very popular sites - don't manage to reply to everyone they hear from, nor to care to. But then in late September, David posted a revised version of his personal ad. My reply went something like "I seem to fit the mould - with a few pressure points."

Little did I know how few there would actually be. I could tell when I first started reading his site that I could get along well with this guy. He was geeky and dorky and proud of it - just like me. He saw solitude as one of his most valuable assetts, and sex as a stand-up comedy. He saw roadside 50s architecture as the greatest of American achievements and 90s stucco malls as the worst depravities of mankind. It was almost creepy how familiar his own banter sounded up against my own. His cynical and yet familiar and comfortable tone was combined with an almost academic atmosphere in all his writings.

To let you all in on a secret, I knew by the second email or so that I really dug this guy. After we met, I found myself somewhat consumed with the desire to see him over and over again.

Thankfully, it was a reciprocal persuasion. David is the greatest guy on Earth. He shares my sense of life, in that we get excited and amused by the same things, distressed and angered by the same things, and we can talk and talk and talk without feeling anything is contrived or phoney. We can spend hours doing nothing or hours doing everything, and just being close to him, sharing his experiences and knowing him gives me so much joy and excitement.

I first told David I loved him sometime around Christmas last year. It was true. And I was overjoyed when he said the same. It was sometime last spring when I decided I wanted to spend the rest of my life with him. And a short time after that, he was kind enough to open his home to my arrival.

I've always been skeptical of any of the sort of declarations as I've made above, but now they seem so perfectly obvious and appropriate. That's not to say that people don't change, or that life can't take different turns. I'm just glad that mine's turned this way, and I'm so happy that I have David in it. He's the most wonderful guy in the world.