Queer Nostalgia in Lanchester

There are two main things I've learned in my travels: one, people will always be people. They'll act the same wherever you go, no matter how different their lives and customs may be. And two, nothing is what it seems on the surface.

The latter is what led me to Lanchester. I had heard of a quaint little village near the sea where queer folk were welcomed and accepted with open arms, but I usually don't believe anything I hear. The former is what kept me there for a whole year after I arrived. People were people all right - a mix of nice and mean, just like everywhere else. But the latter, that's what made all the difference in the end.

I was born and raised in New York City, all my family still live there in fact. I left at sixteen after a huge fight with my father who had found out I was queer (I'm not sure how he did, but he *was* a cop). In any case he made it clear that I was no longer welcome at home and that if I ever wanted to see my family again besides holidays or weddings they would have to accept that I was gay first. He actually said something like "boys don't wear dresses," as though that would make it better somehow. As if being gay meant not being able to tie shoes too or something. It might seem weird since my father worked for the police force but honestly that was his way of looking at things -- black and white, good versus evil, this versus that -- whereas life is most definitely gray sometimes and you just have to roll with it however you can.

I ended up in Lanchester because I got lost on my way to London from Manchester; these tiny villages always seem to blend into each other when you're walking through them so you never really know where you are half the time anyway. When I talked to someone about it they told me they thought they'd heard of Lanchester somewhere before and then they sent me here instead which was only an hour's walk away so it wasn't much trouble either way. There's not much more interesting in London than there is here anymore now that all the sex shops have been closed down and all the seedy streetwalkers have moved on anyway, so everyone else seemed pretty happy to have me around too once they got used to me being there.

Three months later I started working with Aiden at The Greenhouse Tavern & Eatery -- which is also open during the day for breakfast and lunch! -- and living in a small flat above the bakery across the street from there with Archibald -- who does all kinds of handyman jobs around town -- who had been looking for someone new since his last flatmate left last month. We're both gay which helped because we could talk about stuff without anyone getting their nose out of joint and plus we like strange foreign films and things like that so we clicked pretty fast too even though we didn't know each other before we met here or anything. We hang out quite a lot outside of work too though lately Archibald has been kind of busy trying to get things ready for next week's festival so he's been skipping our usual movie night every other Wednesday these past couple of weeks but he'll be home tonight after his last job so hopefully we can watch something together then!

Speaking of tonight... well actually it's already morning now since today's market day over on River Street which means we're going to open early just like every Saturday morning during market season but... yeah... *I'm* going to *be* opening early today thanks to Archibald forgetting to set his alarm clock! He's supposed to be here at seven sharp; I'll give him ten minutes before calling over there just as a reminder because usually he gets moving pretty fast as soon as he wakes up anyway...