8th Anniversary! Devin + Dylan

Today was the 8th anniversary of the day Dylan and I met - which we just adopted as our “anniversary” since there was never any official day that we ‘began’ dating. We met at LA Valley Pride in 2002 when I was DJ’ing at Gold 9 in Sherman Oaks. He and his ex, Chris, had come in for a drink after the parade and they were the only customers we had at the moment. So when he went to the bathroom, I went over and told James, the bartender, to give Dylan his next drink and say it’s “on the DJ.” That got Dylan to come over and introduce himself to me, requesting a song - “Come On Eileen” - which has now unfortunately become the de-facto “our song.” Then he gave me his phone number and a few days later, just after he had given up on me ever calling, I did just that and we set up a time for our first date. Eight years later and we have been together ever since, through good times and bad. Not legally recognized of course since we’re second class citizens in this country, but we know that our love is just as important as all those righteous re-married “christians” that quote their favorite verse from Leviticus (which is also my favorite verse - to rip out of hotel room bibles and flush!).
Anyway, I had Dylan meet me in the office after he got off work so I could take him out for our anniversary. The Sunset/Vine Newsletters had just arrived from the printer that afternoon so all of us had a collating party in the conference room and got them all labeled and stamped, so I was just finishing when Dylan got there and we took them to the post office on our way. Then I drove us downtown, stopped to get cash at the Union Bank on Figueroa and then realized the place we were going was right across the street. Dylan got excited - “we’re going to a hotel?” he asked me. I took him inside and we got in the elevator, and the elevator goes up out of the big atrium like area on the ground floor and then we’re outside, going up higher and higher until we reach the 35th floor. Our destination was the Bonaventure Lounge, a revolving bar/restaurant that overlooks the entire city of LA. It was amazing! I’ve been to a revolving restaurant before, in Houston, but I was by myself and Houston is pretty flat and there aren’t really many skyscrapers. The view here was just something else! Dylan had never been there before either, or to any other revolving restaurant, so the whole thing was new to him. It was the perfect place for our 8th anniversary date! We got there in time for happy hour so we ordered drinks and appetizers and wondered how long it would take to rotate around to the sunset; unfortunately it took too long and the sun was down by the time we got to the west side, but the view was still stunning with all the twinkling lights of downtown Los Angeles.
By the time we finished the appetizers, we were too full to even order dinner. So we just had another drink, and another, and then we ordered desert. I had a ‘banana cream pie creme brulee’ and Dylan had some sort of cheesecake, they were both so delicious.
After our date, we rode the elevator up and down a few more times and then took some pictures in the atrium area downstairs and debated having another drink there in the bar but decided to just head home. We had several TV shows to watch on the DVR so Dylan went and got a 6 pack of beer and we enjoyed the rest of the evening at home.