A law for gay marriage may not be passed, and curious euphemisms will be invented to substitute the rightful status: civil union, domestic partnership, or the French PACS, which at least contemplated common taxes — a perk not to be neglected when looking at the hefty tax income percentage the common mortal is required to give the government in that society.

I can consider myself lucky. Because of my relentless pursuit of a nationality I was entitled to, I can marry the person I love, if she and I so desire. I can be a married gay person in Europe and legally enjoy the same benefits as heterosexuals. However, am I really an equal? There lies the question. Many years ago, while visiting a friend of mine in Denmark, she casually commented on a friend of hers who was married to a person of her own sex. The takeaway of that conversation was that, although gay marriage has been a perfectly viable option in Denmark since the late nineties, she still did not feel she could publicly announce her status without being looked at differently. And that was a shame, I thought, not yet knowing I would once find myself living as a gay person.

So today I know that money will be eventually the decisive element in shaping legal openness to gay families. It will take a long time, but at some point there will be no choice but to see the alternative family model coexisting with you, no matter how many people you can gather around a metropolitan landmark on a given day to go say that gay marriage is unconstitutional, perverse, and against nature.

In a silent, almost imperceptible way, this is happening here in the US, slowly, like the advent of the Spanish language which now has almost equal presence to native English. Slowly, economic power in the hands of the gay community will not leave room for anything but a legal status. Today, the country that hosts me does not accept marriage on a federal level, but gay people still have kids that do not know what a traditional household of mom and dad looks like. Still, US federal law does not grant reality a legal framework. There are kids in many states that are the product of artificial insemination regardless of whether that state has a law that will give their gay moms or dads the option of a legal contract. All of this reality is happening closer to me than I would have imagined. And that is right, that is the truth, regardless of the law.

I agree. The law would be the icing on the cake, le coup final that would make everything right and would allow us to put our heads on the pillow and sleep in certainty. Marriage is like a green card as opposed to a temporary visa. But we are far from that greencard on a global level, so we still go for the temporary visa. Eventually, the greencard will come and nationality will be an option. Today, we can only lobby for it, and hope that eyes will be opened soon to the new reality, once the economics of being gay tears down the barriers of the higher powers with less economic leverage.

It is still early for that. Patience will be necessary until the moment comes. And it will.

Because of Alex, Houston was flooded today. It happened much in the same way as it does in Buenos Aires when it rains heavily. Here the rain amounted to 6 inches or more, and it went on for a full two days, more heavily today.

I went to work, but was wise enough to return home before the rush hour began. Part of that was my need to pick up the dog from his grooming appointment, which he hates. So at some point we found ourselves in the car talking to the woman I still love and eating a sandwich a few blocks away from the apartment. It was good to get home earlier, as recommendations on the TV by the time we arrived were to stay wherever you were and wait it out.

So Houston treated me to its bad weather reputation today and, interestingly, it was not much different from some things I have already seen: cars stuck with water almost reaching the roof, people wading through heavy rain oblivious to whatever lies underneath their knees, well-buried in the water.

By the way, a difference is indeed that the Mayor spoke on the radio and she was later on TV, but at no point was her administration questioned on account of a storm, which is a weather phenomenon and not a capricious human decision. I could not but feel this was a more pragmatic society than mine, which expects her to do her job without blaming her for absolutely everything, such as the weather or World War I.

I personally cannot defend any single Mayor of BA I have experienced in my several years of life there. They have all at some point or another failed me or others. However, I have always been kind of alone defending the point that, if it rains heavily and the city floods, it is not totally a person’s fault…it is the weather. There are no subsidies on offer here for those who got their cars stuck in the water, or whose shops got flooded. You knew that it would happen when a heavy storm came, so you are on your own if Houston’s climate does not suit you.

This is America, right or wrong. This time, scary as it may seem, I have the feeling it is right.

And we crossed the frontier with Malaysia, back into safe, police-controlled Singapore, to catch up on sleep while fully dressed before our early morning flight. And there was a last look at the hotel rooftop, where we had slept the night before under the stars. And I could tell you were already mellow with me, different, as if I had grown into you despite yourself, as if you were no longer fighting that inner battle between saying it or not saying it. And I could sense you drifting away into the land of your own demons.

We crossed a less marked frontier in that trip, and I still choose you. My racing heart betrayed me yesterday as we lay on the couch and you finally told me what your life is really about in that city on the West Coast where I have been banned to set foot, at least for now, the outcast of our love. I knew you were going to say something important, and I still don’t know what else I will be learning about your life before me. Yet, oddly enough, we keep blaming space and time for the complexities in our relationship.

Space and time we may not have, so perhaps it is best to go with what we do have. And that is love, unknown as experienced in this life, flaky and afraid, trying to withstand the fears of us. All we will ask of it is to surmount the great divide between our mirror images, so different in many ways, and see if it makes it through and it finally builds the bridge. For that, we only need to hold on to the walls of the Menara as we climb.

You hurt today, so much, and I love you.

It is only for the past couple of days that I have owned a rather pricey but charming desk with a banker’s lamp that I always craved and never quite indulged in. In Woolfian terms, I have only now secured a “room of my own”. So I might as well use it…although I must confess the couch and small Ikea table I got for myself simultaneously in May are tempting enough to write on. Parts of this place that I now start to recognize as my home are coming to life, designed by me and my taste (or lack of). It is a major step towards the overcoming my own homelessness, the snail’s shell inside of which I am finally free at my pace and with my choice.

Yet all of this housing independence — minus ownership — is happening while someone is by my side, albeit still quite physically removed to make anything simple. Perhaps that is the most obvious and challenging side of my freedom, the planning on my own while I know that we both might plan otherwise one day. I know the time for togetherness will come, and it will be the way it is meant to be. For now, my own time is this, set on Houston rhythm, with large roaches that hang on trees (like they did in Buenos Aires), with hot mornings filled with sunlight entering the kitchen, with her sleepy voice at the other end of the line when we can speak, with me retreating into myself for now, going without much thinking of the future, as if I was taking this for granted. It is not, or it may not be, but she and the space she gives me makes it all feel like home.

None of these things happened while I stopped writing. The earth continued to revolve around the sun and everything leads me to expect a 365-day calendar filled with achievements and further questions on December 31st. Nothing changed and everything did. I am no longer on Argentine soil, and a part of me begins to feel the severance, that even cut that I decided was the necessary step toward the new phase of my journey.

I now live in a garage apartment that in the next few months seems more inclined to harbor the scorching Houston summer in the day, so I can enjoy its stuffy walls at night despite the air conditioning… I have got a couch, which she helped me assemble after my first foray into the iconic IKEA chain. I have a rack to hang my clothes upon, but it fails to do the job so a walk-in closet is now in the making…with a challenge – shapes in a garage apartment would defy the most versatile designer. I still don’t have a desk, but the couch and a small laptop table do the job of letting me churn out basic work. I still sleep on an airbed, but even that becomes a regal bed when she is around.

Last Wednesday she was arriving. The morning found me working from home before I drove my car to pick her up at the airport. There was the regular attente at Terminal C, the minutes that became hours as the escalators gave me small misleading clues of a potential arm resting on the side, the rim of a patterned skirt that could be hiding her beautiful legs, the shoes that would reveal Gothic-painted toenails. It would be a while before she actually found me…but she eventually did. As I stabilized my senses before the myriad of sensations she triggered, I looked into her eyes as she came close, unsure of where the kiss would fall. It is always on the lips, but I like to mislead her and she likes to pretend she does not expect it. And after that moment in which my thirst finds its relief,  I am whole again, unique in my connection with her blue eyes. Her touch will guide me out the automated doors, and I’ll think I know where I’ve parked my car…but I won’t. Yes, I know, at some point I’ll find it…because that is part of the magic, and just like us, it is meant to be.