Arnold Zwicky's Blog

That’s the land of maze and Shiraz and similar AZ things, those whose names have the letter-sequence AZ in them; Aslan is something entirely different (see below). I was taken to AZ-land yesterday on Facebook by Aric Olnes (who is, among other things, a floral artist), in one of a series of alphabetic flower photos from Casa Thomas / Olnes in Pioneer (Amador County) CA — where Aric and his husband Mike Thomas live these days — which come with lengthy alliterative captions, in this case for the letter A:

(#1) The photo, of a Pioneer Azalea; the caption:

Astonishingly attractive Azaleas arrest acrimonious assumptions ascending aloft angelic amiability

(Look, Aric wasn’t aiming for elegance or poetic facility, just alliteration playfully carried to ridiculous lengths; otherwise, all it has to do is make some sense)

And my response, also on Facebook, taking things in a direction Aric probably didn’t anticipate:

— azaleas are from AZ-land, like azure, azimuths, and azithromycin, in a region that embraces Azerbaijan, the Azores, and Azusa [but not Anaheim or Cucamonga] — and is next to the Plaza Hotel, the Amazon River, and Jason Mraz‘s recording studio (among many many other things)

Where there’s an A, there’s a Z. Or, in Pioneer flower terms: where there’s an Azalea, there’s a Zinnia. Aric’s FB posting of 5/31:

 
(#2) The photo, of a Pioneer Zinnia; the caption:

Zany zen Zinnias zing zestily zig-zagged zippily zooming zenith zone zeal

I could go on in this vein for some time, but surely you will be shaking your heads in disbelief; after all, I told you just above that they’re husbands with a house in Pioneer CA. Opposites really must attract, you say, and they are in fact nicely complementary. Indeed, every couple functions to some degree on complementarity; it makes the two of them stronger together. And then couples can bring out the best in each other, can learn from one another. And can create joint enterprises: Mike&Aric became fabulous hosts, serving amazing meals for guests, in small numbers and large, from all over the world, in their first house, known as the Center of the Universe, on Sanchez St. in the Castro (with an incomparable view of San Francisco out the big picture window).

Now I tell you that they picked each other up at the Castro gay bar Badlands in 1994 — that two young guys, with plenty of experience in both casual sex and boyfriend sex, hooked up for a hot night. And you’ll be astonished that anything could have come of that, few tricks go anywhere. Well, that was almost 40 years ago.

One lesson here is that all manner of things can work in all sorts of ways for many different kinds of people. Another is that people can have capabilities, resources, passions, and resiliencies that might not be obvious to the casual observer. And a third is that people change over time; in particular, couples become both more and more alike (even in physical appearance) and more and more attuned to one another (seeming to be moving in synch with one another, smoothly constructing conversations as if in a single voice, catching tiny bits of emotional resonances from one another). Mike and Aric do in fact look more like one another than they did back in 1994, and they’re sufficiently attuned to one another that people meeting them for the first time are likely to think they’re brothers (as people did for Jaques and me, despite the enormous physical differences between us). This attunement persists even when they’re engaged in banter with one other (that’s one of their interactional things).

Mike and Aric: the social beings. So far, this has been mostly about the two men as individuals and as a functioning couple. But then there’s their social role as hosts, as organizers and maintainers of sociability for lgbt-folk and their friends — as public people. And more dramatically, as public exemplars and advocates, resolutely standing up and standing out and showing the way. Because that’s the right thing to do, how could you do otherwise. This is daily living made into queer activism, and I admire them for it. (I am once again delighted to be writing encomia of living people. There’s way too much death going around.)

Which brings me to the San Francisco Chronicle story, “They made history by saying ‘I do.’ Three S.F. couples reflect on Newsom’s impact on same-sex marriage: Gavin Newsom defied the federal same-sex marriage ban as San Francisco mayor 20 years ago. Three couples look back on their wedding days — and what happened after their historic nuptials” by Erin Allday, Robin Buller, and Graph Massara on 2/12/24. A photo from the story and a brief quote from it (a report on the first time Mike and Aric got married in San Francisco, in 2004; those marriages were nullified, then same-sex marriage became possible, so Mike and Aric got married again in San Francisco, in 2008, willing to bang at this thing as many times as necessary to get it right):

 
(#3) [caption:] Michael Thomas, left, and husband Aric Olnes of Pioneer (Amador County) met in 1994 at Castro bar Badlands. In the early hours of Feb. 13, 2004, Michael said, “I told (Aric) he could sleep all day or get his sorry ass out of bed and get married.” [AZ note the banter] (photo by Yalonda M. James/The Chronicle)

As newlyweds, Aric and Michael marched behind [then SF mayor Gavin] Newsom in the 2004 San Francisco Pride Parade, where they met other couples who had been together — and waited for this moment — even longer. “Our 10 years was nothing compared to the people around us who had 30, 40 years,” Aric said.

Mike and Aric: one more thing. The two men have been willing to write quite openly and in detail about their personal lives, even all the sex stuff. Including their coping together with Aric’s experiences as someone living with HIV. Some of which is grindingly awful.

But the worst is long over, and Aric is now serving energetically as a public resource on HIV, the AIDS plague (June 5th is the anniversary of the first published reports of the plague, in 1981), remembrances of the multitudes who died, and advocacy for HIV education and research.

I realize that this is not where you thought things would go when I announced a posting on AZ-land. But that’s the way the world turned. But wait, June 5th is grimmer than that: not only AIDS Report Day (1981), but also Robert Kennedy’s death day (in the terrible year 1968), and, oh weep for me, my man Jacques Transue’s death day (2003). On a beautiful early-summer day.

This entry was posted on June 2, 2025 at 5:45 pm and is filed under Alliteration, Art, Books, California, Events and occasions, Gender and sexuality, Language and food, Language and plants, Language play, My life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.