G is for Gryphon
G is for Gryphon
It is extraordinarily appropriate that the letter "G" happens to fall now in the ABC-along. You see, the most important "G" in my life is someone I've mentioned here a few times before - Gryphon. And as it happens, today is his birthday!
The Gryphon in His Natural Habitat
G is also for GEnie
The "General Electric Network for Information Exchange". Way back in olden times (around 1990 or so), GEnie was one of the available online services in a world where there were far fewer computer users. In those days, we used a dial-up modem to call the Internet over a phone line, and if we shared a home with others we issued dire warnings that the phone should not be picked up because it would disconnect us from the service, and we'd have to try connecting again.
In Syracuse, I had a new computer - my first - and a modem. And GEnie had just offered a new concept in online connectivity - a flat monthly fee for unlimited connection time. I signed up, and began discovering the wonders that were GEnie.
GEnie happened to have a large forum for Science Fiction and Fantasy writers and fans, and the Society for Creative Anachronism was hosted within those confines. (The SCA is a medieval re-enactment group begun in the 60's by SF & Fantasy fans & writers, among them Marion Zimmer Bradley.)
Being an SCA member, I naturally found my way to the SCA forums, and found a lively group of people there. A number of them became my friends. I became very active in the forums, and eventually, was made Topic Leader over the SCA area.
G is for Guillaume
With that position came responsibility for the other staff assigned to the SCA forums, namely a File Librarian named Guillaume de Chaumont. Guillaume lived in New Hampshire. Over the next two years, Guillaume and I, along with other SCAdians in the forums, helped to develop online events, games, and more.
About two years after I had joined GEnie, Guillaume and I and a woman down in Florida were sitting in one of the online chat rooms. The subject? "All the good ones are gay, taken, or both."
At some point, we "looked" around the "room" and concluded that the three people present were "none of the above." One thing lead to another, and soon, a plan was formed that Guillaume would drive from New Hampshire to Syracuse to pick me up, then we'd drive down to Florida to visit Morgaine.
It occurred to me that Guillaume and I should probably figure out if we could stand to spend three days in his pickup truck together before launching on this journey. It was somewhere in the middle of October, 1992, and I suggested that he come to Syracuse for Thanksgiving.
Over the next month, Guillaume and I spent more and more time in chat rooms, getting to know each other. Somewhere along the way - we're not sure when - we realized we really had something here. He hadn't even shown up on my doorstep yet, though, so we didn't want to say it was love. But I think we knew.
On Thanksgiving Eve, there he was at my door. We'd never even exchanged photos yet, can you imagine? Yet somehow, everything was just as it should be.
Guillaume stayed through Sunday. I showed him the sights in Syracuse, and we spent lots of time talking.
By the time Sunday came, no one had said, "Will you marry me?" But we were both saying, "once we're married."
And the Wednesday through the Sunday of Thanksgiving, 1992, was our first date.
After that, of course, we spent lots more time talking in chat rooms and planning things. Guillaume lived in New Hampshire, I in Syracuse. Where would we live? What would we do for a wedding, when and where?
The issue of which state to live in was soon resolved. At that moment in time, Syracuse hit bad economic times. Many stores that I'd known all my life suddenly went out of business. Friends I was hoping to ask for help finding work for Guillaume were laid off. I began to fear that I was going to be asked to turn the lights off on the city when I left...
Guillaume came for Christmas, arriving on Christmas Eve, and staying for 10 days. My family welcomed him with open arms. They hadn't told me they were doing this, but they all got him Christmas presents, and there was even a stocking for him. Guillaume couldn't have felt more like he belonged.
By the time he went back to New Hampshire, we'd bought our marriage license.
And those Ten Days of Christmas were our second date.
The local Syracuse SCA group, the Barony of Delftwood, was having its traditional February event soon, and we'd been given permission to have our wedding at the event. All there was to do now was plan the details, and wait.
We located a SCAdian who was a licensed magistrate in New York State, and was going to be coming to the event anyway. As part of my medieval interest books, I already owned a book about marriage practices in the time and place that our SCA personas came from, and I used that as a guideline for writing our own ceremony. A number of friends at GEnie, including SF writer Jim MacDonald (the Mageworld series, with his wife, Debra Doyle) came to the wedding. It was the same weekend as Boskone, one of the biggest SF conventions of the year, but Jim drove like a banshee Saturday morning all the way from Boston to Syracuse to be there for us.
We were married at, of all things, The Feast of the Seven Deadly Sins, Barony of Delftwood, on February 20th, 1993. Guillaume arrived from New Hampshire the night before the wedding. We spent the next week packing my belongings into a rented truck, and I left the hometown I'd spent 32 years in to live with a man I'd known for 2 years, but only really "met" at Thanksgiving.
And that was our third date.
I've never regretted it once. I am where I belong, and with the person I belong with. I am a better person than I was 13 years ago, and it's all because of the influence of this strange man that I met in such a strange way. Since the wedding, we have jointly drifted away from the SCA that was so important in our lives up to that point. We figure it had served its purpose and brought us together, and it was time for us to move on.
Why a Gryphon?
This part of the story is perhaps best told in Gryphon/Guillaume's own words, as originally posted to his blog.
The gryphon image attached itself to me around 1989. That was when I became active in the SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism). As part of the process, I created a heraldic device for myself, with the help of a local herald. The primary charge was a gryphon. I'm not sure where we came up with that as an image, but I know I liked it.
I haven't been active in the SCA for some years now, but I did meet my wife while I was. Her goose and my gryphon became traveling companions. "Goose and Gryphon" appeared as our joint identity.
Eventually, our heraldic icons became personal and artistic icons. My wife Jenny lost the goose, but created Folkcat to replace her. My Gryphon marched on. We now explored life's mysteries as Folkcat and Gryphon.
The image I use on business cards and web pages is one that Jenny created. She had bought me a lovely resin casting of a gryphon that held a candle in its head behind the eyes. She took photos of that and then used that as a model to paint a gryphon seated on a rocky ledge.
That image got simplified into the icon I use now:
I liked this image. It carried the colors of my heraldic device, which are also the colors of the chakras I am doing the most work on right now. It just felt right.
The gryphon has a colorful history in myth. Of the sometimes contradictory attributes offered, I have adopted those that present the gryphon as a steadfast guardian of treasure. My SCA device showed a gryphon passant, that is, one with but a single claw upraised. This gryphon was standing still, but the raised talon advertised that he was alert and ready. I liked that, and I have strived to live that way -- at peace, but alert and ready.
So that is why Gryphon is a gryphon. Oh, sure, there is more to the story than that. But that will do for now.
-=Gryphon=-
And that's the truth, as Edith Anne would say. A couple of improbable people got together in an improbable way, and changed their lives forever.
Happy Birthday, my love. I wish I could give you everything you desire. I at least give you what I always have - all my love.
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