I was enjoying a gigantic cup of hot chocolate and a bread bowl filled with black bean soup with Alex and my high school friend Jennifer at a place called The Raven, which is in the town where I grew up, Port Huron, MI. The Raven is a two-floor coffeehouse. The building housing it is of the Civil War era - one of the oldest in Port Huron - which, after an eight-year process, has been restored with many details authentic to the period. It is a really cool place; so cool in fact, I felt the need to tell Alex that there was nothing like it when I grew up, lest he think I'm lying about how boring my childhood home was.

Everything about the place made it completely unlike the Port Huron I knew. From the fine coffees to the gigantic couches where people were expected to sit and hang out for awhile to the twenty- to thirtysomething single crowd to the vegetarian options on the menu were totally at odds with the drably practical, remote, family-centered carnivorous farmers that surrounded me as a teenager. Part of me was pleased to see that things do change, but another part was fiercely jealous of every twelve- to eighteen-year-old queer person of color growing up in Port Huron now.

We sat there after enjoying our meal chatting and just generally goofing around, when a rough-looking man and two younger guys sat down on a couch situated diagonally from ours. I overheard them for a moment say "meeting" and "sponsor" and from the rest of their highly-charged, awkward conversation could only assume that it was an AA or NA gathering. All three were white and had probably never left Port Huron or at least Michigan in their lives. They ordered a gigantic urn of coffee and between themselves sucked the caffeine down rapidly, as those in recovery tend to do.

At some point, they were all laughing. It was that kind of conspiratorial, I'm-ribbing-you-but-we're-MEN-that-can-take-it-so-I-can-do-that, straight guy laugh. That laugh has always made me uncomfortable, because I assume that something frightening is about to be lobbed my way. At the very least, I assume that something about me - my queerness, for example - is inspiring the laughter. I ended up subtly glancing over to prepare myself for the homophobic barbs that would soon be hurled at us just in time for the older, rough-looking ringleader to catch my eye and then glance at my lap. I thought for a moment about what attracted his gaze: me and Alex holding hands.