Last night was O Bar's special Valentine's Day event, which had been arranged as a concert for the O2Men. The lesbian singing group used to guest occasionally during big events but has since become a regular part of the bar's performance line-up. The event was a unique celebration of their talents and the unique flavor of performances they've brought to O Bar - and it was certainly a great way to celebrate our Valentine's Day weekend. Beyond the great performances, we had good friends with us for the night and I survived being asked to sing on stage. Crazy!
After checking my old LiveJournal blog archive, I also managed to confirm that the 16th of February is also the anniversary of the first time I had actually gone to O Bar. To be fair, Tobie had also brought me the night before but it was already morning and we only stayed outside. It was around 02:00am 16 years ago that we properly went to the bar together to watch the show and meet some of his friends. This was part of the many things we ended up doing together during our first week of hanging out in person - what a whirlwind! At the time, I had blogged about having had a lot of fun that weekend and being open to being Tobie's wingman of sorts for these nights out. We had no idea how things would turn out.
Had I never attended the New Worlds conventions in 2007, I wouldn't have ended up with a photo of Tobie in costume that would lead to him adding me on Multiply. Had Tobie and I not reconnected on Guys4Men, we never would have started chatting and getting to know one another better. Had I not needed to burn leaves in 2009 before they'd become forfeit, I wouldn't have had a chance to hang out with Tobie on a Thursday night just to play NetRunner. And we wouldn't have spent Valentine's Day together at the party of a friend. And we wouldn't have worked on a Fandom Live! recording the next day and ended up at O Bar right after.
The chain of events goes on and on in both directions, but you get my point. A very particular sequence of events just seemed to happen almost at random, but one can now trace a direct path through all of them. And this path led to me and Tobie getting together and me becoming a major advocate for O Bar. And I doubt our friends now could ever conceive of a world where I wasn't taking all these photos and videos of the O Bar performances and everything else we do in celebration of the bar. Funny how all that worked out.
But wow. I've been going to O Bar for 16 years now. Tobie has been going for longer. And the bar itself will be celebrating its 20th anniversary in December.
We found our way to each other, in a world filled with twists and turns.
ReplyDeleteI love you.