The 13 months I spent in the US was full of joy and sorrows, love, sex and arguments. I can quite honestly say that I’d happily do it all over again. Last June, my visa was reaching the end of its life and I was researching the different ways of trying to stay longer. My God, the American government makes it difficult for someone to get a green card.

I applied for an extension on my visa, but two weeks before it ran out I got the letter from the INS – my application had been denied. I now had two weeks to sort out my entire life in the US – a life that I had been planning on continuing.

The next two weeks were full of activities, trying to get around to saying goodbye to everyone, sorting out what would happen to my car, my finances, and half of my stuff since there was no way in hell I could take it all home!

Fortunately I had a great friend called Will who helped me out a lot. Things didn’t get better as my passport was stolen and I had to travel up to Chicago two days before my flight to get an emergency passport. Back down to Indy to sort out a few things and then back up to Chicago again, but this time to O’Hare where I had a ticket waiting for me at the British Airways counter.

I sat at the bar in the airport with about ten dollars in my pocket, the last of the American money that I had in the world and drank a few beers as the delay in my flight was announced. I sat there chatting away with a few British travellers who were waiting for the flight and we finally made our way onto the plane.

As we took off I looked out of the window and tears welled in my eyes. The situation finally sank in. My time over there was over. I was going home. No more nights of playing cards at Perkins. No more tornado sirens or nights getting drunk on the back porch.

I spent a few months at home trying to get a job, but the UK work scene is very different to Indiana’s and I eventually went back to college. I was lamenting the fact that my sex life was so quiet to a friend of mine, Tony when he recommended Gaydar.co.uk to me and this is where fate stepped in and showed me why I came home.

Gaydar is one of those online dating things. You put in your details and who you’d like to meet and then you can search their database or wait for someone to find you. Since I was back to metered Internet access (urgh) I didn’t do much searching.

So I’m sat there one day, bored and browsing and I go to see who’s logged on from my part of the country. There are 6 guys, 2 of which are under 30, me included. So I have a look at the other guy’s profile and start messaging him.

This is where things started getting weird. As I’m writing to him, I get a message from him. I stare at it for a few seconds before responding. And that was where it all started.

We had so many common interests. He liked computers, so did I. He’d worked in the States for 3 months, I had done so for 13. He’d gone skydiving, I wanted to and had done a lot of flying. He was lonely. So was I.

We hit it off immediately and spent about an hour on the Internet that night, until I realised how long I’d been on and had to disconnect. I called him on the mobile and we spent another excited hour or so talking before he had to go. We made arrangements to meet up the next week. I called Tony and spent another hour on the phone to him excitedly regurgitating the entire night.

We’d arranged to meet in a gay bar in Cardiff and I went down to Cardiff that fateful Wednesday night. I arrived in Bar Out an hour early and had a quick drink before he arrived to try and calm my nerves – but nothing worked. I knew him as soon as he walked in the door and he smiled and his brown eyes twinkled and he came over and we started talking.

That was eighteen months ago. Nathan and I are still going strong and we've recently moved in together. We’ve met the parents on both sides and survived so it looks good for now. I’m deeply in love with the guy, but in a way that I never expected. My previous relationships have all been like fireworks, exploding in a beautiful cacophony of stars before fading into the night again. This one’s different. This time, it’s more like a slow coal fire. The longer it lasts the brighter it gets and it feels like it’s going to go on forever. I most certainly hope so.

It’s only recently that I’ve started contemplating what might have been. Why did the INS refuse my application? Why did I go browsing Gaydar that night? Why did I investigate the option I’d never bothered with before? Just like Keanu Reeves in the Matrix, I’m not comfortable with the idea that someone else controls my destiny, but I’ve got a definite impression that someone up there was looking out for me this time. To whoever that was: Thank you. With all my heart.

You know, isn’t it funny how things work out?


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