Thomas Sidebottom

I'm a queer software developer living in Iowa, and John creates sculptures in wood. John's standing behind me in the picture. (Picture credit: Diane S. Kaye)

In 1995 I had been living alone for almost five years. After hanging out on a gay BBS and newspaper personals I had met lots of guys who wanted a short fling, but no one that I wanted to live with. My journal entry for New Year's Day in 1994 spelled it out. I listened alone on New Year's Eve to one of Gustav Mahler's Rueckert Lieder, Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen (I have become lost to the world). I had indeed become lost to the world. Living in one of the world's gay meccas, I had simply lost interest in dating.

I had helped a friend, Meredith Karns, develop some software for his business. Meredith and his brother Morgan run a specialty printing company in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Meredith came to San Francisco looking for help writing software for a new printing system he was developing. My ex introduced Meredith and me, and I started working for him.

I met several of Meredith's Iowa friends who came west to hang out in San Francisco. One of them, John Schwartzkopf, visited Meredith twice. I liked John, but never pushed to get to know him at all. When Meredith decided to move back to Iowa in May 1995, John helped him load up a rented truck and drive his stuff back home.

On Meredith's last night in California, he and John came to stay with me. We had dinner at The Fish Market in Palo Alto, and then went back to my condo. Over dinner I decided I wanted to make a play for John's affections - or something like that. Back home, I dragged out my massage table, and we three traded some bodywork. Actually I did most all the work - intentionally! After I finished with Meredith, he crashed on my office floor. That left John and me alone for the first time. A bit of bodywork led to other things. Hours later, we had collapsed on my bed.

The following morning, John and Meredith finished packing. We three met at the apartment of my best friends, Kathleen Jacoby, for a send-off brunch. After we ate, I saw the two of them off. Just before he drove off, John gave me a particularly long hug. Then they were gone.

So I liked him. I really liked him. But he was two thousand fucking miles away. How on earth could we do anything? And was he actually interested at all in me? The questions went back and forth for days. Finally I did the obvious low-tech thing. I wrote him a letter, asking him if he might be interested in getting to know me better.

The answer came back about a week later. Five handwritten pages of it. He was interested. We did some phone calling, but I remember mostly writing to him and waiting to hear back.

By September 1995, he agreed to come back to see me for a week. After we got over the initial shock of being with each other, things started to smooth out. We visited the Renaissance Faire in Novato, and did a bit of running around. Mostly, though, we ate and talked and - well, you know what happens.

The end of the week brought an invitation to come see him. I planned a trip over Thanksgiving that year - with no small trepidation. I disliked traveling. I had not been back to the Midwest since 1982, when I helped my parents move from my childhood home in Urbana, Illinois. The Midwest had been home, but prison, too - prison in fundamentalist religion, and in being agonizingly asexual in a place and time unfriendly to queers.

It was a shock to be in Cedar Rapids over Thanksgiving. Actually I had a great time, but John and I had trouble connecting. Part of it was that his house was in terrible shape. It needed roof work in the most dire way, and that was just the start. John wanted to do it. Money stood in the way. He was scraping by as a starving artist, and simply couldn't afford it.

John was committed to Iowa. He called me once in a panic, saying that he couldn't see how he could possibly move. He was 'the least mobile person he knew'. He had a point: the house in Iowa had a separate shop for his work, and plenty of room for the dogs. Barring a raft of stock options or winning the lottery, I couldn't create the same physical plant in the Bay Area. What was around $100,000 in Iowa would be over a million dollars out west.

I returned to California completely confused. I told my friend Iris that I didn't think I could do a relationship with him. She replied: 'I don't believe you.' I asked an old friend and former boss, Ann Stephens, what she would do. Her reply: 'You can always find work. You can't always find a life-partner.'

By Spring 1996 I had decided to help John with the house. I went back in April to talk about what needed to be done. John proposed raising the roof (literally!), and converting the upper half storey into a full second floor. I still wasn't sure whether he wanted me with him. He looked at me puzzled, then said: 'I've redesigned everything with you in mind. Of course I want you here.'

As construction continued, and as the costs climbed, I needed to find a job in Iowa. That proved to be a struggle. By December 1996, the new roof line and upstairs were framed and insulated. I told my current employers that I planned to move to Iowa. I hadn't planned for what happened next.

I worked at Visigenic Software for a husband-and-wife team: Jens Christensen and Neguine Navab. Jens held a Ph.D. in computer science from Stanford, and Neguine had managed significant groups at Sun Microsystems. They were a great team. When I told Neguine about my desire to move, she asked me: "Is the only reason you're leaving that you want to live in Iowa?" When I said I liked working for her, she said, "Don't do anything yet. Give me a few days."

What she did during those days was amazing. She and Jens wanted to keep me, so they arranged a telecommuting arrangement. I would live in Iowa three weeks a month, and come west for a week each month. With their support and good will I made plans to move just after my birthday in February 1997.

The movers came and packed the truck. We got our driving instructions. John and I packed my Explorer with what I needed until the movers arrived in Iowa. We had our last dinner at The Fish Market, and came back to the condo.

I didn't want to leave. John had everything ready. I stood upstairs, looking out at my garden. I had enough stuff in my condo to make my monthly trips west simple and pleasant. But I didn't want to go.

John stood quietly, just waiting. I came downstairs, herded my dog Ki into the Explorer, and we started off.

I told John how tough it was for me to leave. He said that he knew, and that I could take as much time as I wanted. By the time we reached the outskirts of Los Angeles, we were deep in a conversation that we still haven't finished.

Unpacking in Cedar Rapids proved surprisingly tough. There was stuff everywhere: books, recordings, video tapes. We parceled out space, and had a few small turf battles. By the time the movers arrived, we had room for boxes but not much else. I had space in a bedroom for my coding. My books were still downstairs in fifty-one boxes.

Three weeks later I made my first trip cross-country. I wasn't a good traveler then, but I learned. I was cranking out code. By Summer 1997 I started thinking about my California junkets as time for me to be quiet - and away from the construction madness. The house in Iowa was under constant building from the time I moved until 2001. But in California I had freedom to be quiet.

Software companies change constantly, and during those boom years changed happened faster than one can imagine. By February 1998 Visigenic Software had been sold. In the mean time, two of my friends at Visigenic, Farid Khoujinian and Mark Christiansen, had started a new company. I started with the new business, Luna Information Systems, in March 1998. Farid and Mark continued my telecommunting arrangement - even with a few misgivings about working remotely for a startup. We kept working together until Luna finally disappeared in the dot-bomb crash in 2001.

Construction - and the construction costs - are tough on any relationship. John and I weathered it all remarkably well. He learned what bugged me about the constant physical shuffling in the house. I learned that he needed to keep his own work going even though that took time from the house.

It's now ten years since we started going together, and eight since I moved. The boxes have long since been unpacked. John built everything in my office just to my specifications. The kitchen is the best I've ever worked in. Our bedroom - indeed, the whole house - is filled with soft light and air. It is serene here, framed with hand-rubbed wood and screen panels that recall a Japanese house. What doubts I had about us have vanished in a haze of conversations about philosophy and science fiction and movies; of the loss of both our mothers; of everyday dinners; of lazy nights, and sudden heat between two bodies. One story, though, frames John's love for me.

It was a hot summer night in Iowa. Construction was still under way. I had an asthma flare that night; heat and summer humidity aggravate my breathing troubles, and then we had no air conditioning. I piled out of bed, trying to find some coolness. I took a drag on one of my inhalers, and stood in front of a window, trying to breathe.

I came back to bed. John had positioned himself against the wall right behind the bed. He motioned to me, saying, "You'll breathe better if you sit up. Let me hold you..." And he held me sitting up until I fell asleep.