The lead headline in today's New York Times said "Hundreds of same sex couples wed in Massachusetts", accompanied by a photograph of joyous lesbians. It made me so happy - what a time we live in.

Perhaps wedding bells will ring for me one day, who knows. It's always seemed so unlikely, since I've had such wretched luck in love. But maybe things are changing. I spent the weekend in Los Angeles with Ben (the doctor formerly known as "B" in these pages), and I'm beginning to feel there's the possibility of something long-term here, despite the long-distance obstacles. LA isn't such a bad place.

I'm not, quite obviously, contemplating a sudden move south, but I had such a pleasant weekend, and things progressed with Ben at such a pace, that the question did occasionally flicker in my mind as something to consider for the future. On a beautiful late Sunday afternoon, Ben and I drove down Laurel Canyon in the sun, the top down on Ben's convertible, heading for drinks at the Abbey with his good friends B and S, and it felt like such a lovely life.

I envied, a little, Ben's circle of friends. While I do have a fair number of good friends, I don't have anything that could be called a "circle". I don't have the equivalent of hanging out on a Sunday afternoon at the Abbey with B & S, and their friends.

On Saturday, after an early gym session and brunch, we drove down Sunset all the way to the coast, then North along the winding road that fronts the ocean all the way to Malibu. Then back up into the hills to Charmlee Wilderness Park, an extensive, little known, secluded part which only has space in its car park for around ten cars. Today it was only half-filled, and on our 90 minute hike we barely saw another soul. Which left us free to talk, and do things boys do with each other when they're outside in spectacular surroundings and nobody is looking.

Hunky Ben in Charmlee Wilderness Park

The two of us

We'd talked a lot by this point, and I found myself growing in fondness for Ben, at his good nature, his love of beauty, his kindness, not to mention his perfect body. We really do have a lot in common. (Oh my god - I just reread this, and realized it sounds insufferably immodest. I was referring to what follows). On Friday night, we actually both read our books in bed a little while, since both of us tend to read before going to sleep. I hadn't seen what he was reading, but he said that he shouldn't read ghost stories because he had an overactive imagination. I asked him if he'd read Edith Wharton's "The Turn of the Screw", and he stared at me wide-eyed before showing me his book cover; he was reading Wharton's collected short stories. (Now, this story isn't quite as amazing as I first thought, since I'd somehow gotten confused: it was actually Henry James who wrote "The Turn of the Screw", as a reader pointed out a few days after I wrote this. Goddamn it, my fact-checking department must have had another blonde day.)

It's been a long time since I've been on the edge of a potentially serious relationship, and I began to wonder what sort of obligations I had to let him know about baggage he might have to carry. Should I tell him I'm prone to depression? Or was it even a desire for self martyrdom that made me think of disclosing such things?

I remember when I was first setting out into the big world, as a student in London, exploring a vast range of types of people. I felt my all consuming desire was to really get under the skin; to dispense with artifice. I rarely feel that way now. Perhaps I've realized how futile a desire it is. But I wanted, at least, to find out more about Ben, and what makes him tick. Maybe I should have asked him if he's happy. Ah, but then he'd have asked me if I was.

Me playing with Ben's two beautiful dogs

One of said beautiful dogs with a ball in her goofy mouth

If I make it sound like the weekend was heavy and introspective, I'm giving the wrong impression; for the most part, it was a high-spirited, fun weekend. On Saturday night, we went to S and B's birthday party at their new house in the Hollywood Hills (you get a view of the Hollywood sign from their living room, albeit from a rather oblique angle). I downed several cosmopolitans, and spent the evening chatting to a variety of people, and laughing with the hosts.

At B & S's new house, on the deck overlooking Los Angeles, playing with yet another dog

Birthday cakes at gay parties provide an amusing display as figure conscious gay men nibble at the tiniest slivers of cake imaginable. Ben and I shared our morsal and didn't even finish it, although the chocolate icing was strongly tempting.

Afterwards, Ben and I went to the regular Saturday night club in West Hollywood, The Factory, and met up with an acquaintance of mine, Scott, from San Francisco. We all hung out together until around five in the morning. It's rare that I have the mood and energy for an after-hours dance club, but that night everything just felt great. Ben and I even got a good nigt's sleep afterwards, not wakening until past eleven. We made love with a stronger passion than ever before. At one moment I thought I heard Ben say "I love you". I couldn't be one hundred percent sure, and I decided to ignore it, since it could have been just the moment of passion.

Later, we met a hungover B and S in West Hollywood for brunch, and then B, Ben and I went to see "Troy", notable mainly for the stunning, begrimed torso of that force of nature, Brad Pitt.

On Sunday evening, we actually never got into the Abbey, since it was closed for a private party. So we ate in the Mexican restaurant next door, watching a neverending parade of gorgeous young men with tightly muscled bodies in tank-tops and sleeveless t-shirts. I wasn't even strongly turned off by the subtle eyeliner some men wore to accentuate their peircing gaze. It's hard not to think of self-improvement when you're in LA. I found myself contemplating getting the blue rings around my eyes addressed, and maybe an injection of something to flesh out the deepening clefts either side of my mouth. But so many Los Angeles men move with a conscious grace - an air of knowing that they're the object of admiration but pretending they're uncaringly oblivious. If I moved to LA, would I subtly become like that. Or am I so fatally insecure about my appearance that I'm beyond ever truly believing I'm admired for my physicality.

This trip was a needed correction to the last time I saw Ben, at the White Party, when I was at a testerone-deprived nadir of insecurity (I found out later that my testosterone levels at the time had been a fifth of the normal level). The way I'd felt about myself had poisoned, for me, our interaction to the point where maing love induced a measure of self-shame. Not this time. I felt young, and care-free. On Monday, I hugged him goodbye and spent the day at Starbucks in West Hollywood, working via a wireless connection, and feeling in a better mood than I had in a long time. Then home, in the eveing, for a brief overnight before flying to New York on Tuesday. I'm on my way into the city in my limo. It's after midnight on Wednesday morning, but the air is warm, and somewhat humid, but how nice to come back to New York and find warm weather.