I met my husband, Andrew Madrid in 1991, when we were both at the University of California, Irvine. I was in grad school for studio art, although we are the same age (he was born four days after me!). He had taken time off and was an undergrad studying Comp Lit with my roommate, Tom Albrecht, a Brown Semiotics major (so was I, and Studio Art), where Derrida and Lyotard both taught.

Tom and I had a mutual gay friend, Rafi, and we all lived in Laguna Beach, then affordable and beautiful, and an oasis for queer folk in the OC. I went with Rafi to the Boom Boom Room, and in walked Andrew, who looked like a Latino version of Keanu Reeves, who I had a passion for, and it was love at first sight. He also helped me with the first LGBTQ Film and Video Festival I founded at UCI (“Beyond the Orange Curtain”), and we quickly became an item—our first date was when he and his best friend Alicia brought me food as I was installing my first art show at the student gallery.

After I graduated, I had a place in Echo Park, and Andrew would live with me during the weekends. After he graduated, he moved in. It was around this time that we visited my folks in Denver, who welcomed and accepted Andrew into our family’s life. We wanted to adopt a puppy, so Dad took us out to a Yorkie place out in the boondocks, and we adopted Gertrude (after Stein!), our first of many, many pets. She was the runt of the litter, and my mom called her “Sugar Burger.”

We got married the first Sunday it was legal in CA, and now, over 35 years later, we are still together, living in Riverside, CA, where we have three dogs (an Anatolian and two Great Dane sisters), three cats, and a parrot!