13 - we’re here to record a song I wrote for micheal called ’ I can love’ and we’re also here to rehearse and record the song for the beatles for the wedding. 3;52 - the song is for micheal. It’s a thank you - a celebration of how much he changed my life. When I say in the song - this from a man who didn’t know he could - I can love - it’s the truth. I didn’t really know that I could until micheal. Or 41;40 - It’s gorgeous and we’ve had this running joke that um - a number of years. We both came into this relationship having messy previous relationships and broken hearts and all this stuff. Stephen had one relationship in particular that was importao nt for him and the break up was painful difficult complicated. So he wrote 3 songs for this fellow and I joked for the better part of 3 years about 3 song brian and no song Michael. (laughs) 42;30 - m - so now I will be one song Michael - but it’s my wedding day song - so it’s the most important. 11;38 - m - I think what really helped us and continues to help us - is I’m 43 and he’s 55 and we’ve lived really rich lives prior to meeting each other. 31;37 - my life was always around dance. I grew up in a tiny town in west Virginia. My mother owned a dance studio for 40 years. Wen I turned 5 she asked if I wanted to take a tap class and I did and I never left. I knew very early on what I wanted to do and what I would do with my life. I studied any and everything I could. My mom enrolled me in ballet - which we kept secret from my father for a year or two. 30;44 s - I’m a song writer. I worked as a vendor at yankee stadium when I was 14 and that was my last non-musical job. My main training was as a vocal coach and as a singer in cabarets. When I want to be poetic, I say my work is about song - helping people choose them, to write them. And the goal has always been to write a musical on broadway and I just did. 13;22 - s - I say that life in the theater is like everywhere else, it’s just more intense. 17;14 - m - Stephen has a bit of a defense mechanism - early in the relationship. Talked a lot about how he lived a particular kind of life and had been single for a nuber of years and this kidn of new coupling we were doing was a bit challenging. And I think he painted himself as sort of being fussier than he actually is - he actually isn’t fussy. S - he’s not is he? M - he’s not. Traveling is now something we love to do... 11:38 - And we came to this relationship with a lot of information. I knew a great deal about who I was - there’s still more to learn. He’s leanred a lot about who he is. I think we would not have been prepared for each other if we’d met many years earlier. 12;28 - s - I think we would not have liked each other . but we were different people then, too. M - and I think we’re different people now - 4 and a quarter years later. S - and in part because of what we’ve been through. We were not easy on each other. We were testing each other. M - and initially we did a lot of testing of boundaries - seeing how bendable the other person was. S - I think you did a lot of testing M - I think YOU dd a lot of testing S - no YOU... luahging M - but we’ve realy really come to the other side of that? 55;05 55;05 - we met on January 2nd 2011 - within 7 r 8 months we thought this could be serious between us. And that summer we took a complicated trip to rome and venice and neice and then we came back and then we continued to work through. And then about a year after that - we went through a gentleman’s guide opening in Hartford which was exciting and challenging. And then within a year or so - we kind of knew this was who we were going to spend the rest of our lives with. OR 13;22 - s - I say that life in the theater is like everywhere else, it’s just more intense. And that’s a little solispictisc - btu it’s true. We g o through more jobs and more experiences more quickly. There’s a kind of faux intensity and also a kind of real intensity. I think having both had successful careers as artistists - by necessity it toughens you up. 37;17 - s - in a certain way - you get a musical to broadway - it’s gravy from here on in. m - I will also say - one of the ways in which Stephen has changed through all of this. You’ve learned how to find better balance. You’ve found a broader arch to your life. Nothing is every going to be the epic battle that it was to get a gentleman’s guide to the stage. It will never be that again - in some ways it can’t be that again. Especially if there’s a child and a family. 23;20 - m - we went to visit stephen’s family in florida and his nephew and a friend of his nephews wanted us to go to Disney world with them. S - no WE wanted to go to Disney world m- yeah - WE wanted to go and they tagged along. 23;44 - certainly a discussion around family is going to happen at Disney world if no where else (laughing) and we had some quiet time during the day - when they were off during their thing. I think we had talked about it before but this is something we established - this is something we wanted to do if nothing else - is we wanted to make a family together. 22;00 -m - Family’s are tricky. The best of days and best of circumstanes - it is tricky to navigate. I think as a gay man having struggled with my family and on coming out - we’ve worked very hard to heal a lot of that - to repair a lot of that. And I think you have done much of the same work -with similar results. And so - that was an important quality for me to find in a partner. 22;57 - and micheal made it clear early on that he wanted to have a family. Which was - as I’ve often said for a 55 year old man - I never thought getting married was on the table or could be on the table and I never thought having a family could be on the table. And here is someone who’s said - yeah - I want to do it and I want to do it with you - which has been very moving to me... 24;54 - m - thi sis a conversation - though we are in process of making a baby - and we hope that we’re pregnant by july/august if all things go according to plan as we hope . we still talk about it. It’s a concern of mine that our child will inevitably have 2 older fathers. Aside from the challenges it will present ot us . we don’t’ have the energy we once had. But I really think a lot about - the possibility that our child could lose parents earlier than one might otherwise . enjoy it while you can you never know what’ll happen. 25;58 - s - my hope is that that’ll be offset by the fact that - we’ll be a little wiser than parents younger. 26;00 - m - this is one of those moments when our age does make a big difference. When you’re parent in your 20s and 30s it’s easier to see that long road of bringing a child into the world an sending them off to college. Certainly the work I do at the college, it goes by in the blink of an eye. We certainly, we know that. That will shift how we appreciate things. 26;52 - s - I keep thinking our baby is going to be a baby for 12 ½ minutes. And I think we wouldn’t have had any sense of that if we were younge r- it would have been ‘oh my god - we’re never going to get out of this stage’ - whereas now we know it’s ....m - nothing is going to last forever...