E-Mail This Article to a Friend Familiar ring (continued)

First-time fiancées

Since May 17, when same-sex marriage became legal in the Bay State, Amelia Victoria Mederos and Pamela Ashton Streetz have felt as if they were floating on clouds. Everywhere they go, the West Roxbury residents — a biracial couple of 20 years — have met good cheer. Neighbors greet them with hugs. Co-workers extend them good wishes. Friends bestow balloons. One enthusiastic neighbor even flagged them down to check out their diamond engagement rings.

"The goodwill has been overwhelming," says Mederos, 57, a diversity-awareness consultant for businesses and other organizations.

"I’ve been on cloud nine," says Streetz, 52, a sales consultant for Home Depot.

And to think they might have missed out on such heartwarming reactions. Initially, Mederos and Streetz wavered on the question of when to apply for their marriage license at Boston City Hall. Friends had urged the couple not to go the first day, for fear of violent clashes with gay-marriage protesters. Streetz, however, remembered how her father had wanted to take her to the 1963 March on Washington, one of many civil-rights demonstrations that he attended. Her mother had refused to let her go, fearing the worst. For Streetz, May 17 represented her chance to bear witness to another civil-rights struggle.

So she and Mederos wasted no time trekking down to the plaza. Indeed, they arrived at Boston City Hall at 4 a.m., weighted down with chairs, a portable DVD player, books, flashlights, snacks, and beverages. Once there, they were shocked to find the plaza empty — save for a few TV trucks. They settled in for the five-hour wait anyway because, as Mederos says, "We did not want to miss one moment of this historical occasion."

By 9:30 a.m., they were ushered into the City Clerk’s Office to fill out the necessary paperwork. "I was like, ‘Wow, I’m going to do what all my straight friends have done at least once,’" Streetz recalls. "I was excited." Her hands literally shook as she completed the marriage-license application. With the paperwork in hand, she and Mederos emerged from the building to the roar of gay-marriage supporters. "That’s when I really got emotional," Streetz adds. "But as my father would say, ‘Press on regardless.’"

Their May 17 experience ranks among the high points in their relationship, right up there with the day they met in Key West, Florida. For Mederos, love struck instantly. "I saw Pamela and that was it," she explains. Although it took Streetz some time to warm up, she fell hard for Mederos. "I discovered she was this interesting person with all these interesting experiences," Streetz says, adding that once she got to know Mederos — born in Cuba, a trained scuba diver and photographer — "I found her fascinating."

The two were planning to make their marriage official on June 5, when their West Roxbury neighborhood holds an annual block party. Recently, though, they ran into a hitch when they asked a friend to officiate; the wait for a 24-hour justice-of-the-peace license will take another three weeks.

In the meantime, they’re having fun behaving like stereotypical fiancées — proudly displaying their rings, eyeing each other like hawks. When Mederos forgot to wear her ring last week, Streetz made her disappointment known. Says Mederos, "I realized that this is something a fiancée has to do."

Beyond their wildest dreams

Ralph Hodgdon and Paul McMahon never imagined that they would be able to wed. Not once in the past 49 years did the Boston couple dare even to fantasize about getting married. Same-sex marriage, explains Hodgdon, a 68-year-old commercial artist, "was something so far beyond what could happen." As a gay couple, they believed they were destined to attend other people’s weddings.

It wasn’t that they had no desire to marry. For most of their adulthood, though, the world seemed too intolerant to recognize gay and lesbian couples. Back in 1955, when the two first met, Hodgdon was struggling to come to grips with his homosexuality after receiving a psychic beating from a therapist bent on turning him into a straight man. He remained closeted among family and friends for decades. It took 42 years for him to muster the strength to tell his family that the man with whom he lived was actually his life companion. His relatives, he recalls, "looked at me with horror. I’ve not heard from any of them since."

Needless to say, since the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled last November that banning same-sex couples from civil marriage was unconstitutional, life has taken on a surreal quality. "We have to pinch each other to remind ourselves that this is reality," says McMahon, 71, a former dancer, writer, and personal assistant to legendary movie idol Marlene Dietrich.

It seems fitting that the pair has survived to witness state-sanctioned gay marriage, since theirs is a love story defying all the odds. On May 29, 1955, they bumped into each other in Central Park. Hodgdon was sketching on a rock; McMahon was strolling by. Hodgdon cannot forget the "homely green mandarin-collar shirt" that his future partner wore that day. McMahon remembers that Hodgdon was drawing the head of "a very pensive young fellow." The two struck up a conversation, and things quickly fell into place. They discovered a mutual love for movies — and wound up holding hands in the theater while watching Wuthering Heights. Within a week, they had moved into their first apartment.

"Everyone said it wouldn’t last because I was a party animal and Ralph isn’t," McMahon says. "All of my friends told him, ‘You’re wasting your time on him.’ But we proved them wrong."

"Today," adds Hodgdon, "we’re still each other’s best friends and lovers."

Originally, the two had planned to tie the knot on May 29, 2005, in honor of what would be their 50th anniversary. Yet they couldn’t help but wander down to Cambridge City Hall at midnight on May 17, when the city became the first to open its doors to same-sex couples seeking marriage licenses. Taking in the revelry, they got caught up in the emotion. When McMahon was handed a bouquet of white lilies — his favorite flower — he saw it as a sign. "I said to Ralph, ‘Let’s get in line,’" he says. "It was meant to be."

Now, they have a new wedding date, this Friday — their 49th anniversary instead. It’ll be a small yet meaningful affair held in the Boston Public Garden, with a straight friend serving as the matron of honor, a gay friend as the best man, and a justice of the peace as the officiant.

Their May 29 wedding, Hodgdon says, "will top off our long life together."

"It’s the truth," McMahon adds. "We’ve been together for so long we’ve become interchangeable."