Gays Of Summer: Laurel

Name: Laurel.
When did you come out? in 2008
Who was your first love? Eliza Grey
What happened? Still Facebook friends
Whats your favourite movie? Forrest Gump
Whats your favourite song? Karma Police
Are you a gold star? No
If you could be anything what would you be? An oyster farmer.
Biggest turn on? Sense of Humour.
Biggest turn off? Cockiness.
Ellen of Portia? Portia.
Which L Word character are you? Alice.

©Alison Slattery. All Rights Reserved.

Autumn Colours : Andrew

August 2006, I moved to Seoul South Korea for two years. I worked in a Korean Elementary school teaching about 1000 kids a week, sometimes more. Culture shock set in after the honeymoon period and life became very frustrating at times. My family were thousands of miles away and communications were hard with the time difference. Friends became my other family.

I mentioned in a previous post how about 40 teachers lived in this Co-op Residence in the middle of Seoul, literally the Times Square of Seoul. I immediately hit it off with a bunch of people and we became inseparable. I finally met Andrew, who was super quiet and seemed shy. He had his sidekick Nicole always at hand. When you found someone you clicked with in this fast paced environment, you didn't dare let them go far. Andrew coming from Montana, was used to plenty of space, farms and nature. Korea was the opposite. You had to go far outside the city for some peace and quiet and I don't think I ever saw a farm in the two years I was there. After Korea, most of us left and went our separate ways. Andrew moved back to the States and went to grad school. He later became a Park Ranger in several parks throughout North America, including Glacier Bay, Yellowstone and The Everglades needing a fill up on nature after his tank went empty in Seoul. 

Recently Andrew sent me message saying he was going to visit Montreal and would I be around. He ended up staying with us for his trip and we had the most amazing time. I got to know Andrew even better than I did in Korea. I got to hear about his life and his upbringing and his recent escapades as a park ranger. We got to share our stories of joy and horror about our travels since we last saw each other. We had such a fabulous time with you and I loved taking you to my favourite restaurants/cafes of the city and cooking up a storm for you. Please hurry up and come visit us again soon. Best of luck with your next venture living on a farm in Washington State, I am very jealous. I have to hand one thing to Korea, it placed some amazing people into my life.

The rain eased off and the sky was just a ball of orange and a double rainbow appeared. The rain left the leaves on the trees so vibrant. I still feel I could not capture how colourful this street really was.

We randomly walked down a ruelle and found this old style car just waiting to be photographed.

After the rain, it left a glow on the streets with colours and lights.

©Alison Slattery. All Rights Reserved.

Mil and Em Get Engaged

On Oct 12, two of my very good friends, Mil and Em got engaged. This was quite the affair, Mil had been plotting for weeks what would happen and had little roles for all her friends. It started as a facebook message and soon became known as Project Mil Hunt (PMH) in which the date, the time and the place were determined, but the hardest part would be fooling Em and getting her to a mountain on a cold evening.

This is where I came in. I had to book a fake shoot with Mil and Em that evening. Mil would cancel last minute because of a meeting at school and I would then take photos of Em solo. We would accidentally run into other friends, Deanne and Nicole and then it was planned I would be able to use them as pawns too.

Nicole recently got engaged to her fiancée Guy, which worked out great for me because suddenly the shoot became about them and their engagement and this threw Em off the scent for a little while.

First off was a solo shoot with Em around ruelles and gardens of Mile End. Seens as Halloween was coming up, we decided to look for spooky houses or super colourful ones.

Mil set the time, we were to meet on the mountain at 7pm but texts came in to delay delay delay. Guy and Nicole were awesome and told me that their first date was at Dairy Queen on Parc Ave, so we stopped by here for a brief photo shoot before heading to the mountain.

By now we had Nicole, Guy and to help them celebrate their engagement Josie, Deanne and Melissa came who are all friends with Mil and Em. See where this is going???

Em's brother then texted that he was in the area and wanted to see her, which would seem very suspicious except for the fact he is leaving the country in a few days and wanted to see her.

Some craziness happening in this photo, as we are still delaying.

En route to the mountain.

Mil then plotted to "unleash the candy" which was a trail of random people who are friends with Em, that would NEVER be in this area, just to mess with her head a little.

Finally we got to the mountain, where Mil had prepared a little picnic of Champagne and Port. Friends lit sparklers and thankfully Mil had bought some LED lights so that my camera could function with some light on the dark mountain.

Mil finally gets down on one knee after the cutest speech ever, took out the famous Tiffany box and proposed to Em.

SHE SAID YESSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Congratulations are in order....

Brother and sister share a cuddle

Champers.....

And then this happened. Mil forgot the bottle opener for the port. We all remembered this Youtube video of this guy opening a bottle of wine with his shoe. Kevin decided to try it against the lamp post. I can safely say this actually works and here is the proof even if there was a bit of spillage because of Kevin's excitement.

Guys, thank you so much for letting me document and be part of your engagement. It was such a memorable moment and one I won't forget easily. I will leave you with some Irish or as we call it Gaeilge,  its been a while so it may not go well. Mo Chairde, maireann lá go ruaig ach maireann an grá go deo na deor, comhghairdeas. Translation; My friends, a day lasts until it is chased away but love lasts forever and ever, congratulations.

©Alison Slattery. All Rights Reserved.