The fundamental things.

I walked out Larry's door to get my copy of the Casablanca DVD out of my car, and, on my way back into the apartment, found the door locked.

Maybe they thought I was just walking to the other room, I thought, so I knocked on the door.

"Come in," Larry said, and I imagine he had a wine glass in hand when he said it.

I tried the door again. No luck.

So I rang the doorbell.

I heard Larry sigh. "Hold on ...," he said.

He tried the door. It wouldn't budge. It wasn't the lock, though. He tried the door again. Nothing.

"DAVID!!!" he called to his husband, still sitting on the couch waiting for the movie.

"David, this damned door is stuck," Larry said.

David tried it, then tried it again. It was still stuck.

"Hey, are you still out there?" he asked me. "I need you to push!"

I pushed. The door didn't budge.

Though a gay man, David has tools. David started to remove the doorknob. Larry told me a long time ago one of the reasons he likes David so much.

"He's very useful," Larry said.

There's a door to Larry's bathroom up in his condo now. There used to be a curtain hanging. Now there's a door there. David installed it. You can't even tell that the wall above the door was ever incomplete. David's work is seamless, perfect.

The door knob flew off and landed by my feet. I started to talk through the open doorknob hole at Larry and David.

"What happened?" I asked.

"We're figuring that out," David said.

A screw holding on the doorknob had come loose and lodged in the door.

"You're useful," I said to David when the door came open.

"You have no idea," Larry said and laughed.

The door was soon fixed, and David joked with me at that point.

"We thought we'd gotten rid of you," he said, laughing. "I said to Larry, 'Why does he want to watch that movie? I've seen it a dozen times. Quick, try to lock him out!'"

David's very, very good for Larry. The two of them work well together. Though Larry and David are perfectly fine on their own, together they make something stronger, funnier and more admirable. They make, figuratively and literally, a better-constructed device. They opened doors in their lives, allowing each other in, and they live together.

And they've opened their door for me. And their love, which survived all sorts of silly drama, distance and other complications, shows me that it may be possible for me to open the door in my life for someone else, whenever fate determines that the right person should come knocking. And though I'm a gay man, I hope I have the tools to make a relationship happen.