The Gay Uncle hosted one of his favorite guests at his house upstate this weekend, a fourteen year old former preschool student of his, Eddie. G.U. has known this boy since he was not even two two, when his mother approached him in the East Village park where he used to run his students and asked if she could join his school, and the longevity of their connection–as with all of his former students–is a source of boundless pride, interest, and hilarity. His boyfriend Tal–once afraid of Gunc’s young charges (“I feel like they’re judging me”)–of course joins full-force in the action when Eddie’s around, in their own personal take on the G-S-A (Gay-Straight-Alliance) popular in high schools across the country. Eddie provides the Straight, the Guncles the Gay. For example, the boy’s overnight last year featured the axe-wielding destruction of a toy metal car (which, perhaps symbolically, Eddie used to play with during long-ago upstate visits) as it’s Straight component, followed by the building of a complex car-wreck diorama, complete with realistic decorative elements (tiny painted slinky as razor wire, metal fountain pen ink reservoir as trash barrel) and landscaping (real moss and pine saplings) as it’s Gay one. [SEE PHOTO] This year’s visit included two such highlights: a very brief episode of Eddie piloting the Gay Uncle’s 1972 GMC Suburban through a wide riverfront National Park Service parking lot (Straight) following a long wildflower and geographic feature identification hike up a local mountain (Gay); as well as highly supervised target shooting with an air pistol (Straight) followed by the assembly and transcription of recipes for smoothies and Mexican food (Gay). The most fascinating thing to Gunc was the way in which all parties were equally fascinated in and entertained by all activities. He thinks that perhaps there’s a summer camp idea in all of this somewhere after all.