Though Cupid appears in many guises it is safe to say he has seldom taken the form of a hard-boiled, deep-fried, sausage-wrapped cholesterol depth charge called a Scotch egg. The Scotch egg turned out to be an early indicator of compatibility for the couple. Far from being just the out-gay mayor of a scrappy rebounding Rust Belt city, Buttigieg is a singular politician: a Democrat in a Republican stronghold; a high school valedictorian who graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard and who also attended Oxford as a Rhodes scholar; a political comer who, after winning election at 29, quickly set about reversing an economic decline in this northern Indiana city, where the last Studebaker rolled off a South Bend assembly line in ; a Navy veteran who, in , took an unusual leave-of-absence from his civic day job to serve a tour of duty in Afghanistan.
Their individual coming-out narratives became a further point of connection for the two in the early days of a burgeoning relationship, which by the end of had grown serious enough for Glezman to move in with the mayor, commuting to Chicago three days a week to complete his degree.
And, while Glezman had been openly gay for more than a decade before the men met, he encountered real obstacles on the road to visibility.
Glezman left home soon after disclosing his sexuality to his parents, and couch surfed with friends for a time and lived out of his car.
Glezman tended to prefer putting on plays in his basement to breaking down an engine; or reading Hardy Boys mysteries to playing touch football; or binge-watching old movies to freezing in duck blinds and deer stands.
