Partner.  Is it just me, or did that word once signify a subtle way of not specifying the gender of one's lover?  And didn't more queer than straight people use it, or have I been fooling myself?  In my often muddled mind, when I lived in the United Kingdom in the nineties, "partner" was a useful signal that you were in fact talking to a queer person, because straight people just said girlfriend or boyfriend without fear of being discriminated against for it and of course, in those days, only...