Women in White

I am dreading the next few months because my State has passed a marriage equality bill through the House and Senate and, sometime next week amid much fanfare, the Governor will sign it.  She’s already promised.

And it’s not that my jaded little heart can’t go all goosepimply over the prospect of all those his & his & hers & hers weddings.  I positively weep whenever another state opens up their city halls and starts tying knots. Always first is some incredibly aged couple who have been waiting, waiting, waiting for decades to be told that their love is registered. Like an earthquake, on some cosmic scale.

And it is not because I won’t benefit directly from this sudden equality.  I have already warned my co-workers that on the very first day that licenses are available I will be absent from my post and camped out in front of City Hall with my 58 dollars, picture i.d. and a video camera to document my giddy bridal excitement.

I am so ready to make it legal with the woman I call my Unlawfully Wedded.  The fact that we already had a wedding in August just makes me feel superlucky. I could be twice-wed in a year. And to the same person, even!

I am just bracing for the hate. See, between the Gubernatorial signing gala and the nuptial extravaganza there will be a Referendum Drive.  Holy troops of volunteers with God in their hearts and pocketsfull of ball point pens and talking points will descend upon us like plagues of locusts. Or toads. And they will assault us with their hate.

The work I do is rough. It tests the limits of what I can see and hear without giving up entirely on the human race. But I do manage to get up every morning and march off whistling.  Because outside of my job, I live in a bubble where everyone I discuss and love and work with and dine with – yes, even the Republicans and yes, most lovely of which are the Christians – all of the people I see on the regular support my family. And this is by design.  I am not built to fight all day in the public arena and then come home and scrap with the people who profess to love me. I like my bubble. I guard it fiercely.

But when I hear of this referendum fight, I keep picturing my local grocery store and how I will be walking the gauntlet week after week to retrieve my yogurt and school-lunch-friendly juice boxes. You know, the ones hippy enough not to induce instant diabetes, but not so hippy that the 7 year-old is too embarrassed to drink them in public. And the soy milk. (I am a lesbian.)

I will have to pass some dickhead with a clipboard, asking people to sign a petition to remove my marriage right from me. Some dickhead who actually believes he can accomplish that feat. I’d like to see him try.

“The state can’t give you freedom, and the state can’t take it away. You’re
born with it, like your eyes, like your ears. Freedom is something you
assume, then you wait for someone to try to take it from you. The degree to
which you resist is the degree to which you are free…”  Utah Phillips

There has been discussion, amongst my friends, on how to handle the solicitations of dickheads.  My friend J.J. says he will take the petition and carefully print FUCK YOU in large letters across all the unsigned boxes.  I suggested we all sign as “Rick Santorum” with a fake address – possibly one’s own local Planned Parenthood.  There are many creative solutions.

But what I picture myself doing, what I see as really true, is standing at the entrance of the store right next to the dickhead. In my wedding dress. And just asking people.  Please. Don’t sign this. Please?

 

My Unlawfully Wedded is soliciting people’s stories about why Marriage Equality matters to them. Whether it allows you personally to marry or you just believe in the cause. Just something about why YOU care about it. She will be publishing these stories, comments and such on her blog: www.jillmalone.com

She is hoping to keep posting these stories until we’re legal, so get on it.

She also writes books. And blog entries about how totally amazingly lovely I am. You should read both.

Vowed

Me:

Dear Jill, okay that’s dumb. Dearest Jill: When I met you, I’d relented. I was cynical. I was cynical about love and the benefit of lovers. In fact, I had determined to become a spinster. I had cats. I started watching television.

All through my growing up years and into adulthood, I had this dream where suddenly, I could not speak so that anyone could understand me.

I would speak and I understood what I was trying to say, but no one else did. Awkward … and lonely.

Being with you means I have someone who always hears me when I speak. It’s a relief and a comfort.

Here’s what I have to offer: I will always orient toward where you are. You are my comfort and my home.

I will always rely on the best in you and assume you are the woman I know you to be.

I will trust that your love for me, the thing I am most sure of, will always win over details.

I will treat your enthusiasms with reverence, because I know that your sense of joy guided me to you.

I will trust your instinct to make me happy; it is more true than my drive to sacrifice my self.

I will love your true love, which is to say — I will put family first and be a mother along with you.

No one was as born to mother as each of us in our own ways.

I will never treat you as a friend; you are not just a companion, you are my consort.

You will always be mysterious and wonderful to me.

More than anything else I can articulate, this is truth: You are singular in the way you make my life worth the struggle. Together we are so much more of all the most and best than apart.

Will you marry me?
Will you stay with me?
Will you feed me ice chips when I’m dying?
Will you actually hear me every day for the rest of my life?

Her:

The little man in the voodoo shop explained about his pythons, about
the spells he cast with them. But I was already alight with magic. I
walked down a cobbled street and phoned you. I’d taken you everywhere
in New Orleans, through the markets and cafes, along the water. I’d
read to you. I had your letters in my pocket, and went over them as
though they were maps. But this day, the day with the pythons, you
told me a story about your list. About the things you had learned must
not be compromised in a relationship. I stopped walking. The rain
fell, and a wind kicked through me and I listened. Your relationship
is supposed to nurture you. To make you more capable. More likely to
thrive. I had stopped at a garden surrounded by a wrought-iron fence.
I held onto the gate and listened as hard as I could. I could see my
life, like this city, the haunted decay of it. I felt you pull me,
through the phone, you drew the best of me out. Love was a physical
force: it prickled; outside that locked garden, it hummed through the
city. And I knew I’d marry you. I knew it. I saw it as clearly as I
saw my child before he was born. I recognized you at last.

I was so sad before we met. This grave little thing. You are my act
of faith. Who doesn’t love a good redemption story? You are my
favorite defiance. My purest rebellion. I promise to love you as
though there were no injury. I promise to love you as though there
were no disappointment. I promise to love you. To keep faith with you.
To be your counterpart, this half of the circle. I promise to feed you
ice chips. To worship and adore you. I promise to work, to bring you a
new and earnest heart each morning. I promise to get it wrong, and get
it right, and start again. I promise to be your guard against
cynicism. To be supersonically silly. I promise to dance with you.
Our bodies were built for joy.

(Also posted on her blog: www.jillmalone.com)