TWENTY TWENTY HINDSIGHT

Dear Katie,
What are your thoughts on marriage?  It is something I struggle with; yes, I see the benefits, yes, I see how it’s a fucked up “unnatural” institution.  If gays could get married, would you?
Sincerely,
Cold Feet

Dear Cold Feet,

There are several key elements to any successful marriage—good communication, congruent values, similar goals, common interests. Imagine that you’re into crocheting and he’s into scrapbooking? How could that marriage last any longer than it takes for the cake to get stale?

Another integral element is more than one person in the relationship. And this, not just because I’m gay and actually can’t get married, is what keeps me from buying the rings and hyphenating my name. It’s hard to consider marriage when your last girlfriend broke up with you because you both like to be the little spoon. And the one before that because you consider Nottinghill a foreign film and would rather watch it than anything with subtitles. And the one before that because one of your legs is shorter than the other and you once referred to synagogue as “Jew church,” which your Jewish roommate thought was funny so you really don’t understand what the big deal was. The point is, when you’re single, marriage is less important than finding someone to get brunch with.

In theory, however, I do want to get married. This is a recent development in my emotional life. I used to say things like, I don’t understand why you’re going on your honeymoon alone. What happens when you get sick of each other? A week of conversation with only one other person? Yeah, it’s Jamaica, but there’s only so much to say about beaches. I really felt this way, that monogamy is inherently boring, like crafting or sobriety. I thought of myself as a sort of gay George Clooney—a free spirit, unrestrained by commitment and obligation—except without fame, fortune, critical acclaim, or symmetrical features. At that time, I was less likely to wake up with a phone number than with a hangover. And that, not fighting over who’s going to wash the egg pan or mail the rent check, is boring.

But even though lasting commitment appeals to me in a way I wouldn’t have anticipated when I was schlepping around town, marriage probably isn’t in my future. Here’s why: I’m terrible at break ups. I delete her number, block her email, defriend her on Facebook, and generally try to forget that she ever entered my mind cloud. Also, I cry a lot. Even though this complete severing is dramatic and maybe a little immature, it’s necessary, because the hardest part of breaking up is hope. Hope is what makes your blood pressure rise every time your phone dings, every time you check your email, every time there’s an unexpected knock on your door; hope that even though you asked her to stay away, she won’t. Hope is what keeps you submerged. Severing kills the hope, and you can’t do that when you’re married.

In most break ups, you move her toothbrush from the cup on your sink to the wastebasket beside the toilet. Later, when the trash is full, you toss it with the rest of your household garbage, bag it up and leave it on the curb. It moves to the dump truck and to the landfill with all the other toothbrushes, all the other reminders of things that don’t exist. But when you’re married, you can’t just throw out her toothbrush and take her favorite sweater to Goodwill. There are houses and dogs and papers to sign and rings to hide in the sock drawer you no longer share.

I don’t want to split possessions and negotiate custody. And so, even when it becomes legal and normal for two women to promise their lives to each other, when we stop referring to gay marriage in air quotes, stop noticing when women refer to each other as “wife,” I probably won’t make it to the altar. There’s too much possibility that it will all go terribly wrong and you’ll be left in a house that’s twice as big as it was, with half the dishes, with a mattress but not a bed frame, your toothbrush alone on the counter.

But, CF, just because I am not brave, just because I’d rather sleep in the middle of my bed now than get used to an empty side later, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t get married. I still think that the honeymoon would be more fun if you could take your friends, but don’t let the fact that some of us can’t get married keep you from it. Good luck.

This weekend I played the role of the badkhn—a sort of disgruntled court jester—at fake Jewish wedding. I basically read some real nasty and/or depressing shit about marriage and love and gay people and Jesus and made everyone uncomfortable. I didn’t want to do it because I think marriage should be between one impotent man and one child bride, but it was fun and I’m glad to have been a part of a fake marriage between four girls. The local klezmer band Gmish played as I read, so imagine some melancholy Jew music in the background. Afterward, Gmish played some happy Jew music and all the fake Jews danced and were Jewy. What follows is my monologue. Mazeltov!

———-

Remember when the drummer from the lesbian punk band Broken Heart, Broken Hymen cave-manned you against the handicapped stall in the bathroom of a dive bar and then left before you could pay your tab or get her number? And remember that circle jerk in a hostel in Amsterdam, which isn’t something you would normally do, but it was Amsterdam and you were on drugs and you’d never been with a man before because you aren’t some kind of faggot but, shit, when in Amsterdam, do as the dutch: get high and circle jerk with four German tourists on a hostel carpet. And remember your freshman year when you thought you were taking her virginity and she was taking your virginity because she told you that she was a virgin and you believed her because you were a virgin, the last virgin on your hall or maybe even in your entire dorm, but it turns out that she wasn’t just not a virgin, she was on her period, and afterward it looked like you’d dipped your penis in a in a bucket of red paint, which would be okay except that it was also kind of clotted and distinctly not romantic. Remember that? And remember the time you fucked the Jehovah’s Witness, the two of you snorting coke off a hotel bedside table and bumping your vaginas together until your thighs were like suction cups and made embarrassing farting sounds that you pretended not to hear? Remember how she later asked if you thought Jesus was sad for what you had just done, to which you replied, You got off three times. Nobody’s sad.

These are the things you will think of as you lie in a hospital bed at the age of 90, passing urine through a tube, not even pushing it out but letting gravity and modern medicine drain your kidneys. You might think of today, your wedding day, and you might think of the day your daughter was born, but mostly you will think about the things that happened before today. The things that happened before you joined another family and then made another family, before the mass holiday cards and the family portraits and the all day swim meets that you were obligated to attend. You may think of how much you loved your son when he was so young that his Speedo wasn’t yet embarrassing or creepy, but also wished he were less into swimming and more into watching TV. You might also think about how that same son kind of turned into an asshole in his twenties and is still one today, on what may be the last day of your life before the darkness takes you even farther from your youth. You will think of the wedding and the kids and the grand kids, of course, but mostly you will think of the things that happened before today, the things that happened before you wed, the things that happened when you still had something to look forward too.

You never thought you’d be this person. You never thought you’d stand here before your friends and family and your parents’ friends, who you don’t even know but who you had to invite because your dad is paying for the wedding. You thought you were better than this. Different, radical, above convention and ceremony, not a lamb, an individual. When did you turn into your mother? Today, today you become your mother and your father and every one else who has done this before you and everyone else who will do this after you. And why? Because you are scared. Because you are a quarter of the way through your life and you don’t even know what you want to be when you grow up. Because you just realized that adults aren’t actually adults but are children who pay bills and you are one of these child grown-ups, not scared of the dark but scared of dying alone with no one to change your diapers or clip your toe nails or wipe the drool from your chin. You are here because you are looking for the person who will save you. You are here because this is what people do.

But she won’t save you and he will annoy you. Yes, you will have your moments. Sometimes you wag your tail when he comes home from work, sometimes you want to hibernate under a pile of warm laundry with her, but you will always wish for the past, the day before today, yesterday, when you were still excited to leave the house because who might you run into on a Thursday night? Because anything can happen on a Thursday night when you are young and alive. You could climb a parking deck with Helen Mirren. You could dance in a store window with your neighborhood mailman. You could meet the love of your life. But you’ve already met the love of your life and now nothing will happen on a Thursday night because you are tethered to the person beside you like a disease that isn’t terminal but is chronic. You will sit on your couch and watch movies for the rest of your life. That’s all there is left after today. Movies and couches and laundry to fold.

Crushes don’t stop when you get married. You will flirt with the girl with the toaster tattoo who makes your Americano. You go to the coffee shop instead of percolating at home even though you should be saving for your anniversary cruise, a trip you don’t even want to take because the only people who take cruises are those who convince themselves that cruises aren’t what they are, which is seeing the world from a mile’s remove, seeing the world from an endless buffet. You will think of someone else when you fuck your spouse, which isn’t all that often, which you are okay with because you can only fuck the same person so many times until it is like fucking yourself, which you can do without pretending to care if she gets off. You will think of someone who isn’t him, someone who doesn’t piss on his feet in the shower because he thinks it cures athletes foot. You will think of someone who isn’t her, someone who doesn’t talk about yeast infections and stretch marks and hasn’t sucked you off since she found the Nailin Palin porno on your computer. When she gets over the sexy Republican porn and you have your monthly fuck, you will think of the woman at the gym who wears her iPod attached to her biceps with a pink band, biceps that are so much better than your wife’s biceps, not too muscular, but lean and toned, not like a lesbian gym teacher but like a pilates instructor, which she is your fantasy: a pilates instructor and a massage therapist and a really good cook with an insatiable sex drive and a beautiful wine collection. You will turn to the Internet, to Big&Busty69@hotmail.com and fuck her through your finger tips and thank God that email doesn’t cost 99 cents a minute. You will fuck her in your mind. You’re wife will relieved that you’re not pressing your erection into her back every night when she wants to go to sleep and wake up and be 19 years old again, just like you do.

The gays are the worst. The gays, the bane of the good Lord’s existence, the people who beat Jesus with strap-ons and drowned him in a vat of lube, the people who will rot in a hell where everyone’s a bottom and they lie in bed for eternity waiting for someone else to make the first move, even they, born without a conscience but with a hungry prostate, desire to make the same mistake you are about to make. They get teary when they see two mommies; they framed the People magazine spread of Ellen D’Generis and Portia DaRossi sitting cross-legged on velvet pillows surrounded by friends, family, and vegan fare; they talk about “equal rights” and “marriage equality.” They are naive, these queers. They should thank the bigots for saving them from the misery that is marriage and run from the altar as fast as possible, Dykes on Bikes piggybacking fags and twinks. We should all be so lucky.

Romeo and Juliet are the most romantic couple in history. They married and then they died. They didn’t have to pay bills. They didn’t have to go to parent/teacher conferences. They didn’t take turns cleaning out the litter box. The honeymoon never ended because it never began. Real love is real death, side by side in a glass coffin, not talking for eternity.

But for now, at least for tonight, there is no disappointment, only possibility. You don’t yet know that he will get drunk at your office Christmas party and ask your boss when the baby’s due even though she’s just bloated. You don’t know that her mother will move in with you in just seven short years, bringing three cats and her collection of nutcrackers. What you know tonight is that the arch of her foot is the most beautiful geometry in the world; that the color of his eyes exists only in his eyes and nowhere else; that everyone else in this room is secondary; that all the love you’ve ever felt is nothing against this new love; that you will spend your last years together, too old and ugly and tired to change the channel or fold the laundry, but still glad that if the lives you’ve created have to dim, at least they will dim together.