Gays Win Right to Kiss Their Perfect Lives Goodbye
To my gay friends who won the right to marry in New York last week I’m overjoyed for you all. Although the ruling did not come early enough to properly prepare for a summer wedding, a missing human right was finally and forever ensured in the Empire State. Congratulations!
Now stop telling me you’re engaged. Especially if you’ve been with the same guy or gal for two decades. The bloom is off the rose. To me, and most of the rest of your friends, you’ve been a couple of dried up geezers for years now.
Before you start typing hateful comments about how short-sighted, homophobic and just plain stupid I am, allow me to explain. I’ve been married 12 (or 13?) years, ever since that one beautiful day in June (or July?) that was the result of the following innocent question: “You think we should get married before the baby comes?”
I hope you appreciate the honesty, because I may not live to see my 13th (or 14th?) anniversary when Mary El reads this. She was seven months and carrying low in the hip. Some women get to seven months and start to show a little. Mary El starts to show a little at seven WEEKS and becomes a gas giant by the time she hits seven months. The best way I can describe it is if you’ve ever played those Super Mario Brothers video games. You know the pirate ship level when they are firing those big bullets at you that look like a zeppelin cut in half? That was poor Mary El. I give her nothing but credit. If anything did that to my body ONCE, I would be fleeing to the nearest nunnery—she hung in for three 10lb. plus children, all by C-section, and she has the pictures to prove it. Of the children, not the C-section.
We showed up at the courthouse in flagrante, she in her best maternity duds and me in a shirt and tie. Our friends Mary and David stood up for us. The judge was the same guy I plead to about a speeding ticket just a week before. He didn’t recognize me, which proved my assumption that judges rarely look up in those situations. No one gave us the fisheye bacause of Mary El’s condition, which proved my assumption that people in general rarely look past their own noses. We had a very nice lunch afterward during that late fall (or early summer?) day.
So that’s how I feel about the institution of marriage. If it didn’t make taxes and life insurance easier–or keep our first child from being a bastard–we could easily have done without it. Such is our overwhelming love and devotion, along with our avoidance of public scenes and rote ceremony. But I do not presume that everyone should conform to our way of thinking. If you want to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars for the perfect dress and the perfect flowers and the perfect cake so that relatives can make drunken jackasses of themselves and the bride can end up crying her eyes out in the bathroom, be my guest. In fact invite me, I like to see a train wreck up close.
My gay friends, I thought, shared a little wink and nod about the stupidity of it all. The pomp and circumstance surrounding the “breeders” and their silly customs. Gay couples were too cool for that. They found each other, said “hey, I love you, let’s stay together” and worked together to create gorgeous, impeccable homes to which you were afraid to take your children lest they break something expensive. They led childless, pet-filled, two-income lives that were the envy of all their straight friends. (That is a joke, kind of.)
Who knew, deep in the heart of that blissful nonconformity, that there was an adopting, wedding-planning beast ready to be unleashed? Don’t get me wrong; gay couples are as equipped, if not more so to raise children and are frequently in a better financial position and stage in life than most straight people to do so. And with this new NY law, there is nothing to stop anyone from planning and executing the most fabu weddings known to mankind (and I want to be invited to each and every one since the food will undoubtedly be spectacular) to publicly express love for a mate. My question is why? For the love of Mike (or John, or Pete, etc) why?
If I may, I think at the heart of that question is the following truism: people always want what they can’t have. Straight couples like us yearn for a life with no children where we come home to a perfect house that has not been spilled on, broken, raided of food or had pieces of furniture urinated on. Some gay couples want nothing more than the peed-on sofas, and the burping, crying, child that comes with it. And they want the storybook wedding that has always before been denied to them. We take for granted our ability to procreate and our right to rent a hall and throw a shin-dig that winds up with a legal marriage license. Gays take for granted unstained rugs, the lack of necessity for child-care and the TIME to do ANYTHING for yourself.
Obviously I’m talking in hyperbole (sort of). I love my children and would only trade them with the absolutely perfect gay couple who had the right amount of cash up front. I wear a wedding ring and I am thrilled to be married because, along with many other better reasons, I don’t have to be out there in the dating pool that I navigated as well as the captain of the Titanic before Mary El had mercy on me. Our house would NEVER be as nice as our gay friends’ houses if we worked on it, childless, for the rest of our lives. But the getting married thing really was no big deal. I call Mary El my Plymouth Rock because when I landed, I landed for good. We didn’t need ratification, though it was there when we wanted it.
I guess that’s what it gets down to, ultimately. Even if we thought it was no big whoop, we were able to do it and our deserving friends did not. I changed my mind, if you want to trade vows in a field of heather with doves flitting in the air and a Judy Garland impersonator belting “Over the Rainbow”, have at it. Mary El and I will be in the crowd, trying to eat as much filet minon as our bellies will carry, if we can get a babysitter of course. Just don’t hold the toaster against us, ’cause we got two kids and not a nickel to our names. Welcome to your future.
pettiplays 
Yup, perfect house and tons of money, that’s me!!!
OK, but you’re still invited to our wedding, or whatever we do, on March 11, 2012. John
@ Anon–You wanna switch?
@John–I wouldn’t miss it for the world. And by the way, Mary El does a MEAN Judy!
don’t worry Brian, they’ll just be sure to hide you away at a back corner table with the band so you don’t spoil the fun…
As long as I get fed they can put me in the parking lot!