married! man... it's great to be a wife.
First thing my mom asked when I called her from the event: "so should I call T____ your wife? I already call her my daughter-in-law... oh goody!" My mom is so great.
I haven’t had a lot of time to think since we got married. Well, actually, I have had a lot of time to think, just not a lot of time to write.
Well, it was all overwhelming - in a really great way. T had been saying all along that it wasn’t going to feel any different, that nothing was going to change, and that the real commitment was when we became registered domestic partners.
Actually she has been politically against marriage her whole life, on ethical, historical and political grounds. The only way I was ever able to convince her to even entertain the idea was within the context of our moving to Canada. If we weren’t legally married, I wouldn’t be able to work and she’d have to become my sugar mama. Okay, under those circumstances she was willing to do it.
But when the Supreme Court decision came out, she actually popped the question to me. Needless to say, I accepted without questioning her change of heart.
My brother proposed to his girlfriend (back when she was pregnant a couple of years ago). The whole family was in a tizzy. How should he do it? Where should he do it? Oh this is so exciting! Hundreds of phone calls across the country. He did propose, but they never got married. Still, everyone in the family really sees them as a real family. They have a kid, it’s all normal.
My mom aside, when we got domestic partnered no one really had much to say. When we called (emphasis on ‘we’) everyone offered congratulations and welcome to the family sentiment. But we basically had to ask for it.
When we told our families that we were getting married - again, excluding my mom - no one seemed too interested. First off, we had a humorous outgoing message on our phone for a while. It was Paul Anka singing "Having My Baby". All of our queer & feminist friends totally got it and thought it was hilarious, but everyone else was like, "uh, so, uh... you're having a baby? Does this mean...?” T's family totally lost it. So on her side, this was of a piece with our getting married. They seemed to think that we were going to have a religious ceremony (because... why?) and that we'd basically blaspheme ourselves into hell and bring everyone down with us. On my side, maybe it’s because my cousin is getting married in August and they’re focused on that. I don’t know. We still don’t understand. T's family loves me, and they are always telling me how happy they are that we are together. And my family loves T. For some reason this seems to be too much. No one called on the day we actually got married. My aunt said she was happy for us, then proceeded to tell me that politically this couldn’t have happened at a worse time, and she seemed to imply that our getting a constitutional right validated and codified was portending a problem for the democrats, and, like 2004, the gays are fucking it up and providing a ‘wedge issue’ that will keep them out of office. It’s even more insulting since she can’t stand the democratic nominee. I can’t imagine any other move toward equality to which she would have this response. If my cousin got married, and 5 months later his right to marry was revoked and his marriage annulled because he is of Iranian descent, she’d hit the roof. If it happens to us, who knows what she’ll say? But I know one thing - as politically active and radical she is (she quit her full-time job as a social worker to do full-time street activism back before the war started) she will not lift a finger to work toward LGB/T rights. She’s not homophobic at all. She loves T, she loves me, and she has many gay friends. It’s just that she doesn’t frick’n see it. It’s not a ‘real’ issue to her. I think she sees it as a total bougie thing which is only there to deflect from the real, meaningful issues in life - Israel and the war. She doesn’t get it at all. It’s the same with T’s parents. So… there you have it.
So do our families see us as a ‘real’ family? As being in a ‘real’ relationship? Yes and no. I think a big part of our getting married was our trying to make a dent in that.
I was talking to V______ (my brother’s partner) a while back and she told me that she doesn’t care if they get married. Especially with the baby, they just feel like a family. And it seems to me that they are treated like a family everywhere they go, in every area of their lives. That is not an experience I have ever had. I guess marriage is really important to me because it IS codified, and there is a social context in which everyone understands what the relationship is (obviously there are political issues there, but…), and that has been withheld from me, so it is really meaningful to finally obtain it. Even though no new legal benefits are accruing to us (since we are already domestic partners), this is the sort of social, as opposed to legal, legitimacy that I thought that our families would understand and appreciate. One of the people who interviewed us asked us how it feels going from DP in which we don't have to worry about alimony, "or all the bad stuff" which comes with marriage, into a status where we are then obliged legally to the other person. It's such an opposite way of looking at it. I told her that having the responsibility for our partner - the legal obligation - is a good thing to me. I want the recognition of the responsibility to her. I want to be able to be responsible for her, and for her to be able to count on that. They don't realise that even with a DP we still have to fight for the state to recognize that we ARE responsible for each other.
So all of the family stuff, and the romantic excitement was background noise to me as we got up at 5am to get to West Hollywood before the crowd. I was scared about my health because my medication and my medical condition make it impossible for me to deal with prolonged exposure to light and heat - and we're in the middle of a heat wave in LA. I figured if we got there early enough it would be fine. I made a bunch of wedding day CDs for the car, so we were totally in the spirit of things when we got there. We thought, though, that all we were doing was signing papers.
We were the 15th couple there. Sweet! We staked out a place in line in the shade. At first, press outnumbered people 10 to 1, but that changed pretty soon. A bakery was giving out cupcakes with women’s (or men’s) symbols. There was so much loving energy. A woman was walking her dog, and she came over to folks in line and said that they were there for anyone who wanted a witness, because she wanted to support history being made.
There was one lone protester, but no one paid him any mind.
So many people interviewed us while we were on line Tuesday morning. One of the questions asked was “Why today? Why was it important to be one of the first couples?” I had never thought about that. It seemed like, for both of us, that there was no other time to do it. I think that there is a sense of this-will-be-taken-away-tomorrow about it. Also, because it wasn’t really real. I could feel myself getting dazed as they started letting folks in to do the paperwork. We got rousing applause when we finished signing everything. We then went out back to have our civil ceremony. This was the part we didn’t know about. So, we thought we would file papers and that would be that. But it turns out that to get married you have to have someone preside over the vows. So we decided to just do it, and then have our real ceremony later. So we did. L and Z, A, and FAG were all with us. The woman who presided had been deputized the day before, and we were her first couple, so none of us knew what we were doing. It was perfect. We didn’t know which finger the ring went on (luckily we brought the rings! I think we’re going to each get a secret engraving for the other, and re-present them to each other when we have our official ceremony). We were both so hot from standing in line for 6 hours in the sun that our fingers were swollen. We hadn’t prepared vows… but it was perfect. The only down side is that the NY Times, completely uninvited, decided to horn in and shoot the whole thing. They took all of the space behind the woman presiding, so none of our friends could get a good video shot, since they had to stand behind. They were rude to our friends, and they basically interrupted the ceremony to ask if they could put the video up on the website.
So, this is us legally tying the knot. Thanks to LS for filming it.
After it was done, we all went over to the French Market for lunch. It’s such a community place, and both T and I have a long history with this gay institution. Our waiter was so sweet to us. He was so excited that we got married. After we all ate, he actually brought us carrot cake with a candle, and all the staff gave us a “congratulations!” The guy who has the stained glass shop in the market gave us a lovely piece of art, and then bought a round of champagne for us and 3 other couples who had just gotten married. It was so sweet!
We wanted the tin cans on string, but these newfangled cars don’t have a place to tie them, so we decorated the windows instead.
The rest of the day, people kept honking at me. I thought I must be so excited that I’m driving really poorly, but then we noticed that everyone was giving us the “thumbs up”.
We went out to our traditional romantic dinner spot (La Fondue Bourguignonne) and celebrated.
The next day I was so wiped out. I thought that it was from the excitement, but actually, by the end of the day, as I started to get vision issues and nausea, plus that familiar being pushed down feeling, T realized that we’d gotten married on a Tuesday and that in the excitement I’d forgotten to take my methotrexate. I took it right away but I still feel horrible. I can’t believe I forgot! Last time I missed a dose I was sick for a week - hopefully that won’t happen again since I have a 3 day meeting in Burlingame next week.
So now we try to get folks to vote down the ballot initiative so we can plan our wedding.
Next stop: NY in August. T's parents are coming down to Syracuse to meet my mom. That will be interesting.
I haven’t had a lot of time to think since we got married. Well, actually, I have had a lot of time to think, just not a lot of time to write.
Well, it was all overwhelming - in a really great way. T had been saying all along that it wasn’t going to feel any different, that nothing was going to change, and that the real commitment was when we became registered domestic partners.
Actually she has been politically against marriage her whole life, on ethical, historical and political grounds. The only way I was ever able to convince her to even entertain the idea was within the context of our moving to Canada. If we weren’t legally married, I wouldn’t be able to work and she’d have to become my sugar mama. Okay, under those circumstances she was willing to do it.
But when the Supreme Court decision came out, she actually popped the question to me. Needless to say, I accepted without questioning her change of heart.
My brother proposed to his girlfriend (back when she was pregnant a couple of years ago). The whole family was in a tizzy. How should he do it? Where should he do it? Oh this is so exciting! Hundreds of phone calls across the country. He did propose, but they never got married. Still, everyone in the family really sees them as a real family. They have a kid, it’s all normal.
My mom aside, when we got domestic partnered no one really had much to say. When we called (emphasis on ‘we’) everyone offered congratulations and welcome to the family sentiment. But we basically had to ask for it.
When we told our families that we were getting married - again, excluding my mom - no one seemed too interested. First off, we had a humorous outgoing message on our phone for a while. It was Paul Anka singing "Having My Baby". All of our queer & feminist friends totally got it and thought it was hilarious, but everyone else was like, "uh, so, uh... you're having a baby? Does this mean...?” T's family totally lost it. So on her side, this was of a piece with our getting married. They seemed to think that we were going to have a religious ceremony (because... why?) and that we'd basically blaspheme ourselves into hell and bring everyone down with us. On my side, maybe it’s because my cousin is getting married in August and they’re focused on that. I don’t know. We still don’t understand. T's family loves me, and they are always telling me how happy they are that we are together. And my family loves T. For some reason this seems to be too much. No one called on the day we actually got married. My aunt said she was happy for us, then proceeded to tell me that politically this couldn’t have happened at a worse time, and she seemed to imply that our getting a constitutional right validated and codified was portending a problem for the democrats, and, like 2004, the gays are fucking it up and providing a ‘wedge issue’ that will keep them out of office. It’s even more insulting since she can’t stand the democratic nominee. I can’t imagine any other move toward equality to which she would have this response. If my cousin got married, and 5 months later his right to marry was revoked and his marriage annulled because he is of Iranian descent, she’d hit the roof. If it happens to us, who knows what she’ll say? But I know one thing - as politically active and radical she is (she quit her full-time job as a social worker to do full-time street activism back before the war started) she will not lift a finger to work toward LGB/T rights. She’s not homophobic at all. She loves T, she loves me, and she has many gay friends. It’s just that she doesn’t frick’n see it. It’s not a ‘real’ issue to her. I think she sees it as a total bougie thing which is only there to deflect from the real, meaningful issues in life - Israel and the war. She doesn’t get it at all. It’s the same with T’s parents. So… there you have it.
So do our families see us as a ‘real’ family? As being in a ‘real’ relationship? Yes and no. I think a big part of our getting married was our trying to make a dent in that.
I was talking to V______ (my brother’s partner) a while back and she told me that she doesn’t care if they get married. Especially with the baby, they just feel like a family. And it seems to me that they are treated like a family everywhere they go, in every area of their lives. That is not an experience I have ever had. I guess marriage is really important to me because it IS codified, and there is a social context in which everyone understands what the relationship is (obviously there are political issues there, but…), and that has been withheld from me, so it is really meaningful to finally obtain it. Even though no new legal benefits are accruing to us (since we are already domestic partners), this is the sort of social, as opposed to legal, legitimacy that I thought that our families would understand and appreciate. One of the people who interviewed us asked us how it feels going from DP in which we don't have to worry about alimony, "or all the bad stuff" which comes with marriage, into a status where we are then obliged legally to the other person. It's such an opposite way of looking at it. I told her that having the responsibility for our partner - the legal obligation - is a good thing to me. I want the recognition of the responsibility to her. I want to be able to be responsible for her, and for her to be able to count on that. They don't realise that even with a DP we still have to fight for the state to recognize that we ARE responsible for each other.
So all of the family stuff, and the romantic excitement was background noise to me as we got up at 5am to get to West Hollywood before the crowd. I was scared about my health because my medication and my medical condition make it impossible for me to deal with prolonged exposure to light and heat - and we're in the middle of a heat wave in LA. I figured if we got there early enough it would be fine. I made a bunch of wedding day CDs for the car, so we were totally in the spirit of things when we got there. We thought, though, that all we were doing was signing papers.
We were the 15th couple there. Sweet! We staked out a place in line in the shade. At first, press outnumbered people 10 to 1, but that changed pretty soon. A bakery was giving out cupcakes with women’s (or men’s) symbols. There was so much loving energy. A woman was walking her dog, and she came over to folks in line and said that they were there for anyone who wanted a witness, because she wanted to support history being made.
There was one lone protester, but no one paid him any mind.
So many people interviewed us while we were on line Tuesday morning. One of the questions asked was “Why today? Why was it important to be one of the first couples?” I had never thought about that. It seemed like, for both of us, that there was no other time to do it. I think that there is a sense of this-will-be-taken-away-tomorrow about it. Also, because it wasn’t really real. I could feel myself getting dazed as they started letting folks in to do the paperwork. We got rousing applause when we finished signing everything. We then went out back to have our civil ceremony. This was the part we didn’t know about. So, we thought we would file papers and that would be that. But it turns out that to get married you have to have someone preside over the vows. So we decided to just do it, and then have our real ceremony later. So we did. L and Z, A, and FAG were all with us. The woman who presided had been deputized the day before, and we were her first couple, so none of us knew what we were doing. It was perfect. We didn’t know which finger the ring went on (luckily we brought the rings! I think we’re going to each get a secret engraving for the other, and re-present them to each other when we have our official ceremony). We were both so hot from standing in line for 6 hours in the sun that our fingers were swollen. We hadn’t prepared vows… but it was perfect. The only down side is that the NY Times, completely uninvited, decided to horn in and shoot the whole thing. They took all of the space behind the woman presiding, so none of our friends could get a good video shot, since they had to stand behind. They were rude to our friends, and they basically interrupted the ceremony to ask if they could put the video up on the website.
So, this is us legally tying the knot. Thanks to LS for filming it.
Click to viewAfter it was done, we all went over to the French Market for lunch. It’s such a community place, and both T and I have a long history with this gay institution. Our waiter was so sweet to us. He was so excited that we got married. After we all ate, he actually brought us carrot cake with a candle, and all the staff gave us a “congratulations!” The guy who has the stained glass shop in the market gave us a lovely piece of art, and then bought a round of champagne for us and 3 other couples who had just gotten married. It was so sweet!
We wanted the tin cans on string, but these newfangled cars don’t have a place to tie them, so we decorated the windows instead.
The rest of the day, people kept honking at me. I thought I must be so excited that I’m driving really poorly, but then we noticed that everyone was giving us the “thumbs up”.
We went out to our traditional romantic dinner spot (La Fondue Bourguignonne) and celebrated.
The next day I was so wiped out. I thought that it was from the excitement, but actually, by the end of the day, as I started to get vision issues and nausea, plus that familiar being pushed down feeling, T realized that we’d gotten married on a Tuesday and that in the excitement I’d forgotten to take my methotrexate. I took it right away but I still feel horrible. I can’t believe I forgot! Last time I missed a dose I was sick for a week - hopefully that won’t happen again since I have a 3 day meeting in Burlingame next week.
So now we try to get folks to vote down the ballot initiative so we can plan our wedding.
Next stop: NY in August. T's parents are coming down to Syracuse to meet my mom. That will be interesting.