A gilded wedding
I attended a more or less surprise wedding a few weeks ago. I suppose it's fair to say it was only a surprise to me; Greg and Nick had been waiting twenty years for the privilege of an unembellished wedding in front of an empty stage save four witnesses and a deceptively simple officiant.
On a carpet that has seen better days and more exciting plays, we hosted twenty years of a tarnished union burnished gold.
Despite the overwrought phrasing, I understand that their relationship is statistically insignificant. They may still seek separate paths, partners, or palimony. After all, we don't yet know the rates of divorce among the queer community because its just only become acceptable. However, twenty years must count for something.
But I'm not sure what. Stubbornness? Laziness? Abject melancholy or mutual apathy? Or love, maybe.
I'll immediately have to discount love. If that were the answer then thousands of lawyers would've attended med school instead of officiating courtroom cockfights. So, why are we here?
Choosing to spend a significant amount of time with any mate must eventually be justified because the fall back doesn't pay out. Evolutionarily, there's no gain in buying rocking chairs together years after children are independent, if there are any at all. For some period, marriage gained you some social status, if you were lucky enough to have the time to care about your social ranking.
Here and now, however, we are (mostly) not breeding chattel, we don't have to nor do we have many children, and we are more independent than ever, planning our destinies as easily as our grandmother's planned dinner. So what value is to be gained by bonding ourselves to partners, who are by any right, equally infuriating as children.
Fucking and birthing are biological imperatives, but I suspect arguing the merits of frozen yogurt versus ice cream twice a month is not. So then, when fighting against ourselves, against family, against social mores, there must be payout. The equation must balance or I wouldn't feel so elated signing my uncles' marriage certificate.
But goddamn, I'm neither metallurgist or a mathematician. So I suppose we'll see what comes out in the wash.
Which, maybe that's the answer.