Tag Archives: love

You’ll feel different when…

life, love, people, ,

When I was in my late teens, I once got into a peculiar argument with a slightly older friend. I had made a comment to the effect that I could never see myself being happy living in a city. It had taken me a few years to get used to living in a town that was big enough to require more than one high school, after spending most of my life living in very small towns.

He was attending college in a nearby city at the time. He said he had felt the same way just a few years before. “You haven’t actually lived in a city,” he pointed out. “You’ll feel differently after you do.”

At least, that’s what I heard. It is quite possible that he actually said, “You may feel differently,” but I heard the firm assertion that he knew exactly how I would feel, and it activated my obstinate streak. I pointed out that I had been visiting a couple of cities fairly regularly, and I had a pretty good idea what they were like. Except I probably said it a bit meaner. I know I made a lot of disparaging observations about cities during the course of it.

A year or so later, I was attending college in a city. By the time I finished college, I had some good job prospects, and I had become quite enamored with several aspects of city life. So I stayed. And the longer I stayed, the more I liked living here. When I visit my mom in the town where I went to high school, I find I feel a lot differently about several aspects of living there which I used to think of as advantages.

My friend was right, and I was wrong.

Another time another friend and I had gotten into a discussion about my dismal love life. Most of the time there had been no love life at all. The few exceptions had failed spectacularly, though each in a different way. I trusted this friend more than I had ever trusted anyone, so I told him that I suspected I was bisexual, and I thought that perhaps that might be playing into my difficulties.

He immediately asserted that 1) I could not possibly be bi, and 2) once I stop doubting myself I would find the perfect girl for me. He argued his point with such emphatic certainty, that I doubted my own feelings and experiences.

Of course, I wasn’t being entirely honest. I didn’t merely suspect that I was not heterosexual. I had quite incontrovertible evidence. My friend was also operating under the same societal brainwashing that was responsible for the megaton of internalized homophobia I was carrying around at the time.

Eventually, I worked through that baggage (though it got more than a bit messy) and came to understand that my friend was wrong. I had only been half-right in understanding myself and my future, but the half I was wrong about was part and parcel of the parts he was wrong about.

Of course, one could argue that my friend was partially correct. Because eventually I did find the right person for me—a guy who made me so happy, who I couldn’t imagine living without, and who made me brave enough to stop living the lie of being closeted.

Our fairytale ending didn’t last as long as I hoped—Ray died a bit over six years after we moved in together. I had to figure out how to have a life that no longer had him in it. I have since been lucky enough to fall in love with another wonderful man, who has stuck with me for 15 years, so far, and even said “I do” when we finally could do so, legally, a few months ago.

The two friends who were adamantly convinced that I would feel differently one day were correct that my perspective changed, but their certainty about the way my perspective would change was at best guess work. It was also a bit of projection. Like people who insist that another person saying they don’t want to have kids “will feel different when you have your own,” they’re unable to conceive of anyone being happy and fulfilled living differently than themselves.

Just like I was when arguing with my first friend that I’d never be happy in the city.

Because we all do it. At one time or another everyone has either offered advice along that line. Or we’ve complained to a mutual friend, wondering why the person doesn’t see the obvious solution and do things this way. We may be right that there’s a better way, but it isn’t our life. No matter how smart or sympathetic we think we are, we don’t know what it’s like to be them.

Skewed polls and secret money

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A few days after election night, when the leader of one of the local anti-gay groups conceded that voters had approved marriage equality, he groused about how the pro-gay groups had outspent them three-to-one. Just a week earlier he had been insisting that the polls which were all predicting passage of the referendum were skewed. “People are reluctant to say what they really feel to a pollster, because the pro-sodomy side has tricked the media into calling support of traditional marriage as bigotry. But when those voters are in the privacy of the voting booth, they will vote their true feelings.”

They did vote their true feelings. Fortunately for those of us who believe in equality, they had also been telling their true feelings to the pollsters. Surprise, surprise!

Sadly, I believe it was a complete surprise to the opposers. It shouldn’t have been. They had other evidence, and it was right there in that hypocritical comment he made about spending. It was hypocritical because it had only been four years before, during the Proposition 8 campaign in California that the anti-gay side had been doing the outspending. And for years before that, each ballot measure that came up in any state related to marriage equality or civil unions, it was the anti-gay side that always seemed to have the money advantage.

This time around, in Washington, Maine, Maryland, and Minnesota, the forces of hate came up short both in the ballot box and fundraising. And it wasn’t simply a matter that suddenly our side was better at raising money. No, the big story is that they have, in just the last few years, experienced a serious drop in donations.

It isn’t just the amount of money. What’s more significant is the number of donors. The national organizations have been very secretive about their funding. They have refused, again and again, to reveal their donor lists, even when they appealed all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court and lost, they have tried to keep that secret. Eventually, some details are beginning to emerge:

Each year, according to [the National Organization for Marriage]’s tax filings, two or three donors give NOM between $1 million and $3.5 million apiece; another two or three give between $100,000 and $750,000; and 10 or so others give between $5,000 and $95,000. In 2009 the top five donors made up three fourths of NOM’s budget; in 2010 the top two donors gave two thirds of the year’s total donations; and in 2011 the top two donors gave three fourths of NOM’s total income. But those funders’ identities are a mystery. Their names are redacted on NOM’s federal tax returns.

My emphasis added. Whoever those mysterious top two donors are, their donations have became a larger and larger proportion of the pot, as the thousands who gave less than $5000 dollars a year have dwindled to hundreds.

Statistics tell us the the most vehement opposition comes from the oldest voters, so a percentage of that drop off represents to reality of demographics. As elderly opposers die off, without a compensating proportion of supporters coming up in younger generations, some of that is just inevitable. But the drop off in support to the anti-gay cause in the last three or four years is far in excess of what could be accounted for by mere demographics.

People are changing their minds.

There will always be a hardcore group opposed to equal rights for gay, lesbian, bi, and trans people. Just a couple weeks ago at the big conservative conference a guy stood up and argued in favor of slavery because he believed it was a self-evident truth that whites were superior to blacks. He wasn’t an invited speaker, and to their credit, panelists and audience members challenged him on it, but during the ensuing back and forth he also made a comment to the effect the women shouldn’t have the right to speak up in public, either. So, just like that unrepentant racist and misogynist, there will always be homophobes among us.

But as more of the moderates and non-hateful conservatives come around, that view will be limited to the lunatic fringe where it belongs.

In the months since the vote in Washington, Maine, Maryland, and Minnesota went our way, the opposers’ spokespeople have gone from saying that they were outspent 3-to-1 (which turned out to be a small exaggeration in our state) to claiming they were outspent 4-to-1, then 5-to-1… the last quote I read was “more than 7-to-1.” I believe their exaggerations get worse due to desperation. They hope that skewing their claim of victimhood will prompt more people to donate more money, which they think can turn the tide.

What they don’t understand is that the only skewed “polls” were their own. They fell into the common trap of thinking that because most of the people they know and like agree with them, that it absolutely must be the case the most people, period, do so. They think that since they still manage to raise a lot of money that there is still a lot of support, ignoring the fact that it’s a smaller and smaller number of people sending in the money. Because they are convinced of the truth of their cause, they believe that the only reasons polls and voting can be going against them is some kind of chicanery. They think that calling us pedophiles, comparing our relationships to bestiality or incest is “civil discourse,” but if we call them bigots we’re being bullies.

Most of all, many of them believe all the lies and distortions that they tell about us. Lies that other people can no longer believe once they get to know us:

I’ve known…

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On the subject of coming out to one’s parents, I’ve always remembered the story one acquaintance told: “When I finally came out to my mom, she said, ‘I’ve known you were gay since you were two.’ And I thought, ‘Gee, thanks, Mom, why didn’t you tell me? It would have made my teens a lot less confusing!'”

Growing up gay, particularly before the 90s, the best you could hope for if your parents learned you were gay was a reaction like his mother’s. Truth be told, since we had no positive role models, and what little we knew about the family members of gay people were that they were all ashamed or hostile to their gay child, we didn’t even hope for that.

In my early teens I recall whispers about someone’s cousins being kicked out by his parents, for instance. In my later teens I knew one classmate who was accused of being gay whose parents sent him to “reform school.” Another who was actually caught having sex with another guy was kicked out by his parents and wound up living with relatives in another city (how the quarterback of the football team who he was having sex with was able, somehow, to convince everyone in authority that the much smaller, skinnier kid had somehow forced him into the situation is a tale for another post).

When I did come out to my own parents in the early nineties (I was a gainfully employed adult living in my own place in another city, by then), their reaction could best be characterized as, “I never had any clue, I don’t accept it, and someone must have done something to you to make you think this way.”

Even today, we are surprised to hear of anything as loving and accepting from a parent as this letter that a teen-ager in Michigan received this week from his Dad:

Michigan dad put his son's fears about coming out to rest with this loving letter.
Michigan dad put his son’s fears about coming out to rest with this loving letter.

You can read the story of a teen named Nate, from Michigan, and the note from his Dad in this story.

Note: since apparently I wasn’t being clear: I am not Nate. That isn’t my letter. My father’s reaction was, as noted above, pretty much the opposite of this in every way.

Things out of our control, part 2

life,

I was just laying down to take a nap last night when the phone rang. The name on the screen was a friend who very seldom calls, but when he does, it’s important. So instead of letting it go to voice mail and laying back down, I answered.

He was at a hospital, outside a room where his dad lay unconscious and not expected to recover.

I didn’t know my friend’s dad well. I had met him a few times. I had admired his father’s artwork many times before I met him, because he’s kinda famous. So when my friend introduced me, I made the mistake of calling him “Mr. J——.” He shook his head and told me, “No! I’m Bud.”

It was fun getting a tour of Bud’s studio from the man himself, complete with a few amusing stories about his son, my friend. Some years later I had the privilege of hearing him play fiddle at his son’s wedding.

My favorite moment with Bud occurred during a barbecue one Fourth of July. My friend was setting up some fireworks. Some bottle rockets and the like. Bud came over and told his son to aim them up at one particular tall tree. “There’s a wasp’s nest up there I’d like to get rid of.”

What followed was a debate about the pros and cons of firing fireworks into a tree that loomed over the house, and happened to be infested with wasps. Bud almost talked his son into it. Almost.

All of that flashed through my mind as his son told me, “We’re taking turns saying good-bye.” I asked him what I could do. He said that he just needed someone to talk to. Someone who wasn’t there and crying.

I managed to gulp back the tears and tried to be someone who wasn’t crying.

There’s nothing we can do in times like that, other than be there for each other.

This year has been a bit of a challenge. My last grandparent died a month and a half ago. If the doctors are right, this will be the fourth parent of someone I know who has left us since I lost Grandma B.

They’re not connected. I know that. Because of my age, and because many of my friends are of a similar age, our parents are “getting up there,” as one friend put it.

But it’s a reminder that we shouldn’t take anything and especially anyone for granted. Make sure you tell people you care about how you feel. Now. Because we never know which conversation with them will be our last.

Things I never believed I would see

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A lot of gay news blogs are sharing the video below this week. And to most people it probably just seems like a kind of silly video with these two guys talking.

But to folks like me? Gay men who no longer can be described as “young” by any definition? It’s amazing. I literally never believed I would see the day when someone would so casually create a show about them self that included the phrase “Your Favorite Gay Marine.”

The fact that Russ and Matt are just two adorable young guys in love, who just happen to both be in the Marines, and happen to be in love with each other, and how matter-of-fact they can be in this very public way is just mind-boggling for an old fart like me:

My New Year’s Wish

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The changing of the year from one calendar to the next is often a time to set goals. I may do that more concretely before the week is out, but first I want to make a New Year’s wish. This wish is for everyone, especially me:

Remember to be a lantern, not just a mirror. If your life is filled with light, share it. But even if it is not, never forget that we always have the power to lighten someone’s life, at least a little bit, and sometimes that little bit is more significant than we can imagine.

Gold rings (ba-dum-bum-bum)

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About a week after we eloped a friend said, “I’m going to ask you a question that may seem weird, but I’m asking because so many people asked me the same question after I got married: do you feel different?”

My answer was, “Actually, yes, I do. It’s a little weird. Great, but weird.”

There are several reasons I didn’t expect to feel different. Michael and I have been together for nearly fifteen years, living together for 14½ of them. We already know each other’s quirks, bad habits, good habits, who is most likely to misplace his keys/wallet/watch/phone (me), or who is most likely to not check to see if his keys are in his pocket until he’s out of the house but know exactly where they are inside the house (Michael). We’ve registered as domestic partners, first with the city, and then when the state offered it, the state. We even had a small party with friends the first time. We’ve been through medical emergencies together. We’ve bought two cars together. We’ve been calling each other (and thinking of each other as) “husband” for many years.

When voters in our state approved the referendum three years ago affirming the legislature’s vote that extended all the state-given rights and responsibilities of marriage to domestic partnerships (but not to call it marriage), one of the changes was that the process of dissolving a partnership became the same as getting a divorce. When we received the official notice from the state that we had a certain number of days to dissolve the partnership under the old (much quicker and simpler) process before the new law went into effect, I remember we had a few moments of joking that if either of us wanted out, this was our last chance. It was a sobering thought, and one which I don’t think most couples entering into marriage think about as much as they ought.

So while I think the latest vote that got rid of domestic partnerships and extended marriage to same-sex couples was important, I didn’t expect to feel different. Having been through so much with Michael already—having covered all that emotional ground together—I figured the actual being married part would feel like the same old same old. I knew I would get emotional during the actual ceremony. I cry at tearful scenes in movies that I’ve seen millions of times, for goodness sake. Of course I was going to tear up a bit.

Okay, so I didn’t just cry a little bit. I cried while reading news stories of couples who had been together for many decades getting their licenses. I cried seeing the pictures and watching the videos of crowds of people congratulating strangers. I cried when they took our picture after we picked up our license. I cried when relatives and friends sent their congratulations. And I cried at our elopement. I cried a lot.

And I still get teary-eyed. While I was tidying the house on the afternoon of Christmas Eve it struck me that this is our first Christmas as a married couple. And I teared up and had to go give Michael a hug.

I know part of that is because it is new. I know another part of it is because I’ve had to fight for legal equality my whole life, and it’s still just a bit of a shock that a majority of voters in my state agreed this institution should be open to gay people, too. Related, over the last few decades I have become painfully familiar with just how many legal rights and responsibilities are utterly unavailable to couples who don’t have the flimsy piece of paper from the state saying you’re married.

A few years ago I read an editorial about how important marriage is to society. In building her argument, the author pointed to several gay rights web sites that had lists of legal rights available only through marriage and heart-wrenching stories of long-term partners being kept out of hospitals or funerals by bigoted relatives as the best source of information about how deeply entrenched the concept of marriage is in many of our customs and laws. “No one understands the value of a social or legal institution more than the people who are not allowed in,” she said.

Which brings me to the people who feel such a burning desire to keep the institution an exclusive club that only allows people of whom they approve. People don’t raise millions of dollars, compose disingenuous television commercials, and pass laws to exclude people from a mere piece of paper. They don’t amend state constitutions, try to oust judges, or fire teachers to prevent the mere public acknowledgement of the “true commitment that happened in private.” To do that sort of thing you must believe that this institution is something more important than a simple piece of paper or public declaration.

So one shouldn’t be surprised if one does feel something once you’ve managed to join that very institution.

I’ve been failing to complete this posting for several days because I can’t quite put into words the difference that I’m feeling. Searching the web, I see that in other blogs and articles it’s split about 50-50 between people who insist that nothing feels different, and those who admit that it does feel different, but they can’t quite explain what it is.

One thing I know it isn’t: the ceremony was not the culmination of our relationship. It isn’t a pinnacle. It was a high point, but it isn’t the highest we will ever reach together.

It was a wonderful and very moving day. It was and is fabulous to feel the genuine excitement from our friends. The love and support and well wishes that we’ve received have been palpable and have made me grateful to have so many wonderful people in our life. It’s the beginning of a new phase in our journey through life together. Not radically different on a day-to-day basis, but very subtly different.

I can’t fully describe all the ways I feel different. And I certainly don’t claim that the way I feel is the same way any other married person ought to feel. But I do know that I feel very, very, very lucky to have this wonderful man as my husband.

And maybe that’s all that matters.

Get me to the church on time, part 2

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We got hitched.

C.D. administering the vows.
C.D. administering the vows.

I’ve been calling it “the Elopement,” in part because we were doing this quickly for legal purposes, and planning a more traditional ceremony and reception in the late spring/early summer when more of the people who wanted to attend could. And so we could do it properly.

Which is why, when we were thinking of a cake for the elopement, and Michael said that the ones we were looking at looked too much like birthday cakes, I had said that wasn’t a problem. In fact, I opined that for the proper elopement vibe the cake ought to say something like, “Happy Bar Mitzvah, Kevin.”

Then Michael said it was the wrong time of year, because if that was the aesthetic I wanted, then the bouquet needed to be flowers stolen from someone’s garden. And maybe looking a little bedraggled. Which made me say something about how I hadn’t decided if I should be holding flowers, to which he replied, “Are you saying I can’t hold flowers?”

“We can both hold flowers!”

I knew, because of some of the friends involved, that there would be more than a slight festive look to the house when we arrived. and there had been hints that the super simple ceremony we had told C.D. we would be happy with might not cut it with one of our witnesses. There had also been whispered conversations I almost overheard, where some friends immediately denied they had been talking about anything, so I knew people were planning some additions. I just didn’t correctly anticipate how many.

A kiss after the toast/
A kiss after the toast/

When we arrived at the home of the friends hosting, and walked in the door with the hat boxes and such, a cello and violin began playing “Here Comes the Bride.” My godson was playing the violin, and our friend Jeri Lynn was on the cello. I should have realized there would be a surprise string section. It is entirely in character for our friends. But it did surprise me, and I started crying.

Then, of course, I saw the flowers. Lots and lots of flowers. Red roses. Big lilies. White mums. White poinsettias. And more. A big altar of flowers.

Two rows of chairs were set up facing the flowers. Four very pretty wedding-cake-shaped candies were under a beautiful glass dome. Gorgeous cut crystal champaign flutes were lined up. I could go on. But even typing this is making me get misty-eyed.

I cried a lot.

So after hugging, expressing astonishment, setting up the cakes, and getting our bouquets in water, we went off to get dressed. More friends arrived. More decorations appeared. The musicians kept playing incidental music until we were all ready to begin.

I cried more. I couldn’t actually look at Michael while I was repeating my vows, because when I did, I would cry harder and wasn’t able to talk.

I must say, a small wedding like this is especially fun because instead of a receiving line, we just turned into a hugging mob. Which was perfect.

We fed each other the wedding cake candies. We cut the cakes. There was a toast (with amendments). There was a lot more hugging.

And then we changed, rearranged the room, and sat down to play a game.

Thank you to Ieva, Kristin, Jeri Lynne, David, C.D., Valentine, Sky, Judy, Matt, Jeff, and Darrell, for being there for the happiest day of the year–and quite possibly my whole life.

Most of all, thank you, Michael, for becoming my husband.

I love you all!

The service made me cry a lot.
The service made me cry a lot.
Indulged in the felicity,
Of unbounded domesticity.
Quickly parsonified,
Conjugally matrimonified,
A first-rate opportunity,
To get married with impunity!

(Apologies to Gilbert and Sullivan for re-arranging their lyrics!)

Crying

life, , ,

I was sitting in my usual seat at practice for the Seattle Lesbian & Gay Chorus. I was tenor section leader at the time, and we had just finished singing a song that I particularly loved. The conductor then said the name of another song, “What’ll I Do?” an Irving Berlin classic from back in the 1920s. I should have known what would happen.

We started singing. I always had a freaky good memory for music, so I always had songs memorized very early in the typical practice cycle, and would start memorizing the other harmony parts to keep my focus. Besides, my favorite choral professor in college had insisted that was the only way to learn.

So I was one of the few people in the chorus who was off book. Good thing, too. The first half of the first refrain is when it started:

What’ll I do
When you are far away
And I am blue
What’ll I do?

The song is about a lost love. And most of the lyrics refer to the loved one being with someone else, now. So it’s a break up song. I had not broken up recently.

But my first husband had died only weeks before.

And I started crying.

I kept singing. A part of me got very stubborn. I knew the music. This was rehearsal for an upcoming concert, one that was going to be dedicated to Ray, in fact (since he had been involved as a volunteer for years, specifically the music librarian the last year and a half before his death).

I wasn’t sobbing. I mostly managed to keep control of my breathing. But the tears were flowing and I couldn’t make them stop. I didn’t want to disrupt the rehearsal by standing up and walking out.

We reached the end of the song. And it was break time, anyway. The conductor told us to be back in 10. I tried to get away. But Adrienne grabbed me.

She had been a super volunteer with the chorus for years, as well. She and Ray had often working together at the back of the room on various things for the chorus while we sang.

She grabbed me. She kissed me, and then she let me finish fleeing the room.

I found out later that most of the folks sitting around me had not realized I was crying while we sang the song. As Mary 1 (we had two Marys singing tenor) told me, “I didn’t know until I saw Adrienne grab you, and saw the tears welling up in her eyes.”

I was standing around outside, cursing myself for having quit smoking just a year or so before—and seriously thinking of walking over to the group of smokers to bum a cigarette. But also knowing how angry Ray would be at me for starting up again on his account. He had never managed to quit, see. Even when his illness and the chemo started destroying lung tissue, he just couldn’t. He had been unbelievably proud of me for quitting. Knowing how disappointed he would be had been the only thing that kept me on the wagon for months after he died.

I pulled myself back together, walked back inside, and finished the second half of the rehearsal.

It’s a little early in the year for me to start getting melancholy about Ray. But only a little. His birthday was two days after mine. So as my birthday gets close, I keep thinking about him. I start being moody. And it doesn’t let up until November, when the anniversary of his death comes around.

I think about him at other times of the year, of course. I don’t always get weepy. Sometimes I smile, or even laugh. I remember it was a bit more than a year after he died when I realized that I would smile when remembering him about as often as I was sad.

But the September through November period is fraught. Ray was a little crazy about anniversaries. He would give me anniversary cards for things like our first date, the first time he made me breakfast, the first time I made him breakfast, the first time I bought him flowers, et cetera, et cetera. I could never remember all of those anniversaries. I knew our first date had been early in September, and when we had our commitment ceremony a few years later, it was on National Coming Out Day, in October, but all those other things blended together, for me.

Even though I don’t remember the exact date of those anniversaries, this time of year reminds me a lot of those firsts. And as we near November, it reminds me of a lot of our lasts (which at the time we didn’t know they were, of course).

It’s been fifteen years, but being awakened by any sound too close to that of a bookcase falling over still sends my heart into panicked super overdrive.

But crying is good. It reminds us that we were loved. That the loss hurts so much should also remind us that we had something precious enough to deserve being cried over. And it should remind us not to take what we have now for granted.

I have a lot of wonderful, talented, loving people in my life. I don’t deserve to have all this wonderfulness in my life. Thank you for letting me be a part of yours.