Two women seeking equality in a state where some couples are more equal than others.

Saturday, May 30, 2015

MI Gay Day: On My Marriage, or as some people call it My "Gay Marriage"

I've been married for more than three years now, if you count from our spiritual covenant wedding, not our civil one (then it's just about a year and a half). I'm starting to accept that Rebecca and I don't really count as newlyweds anymore. I'm starting to accept that in some ways, we committed young - after all, I have friends who are single, friends who just got married, and sadly, friends who are now divorced. It seems a lot of sitcom plots are centered around people older than we who are still looking for love.

A lot of people seem to think that the "gay lifestyle" is somehow glamorous, or hedonistic, or promiscuous, or that we use a lot of drugs, or  . . . I don't know. As most of you have seen from the MI gay day posts, our life isn't really that glamorous for the most part.

I think some other people may run the opposite way in terms of stereotypes, though. I think they think that our marriage is somehow perfect, that because we're of the same gender, we completely understand each other all the time and couldn't possibly fight or struggle to keep a commitment as big as marriage together. Our life isn't really that perfect for the most part, either.

Today is a pretty good example of the mundane nature of our relationship, so here's a fairly brief MI gay day rundown:

I woke up about 10 am, the perfect time for fabulous gay brunch (yes, we did popularize brunch, so I'm claiming that - you're welcome) and caught up on some e-mail while waiting for Rebecca to wake. She was sleeping on the couch, not because of marital trouble, but because she has some kind of bronchitis or viral pneumonia or something that causes her to have really loud gay hacking fits. The hacking fits are not gay, only her, and sleeping on the couch so I can sleep well is the kind of selfless, loving thing that no one normally gets accolades for. So props to her.

We make gay breakfast - gay eggs (although I doubt the chickens were gay), gay bacon (also doubtful on the pigs), and gay Southern greens (maybe gay, since the idea was stolen from Rose's Fine Food, which seems pretty rainbow to me). I get gay overwhelmed because our gay kitchen is covered with gay dirty dishes because we're both working a LOT right now and no one has time to clean it and there's nowhere to put anything and my gay brunch is getting cold, and as discussed, gay brunch is an important part of my culture. I rant about this problem. Rebecca tries to calm me. She eventually succeeds, and I get the food plated and sit down on our gay IKEA couch (Rebecca assembled this herself after finding it on Craigslist, which seems stereotypically lesbian enough) to eat my breakfast. I'm getting pretty good at poaching eggs.

We snuggle on the couch for a bit and flip through Zillow and some renovation ideas, which some people refer to as a lesbian activity. <<Insert moving van joke here.>> And then a gay friend calls to ask us to meet for gay late lunch. This friend really is gay. For sure. And she's a sweetheart I haven't seen in a while, so we meet up for lunch and board games. Yes, a board game (7 Wonders, if you were curious). Super glamorous. We had a lovely time.

Upon returning to our gay apartment, Rebecca was wiped, so I settled her on the couch and dealt with at least the worst of the dish situation and made her promise, hard core, cross her gay heart, to do laundry tomorrow while I'm at work. I heated up some leftovers for dinner and we watched Alex & Emma, which I suppose as a romantic comedy might have been a bigger point of contention in some straight marriages (there, see, I managed to assign a useful label to heterosexual marriages, "othering" them maybe a little - how you like me now?).

And then Rebecca was still exhausted, so I tucked her into bed, lotioned her face so she'd stop ashing (because I will NOT let her go to work ashing - it's not respectable), rubbed organic vapor rub on her chest, brought her cough syrup, and hit her back with cupped hands as though she were a kid with cystic fibrosis. And then I convinced our older cat Dorian to stay with her for a bit so I could write you all this post. Again, super glamorous. Super subversive. Lots of tearing at the fabric of traditional marriage going on today, folks.

But that's love, really. That's modern marriage. I don't regret committing young - it's meant that I get to share more of my life with my helpmate. I don't really feel the need for my life to always be glamorous, and my everyday tasks are rarely that subversive. Maybe that's why, even after three years, it feels weird when someone refers to "gay marriage," as though it's somehow different for us. Because in the end, I think it's all about choosing love.

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