I decided to post a Top 8 list. The Top 8 things the Proposition 8 ruling was like. It included things like being in love on the Titanic -- you're in love, but you're still not on a lifeboat like that snooty rich lady over there. It included things like Ariel, The Little Mermaid, having a statue of Eric but being stuck with fins while everyone else had legs. It even included my roommate deciding to get rid of the less hairy of her two cats to ease my allergies.
But in the end, I wasn't happy with it. I wasn't happy with not being happy. I couldn't throw up my defensive, I-still-can't-get-married walls. Because somewhere on the west coast, some gay man who fell in love and wed while it was legal in good ol' CA was allowed to do so. He believed, as much as I believe, that every time he crawled into bed with the man of his dreams, he was lucky. That he'd found the man he wanted to love for as long as he could, that he wanted to sleep next to, wake up beside, and grow gray with. (Incidentally, sideburns, I'm watching you. I still remember the stunt you pulled last week -- and so do my tweezers.)
Wednesday, just after that ruling, that man in California looked at his husband -- not boyfriend, not roommate, not domestic partner -- and knew that someone in power, someone who'd been elected, had decided that his marriage was worth it. That he was an equal, the same as every other resident of California, the same as every United States citizen. That their marriage was protected. Legal. Constitutional.
That the love he had sworn to uphold, honor and protect wasn't a game. It wasn't "gay marriage." What is gay marriage? Are there black marriages? Asian marriages? It was just marriage. Isn't that what equality is? Lose the adjectives.
All I had to do was think of that man -- that man, so in love with some other man -- and I canned the list. I canned my cynicism. Most of it didn't really make sense, anyway -- just ask my boyfriend. He didn't read it, no, but that's because I wouldn't let him. I was too busy taking out my writer's block on him: the writer's block that came from fighting my soft side. Cynicism can be an ugly, ugly dark hole.
I don't think I'll be getting married in the next year or anything, even in light of the small (but very large) decision. I know there'll be all sorts of appeals, etcetera, and I don't even know if my boyfriend and I would tie the knot tomorrow if we could anyway. I could, however, tell you how I plan to propose someday -- and it'd make you melt -- and he could probably tell you his way would be better, though I know it isn't. Still, I know it's coming. Eventually.
I don't know it because of California -- I know it because of the soft side I have. I'm a wiener for true love. I don't care how trite, how mushy or how ridiculous it may sound to some people, and I know life isn't like "the movies" or grand romantic fiction. But I know I'm in love, as much as any man can be, and I truly believe -- with everything that I am -- that love conquers all. It'll find a way.
Just ask that guy in California.
