"Lovesick" Ramblings

I learned young that there are no ends to the earth that cruelty won’t follow you to. To be vulnerable a moment, as if I’m ever not in all these writings, when I was bullied, I was often bullied in what I’d consider a shockingly trans way, in retrospect. I was a lonely kid. Easy to pick on and tease. Isolate. Calling me names and using their words to get as far under my skin as they could just to watch me explode. It often made me wish my bullies were the kind who would try to beat me up, but a bully knows not to fight you in a way they know they can’t win. Worse, the smart ones know to bully you in a way that looks just enough like it isn’t breaking any rules. As many of you will surmise, yes of course I got in trouble for beating their asses to the ground once I had enough. That constant, dogged hounding, always trying to make me lose my temper because it was funny. The same way some ghoulish bigot thinks he can ‘trigger’ me and show everyone what an angry freak I am. My teachers, my parents, my adults and gods would tell me, “You just have to ignore them. You need to learn to just walk away.” Where? Where can I go where they won’t follow? Where do their feet refuse to fall, where is the line they’re too scared to cross? I searched that recess yard for years, teacher. All I learned was that even if there were no end to the horizon and infinity were real, even if the town were big enough for all eight billion of us and kept stretching on and on into forever, they would stop at nothing just to follow me a little longer. I’m not asking for a homeland to fight for or an eden of my own. I am telling you, they would not even let me have the rubble or the camps if they thought I could find the briefest reprieve from them there. They would take the wasteland from me if that’s where I ran to to hide and live in isolation, just trying to carve myself a peaceful life and for what, what is my sin? I am asking to live, and worse yet, because I am human, I dared to try to do so unalone.

I have been threatened in front of my mother as we rode the train together. I remember how I shouted back at the man how I just wanted to be left alone, to be left in peace, how I didn’t deserve this, any of this. I remember the way every passenger looked at me then looked away, because they couldn’t bear to have their own peace disturbed. I remember the one teenage girl that started to lay into him too once I yelled loud enough to the rest of the car what this man was doing, bless her rage. But I also remember the way my mother’s hand gripped my arm. I remember the fear in her eyes. I remember the pleading look, don’t fight this, don’t let him hurt my baby, don’t put yourself in this danger. She thought I would die that day if I decided to defend myself too audaciously and for me, it was just another Tuesday. I looked at this man and I knew he was easily a weight class or two above me. He looked so deeply unwell in his vile rambling. Of course I could die if that’s what he wanted. If I were all alone on that train, maybe I never would’ve stepped off or maybe it would still be just another Tuesday. I chose to become a woman knowing of the men I could meet in the woods. I made this choice knowing both what it would cost me and the risks I’d face by choosing this life. Never once have I regretted it. But I still can’t shake the look I saw in mom’s eyes. How that paralyzing animal fear rose up in her that she was going to watch her daughter die in front of her. How lonely I felt, looking back at her. Shouldn’t it make you so angry that you start shouting too?Where would I even run, mother? I don’t want to run. Don’t I deserve the train too? Don’t I deserve the bathroom and the computer and the workplace? Don’t I deserve my pound of flesh or at least a little peace? If no one else on that train was going to shout and fight for me unless I did, why shouldn’t I make a scene? Don’t I deserve to be fought for? I want more than courtroom justice. I want more than pride parades. I want more than basic fucking decency. I want to be fought for. If I’m the only one that’s willing to pick that fight then I’ll gladly do it for my sake alone. That’s the very least I deserve.

Sometimes I’ll sit for over two hours arguing, yelling at people on discord about how fucking stupid and illiterate they are. I don’t seek these people out, I just have the audacity to use a mic as a woman and the gall to have an androgynous voice. I don’t leave my online games and I don’t mute people after I report them, not unless they’re especially tiring and noisy or I myself am exhausted that day. I’d rather fight and tear into them or even just piss them off as hard as I can til I teach them that they’re the ones that are going to have to learn to shut the fuck up. That they can’t say whatever they want without someone biting back, hard. I know what a stubborn woman I am. No, I won’t laugh it off and jokingly call myself a fool. It is simply me and I take that very seriously. What if there’s someone like me watching in the wings, wondering if it’ll be safe to come out? Watching like I used to, if it was a safe place where others like me felt okay being seen in. I’ll give you a tip: there always is. Call it a sick kind of fun, call it heroic, call it unstrategic, but it’s who I am to live this loud and headstrong. I’ve made the world better for it, by inches or less probably, but even just those small victories give me the confidence and willpower to reach for the greater ones. But when I tell friends how I made things better in the end or at least how I neither bent nor broke while I made a fool of them all… I’ll admit, I can still sorta tell how they never really get it. I don’t blame others for not wanting to expose themselves to the shit that’s on my shoes. In case the above paragraphs weren’t clear, it’s not like it’s fun. But it does get… lonely. It’s easy to say “I would’ve just left,” or “You need to learn to just walk away,” when you’re not angry enough at the world. It’s easy to say that as long as you don’t think about how lonely it feels to have to do that again and again and again while everyone around you gets to do what you can’t. It’s easy to say that if you don’t want to get to do the same things men can do or feel the same safety when you choose to speak in the same public spaces. Isn’t it?

But I wish to go where I please. I wish to live, just like you, in sunlight, on crowded streets, in online forums and public facing workplaces. I wish to live in these places with a pride and love for myself so deep it crushes all my doubts under the pressure. I am willing to fight for that small and profound social privilege I once had as a young man but I do not bereave others who find my way too harsh, too direct and forceful. It’s ugly and it’s messy and damn can it ever be a burden on the soul wondering if you’re doing and saying all the right things, riding the razor’s edge of high running emotion and calm, coherent rhetoric. But I’m also privileged enough to live somewhere I’m loved, somewhere I have a home and close community that has accepted me even after all the wrong I’ve done in my life. I have somewhere I can go when I’m tired. If I want to go somewhere new, I know I’ll have to stay hyper vigilant. If I don’t want to be called sir I’ll have to put on makeup and not dress too butch. I’ll need to steel my heart against any flaw I hear in my voice. I know the sheer energy it takes just to be strong and how exhausting it is to feel safe. But I know I can do at least a little good with this strong heart of mine, not just for others but for myself. I deserve to be fought for too. I deserve to be fought for and I am strong enough to fight so I will fight until it’s safe enough for you and me and all those we love to rest at last in the peace we deserve. When I am tired I will rest and heal and dance and sing and rise again unbroken. I am loved and love in kind; it makes me gentle and nurtures my hope. My deepest scars were always healed by love. Oh, what an ugly, rare thing it can sometimes be to find your strength hiding in the callouses of your heart. But oh, what an honour I feel to use it for the sake of those I love.

Suffice it to say, I have never feared what may fall upon my head from on high. And they are not the rain. They are men. Bigots. They are not calamity, they are not disaster and there is nothing natural about the way they think the world ought to be. If I were to run, the storm won’t follow but men always will. If they both fell upon me, the rain would heal my nature but the men would burn it all, just another harvest for their vile machine gods or a light chuckle for their circuses of ridicule and humiliation. There is no amount of space they will ever be satisfied with taking. You can walk away and walk away and walk away and one day there will be nowhere left to go and when you face them again, you will have forgotten the rage you have to grip with two hands just to say, “No, this is where I belong, you are the one that is going to leave,” because rage is a muscle that must be exercised. Learned and learned from, but never feared. If you learn how to use it, it will protect you. It will save you from the fear that holds your hands and the darkness aching in your deepest regrets. The first weapon you ever held in your newborn fists, now yours to form against those who would dare to come for you and the people you hold dear. The first step, and the only step, is to just keep trying, no matter how many times you’ve failed before. To try and speak up, to challenge the wicked whenever you can and even if it never gets easier, even if it doesn’t do much, know that you still changed my world for the better. For people like me, just seeing that someone else tried for me is enough to keep me going. We’ll rage for love and we’ll rage for pride. That is enough. There is no victory too small to matter when you fight to make your world a kinder, softer place.

So you can tell me how you would’ve just left or how you’d never do that to yourself but don’t you dare dishonour my wish to live. Tell me how you could never do what I have no choice but to do every time I merely wish to exist unalone, but pity not my beautiful, angry life. Fight for me, fight by my side or love me from afar from wherever it is safe, but don’t you dare call me a fool. I know what privilege means and I gave that up gladly to live as a woman. Now I’m going to take it back, by wrathful pride and righteous love because that is what we all deserve.

2004 was an election year, and much like conservatives are whipping up anti-trans hysteria and anti-trans bills and propositions to drive out the vote today, in 2004 it was all anti-gay stuff. Specifically, preventing the evil scourge of same-sex marriage from destroying everything good and decent in the world.

Enter Gavin Newstrom. At the time, he was the newly elected mayor of San Francisco. Despite living next door to the city all my life, I hadn’t even heard of the man until Valentines Day 2004 when he announced that gay marriage was legal in San Francisco and started marrying people at city hall.

It was a political stunt. It was very obviously a political stunt. That shit was illegal, after all. But it was a very sweet political stunt. I still remember the front page photo of two ancient women hugging each other forehead to forehead and crying happy tears.

But it was only going to last for as long as it took for the California legal system to come in and make them knock it off.

The next day, we’re on the phone with an acquaintance, and she casually mentions that she’s surprised the two of us aren’t up at San Francisco getting married with everyone else.

“Everyone else?” Goes I, “I thought they would’ve shut that down already?”

“Oh no!” goes she, “The courts aren’t open until Tuesday. Presidents Day on Monday and all. They’re doing them all weekend long!”

We didn’t know because social media wasn’t a thing yet. I only knew as much about it as I’d read on CNN, and most of the blogs I was following were more focused on what bullshit President George W Bush was up to that day.

"Well shit", me and my man go, "do you wanna?" I mean, it’s a political stunt, it wont really mean anything, but we’re not going to get another chance like this for at least 20 years. Why not?

The next day, Sunday, we get up early. We drive north to the southern-most BART station. We load onto Bay Area Rapid Transit, and rattle back and forth all the way to the San Francisco City Hall stop.

We had slightly miscalculated.

Apparently, demand for marriages was far outstripping the staff they had on hand to process them. Who knew. Everyone who’d gotten turned away Saturday had been given tickets with times to show up Sunday to get their marriages done. My babe and I, we could either wait to see if there was a space that opened up, or come back the next day, Monday.

“Isn’t City Hall closed on Monday?” I asked. “It’s a holiday”

“Oh sure,” they reply, “but people are allowed to volunteer their time to come in and work on stuff anyways. And we have a lot of people who want to volunteer their time to have the marriage licensing offices open tomorrow.”

“Oh cool,” we go, “Backup.”

“Make sure you’re here if you do,” they say, “because the California Supreme Court is back in session Tuesday, and will be reviewing the motion that got filed to shut us down.”

And all this shit is super not-legal, so they’ll totally be shutting us down goes unsaid.

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We don’t get in Saturday. We wind up hanging out most of the day, though.

It’s… incredible. I can say, without hyperbole, that I have never experienced so much concentrated joy and happiness and celebration of others’ joy and happiness in all my life before or since. My face literally ached from grinning. Every other minute, a new couple was coming out of City Hall, waving their paperwork to the crowd and cheering and leaping and skipping. Two glorious Latina women in full Mariachi band outfits came out, one in the arms of another. A pair of Jewish boys with their families and Rabbi. One couple managed to get a Just Married convertible arranged complete with tin-cans tied to the bumper to drive off in. More than once I was giving some rice to throw at whoever was coming out next.

At some point in the mid-afternoon, there was a sudden wave of extra cheering from the several hundred of us gathered at the steps, even though no one was coming out. There was a group going up the steps to head inside, with some generic black-haired shiny guy at the front. My not-yet-husband nudged me, “That’s Newsom.” He said, because he knew I was hopeless about matching names and people.

Ooooooh, I go. That explains it. Then I joined in the cheers. He waved and ducked inside.

So dusk is starting to fall. It’s February, so it’s only six or so, but it’s getting dark.

“Should we just try getting in line for tomorrow -now-?” we ask.

“Yeah, I’m afraid that’s not going to be possible.” One of the volunteers tells us. “We’re not allowed to have people hang out overnight like this unless there are facilities for them and security. We’d need Porta-Poties for a thousand people and police patrols and the whole lot, and no one had time to get all that organized. Your best bet is to get home, sleep, and then catch the first BART train up at 5am and keep your fingers crossed.

Monday is the last day to do this, after all.

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So we go home. We crash out early. We wake up at 4:00. We drive an hour to hit the BART station. We get the first train up. We arrive at City Hall at 6:30AM.

The line stretches around the entirety of San Francisco City Hall. You could toss a can of Coke from the end of the line to the people who’re up to be first through the doors and not have to worry about cracking it open after.

“Uh.” We go. “What the fuck is -this-?”

So.

Remember why they weren’t going to be able to have people hang out overnight?

Turns out, enough SF cops were willing to volunteer unpaid time to do patrols to cover security. And some anonymous person delivered over a dozen Porta-Poties that’d gotten dropped off around 8 the night before.

It’s 6:30 am, there are almost a thousand people in front of us in line to get this literal once in a lifetime marriage, the last chance we expect to have for at least 15 more years (it was 2004, gay rights were getting shoved back on every front. It was not looking good. We were just happy we lived in California were we at least weren’t likely to loose job protections any time soon.).

Then it starts to rain.

We had not dressed for rain.

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Here is how the next six hours go.

We’re in line. Once the doors open at 7am, it will creep forward at a slow crawl. It’s around 7 when someone shows up with garbage bags for everyone. Cut holes for the head and arms and you’ve got a makeshift raincoat! So you’ve got hundreds of gays and lesbians decked out in the nicest shit they could get on short notice wearing trashbags over it.

Everyone is so happy.

Everyone is so nervous/scared/frantic that we wont be able to get through the doors before they close for the day.

People online start making delivery orders.

Coffee and bagels are ordered in bulk and delivered to City Hall for whoever needs it. We get pizza. We get roses. Random people come by who just want to give hugs to people in line because they’re just so happy for us. The tour busses make detours to go past the lines. Chinese tourists lean out with their cameras and shout GOOD LUCK while car horns honk.

A single sad man holding a Bible tries to talk people out of doing this, tells us all we’re sinning and to please don’t. He gives up after an hour. A nun replaces him with a small sign about how this is against God’s will. She leaves after it disintegrates in the rain.

The day before, when it was sunny, there had been a lot of protestors. Including a large Muslim group with their signs about how “Not even DOGS do such things!” Which… Yes they do.

A lot of snide words are said (by me) about how the fact that we’re willing to come out in the rain to do this while they’re not willing to come out in the rain to protest it proves who actually gives an actual shit about the topic.

Time passes. I measure it based on which side of City Hall we’re on. The doors face East. We start on Northside. Coffee and trashbags are delivered when we’re on the North Side. Pizza first starts showing up when we’re on Westside, which is also where I see Bible Man and Nun. Roses are delivered on Southside. And so forth.

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We have Line Neighbors.

Ahead of us are a gay couple a decade or two older than us. They’ve been together for eight years. The older one is a school teacher. He has his coat collar up and turns away from any news cameras that come near while we reposition ourselves between the lenses and him. He’s worried about the parents of one of his students seeing him on the news and getting him fired. The younger one will step away to get interviewed on his own later on. They drove down for the weekend once they heard what was going on. They’d started around the same time we did, coming from the Northeast, and are parked in a nearby garage.

The most perky energetic joyful woman I’ve ever met shows up right after we turned the corner to Southside to tackle the younger of the two into a hug. She’s their local friend who’d just gotten their message about what they’re doing and she will NOT be missing this. She is -so- happy for them. Her friends cry on her shoulders at her unconditional joy.

Behind us are a lesbian couple who’d been up in San Francisco to celebrate their 12th anniversary together. “We met here Valentines Day weekend! We live down in San Diego, now, but we like to come up for the weekend because it’s our first love city.”

“Then they announced -this-,” the other one says, “and we can’t leave until we get married. I called work Sunday and told them I calling in sick until Wednesday.”

“I told them why,” her partner says, “I don’t care if they want to give me trouble for it. This is worth it. Fuck them.”

My husband-to-be and I look at each other. We’ve been together for not even two years at this point. Less than two years. Is it right for us to be here? We’re potentially taking a spot from another couple that’d been together longer, who needed it more, who deserved it more.”

“Don’t you fucking dare.” Says the 40-something gay couple in front of us.

“This is as much for you as it is for us!” says the lesbian couple who’ve been together for over a decade behind us.

“You kids are too cute together,” says the gay couple’s friend. “you -have- to. Someday -you’re- going to be the old gay couple that’s been together for years and years, and you deserve to have been married by then.”

We stay in line.

It’s while we’re on the Southside of City Hall, just about to turn the corner to Eastside at long last that we pick up our own companions. A white woman who reminds me an awful lot of my aunt with a four year old black boy riding on her shoulders. “Can we say we’re with you? His uncles are already inside and they’re not letting anyone in who isn’t with a couple right there.” “Of course!” we say.

The kid is so very confused about what all the big deal is, but there’s free pizza and the busses keep driving by and honking, so he’s having a great time.

We pass by a statue of Lincoln with ‘Marriage for All!’ and "Gay Rights are Human Rights!" flags tucked in the crooks of his arms and hanging off his hat.

It’s about noon, noon-thirty when we finally make it through the doors and out of the rain.

They’ve promised that anyone who’s inside when the doors shut will get married. We made it. We’re safe.

We still have a -long- way to go.

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They’re trying to fit as many people into City Hall as possible. Partially to get people out of the rain, mostly to get as many people indoors as possible. The line now stretches down into the basement and up side stairs and through hallways I’m not entirely sure the public should ever be given access to. We crawl along slowly but surely.

It’s after we’ve gone through the low-ceiling basement hallways past offices and storage and back up another set of staircases and are going through a back hallway of low-ranked functionary offices that someone comes along handing out the paperwork. “It’s an hour or so until you hit the office, but take the time to fill these out so you don’t have to do it there!”

We spend our time filling out the paperwork against walls, against backs, on stone floors, on books.

We enter one of the public areas, filled with displays and photos of City Hall Demonstrations of years past.

I take pictures of the big black and white photo of the Abraham Lincoln statue holding banners and signs against segregation and for civil rights.

The four year old boy we helped get inside runs past us around this time, chased by a blond haired girl about his own age, both perused by an exhausted looking teenager helplessly begging them to stop running.

Everyone is wet and exhausted and vibrating with anticipation and the building-wide aura of happiness that infuses everything.

The line goes into the marriage office. A dozen people are at the desk, shoulder to shoulder, far more than it was built to have working it at once.

A Sister of Perpetual Indulgence is directing people to city officials the moment they open up. She’s done up in her nun getup with all her makeup on and her beard is fluffed and be-glittered and on point. “Oh, I was here yesterday getting married myself, but today I’m acting as your guide. Number 4 sweeties, and -Congradulatiooooons!-“

The guy behind the counter has been there since six. It’s now 1:30. He’s still giddy with joy. He counts our money. He takes our paperwork, reviews it, stamps it, sends off the parts he needs to, and hands the rest back to us. “Alright, go to the Rotunda, they’ll direct you to someone who’ll do the ceremony. Then, if you want the certificate, they’ll direct you to -that- line.” “Can’t you just mail it to us?” “Normally, yeah, but the moment the courts shut us down, we’re not going to be allowed to.”

We take our paperwork and join the line to the Rotunda.

If you’ve seen James Bond: A View to a Kill, you’ve seen the San Francisco City Hall Rotunda. There are literally a dozen spots set up along the balconies that overlook the open area where marriage officials and witnesses are gathered and are just processing people through as fast as they can.

That’s for the people who didn’t bring their own wedding officials.

There’s a Catholic-adjacent couple there who seem to have brought their entire families -and- the priest on the main steps. They’re doing the whole damn thing. There’s at least one more Rabbi at work, I can’t remember what else. Just that there was a -lot-.

We get directed to the second story, northside. The San Francisco City Treasurer is one of our two witnesses. Our marriage officient is some other elected official I cannot remember for the life of me (and I'm only writing down what I can actively remember, so I can't turn to my husband next to me and ask, but he'll have remembered because that's what he does.)

I have a wilting lily flower tucked into my shirt pocket. My pants have water stains up to the knees. My hair is still wet from the rain, I am blubbering, and I can’t get the ring on my husband’s finger. The picture is a treat, I tell you.

There really isn’t a word for the mix of emotions I had at that time. Complete disbelief that this was reality and was happening. Relief that we’d made it. Awe at how many dozens of people had personally cheered for us along the way and the hundreds to thousands who’d cheered for us generally.

Then we're married.

Then we get in line to get our license.

It’s another hour. This time, the line goes through the higher stories. Then snakes around and goes past the doorway to the mayor’s office.

Mayor Newsom is not in today. And will be having trouble getting into his office on Tuesday because of the absolute barricade of letters and flowers and folded up notes and stuffed animals and City Hall maps with black marked “THANK YOU!”s that have been piled up against it.

We make it to the marriage records office.

I take a picture of my now husband standing in front of a case of the marriage records for 1902-1912. Numerous kids are curled up in corners sleeping. My own memory is spotty. I just know we got the papers, and then we’re done with lines. We get out, we head to the front entrance, and we walk out onto the City Hall steps.

It's almost 3PM.

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There are cheers, there’s rice thrown at us, there are hundreds of people celebrating us with unconditional love and joy and I had never before felt the goodness that exists in humanity to such an extent. It’s no longer raining, just a light sprinkle, but there are still no protestors. There’s barely even any news vans.

We make our way through the gauntlet, we get hands shaked, people with signs reading ”Congratulations!” jump up and down for us. We hit the sidewalks, and we begin to limp our way back to the BART station.

I’m at the BART station, we’re waiting for our train back south, and I’m sitting on the ground leaning against a pillar and in danger of falling asleep when a nondescript young man stops in front of me and shuffles his feet nervously. “Hey. I just- I saw you guys, down at City Hall, and I just… I’m so happy for you. I’m so proud of what you could do. I’m- I’m just really glad, glad you could get to do this.”

He shakes my hand, clasps it with both of his and shakes it. I thank him and he smiles and then hurries away as fast as he can without running.

Our train arrives and the trip south passes in a semilucid blur.

We get back to our car and climb in.

It’s 4:30 and we are starving.

There’s a Carls Jr near the station that we stop off at and have our first official meal as a married couple. We sit by the window and watch people walking past and pick out others who are returning from San Francisco. We're all easy to pick out, what with the combination of giddiness and water damage.

We get home about 6-7. We take the dog out for a good long walk after being left alone for two days in a row. We shower. We bundle ourselves up. We bury ourselves in blankets and curl up and just sort of sit adrift in the surrealness of what we’d just done.

We wake up the next day, Tuesday, to read that the California State Supreme Court has rejected the petition to shut down the San Francisco weddings because the paperwork had a misplaced comma that made the meaning of one phrase unclear.

The State Supreme Court would proceed to play similar bureaucratic tricks to drag the process out for nearly a full month before they have nothing left and finally shut down Mayor Newsom’s marriages.

My parents had been out of state at the time at a convention. They were flying into SFO about the same moment we were walking out of City Hall. I apologized to them later for not waiting and my mom all but shook me by the shoulders. “No! No one knew that they’d go on for so long! You did what you needed to do! I’ll just be there for the next one!”

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It was just a piece of paper. Legally, it didn’t even hold any weight thirty days later. My philosophy at the time was “marriage really isn’t that important, aside from the legal benefits. It’s just confirming what you already have.”

But maybe it’s just societal weight, or ingrained culture, or something, but it was different after. The way I described it at the time, and I’ve never really come up with a better metaphor is, “It’s like we were both holding onto each other in the middle of the ocean in the middle of a storm. We were keeping each other above water, we were each other’s support. But then we got this piece of paper. And it was like the ground rose up to meet our feet. We were still in an ocean, still in the middle of a storm, but there was a solid foundation beneath our feet. We still supported each other, but there was this other thing that was also keeping our heads above the water.

It was different. It was better. It made things more solid and real.

I am forever grateful for all the forces and all the people who came together to make it possible. It’s been twenty years and we’re still together and still married.

We did a domestic partnership a year later to get the legal paperwork. We’d done a private ceremony with proper rings (not just ones grabbed out of the husband’s collection hours before) before then. And in 2008, we did a legal marriage again.

Rushed. In a hurry. Because there was Proposition 13 to be voted on which would make them all illegal again if it passed.

It did, but we were already married at that point, and they couldn’t negate it that time.

Another few years after that, the Supreme Court finally threw up their hands and said "Fine! It's been legal in places and nothing's caught on fire or been devoured by locusts. It's legal everywhere. Shut up about it!"

And that was that.

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When I was in highschool, in the late 90s, I didn’t expect to see legal gay marriage until I was in my 50s. I just couldn’t see how the American public as it was would ever be okay with it.

I never expected to be getting married within five years. I never expected it to be legal nationwide before I’d barely started by 30s. I never thought I’d be in my 40s and it’d be such a non-issue that the conservative rabble rousers would’ve had to move onto other wedge issues altogether.

I never thought that I could introduce another man as my husband and absolutely no one involved would so much as blink.

I never thought I’d live in this world.

And it’s twenty years later today. I wonder how our line buddies are doing. Those babies who were running around the wide open rooms playing tag will have graduated college by now. The kids whose parents the one line-buddy was worried would see him are probably married too now. Some of them to others of the same gender.

I don’t have some greater message to make with all this. Other then, culture can shift suddenly in ways you can’t predict. For good or ill. Mainly this is just me remembering the craziest fucking 36 hours of my life twenty years after the fact and sharing them with all of you.

The future we’re resigned to doesn’t have to be the one we live in. Society can shift faster than you think. The unimaginable of twenty years ago is the baseline reality of today.