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| by Fish |
Pete was antsy, edgy, nervous. He kept trying to swing the conversation around. I kept trying to swing it back. I don't think he'd noticed.
It's not that I was uncomfortable talking about it; it's that he was. So I thought I was being kind. In my way, I was trying to save him the stammers and the sweats, since he'd not be telling me something I didn't already know. We all knew. When Rich Norman began popping up more and more in conversation, with the look in Pete's eyes growing more and more far-off, we all knew. Before Pete did.
Pete had apparently figured it out. And reached the stage where he felt he needed to tell me. In retrospect, I should have realized this was difficult for him. In retrospect, if I'd felt like I wanted to spare him the discomfort, I should have said something simple, patted him on the back, and moved on with the conversation. But it was 1990, and I was eighteen, and dumb. I felt that it'd be easier for him if we just avoided the topic altogether and I just took it as a given.
Thus, our current conversational veering. He kept yanking the wheel to the right, and I'd slowly nudge it back to the left. Pete, caught up in his own bundle of nerves, didn't seem to notice I was doing this, or if he did, he must have assumed I was doing so unwittingly.
I don't remember the big reveal actually taking place. The two of us, in some fashion, just reached a stage where I knew, and he knew I knew.
Helen was really nervous. At first, I did not know why.
Only later did the pieces all come together. It was National Coming Out Day 1992, and as the two of us walked into the Campus Center to check our mail, supporters were handing out lavender ribbons – okay, purple strips of cloth – for people of all stripes to show their support. I'd taken one and tied it onto my belt.
For Helen, it turned out this was the sign it would be okay to open up. I was surprised that she didn't already think the subject was safe; we had gay and lesbian friends in common, and I'd thought she'd known my positive opinions of same. Besides, given the bohemian nature of our school, there was short shrift for homophobes. Still, it is emotions and not logic that knot the stomach and silence the tongue. It had taken a strip of purple cloth to assuage her.
I'd learned a few things since Pete. By now, I was not so dumb. I let Helen talk, hugged her when she cried, and smiled until she smiled.
Helen started dating a woman the next year.
"And crown thy good with brotherhood / from sea to shining sea," we sang.
The impromptu choir's collective voice rang off the walls of the State House, filling the chamber with song. It was a high-spirited, optimistic choir; despite the metal detectors, the omnipresent police, and the reasonable chance that our legislators would take it all away, the choir was upbeat.
The other side was quite the opposite. Gloomy, grim, scowling. As they'd walk past us, trying to find their choir, they'd glare, brows knitted, hackles up, as if our songs were poison.
Their choir sang hymns. Our choir sang patriotic songs. Given the separation of Church and State, I found that telling; we were asking the State to uphold the laws of the State, and they were asking the State to follow the dictates of the Church.
Well, maybe their Church, but not mine. When the legislature couldn't pass a resolution, thus leaving the status quo in place, the plantiffs from the landmark case were free to marry, and on May 17, 2004, my very own pastor sanctified the now-legal ceremony joining the first of those couples.
"Her," I replied.
Sigh. Recognition in one state didn't help the other forty-nine. We're still snarled up by euphemisms. I hadn't been using a euphemism. The HR representative thought I had.
I'd called the HR hotline because I'd discovered that my partner's medical coverage was in error. Since she'd decided to start her own business I was the sole source of health and dental care, a benefit my employer thankfully extends to domestic partners. Of any kind. Not wanting to leave my better half in the lurch, I'd wanted to follow up with HR post haste.
"Hello, this is _____. How can I help you?"
"I just got my medical plan confirmation, and my domestic partner is listed as 'waived', which is wrong. We should both have the same coverage."
"Sure thing, sir," said the rep. "We'll just need his name and Social Security number."
And hence my reply. "Her."
It was no insult to me, but the rep gurgled out an embarrassed "erp." In an ideal world, we wouldn't have to use "domestic partner" as a euphemism for when the State lacks the courage to afford recognition. In an ideal world, it would just mean "two people who aren't married, living in one household." In an ideal world, the HR rep wouldn't have taken the phrase and made an assumption about who my partner is, nor an assumption that I'd be insulted when she assumed incorrectly.
Of course, I don't live in an ideal world. But I live in a one that's getting better. Pete is alive and well and, judging by his personal pages on social networking sites, is surrounded by short-haired boys who do not favor shirts but work out a lot. Helen and I have drifted over time; I think she's gone back to dating men now, for whatever that's worth. The legislative margin supporting our status quo gets larger and larger with each passing year, and while Connecticut, Vermont and New Jersey have copped out with separate-but-equal, I suppose that's better than nothing at all – certainly since most of the other forty-six have let some of the Church boss State around by using phrases like "sanctity of", and "sacred institution", and other terms that sound an awful lot like Sunday School and not a lot like civic debate. But as other groups come around, I have faith – no pun intended – that one day, the State will let the Church do what it wants, but assert that the State must fulfill its responsibilities to its citizens. Faith that, one day, nobody will be forced to be just a domestic partner.