i never wanted to get married until suddenly i did.
All it took was a Trump presidency and a global pandemic — kidding, but also.. not.
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Two weeks and a day ago, I married Stefin, my boyfriend of almost 12 years, in a small, private garden ceremony.
If you had shown me photos of our beautiful day, gazing into each others’ eyes while surrounded by hostas and trees atop the garden’s picturesque moon bridge, 12 or even six years ago, I probably wouldn’t have believed I was looking at a picture of us.
To be totally honest, marriage had never been a goal of mine, or ours, and I never foresaw the sort of queer life that we’ve cultivated. I think the severe lack of queer lives depicted in mainstream media as I was growing up played a big part in that. I never really knew a happily-queer-coupled life was possible, much less likely.
When I was first recognizing and coming to terms with my queerness in the late ‘90s and early ‘00s, the best-case-scenario future I thought I was headed for was a sort of Will and Grace roommate situation with a platonic, perpetually-single friend. I imagined that men would float into and out of our lives, but that my deepest alliance in life would probably not be a romantic one.
A next-best scenario was closer to what I saw on Queer as Folk, which I was first exposed to when I began college in the mid-aughts. Here, there were a few more options to choose from — but somehow the road always seemed to bend toward tragedy. A brutally violent beating or heartbreaking family rejection here, a shocking medical diagnosis or brazen terrorist act there, the best scenario one could hope for, I now assumed, was forming a strong bond with a chosen family of fellow queers and allies for some strength in numbers. How else could one withstand the seemingly never-ending parade of woes apparently heading my way? I crossed my fingers to be successful enough that I’d have a Brian Kinney industrial bachelor loft complete with a freight-elevator entrance.
Later in college, as I’ve previously discussed in this space, the matter of marriage equality became one I couldn’t ignore as voters in the state of Wisconsin, where I grew up and was attending school, considered a state-level ban on same-sex marriages during the midterm election of 2006. At the time, I was very involved with LGBTQ organizing on campus, which meant that protesting, canvassing and campaigning against the proposal just became a part of my everyday life.
That bill passed, but the fight continued in Wisconsin and nationwide. And as my professional life began to take shape, I had a front-row seat to the struggle for marriage equality. As I got my start in journalism after college and entered into the seriously dire job market just on the verge of a recession, the only media outlets I could find that would agree to featuring my byline were queer ones.
As a result, marriage equality was at the heart of easily half of all the hundreds of stories I wrote between 2008 and 2011, when I finally landed my first full-time staff job at a mainstream publication. And all that time I was featuring the incredibly devoted protesters and activists fighting for marriage equality, I knew what I was writing about was important and valid, but I also felt like it was something that someone else wanted, not something for myself.
At the same time, I was falling deeply in love with Stefin, a love that’s only grown deeper and more intense with time. It’s hard to imagine a kinder, funnier, more patient, fiercely loyal soul. He’s the kind of guy who will call the restaurant that screwed up your chicken finger order when your social anxiety flareup won’t allow you to. The kind of guy who will pick up your favorite pre-packaged spicy noodle bowl for you when you’re sick, then go back to the store and pick up your actual favorite pre-packaged spicy noodle bowl when you sheepishly tell him it wasn’t exactly the right one. The kind of guy who doesn’t immediately ghost you after you took him on a date to watch Lars von Trier’s Antichrist mere months after meeting. The kind of guy who gets it. Who gets you.
We were (and are) deeply in love and committed. Still, marriage, to me, just always felt deeply patriarchal and, for lack of a better word, just a little bit corny. The expense of weddings and the expanse of the bridal industrial complex always felt deeply wasteful to me, and put a lot of pressure on friends and family who spend hundreds of dollars to travel to one (or more) of the associated events. On top of all that, as an introvert, I couldn’t imagine ever feeling comfortable getting up in front of a giant room of loved ones and being the center of attention. I also appreciated the work of radical queer groups like Against Equality critiquing the institution of marriage and mainstream LGBT groups’ treatment of the issue. To be frank, even after Illinois legalized same-sex marriages in 2013 and federal marriage equality passed two years later, a wedding sounded like my worst nightmare, and Stefin was well aware of this.
Then, slowly, something deep inside of me changed. After the Pulse Nightclub massacre followed a few months later by Trump’s election in 2016, I felt more deeply committed to being a visible and vocal queer opponent to hatred and shame. Moving to the suburbs that same year, I again felt a certain sense of responsibility to represent queerness in a community that is primarily built for compulsory straightness. And I also began to ask myself why we were denying ourselves the same label and the same recognition and the same title that so many of our peers had ascribed to themselves. And in 2019, on our tenth anniversary of dating, as we listened to the same vinyl album we had first kissed to 10 years before (Bat for Lashes’ Two Suns), I did the very thing I long feared that Stefin would do to me: I got down on one knee and proposed. After he confirmed that he wasn’t hallucinating the moment, Stefin said yes.
Of course, the pandemic delayed our wedding planning, and we were not in any rush to hold a pandemic wedding, but then the sudden death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the swift appointment of Amy Coney Barrett, another conservative judge, to the court changed that. At the time, we questioned whether federal marriage equality might be at risk. Maybe everything that had been gained across all those years of protests and campaigning would be swept away along with our hope for legal recognition and making it official-official. The time was now.
We hit fast-forward on our planning, stumbled on the perfect outdoor venue (the Fabyan Japanese Garden in Geneva), picked a date and sent out invitations to an intimate group of friends and family. We asked our dear friend Brea to marry us, and she graciously agreed to do so. We assembled a seriously all-star roster of local vendors, and rented tables and chairs. And then we spent two weeks agonizingly refreshing weather apps for the latest forecasts.
Then the day (which turned out to be the sixth anniversary of the SCOTUS decision that legalized same-sex marriage federally) arrived. We knew we had made the right decision. After a stormy week of nonstop rain and multiple tornado warnings in the metro area, we got clear skies for both our ceremony and reception. After we exchanged our teary “I do”s, we arrived back at our home and danced our first dance as husbands to Brittany Howard’s “Stay High” while surrounded by our friends and family. We dined, drank and danced under a full-ish moon until 1 a.m. and went to bed feeling filled to brim with love and relief. We did it. In the words of Valerie June’s “Why The Bright Stars Glow,” which we used in our ceremony’s processional:
When the race is run and the goal is won / Look how far we've come dancing in the sun
A week later, a dear activist friend of mine commented on my Instagram: “Remember all those years you and I fought for gay marriage, and then was like fuck that there’s more queer problems out there, and then was like FUCK that there’s other other problems out there. Gotta love 2008. It’s stuff like this that makes all the struggle worth it, friend.”
The struggle was worth it, and the struggle is real. Survival is a privilege, but queer love matters. Queer joy matters. Pride matters. Don’t wait for permission to do what you want to do or be who you want to be. The time is now.
***
It’s been a few weeks since the last essay and link dump! Here are a few things I’ve been listening to, reading and watching:
In Rolling Stone, EJ Dickson penned an oral history of one of my favorite YouTube videos ever: a community theater production of the Legally Blonde musical that spawned a niche meme: “Courtney, take your break.” IYKYK.
I’ve been totally enthralled with Michelle Zauner’s new memoir, Crying in H Mart. In it, Zauner (who you might know from her music released under the band name Japanese Breakfast) explores her relationship with her late mother, and specifically the period of time she spent caretaking for her as she died of cancer. If that sounds dark, it’s because it is, but Zauner’s writing is so incredibly visceral, it doesn’t matter. In May, Zauner spoke with The Daily Show’s Trevor Noah about the book.
Questlove’s much-anticipated documentary on the Harlem Cultural Festival of 1969 (a.k.a. “Black Woodstock”) just dropped on Hulu (as well as in theaters), and it is magnificent. The fact that all these artists — Nina Simone, Stevie Wonder, Mahalia Jackson, Sly and the Family Stone, Gladys Knight, The Staple Singers and B.B. King, just to name a few — were all gathered in one place at one time is astounding enough, but the context of that time really adds to its lightning-in-a-bottle feel. This documentary isn’t just about an iconic Black music festival, it’s about iconic Black history. Watch it now!
The New York Times just published this chilling long read on the impact that climate change is having on Lake Michigan, and what the ramifications of this look like for the Chicago area. It’s a critically important read especially if you (like me) had been operating from the assumption that Chicago was a relatively climate-resistant place to live compared to, say, Miami.
Listen, there’s this thing that’s been happening on TikTok for months (probably years) now that has been perplexing me, though I was never able to put my finger on what exactly it was, or why it inspired such a guttural reaction for me. It turns out I’m not alone: Just call them, as this viral tweet did, “the gays who walk” and I think we can chalk it all up to the lack of rhythm, originality and the unenthusiastic “yes.”
We close this week out, as always, with a bop: South Korean DJ Peggy Gou just released a new track and it is pure deep-house perfection. You can be sure if Batavia holds another silent disco (which was amazing, by the way!) and I’m invited to play again, you’ll hear this track in my set.