Phonecall for me from the Universe

[chanaleh]

The thing that I will remember longest about Sunday night at Cambridge City Hall... had nothing to do with same-sex marriage.


I showed up around midnight and promptly ran into, first, jweiss, who was handing out chocolate truffles -- and then tapuz and laurens10 and company, and then jehanna and company, and then jbsegal and kimberlogic and company, and so on and so on. It was wonderful.

But so anyway, after a few more minutes of trying to work our way inwards, I was standing at the edges of the crowd with jweiss, and rjpb (dashingly tuxedo-clad) came up, and some other people, and I got reintroduced to sgwadlow, and we were all chatting. And then someone says to me, "So, you gonna go get in line there?"

"What?" "Well, Wadlow's a minister... there are plenty of guys around... you could just go up and get a license...!"

"Ah, okay," I say, playing along, "and we've got a guy in a tux right here, so yeah, clearly, all ready to go!"

At that moment, someone taps me on the shoulder. I turn around and there is mrmorse, standing on the hillside behind me, looking me placidly in the eye. Smiling.

I whoop with joy, and without even thinking about whether it's good or safe or permissible, I fling my arms around him and hold on tight.

Someone says to rjpb, "Gee, you're not going to be able to marry her if she keeps running off and hugging other guys like this."

"No," I say, "this one."

"Uh... what? ... You want to marry that one?"

I nod. The truth is, I do. Or part of me does, the part that will not shut up and go away no matter how long it gets denied.
And then I don't hear anything else but the roar of the crowd because I am clinging to my boy and tears are welling up in my eyes. He holds me and strokes my hair, and I let myself sob -- for all the things I've been mulling over, especially (as it happens) the last several days, and all the things I miss most -- until I can compose myself and wipe my eyes and apologize, and we go back to having more of a normal conversation.

He had missed the entire lead-up, of course. I tried to explain it to him three hours later, when we were walking back toward the T, and he said, "No, I definitely didn't get any of that... though I figured from the way you started crying that it was something vaguely along those lines..."


When I told my therapist this story this morning, he said, "You know, if you were more of a mystic, you'd have to say that that was some kind of sign from God."

I said it was more striking to me that that, after all we've gone through and said and done, all the frustration and anguish, is so immediately my gut reaction. The impulse that never truly goes away.

Comments

[darlene-ford.livejournal.com]

Strong feelings don't go away when they aren't good or safe or permissible. Life is like that, unfortunately. Wishing you less flammage on that subject than my journal has drawn. Hang in there...