The pleasure of your company is requested
at the marriage of
Joel Legare Derfner
to
Michael David Combs
on Sunday, the tenth of October, nine o’clock in the morning
at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden.
One month from today, I am getting married to my boyfriend of seven years. I suspect I would feel much more nervous than I do if it weren’t for the fact that all my energy is taken up by the HGTV Urban Oasis Giveaway, which is in the grand scheme of things at least as important to me as my wedding, if not more.
Because I hate living in Brooklyn. Our house is in an area populated largely by people from the Caribbean, the downside of which is that the restaurants tend to serve a lot of goat, when what I want instead is a really first-rate Taco Bell. While the crack dealers on our right have come to love me—they call me Jimmy, after Clark Kent’s sidekick Jimmy Olsen, and I am supremely confident that if anybody tried to mess with me I could go to the crack dealers and ask them to intervene on my behalf and somebody would end up looking down the wrong end of a sawed-off shotgun—and the retired schoolteacher on our left has calmed down quite a bit, I would feel the same way if I lived in a posh neighborhood like Park Slope or Brooklyn Heights, because I believe, with the utmost provinciality, that Manhattan is the center of the world, which means I’m living in a suburb of the center of the world, and why would anybody do that?
(If anything, the fact that my neighborhood is a ghetto makes it better than Park Slope or Brooklyn Heights, simply because it’s more interesting. Though the gunfire we used to hear once a week has slowed down, thanks to gentrification, to once every few months, and though I will never forgive Mike for not calling me at once so I could join him when on his way to the grocery store he walked by the body of the guy who had been stabbed to death, telling people where I live still produces a dismayed response often enough for me to enjoy doing so. Nonetheless, since the police crackdown that led the Crips to abandon our corner store as a hangout and move to a different corner more than two blocks away from the Bloods hangout, things haven’t been the same.)
All the hours I have put in watching Mike’s goddamn home and garden television shows with him, however, have now presented me with an alternative. HGTV is giving away an apartment in downtown Manhattan, designed and furnished by none other than Mr. Vern Yip himself, the only halfway decent designer from Trading Spaces and now one of the judges on Design Star. The apartment, which is in the Residences at the W Hotel on Washington Street, has an area of 800-some-odd square feet and an astonishing view of the Statue of Liberty.
You’re allowed to enter the giveaway once a day online, at hgtv.com. I read the small print, however, and it turns out that the once-a-day rule applies only to online entries and that, if you enter by mail, sending an index card with your name, address, birthday, phone number, and social security number handwritten on it in a hand-addressed, hand-stamped envelope to the HGTV post office box in Tennessee, you’re allowed to enter as many times as you like.
So yesterday I went out and bought five thousand index cards and five thousand envelopes, which means that by the time I leave for my honeymoon—four days before the HGTV Urban Oasis Giveaway deadline—I’m going to know my mailing address very, very well.
HGTV Urban Oasis Giveaway cards left to fill out: 5,000.
HGTV Urban Oasis Giveaway envelopes left to address: 5,000.
In order to start hand-writing entries for the HGTV Urban Oasis Giveaway I first need to finish hand-writing the wedding invitations and then mail them. They’re a formality, as we already know who’s coming and who isn’t, but if I didn’t send them I would feel incorrect.
The pleasure of your company is requested
at the marriage of
Joel Legare Derfner
to
Michael David Combs
on Sunday, the tenth of October, nine o’clock in the morning
at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden.
I hope I’ll be able to find a Julius and Ethel Rosenberg stamp or a J. Robert Oppenheimer stamp or something like that but I worry that my tendency toward sentiment will lead me to choose the LOVE stamp.
HGTV Urban Oasis Giveaway cards left to fill out: 5,000.
HGTV Urban Oasis Giveaway envelopes left to address: 5,000.
“There were no Julius and Ethel Rosenberg stamps or J. Robert Oppenheimer stamps at the post office,” I said to Mike.
“I’m sorry, honey,” he said. “But I think the LOVE stamp will be sweet.”
“No, I stayed strong. No LOVE stamp. Doris Miller. See?” I showed him the stamps I had bought.
“Who’s that?”
“He joined the Navy but because he was black he had to be a cook or something. Then he grabbed a gun at Pearl Harbor and ended up shooting down like six Japanese planes and being awarded the Navy’s version of the Purple Heart.”
“Oh, that’s nice. You couldn’t manage McCarthyism or the atom bomb, but at least you got racism.”
HGTV Urban Oasis Giveaway cards left to fill out: 4,923.
HGTV Urban Oasis Giveaway envelopes left to address: 4,923.
Rabbi Rachel has emailed us a Wikileaks’ scandal worth of documents about wedding decisions we have to make, which we are taking one item at a time, starting with the list she’s given us of things people say instead of “Behold, you are consecrated to me with this ring according to the law of Moses and Israel.”
I will espouse (betroth) thee unto me forever. I will espouse (betroth) thee unto me in righteousness, and in lovingkindness and in compassion. And I shall betroth thee unto me in faithfulness.
Unacceptable. First of all, why do “forever” and “in faithfulness” get their own sentence, but “righteousness,” “lovingkindness,” and “compassion” all have to share one little espouse (betroth)? Also, the second sentence needs a serial comma.
By this ring you are consecrated to me as my husband.
That’s just taking out “by the law of Moses and Israel” but pretending you didn’t.
Fair is the white star of twilight, and the sky clearer at the day’s end; but you are fairer, and you are dearer, you, my heart’s friend.
Even Mike thinks this one is gross.
Many waters cannot quench love; neither can the floods drown it.
We’re not getting married in scuba gear. More important, though, is the fact that love is about the relationship between two people, whereas marriage is about the relationship between them and society. Using “many waters cannot quench love” feels, oddly, too personal for a wedding ceremony. My love for Mike and his for me is nobody else’s business, not even our wedding guests’.
I hope Rachel has a backup list.
Mike has rejected every single ketubah I’ve shown him.
HGTV Urban Oasis Giveaway cards left to fill out: 4,864.
HGTV Urban Oasis Giveaway envelopes left to address: 4,864.
I’ve told Mike that, since he’s paying for the caterer, the cake, the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, and the rental of the morning clothes, I’ll pay for the honeymoon.
The problem is that the travel agent I gave the deposit to said that the rest of the fee needs to be paid by a week from today, and right now, having paid the deposit and bought the HGTV Urban Oasis Giveaway cards and envelopes, I don’t have the money to buy a pack of gum, much less a trip to the Caribbean.
Whatever. I’m sure some publisher will call me at the last minute to offer me a huge advance for my next book. Or maybe some producer will call me at the last minute to offer me a huge advance for my next show.
I would ask 28 for help, except I’m sure all he would say is that the money will appear when I’m ready for it.
HGTV Urban Oasis Giveaway cards left to fill out: 4,800.
HGTV Urban Oasis Giveaway envelopes left to address: 4,800.
Why am I thinking of myself as the wife? There’s no doubt that I am. When Rachel was telling us about the customs of a Jewish wedding, I was the one who didn’t want to wear the veil—the idea that Mike could accept or reject a veil never occurred to me. And no way was I ever going to propose to Mike; I told him he had to propose to me. I’m the bride here. I don’t know how to say this without opening up a huge can of worms, so I guess I should steel myself for a session of annelidology: I want to be the girl.
Of course I don’t mean this in a literal sense. Homosexuality isn’t, as a rule, about somebody being the boy and somebody being the girl. I’m a boy, Mike is a boy, we’re both boys, and that’s what allows us to be attracted to each other. We both identify as men. I still remember vividly the shudder of revulsion I felt when my now ex-boyfriend put on a dress and did a striptease—revulsion so strong it had to come from more than just the fact that I’m not attracted to women.
I am also aware of how easy it is for me as a man to talk about wanting to be “the girl” in a society that discriminates against women in employment, health care, and innumerable other facets of daily life. (“Take the pay cut to the seventy-seven cents a woman makes per dollar a man makes,” said a friend of mine when I brought the idea up with her, “and then we’ll talk.”)
So what do I mean when I say I want to be the girl?
Unfortunately, I’m not exactly sure.
Am I talking about getting to be taken care of ? About being put on a pedestal, about being cherished? About getting to be the special one?
And why are the things that occur to me entirely about benefits and not at all about responsibilities?
Perhaps there’s something about being permitted to express your emotions?
In my last relationship, I suppose I was the boy and I thought of Tom as the girl. I was going to propose to him. Our relationship dynamic allowed him to be more emotionally expressive than I was. Maybe that was why we were so miserable. Maybe he really longed to be the boy. More likely we both longed to be the girl.
My therapist thinks it has to do with wanting to be wanted. My parents were more interested in saving the world than in paying attention to me, so now I’m trying to make up for it by being the one to whom attention ought to be paid.
Actually, that would explain my towering narcissism, too.
But seriously? I need what I need in my relationship with my fiancé because of what happened when I was eight?
Suspecting that the same sort of dynamic might operate in the relationships of other same-sexers, I posted a Facebook status update requesting my friends’ thoughts on the issue. I got a number of “That’s dumb, if somebody needs there to be a boy and a girl he should marry a girl”s and an even greater number of “blah blah blah offensive, patriarchal construct blah blah blah”s. Of course gender roles are an offensive, patriarchal construct, but I was after descriptions of an inner, emotional perspective.
Of those whose responses dealt with what I was investigating, a few people said it wasn’t part of their experience at all. But they were a minority. Here are some of the replies I got from others.
“I view us both as two men with a broad array of emotions and tendencies. We equally share responsibility for the household finances, upkeep, etc. . . . We’re both excellent cooks so we alternate chef duties. He’s definitely a better housekeeper so he tends to do more of that just so that he won’t have to live in my disarray. It may tip one way or the other at times with someone taking on more responsibility than is fair, but in the end, the other knows that he ‘owes’ the relationship some payback and it will be his time to take on some of the finances for both, yadda, yadda, yadda.”
“In my relationship we’re relatively balanced but I carry a bit more of the male energy. My past relationships have failed because I either carried too much of it or not enough of it in relation to my partner. I’m blessed to have found my perfect match!”
“While I don’t want to be ‘the girl,’ I do like to think of my partner as ‘the man.’ Ours aren’t traditional roles, but I’ll happily cook for and feed my man, so long as he likes to do the directions and driving. (And it’s always a little mixy because I’m so handy and will build all the Ikea, dig and plant a flower garden, and lay/ grout a new tile or marble floor. . . .)”
“I actually often think about this, and more often than not it fills me with anxiety for some reason. I’ve been in long relationships with women in the past, have not been so lucky with men. There is a definite ‘role’ one plays when in a relationship and it kind of helps keep things on track and running smoothly. Once roles are switched up, it can lead to confusion and sometimes insecurity in my opinion. But labels only limit us, and allow others to feel comfort in thinking that everything has its place. The unknown, uncategorized, and unfamiliar will always be frightening. While labeling is limiting, I find freedom in playing any role that I feel like in that moment. Today, I feel like a garden gnome.”
“I tend to see myself as the boy, because I like to be everything that is brought to mind when a man is in an opposite-sex relationship. I tend to be a protector, pay for things, make the first move, etc. I know that it doesn’t mean I can’t be these things if I thought of myself as the girl, but I guess I’m too worried about controlling where I fall within a relationship with another man.”
“It often comes up and most people in my life joke about it. Sometimes it’s a balance of both, but other times it does come down to stereotypical traits and what society has shown gender roles are. At the end of the day, it doesn’t really bother me that I’m often labeled the girl, but I do think in reality, we’re a mix of both. I like to be taken care of and protected, but I make more money and pay for more things. I know how to pitch a tent, but he will pump my gas.”
“In my past seven-year relationship/marriage, some would say I was the ‘girl,’ wanting to be protected and taken care of, and I cast my ex-husband in the role of ‘boy,’ protector, etc. It’s all true and it led to the dissolution of the marriage. Except I wouldn’t slice it according to the boy/girl divide. I characterize it as me being the ‘child’ and him the ‘parent.’”
“It’s a balance. We switch off. Some days I need attention. Some days they do. I think a healthy relationship switches the archetypal traits of ‘male’ vs. ‘female.’”
So that’s what people gave me.
Having read all the responses to my question, I’m not sure I understand any better, but at least I know that I’m not the only one who finds the issue complicated and difficult to grapple with. I realize that I, too, go back and forth. There are times I feel like the boy as well; whenever anything technological in the house stops working, for example, or whenever there are forms to fill out. But in the matter of our wedding, evidently, I want Mike to be the boy.
Except now instead of Mike I want to marry the guy who said he felt like a garden gnome.
HGTV Urban Oasis Giveaway cards left to fill out: 4,786.
HGTV Urban Oasis Giveaway envelopes left to address: 4,800.
“Do you think if I asked really, really nicely,” I said to Mike, “people in the neighborhood would stop handing me flyers to vote, in the upcoming Congressional election, for a candidate who believes in ‘the Judeo-Christian tradition of marriage?’”
“No.”
HGTV Urban Oasis Giveaway cards left to fill out: 4,765.
HGTV Urban Oasis Giveaway envelopes left to address: 4,800.
I spent the day at the library, where I figured—accurately, as it happens—that nobody would be handing out flyers about the Judeo-Christian tradition of marriage, in an attempt to discover what the Judeo-Christian tradition of marriage actually is. And let me tell you, those politicians are way off the mark.
“Mike,” I said when I got home, “guess what I learned today.”
“To obey me?”
“Funny. No, I learned that there’s a good reason I’ve always hated the term ‘Judeo-Christian.’”
“It would have been better if you’d learned to obey me. But go ahead. What’s the reason?”
“Well, you know how I’m like, Christians are the only people who ever say ‘Judeo-Christian’ and it’s really just another word for Christian?” (Seriously: have you ever heard a Jew use the term “Judeo-Christian” other than Dennis Prager, radio host and embarrassment to Judaism?)
“Yeah.”
“That’s because it’s always been just another word for Christian.”
The term first came into the vernacular, it turns out, with the rise of Hitler to the east; American Nazi supporters kept forming groups with names like the Christian American Crusade and the Christian Aryan Syndicate and publishing periodicals like The Christian Defender, so if the good guys wanted to make it clear that they weren’t German sympathizers they had to use something else, and lo and behold! “Judeo-Christian” was born as a way to say “we’re Christian and we think Nazis are bad.” After the war, however, even though the Nazis were gone, Christians couldn’t go back to “the Christian tradition” without implying that they thought Hitler had had the right idea, so “Judeo-Christian” stuck, which was lucky, because almost immediately people needed a term that meant “we think Communists are bad,” and “JudeoChristian” served nicely. Then, around the time same-sexers started pointing out that the Constitution applied to us, too, the Cold War ended, leaving “Judeo-Christian” free to become “we think gay people are bad”; after September 11, 2001, the term stretched to cover Muslims as well—nothing like a good twofer—which gets us to where we are today. “Judeo-Christian” is and always has been a term used by the majority to mean “us—and, more importantly, not them.”
The problem is that the term “Judeo-Christian” doesn’t make any sense.
The reasoning employed by those who call anything “JudeoChristian” goes, as far as I can tell, something like this: The Jews have the Old Testament. Jesus just added a bunch of stuff and made a few edits to what was already there, so really Christianity is Judaism plus the New Testament. The only difference between Jews and Christians is that Jews don’t believe the messiah has come yet, while Christians believe Jesus was the messiah (which in itself seems to be about as logical as saying that the only difference between war and peace is that war has a lot of people shooting each other with guns, but nobody asked me).
The problem with this view is that the Old Testament, which Jews call the written Torah, is only half the law. (I didn’t need the library for this; I remembered from Sunday school—really, guys, you should give Mrs. Grossman a raise.) It’s linked inextricably to the oral Torah, which is essentially the instruction manual for the written Torah. When Moses was up on Sinai, after he’d taken all that dictation, God said, okay, so those are the rules, now I need to explain how they work. And Moses was like, um, Buddy, I’ve already developed a repetitive stress injury from writing this down, and I still have those rocks with commandments carved into them to carry back with me, how about I just take a breather and listen really carefully and promise to remember? So he did, and when his meeting with God was finished Moses explained the instructions to all the guys he’d picked to run things once he was gone, and they all told their kids, and they all told their kids, and so on and so forth, until the Romans destroyed the Holy Temple in 70 A.D. (as a Jew I ought to say C.E., since as far as I’m concerned I’m not living in the year of anybody’s lord, but I recognize that one has to make compromises) and with it what was left of the Jewish nation.
The deracinated Jews began to scatter all over the world, and as they did so they figured that, since there was no longer a group of people whose job it was to keep track, it might not be a bad idea to start writing this stuff down. A century or two later somebody collected everything he could get his hands on and wrote a sort of Cliffs Notes to the oral Torah called the Mishnah (which later on got its own Cliffs Notes, called the Talmud). The problem was that by this time Rabbi Yochanan, living in Yavne, had written one thing, while Rabbi Akiva in Bene Berak had written another, and Rabbi Tarphon in Lod yet another, either because they remembered things differently or because they figured the instruction manual could do with a little updating, and there was nobody to say which of them was right, so the Mishnah and the Talmud had to include all of them. In this way, these texts are kind of like the anti-Pope. When the Pope speaks ex cathedra in the Vatican, that’s the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, forever and ever, or at least for a century or two until the Church is shamed into recanting it. In the Talmud, when anybody says anything under any circumstances, sure, what the hell, the more the merrier, that’s true too.
This is all a very idyllic view of the matter, to be sure. Yes, for many Jews the question is often more important in theory than the answer, but nowadays that doesn’t stop crazy people from feuding viciously with other crazy people because one of them used the wrong knife to kill a chicken. But if we’re talking about the Judeo-Christian tradition—or, we might as well say, the Judaic tradition—then I see no reason not to go by what we think it used to be rather than what it happens to be today. Why shouldn’t we be able to Norman Rockwellize our past just as delusionally as the goyim?
“So what I’m thinking,” I said to Mike, having explained all this, “is that, if ‘Judaic tradition’ means something completely different from ‘Judeo-Christian tradition,’ maybe the ‘Judaic tradition of marriage’ means something completely different from the ‘Judeo-Christian tradition of marriage.’”
“Maybe it means that you have to obey me.”
HGTV Urban Oasis Giveaway cards left to fill out: 4,765.
HGTV Urban Oasis Giveaway envelopes left to address: 4,800.
The answer, I was not surprised to learn after another day at the library, is yes, the Judaic tradition of marriage means something very, very different. Very, very, very different.
Divorce and remarriage, for example, have always been part of the Jewish marital tradition (in contrast to Jesus, who said, “Whosoever shall put away his wife and marry another committeth adultery against her, and if a woman shall put away her husband, and be married to another, she committeth adultery,” I’m looking at you, Newt Gingrich). The Talmudic divorce laws are, unfortunately, pretty sexist, but there are also some surprising exceptions. On the one hand, only a man can initiate a divorce, which suggests that an unhappy wife has little recourse. On the other hand, the ketubah is a serious matter: If a man divorces his wife and it’s her first marriage, he has to pay her, depending on the authority you consult, either a) enough money to buy a minimum of a hundred goats, b) enough money for the interest to buy a minimum of a hundred goats a year, or c) enough money for the interest to support her for the rest of her life. Subsequent marriages have the same rules but it’s only fifty goats instead of a hundred. (I must point out that the goat is my unit of measurement, not the Talmud’s. The actual sum involved is two hundred zuzim, but it’s been centuries since anybody knew how much a zuz was worth, so I went by the traditional Passover song about a child whose father buys a goat for two zuzim. According to this reckoning, two hundred zuzim would buy a hundred goats. A goat these days will run you somewhere between $100 and $350, which means the ketubah was worth up to $70,000, but that would be in B.C. dollars, which don’t exist; the best I can do is to say that $70,000 in 1800 A.D. would be worth $885,710.32 today, but the calculation is artificial enough that I’d rather just stick with the goats.)
Furthermore, even if her husband doesn’t want to divorce her, a woman who wants to leave him can sue to have the court force him to do so, and there were at least some periods during Jewish history during which she pretty much automatically won. If the court finds in favor of the wife and the husband refuses to divorce her, he’s beaten until he consents. The list of reasons a woman can sue for divorce is extensive and includes things like providing her clothing inappropriate for her age, and, stunningly, failing to meet his sexual obligations to her.
The sages make this very clear: sexual pleasure is the woman’s right and the man’s obligation. Different frequencies are required depending on the man’s occupation, so that a man of independent means, for example, has to offer his wife sex every day (though if he has several wives he just has to rotate through them daily); the Mishnah goes on to tell us that the frequency with which other men must offer their wives sex is, “for laborers, twice a week; for ass-drivers, once a week; for camel-drivers, once in thirty days; for sailors, once in six months. These are the rulings of Rabbi Eliezer.” A man has a duty to make sure his wife enjoys sex; he also has to keep an eye out for indications that she’s in the mood and offer it to her without her having to ask for it.
More succinctly put, the Talmud says that a man has to have sex with his wife on demand or she can divorce him and take him for a whole lot of goats.
Now I know why I think of myself as the girl.
Adultery, on the other hand, unlike divorce and women’s sexual pleasure, is an issue on which we’re in perfect agreement with Christians; after all, it says it right there in the ninth Commandment, Exodus 20:14: “Thou shalt not commit adultery.” If a woman commits adultery her husband can either divorce her (paying her the appropriate number of goats) or sue her. If he sues her and she’s found guilty, she’s stoned to death, unless she’s the daughter of a priest, in which case she’s burned alive; either way, the man with whom she committed adultery magically dies at the same time. The Talmud is vague on the mechanics of this, but I find myself hoping that it’s just like the Skeksis and the Mystics in The Dark Crystal, and wherever he is he’s just suddenly pummeled to death with invisible rocks or he spontaneously combusts (I should note that my friend the Orthodox gay ex-rabbi calligrapher says he doesn’t remember this, but it came from a source that was full of other stuff he said was on the money, so I stand by it). If the woman is found innocent, her husband is flogged and has to pay her two years’ worth of a skilled laborer’s salary.
(All of this is theoretical, by the way; after the temple was destroyed there were no priests and therefore no priests’ daughters to burn alive.)
According to the Talmud if the man is married, and the woman is single, then it’s not adultery. A man can have as many wives as he desires, although with a mind to his obligation to give each one sexual pleasure (remember, he rotates through the list) rabbis recommend four as a practical upper limit, so that no wife goes too long without the opportunity for sex. Premarital sex, although the rabbis frowned on it from a societal point of view, is actually fine as far as God is concerned.
Judaism tends to be pretty sex-positive in general; the Vilna Gaon says that one ought to get an erection while studying Torah, and the eighteenth-century founder of Hasidic Judaism explains that the reason Jews rock back and forth while praying is that prayer is sex with the feminine aspect of God.
Whoops. Mike’s home. Time to argue about what proportion of the cupcakes for the reception will be chocolate. I myself don’t see the need for more than two or three non-chocolate cupcakes, but Mike has promised me a persuasive argument for a one-third chocolate, one-third lemon, and one-third red velvet split.
No ketubah yet, but it turns out that, according to the Talmud, a ketubah written on the horn of a cow is valid, so we may have more options than I realized.
HGTV Urban Oasis Giveaway cards left to fill out: 4,765.
HGTV Urban Oasis Giveaway envelopes left to address: 4,800.
Prostitution—this has to be the last day I spend at the library, because it’s really cutting into my HGTV-Urban-Oasis-Giveaway-card-filling-out time—is technically against the rules. However, the Talmud tells some interesting stories about rabbis who, as they traveled from city to city, would send ahead a week or so before their arrival so that when they got to town they could ask, “Who will be my wife for the night?” The town would produce a suitable woman (it’s unclear to me whether she had any say in the matter), the rabbi would marry her, they would spend the night doing the sorts of things one imagines they might do, and then the next day they would divorce, at which point the town would pay her the divorce settlement of a hundred goats (and she would be free to marry again if she liked). Which seems like a high price to pay even for a night of unimaginable ecstasy, but hey, I paid $12.50 to see Season of the Witch, so who am I to talk?
The Talmud doesn’t love jacking off. Here’s one place where the goyim have it easier than we do, at least as far as men go. Judaism takes very seriously God’s command to “be fruitful and multiply,” and, while few sages go so far as to forbid masturbation entirely, nobody’s particularly fond of the idea of spilling seed. (Rabbi Ishmael commands, “Thou shalt not practice masturbation either with hand or with foot”; when I got back from the library this afternoon I spent twenty minutes trying to maneuver myself into a position from which I could masturbate with my foot. When I finally managed it, I was good for about ten seconds before feeling spasms of excruciating pain in some leg muscle I didn’t know I had, so all I can say is that Rabbi Ishmael must have been one flexible bastard. Luckily my failure did not impede my ability to write the cards for the HGTV Urban Oasis Giveaway.) Here again the law is mute when it comes to women, so apparently they’re free to masturbate to their hearts’ content.
Anal and oral sex are both fine. “Meat which comes from the slaughterhouse,” points out one rabbi when asked about this, “may be eaten salted, roasted, cooked, or boiled; so with fish from the fishmonger.” And what about the fact that a male orgasm during anal or oral sex spills seed nonprocreatively? Apparently this isn’t a problem “unless it is his intention to destroy the seed and it is his habit always to do so. However, if it is occasional and the desire of his heart is to come upon his wife in an unnatural way [i.e., anally or orally], it is permitted.”
When it comes to abortion—not that Mike and I are likely to have to confront the question, but what the hell, it was only a few more pages of reading—for the first forty days a fetus is “considered to be mere water,” and the majority opinion seems to be therefore that abortion during that time is no problem. After that, the fetus is alive, but still most certainly not a person, and its life is absolutely less important than its mother’s. Though there were some conservatives who dissented, most rabbis agreed that the moment at which it becomes a human being is when it has come halfway out of its mother’s body; others went further still and argued that a newborn isn’t human until its thirteenth day. I don’t suppose they allowed infanticide if a baby was born and a week later you decided you didn’t want it, but there it is.
On the question of homosexuality the Talmud is, alas, less enlightened than one would wish; anal sex between two men is forbidden (though now that I think about it I didn’t find anything on the books prohibiting anal sex when you’re talking about more thantwo men, so maybe orgies and double penetration are exempt). The sages are silent, however, about any other kind of gay male sex, and, though what little they say about lesbian sex is disapproving, it’s extraordinarily half-hearted. So the Judaic part of the Judeo-Christian tradition allows guys to suck each other’s cocks till the cows come home, and women can do whatever they want with each other as long as they don’t mind the occasional finger being wagged at them.
(Furthermore, for the Biblically prescribed punishment to be carried out, there have to be two witnesses. There’s a great story in the Talmud about a rabbi who catches two guys screwing. He says, wait, you’re screwing, you’re not allowed to do that. And they say, “Yes, but you are one, and we are two.”)
One of the best books I found was by Steven Greenberg, the first openly gay Orthodox rabbi. Called Wrestling with God and Man: Homosexuality in the Jewish Tradition, it proposes a new interpretation of the Biblical passages we’ve read heretofore as forbidding gay anal sex; Greenberg suggests, compellingly, a reading of the text that leaves sexual orientation and position alone and forbids any intercourse, gay or straight, whose purpose is to degrade or humiliate (which I suppose might be unhappy news to S/M fetishists but my guess is that they’re not too concerned with the Talmudic correctness of what they’re up to). He acknowledges that this gay-friendly interpretation flies in the face of thousands of years of Jewish tradition—except I suspect he would probably also say that it’s completely in line with thousands of years of Jewish tradition, which is all about arguing, reinterpreting, and continually rediscovering the meaning of a living text.
“So what you’re telling me,” said Mike after I shared what I had learned with him, “is that the Judeo-Christian tradition of marriage actually includes divorce, polygamy, prostitution, abortion, and gay oral sex?”
“And gay orgies and double penetration. Don’t forget the gay orgies and double penetration.”
“Somebody better tell Rick Santorum.”
HGTV Urban Oasis Giveaway cards left to fill out: 4,621.
HGTV Urban Oasis Giveaway envelopes left to address: 4,700.
Yesterday my stepmother (who when I’d mentioned early on that I had no idea what kind of a wedding I wanted or how many people I wanted to invite looked at me as if I’d just eaten a baby) asked me where we were registered, and I told her about my plan to have a friend email everybody and tell them to donate to charity.
“No,” said my stepmother.
“What do you mean, no? You were supposed to say, how selfless of you.”
“I mean, no. It’s fine to tell people to give money to charity, but you also have to register somewhere, because if people want to give you a real gift, it’s inconsiderate not to let them.”
So, after she remained unswayed despite all my efforts, Mike and I have registered at Z Gallerie, which is the gayest store on the face of the earth.
It is one of the world’s great tragedies that the physical Z Gallerie store in New York is no longer open, because when Mike and I needed a vacation but couldn’t actually take one it used to be almost enough to go there and spend a few hours wandering among their collection of gewgaws, statuary, art, glass, and cute kitchen paraphernalia. Sconces made out of iron, sconces made out of silver, sconces made out of pewter, sconces made out of wood. Art deco end tables. And kitschy stuff, but classy kitsch, like black bat sunglasses for Hallowe’en that actually make you look sexy, or silver moose salt and pepper shakers. At least half of their wares involve either mirrors or feathers or both. Z Gallerie was where Mike got the purple star Christmas tree ornament that started this whole thing in the first place. Really, the best way I can think of to describe Z Gallerie is to say that it sells Gay Stuff. You walk in and you’re breathing gay dust.
So here are some of the things we’ve registered for (following the principle that there should be gifts at all price ranges, for guests at all income levels):
Scented candles (Sandalwood, Tuscan Blood, Madagascar Spice, Bali Lime Papaya, Egyptian Bergamot, Tunisian Jasmine).
A set of glasses whose rims are cut on the diagonal.
A set of copper napkin rings cast to look like pheasants, with feathers attached.
(See? Gay, gay, gay.)
Terracotta placemats.
Mirrored sconces.
Sconces with feathers.
Mirrored sconces with feathers.
Various vases, lamps, and tables united only by their utter gayness.
A copper fountain for the garden. A coffee table that looks like a seventeenth-century expedition trunk. An art deco chaise longue. Carved panels for the wall.
Something that has a mirror and feathers on it and I don’t even know what it’s for but it’s gorgeous.
WE’RE SO GAY.
Meanwhile, I have asked Sarah (my accomplice on the reality show) to send the following email to all the people we’ve invited.
Dear Potential Guest at Mike and Joel’s Wedding,
I hope you’re as excited as I am that Mike and Joel are finally tying the knot. I’m writing because I just had a conversation with them that seems worth mentioning to other guests.
What Mike and Joel want most for their wedding is for us all to be there to share the occasion with them, but for those of us interested in celebrating with a gift, they’re hoping we’ll make donations in their honor to Doctors Without Borders, Freedom to Marry, or another charity important to us. If you can’t bear to mark the event without a physical gift, they’re registered at Z Gallerie, but they would be happy with anything it pleased you to give them.
Sincerely yours,
Sarah
It’s too bad Z Gallerie doesn’t carry Karl Rove’s head.
Of course, they could always get a shipment in next week.
Then they could cover it in mirrors and feathers and sell it to us.
HGTV Urban Oasis Giveaway cards left to fill out: 4,591.
HGTV Urban Oasis Giveaway envelopes left to address: 4,628.
And now I wish to God we had been slightly less gay and registered, like normal people, at Sears or something, because our dishwasher broke yesterday, and when the plumber came out to take a look at it he told us we had to replace it. I have therefore moved the portable dishwasher up from the basement so that our dishes can still get clean while we look for a new one.
Mike and I bought this house from the daughters of the ninety-year-old man who had been living in it for fifty years, the last twenty alone after his wife died. When we moved in, the kitchen was an empty box containing literally nothing but a small refrigerator and a beat-up sink, so changing that was high on our list of priorities. I found some cabinetry on Craigslist, and Mike called a plumber about installing appliances. “The sink can go there,” Mike said when we were making plans, “and the stove can go there.”
“What about the dishwasher?” I said.
“What do you mean? We’re not getting a dishwasher.”
“Um, yes, we are.” We had never lived together before, and though we had talked about a lot of the conflicts we might face this was not a problem we had foreseen.
“No, we’re not. I’ve never had a dishwasher, and I wouldn’t use one if we got it.”
“You think having a dishwasher is a sign of moral weakness, don’t you?” I said.
“Honey, of course having a dishwasher is a sign of moral weakness,” he replied. “You’re the one who’s deluding yourself by saying it’s not.”
So the next day, without consulting Mike, I went out and bought a portable dishwasher off Craigslist, which enraged him when he found out what I’d done, and then that night I cooked dinner using every single container in the kitchen.
The problem, we realized gradually, was that I had grown up in a home where the person who cooked the food was exempt from doing the dishes, while Mike had grown up in a home where the person who cooked the food also did the dishes (usually this person was him). So when he cooks, he uses one bowl or pot or pan and cleans up as he goes and after dinner there are exactly three things to be cleaned: the bowl or pot or pan he cooked the food in, the utensils he made and ate it with, and the plates he ate it from. Whereas when I cook, the list of things that need to be cleaned swells by, for an average dinner, another two bowls, three pots, five pans, six knives, the garlic press, the colander, the Cuisinart, the blender, the counter, the floor, and occasionally the ceiling. (You can see how I would be inconvenienced by the disappearance of the pot and pan lids I put in the basement when I was mad at Mike, which are STILL MISSING, by the way.) So for the first several months of our cohabitation, I would create these extravagant messes in the kitchen and then not clean them up, because that was Mike’s job, while Mike sat and simmered in growing resentment and didn’t clean them up, because it was my job. “Every time you called me and told me you’d baked me a pie,” he later told me, “I was filled with dread of what I was going to come home and see in the kitchen.”
Eventually I persuaded Mike to install an actual dishwasher, putting the portable one in the basement; over time we’ve both managed to move toward the middle, and these days the cooking and the cleaning up both migrate vaguely between us. But it’s too bad Z Gallerie doesn’t have a mirror-and-feather-covered dishwasher, because this battered old portable thing isn’t going to last long.
HGTV Urban Oasis Giveaway cards left to fill out: 4,409.
HGTV Urban Oasis Giveaway envelopes left to address: 4,572.
Today is the day I had to send the travel agent the balance of the honeymoon payment, but, inexplicably, no publisher called me at the last minute to offer me a huge advance for my next book, and no producer called me at the last minute to offer me a huge advance for my next show, even though I was totally ready for the money to appear, so the only way I was able to pay for the honeymoon was to steal one of Mike’s checks, forge his signature, and deposit it in my account.
The way I see it, I’m still technically paying for the honeymoon. I mean, it was my account number I gave the travel agent over the phone, after all.
And I’ll totally pay Mike back, some day, probably, though once we’re happily ensconced in our urban oasis I’m sure he won’t even notice the money is missing.
HGTV Urban Oasis Giveaway cards left to fill out: 4,270.
HGTV Urban Oasis Giveaway envelopes left to address: 4,363.
Here is how my conversation with the guy in the formalwear store yesterday began.
FADE IN:
INT. A FORMALWEAR STORE--DAY
Mike and Joel enter, thrumming with excitement about their impending nuptials.
As Guy in the Formalwear Store comes obsequiously up to him:
JOEL
Hi, I called earlier. My fiancé and I are here to be fitted for morning clothes.
GUY IN THE FORMALWEAR STORE
Oh, yes. Step this way and let me take your measurements.
MIKE
Please don’t tell us what the numbers are.
GUY IN THE FORMALWEAR STORE
There are no numbers in this store.
JOEL
We love you.
Here is how it continued in my fantasy world:
GUY IN THE FORMALWEAR STORE
All right, here are your sets of morning clothes, each complete with top hat, dove gray waistcoat, dashing ascot, shoes, and lemon gloves.
JOEL
(as they exit) Thank you so much!
FADE TO BLACK.
Here, alas, is how it actually continued:
GUY IN THE FORMALWEAR STORE
(indicating dummy with set of morning clothes on it)
All right, so we’ll get together sets of morning clothes for both of you with the options you requested, using this combination as a base.
JOEL
Great! I see the waistcoat is just a false front, though; I’d love an actual waistcoat.
GUY IN THE FORMALWEAR STORE
Why? You’ll just sweat through the whole ceremony.
JOEL
You’re probably right, but I’d still love an actual waistcoat.
GUY IN THE FORMALWEAR STORE
Well, we don’t have any.
JOEL
(after a pause)
Hmm. Maybe I can just wear one of the ones I have at home.
MIKE
Sweetheart, I’m not sure any of those still fit you.
JOEL
Shut up.
(to Guy in the Formalwear Store)
Okay. How about a top hat?
GUY IN THE FORMALWEAR STORE
Gee, we don’t have many of those.
JOEL
(under his breath)
But you’re a formalwear store.
GUY IN THE FORMALWEAR STORE
Let me go check in the back and see what’s in stock.
He leaves. He returns with a gray top hat.
GUY IN THE FORMALWEAR STORE
This is the only one we have, and I
think it’s probably too big for you.
JOEL
Why don’t I try it on, just to see?
He tries the hat on. It engulfs him.
GUY IN THE FORMALWEAR STORE
Yeah, that’s what I thought.
JOEL
You’re sure there are no more back there?
GUY IN THE FORMALWEAR STORE
There are, but they’re black.
JOEL
Oh, great! Could you take a look, please?
GUY IN THE FORMALWEAR STORE
You can’t wear a black top hat with morning clothes at a wedding. Only gray.
JOEL
Actually, that’s a myth that sprang up when they stopped manufacturing silk plush after the last looms used to weave it were destroyed in the owner’s bitter feud with his brother, who--
Guy in the Formalwear Store exits mid-sentence. He returns with two black top hats.
JOEL
Oh, thanks!
He tries one of the hats on. It fits. Mike tries the other hat on. It also fits.
GUY IN THE FORMALWEAR STORE
This just looks so wrong to me.
JOEL
No, I promise, the gray top hat thing really is a myth, it--
GUY IN THE FORMALWEAR STORE
I know what it’s supposed to look like.
JOEL
(to Mike, under his breath)
Is there a copy of Modern Bride I can hit this guy with?
(to Guy in the formalwear store)
Well, I appreciate your patience with us. If I ask for an ascot, it’ll be real, right? Not a clip-on?
GUY IN THE FORMALWEAR STORE
Yes, it’ll be real.
JOEL
That’s terrific. Now, about the gloves--
MIKE
Joel, I really don’t want to wear gloves. Can we leave?
GUY IN THE FORMALWEAR STORE
Come and pick these up the day before the wedding.
JOEL
Thank you.
GUY IN THE FORMALWEAR STORE
It still looks wrong.
JOEL
No, really, they--
MIKE
Honey.
JOEL
Thank you.
(under his breath as they leave)
It’s a myth.
FADE TO BLACK.
HGTV Urban Oasis Giveaway cards left to fill out: 4,026.
HGTV Urban Oasis Giveaway envelopes left to address: 4,188.
I went by the Brooklyn Botanic Garden today to fill out some paperwork. It had spaces for “Bride” and “Groom.”
“You folks need to fix this,” I said.
“Tell me about it,” said the obviously lesbian woman (blue spiky hair, three nose rings, “Dykes Rule!” button) behind the counter.
So I crossed out “Bride” and wrote in “Groom.” And I laughed at how an entire architecture of prejudice could be toppled with the stroke of a pen.
HGTV Urban Oasis Giveaway cards left to fill out: 3,865.
HGTV Urban Oasis Giveaway envelopes left to address: 4,012.
“You should talk about our wedding as part of the fight against injustice,” I said to Rachel, “but it can’t be just about fighting marriage inequality or even fighting discrimination against same-sexers. That’s not enough. Injustice in the world reaches so much farther and so much deeper than that. If people leave the wedding thinking only about trying to make the world better for same-sexers then I feel like we’ll have failed. They need to be thinking about trying to make the world better for everybody who’s oppressed, in any way, anywhere.”
“Got it,” she said. “Do you have a ketubah yet?”
HGTV Urban Oasis Giveaway cards left to fill out: 3,644.
HGTV Urban Oasis Giveaway envelopes left to address: 4,012.
WE HAVE A KETUBAH! And it’s purple! I have no idea what led Mike to approve it even though it’s such an extravagant color; I think it was at least in part that it looks Artistic. But I don’t care, because at last I can stop worrying about the damn thing.
HGTV Urban Oasis Giveaway cards left to fill out: 3,453.
HGTV Urban Oasis Giveaway envelopes left to address: 3,978.
Yesterday we received an RSVP in the mail from Mike’s cousins (who we already knew wouldn’t be able to come). It read something like this:
Dear Mike and Joel,
Thank you for the invitation to your wedding. Since we’re Catholic and follow the Church’s teaching, we can’t accept, but we send you all our love and hope that the day is a wonderful one.
Love,
George and Frances
At first when I read this I was just nonplussed. I mean, it’s 2010; who sends an RSVP like that in 2010?
But as the day wore on, I started to get angry. First of all, the correct way to decline an invitation is, “George and Frances regret that they will be unable to accept the very kind invitation of Joel Derfner and Michael Combs on Sunday, the tenth of October.” Note that doing so involves no mention of why George and Frances are declining or what they might or might not believe about the wedding and its validity.
I showed the note to Mike when he got home. “Look, Joel,” he said, “Frances is the one who talks about everybody in the family behind their backs.”
“Maybe she didn’t understand what she was doing.”
“She understood exactly what she was doing. Remember, she read your last book and then called everybody she could think of to talk about how scandalous it was that I was dating a stripper.”
“She did what?”
“Whoops. I thought I told you that.”
“But she was so nice to me when I met her.”
“That’s Frances for you. I’m sure she was drunk when she wrote this, anyway. Just let it go.”
But I couldn’t let it go. I grew angrier and angrier, and when we went to bed I lay awake, tossing and turning. Finally I had an idea, got up, did some Googling, and found that an organization such as I had in mind did indeed exist. This allowed me to write (on handmade Nepalese paper, no less) and send the following letter today:
Dear George and Frances,
Thank you so much for your kind note; of course we understand why you can’t attend. We felt our wedding wouldn’t be a true celebration, however, without having you involved in some way, so we made donations in your honor to Freedom to Marry and to SNAP, the Survivors’ Network of those Abused by Priests.
We hope you’re well and we look forward to seeing you some time soon.
Love,
Joel and Mike
(Sometimes even I am impressed by my evil genius.)
When I told Mike about the response I’d written, he laughed and said, “You should send it. It would serve her right.”
“Oh, I already did.”
“Please tell me you’re joking.”
“Okay, I’m joking.”
“You’re not joking, are you?”
“No.”
Let this be a lesson, by the by, that etiquette is neither “stupid rules about which fork to use” nor “just about making people feel comfortable,” both of which descriptions I have seen offered as definitions. Dinnerware and social lubrication do indeed find themselves under the umbrella of etiquette, but they are joined there by techniques for smiling sweetly at your adversaries as you cut their hearts out.
HGTV Urban Oasis Giveaway cards left to fill out: 3,322.
HGTV Urban Oasis Giveaway envelopes left to address: 3,867.
We forgot to buy rings.
HGTV Urban Oasis Giveaway cards left to fill out: 3,235.
HGTV Urban Oasis Giveaway envelopes left to address: 3,745.
The Department of Justice is visiting Mike’s hospital—I think this has something to do with the woman who showed up in the emergency room, waited for twenty-five hours to be seen, and died, though I must point out that this happened a full three weeks before Mike started working there; eventually they named a conference room after her, which makes me angry, because I think she should have gotten at least a wing if not an entire building—so I’ve volunteered to take care of the rings.
I have determined that, given the postage for the HGTV Urban Oasis Giveaway, along with the portion of my own money I have left to spend on the honeymoon, my budget for wedding rings is twenty dollars. I would just steal more money from Mike, but I think he’s discovered the earlier theft, because he’s moved his checkbook to somewhere I can’t find it.
HGTV Urban Oasis Giveaway cards left to fill out: 3,178.
HGTV Urban Oasis Giveaway envelopes left to address: 3,745.
I am making very little headway on the HGTV Urban Oasis Giveaway entries. I have done the calculations and if I allocate eight hours per day to sleep and an hour and a half to meals and hygiene, then to get them all done in time I have to fill out roughly one card or envelope every waking minute.
This is not going to happen.
So I posted an ad on Craigslist a few hours ago, under the heading $50 to help me with tedious task on sunday. I couldn’t decide which category to put it in, so after considering Labor and Event I finally went with Writing, figuring that sometimes it’s okay to be exceedingly literal. I wrote a funny paragraph describing the situation and then said, “The only requirements are that you have decent handwriting and that you be entertaining, because if I’m going to spend four hours with you doing a task this boring I want the conversation to take my mind off the soul-numbing tedium.”
I’ve received a number of responses so far, but only a few from people who were even mildly amusing, so I’ve contacted them, along with one who wasn’t particularly amusing but whose email signature was the URL for his profile on modelmayhem.com. I took a look and wrote him back immediately, forbearing to tell him that I would double his pay if he did the gig shirtless or that I was open to more involved arrangements as well.
HGTV Urban Oasis Giveaway cards left to fill out: 3,078.
HGTV Urban Oasis Giveaway envelopes left to address: 3,745.
It looks as if I’ll have four or five people to help me tomorrow (depending on whether I ask the model to fill out cards and envelopes or just sit or stand, godlike, off to the side).
HGTV Urban Oasis Giveaway cards left to fill out: 3,078.
HGTV Urban Oasis Giveaway envelopes left to address: 3,745.
God hates me and does not want me to win an apartment in Manhattan. None of the Craigslist people I emailed with showed up. I’m trying to figure out how to continue communicating with the model without being stalkerish, but so far I’m coming up empty.
HGTV Urban Oasis Giveaway cards left to fill out: Never mind.
HGTV Urban Oasis Giveaway envelopes left to address: Fuck you, HGTV.
From: Joel Derfner
To: Mike Combs
Time: 11:26 a.m.
Honey, I found some rings. Take a look at this URL. We can replace them after the wedding, but at least they’ll do for now.
From: Mike Combs
To: Joel Derfner
Time: 1:13 p.m.
At $7.99 apiece, what could go wrong?
HGTV Urban Oasis Giveaway cards left to fill out:
HGTV Urban Oasis Giveaway envelopes left to address:
“Honey, great news!” I said this evening. “I was just talking to a photographer friend of mine and she’s willing to shoot the wedding for a huge discount! We don’t have to go out and buy little disposable Kodak cameras for all our guests and have the photos they take be the only photos of our wedding after all!”
This was a lie. The photographer quoted me her standard rate, which on top of the sixteen dollars for wedding rings is money I don’t even come close to having, but the thought of throwing Kodak mini-cameras at our guests—a plan Mike actually argued for—and ending up with a bunch of photographs of us seen through a delicate haze of cupcake icing is too much for me to bear.
HGTV Urban Oasis Giveaway cards left to fill out:
HGTV Urban Oasis Giveaway envelopes left to address:
I emailed a bunch of my students and told them that if they came over and helped me with the Urban Oasis Giveaway cards and envelopes I would feed them pizza and beer. Several of them showed up and made short work of the afternoon, and I am much closer to my goal of moving back to Manhattan.
HGTV Urban Oasis Giveaway cards left to fill out: 1,837.
HGTV Urban Oasis Giveaway envelopes left to address: 2,044.
I just got back from Home Depot—I almost called Mike to tell him that I was there of my own volition—where I did the butchest thing I’ve ever done in my entire life, which was use a saw to cut pieces of wood to make poles for the chuppah.
Then I spent twenty minutes trying to decide whether or not to paint them mulberry, which brought the butch factor right back down into the negatives again, but still, it was an exhilarating moment.
HGTV Urban Oasis Giveaway cards left to fill out: 1,523.
HGTV Urban Oasis Giveaway envelopes left to address: 1,809.
“There’s all this God,” I wailed to Rachel on the phone today after reading the outline of the ceremony she’d sent me along with the texts to be recited in various places.
“Well, you said you wanted a traditional Jewish ceremony.”
“Yeah, but not one with God in it. God doesn’t exist. The universe is a cruel, caliginous, uncaring wasteland. I don’t want my wedding to be full of a lie. We have to start over.”
“Joel, the ceremony is in two days. We’re not starting over. But let me take a look at what we’ve got and see what I can come up with. Where it says, ‘in the name of God,’ I can definitely substitute ‘in the name of love.’ Would that be a good start?”
“Yes.”
HGTV Urban Oasis Giveaway cards left to fill out: 1,369.
HGTV Urban Oasis Giveaway envelopes left to address: 1,487.
I picked up the clothes from the formalwear store with three minutes to spare before they closed.
And I must have done something really, really bad in a past life, because the ascot is a clip-on.
I’m going to look like a mountebank at my own wedding.
Tomorrow.
HGTV Urban Oasis Giveaway cards left to fill out: 1,024.
HGTV Urban Oasis Giveaway envelopes left to address: 1,245.