“Thanks, Karen, but I got it. Really, I’ve been dressing myself for a while now. Jeff hardly has to help me at all.”
My sister does not laugh. She’s as stressed out as I am by having too many people around and too little time to herself.
“What you could do is talk to Reverend Cole until it’s time. When I peeked out she was standing alone, which has got to be awkward. I’d really appreciate it if you could make her feel welcome. Maybe introduce her to Mom? And Jeff’s parents.”
“Sure, I can do that.”
“Thanks. Jeff’s mom is Donna, and his dad is Jeff, too, in case you forgot.”
“I didn’t. See you in a bit.”
Once Karen closes the door to the bedroom, I’m alone for what feels like the first time in a week. Even in the bathroom, people have come in to pee while I was in the shower. “It’s me, Matt. Lindsey. Sorry, but I couldn’t wait,” she called. “Just stay in there a second, until I’m done.” It’s not easy hosting guests in a one-bathroom house.
I showered first today. My shave is close, my haircut recent and a little too short, my shoes shined, my new suit pressed. It’s identical to my first navy suit except a larger size to accommodate the last twenty-five years. The tie still fits, though.
Jeff, the healthy bastard, is wearing his original suit, purchased for a commitment ceremony with no legal standing, also navy but double breasted. The trousers are snug against his hard thighs. “That’s what thirty years of running will do,” he announced when he tried it on.
“Now aren’t you sorry you don’t sleep in like me?”
“Spoken like a true couch potato.”
“Your couch potato.”
“Exactly.” He examined the brass buttons, which were tarnished. “Which is the whole reason we’re doing this.”
This meant a real wedding like we should have had the first go-round. We hunted down the guests who’d attended our first ceremony, praise God for Facebook and LinkedIn. Time and the job market scattered people, but we found nearly everybody and agreed to a days-long sleepover for those who couldn’t afford hotels, although now I wish we’d thought that through. The invitation list grew with current friends and more family than we’d had then.
We held the original commitment ceremony in our friends’ backyard, but Pat and Lydia’s place is too small for the expanded crowd even without the deck taking up a third of it.
At least our jobs are stable and let us stay local. We bought this house nearly a decade ago, and our standard joke is that we hope to have it fully renovated within another three or four. The yard isn’t especially nice, but it’s big and flat, which is really all you need for an outdoor wedding. I check my tie in the mirror, which is tilted wrong for me. It would be easy enough to adjust it so we can both use it, but that’s the kind of job that can always wait. I can’t see most of my head, but the knotted silk at my throat looks good. A postcard from Jeff’s brother is tucked into the frame of the mirror. A beach at sunset. I can’t remember where they went, but our disagreement about our “real” honeymoon after today’s wedding is still painful.
Jeff wants to go someplace fabulous. “Aruba? No, Tahiti. Or Paris! How many times are we going to get married, ya big lug? Let’s splurge.”
“Let’s gut the bathroom instead. We could get years of pleasure from a new one, instead of a week.”
“Redoing the bathroom isn’t exactly romantic.”
“But it’s what we were saving up for when the legislature saw the light.”
I finally wore him down, but I still feel bad that I can’t take him to Paris and Tahiti. Maybe if I can keep my truck running for two more years. Maybe.
A fast peek out the gap between the curtains, and I see nearly all our guests have arrived. I’d been grateful for the sunshine and warm temperatures earlier, but despite the white tent keeping direct sunlight at bay, Mom is fanning herself and leaning on Donna a little. The chemo is kicking her butt.
In a perfect world, Dad would be here for her if not for me. Karen reports he’s really great about doing every little thing for her, anticipating her needs, making light of lifting her into their high bed, announcing he can’t tell her wig from her hair, which is a flat-out lie. But Dad made it clear when I came out of the closet that he no longer had a son. Unlike most people, his stance has not softened with passing years and changing public opinion. Mom and I phone and email, arranging to see one another pretty often, but even when she felt like shit on toast, Mom made sure Dad and I wouldn’t run into each other at the hospital.
If she doesn’t beat this damned cancer, fuck him. I’m sitting right in front at the funeral, my husband Jeff at my side. If Dad can’t breathe the same air as his queer son, let him be the one who stays away.
The thought makes me both sad and angry. Karen and I agree Mom falls way short of being forthcoming about her health, and there’s only one reason she’d do that. This makes us worry more. I haven’t said it to Karen or Jeff, but I think we’re going to lose her.
My vision blurs at the thought of putting my mom, who loves me no matter what, into the ground. It’s going to happen. Maybe not from this goddamned cancer, maybe not for years to come, but someday. An invisible fist grabs my upper belly and twists from the inside. Fuck, I can’t be thinking about that today. If I go out there and ask her to be honest about how she’s doing, I know what she’d say so well I can hear it in my head. “Matt, honey, we can talk about me some other time. Today is your day, yours and Jeff’s, and all I want in this world is for you two to be happy.”
I pick up the framed picture from our first ceremony. It seems almost funny now, especially our hair and Jeff’s looking like a very serious twelve-year-old. But the memories swirl.
*
“Pat says there aren’t any more chairs.” Lydia pronounced the shortage as she might a death sentence.
“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “Anybody who comes a little late can stand over by the fence.”
“The neighbors play bridge. I bet they have at least four chairs. Maybe eight or twelve.”
“It’s fine. We read through it, and it’s short. People can stand that long.”
“And if anybody can’t,” Jeff added, “I’m sure someone with a seat will give it up. You ready?”
“I’ve been ready for the last four years.”
Jeff beamed. “Me, too, big guy. Me, too.”
The late afternoon sun sprinkled golden coins on our guests seated in rows and sparkled off the legs of the folding chairs as they sank into the grass a bit.
“At least the rain stopped for us,” I said.
“It sounds sappy,” Jeff said, “but may the sun always shine for us, huh?”
“I’m good with sappy.”
We stepped onto the concrete patio. Everyone lifted their heads and stopped talking. My big sister Karen, in the front row, was first to stand, giving me a thumbs-up and a huge smile. Her support eased my nerves a little, but it also reminded me my parents had chosen not to be here. Or Dad had, anyway, and he’d swayed Mom. Donna and Jeff Senior sat beside Karen, ghastly smiles frozen on their faces. What were they thinking? His father openly disapproved of Jeff’s “choice,” by which he meant being gay, although I guess he probably didn’t approve of me, either, being a big fat queer and all.
Our friend Mara took the bus all the way from Boston to officiate. Since our commitment ceremony was for us, not for the government, it didn’t matter that she was not an ordained minister but ran an underground bookstore-cum-coffeehouse that clung to the hippie spirit of its original owner, who’d sold it for next to nothing and left for Nepal.
She wore a flowing blue dress belted with shiny gold ropes, and a crown of flowers nested among her curls. I grinned when I saw her bare feet step onto the little platform Jeff and I had built the previous weekend.
“Good thing we sanded before we painted,” I whispered to Jeff. We’d given it two coats of white paint after work during the week. The lattice behind it came whitewashed. We should have painted it, but Lydia made it her project to thread the holes with greenery and artificial flowers in every shade of blue. The effect of Mara framed in flowers was pretty cool.
Jeff and I locked elbows, although I had to bend a little. We agreed we were each our own man, that nobody could or should give us away, although both families wanted to be rid of us. We walked up the aisle between the folding chairs slowly, giving everyone a chance to check us out in our finery. Most of these people had never seen either of us in a suit.
We’d had to nix the idea of flower girl or ring bearer, but white petals lay scattered on the grass aisle. Up close, I could see them under Mara’s bare feet, too. She had one orange toenail.
We stepped onto the platform in unison, just like we’d practiced.
Mara’s big smile was genuine.
“Jeff and Matt,” she said, loud enough to be heard, “today you are surrounded by people who hold you dear. We come together to celebrate you, to witness your vows, and to rejoice at your union.”
We’d struggled with the wording when we wrote the ceremony together. It started as all the people you hold dear, but as it became clear my parents would not attend, and that Jeff’s folks could not bring his teenage brother or Karen her kids, that phrasing wasn’t going to work. We held those people dear even if it wasn’t always mutual.
“On this day and all the days to come, we will all remember your love is unique. Yet like all love, it changes and grows. There will come days of a love so much richer and deeper than what you feel today that its strength and size will cause awe. You will be so awash in love that you take it for granted, never doubting one another. We who love you wish you a lifetime of such days together.
“Yet we must acknowledge that love can also dwindle. Because we are humans, because we face pressures and difficulties every single day, because we forget our great love and speak sharply or fail to show our appreciation, one or both of you may fear that the light of your love for one another has gone out. Yet those of us who know you also know it remains, solid and enduring, awaiting its rekindling. A single spark can ignite it. I charge each of you, singly and together, to be the flint.”
We didn’t write that, but I liked it. We’d mailed Mara our first draft, expressing our horror at its quality and asking her to patch the holes and shore it up. Apparently she’d taken that as license to rewrite the whole thing.
“Please take one another’s hands.”
I turned toward Jeff, who gave me an impish smile. He hated being reminded of it, but he was small and cute like an elf, or maybe a hobbit from Houston, as he liked to add with an exaggeration of his slight Texas accent. The contrast with my oafish clumsy self made his compact size all the more noticeable. Despite the sunshine, his hands were cold. I put them both inside my grasp to warm them.
“Do you, Jeffrey, commit your love and life to Matthew, in times of powerful love and in times of weak? Do you promise to respect and cherish him for the man he is, when he is at his best and when he is not? Do you promise to place his happiness on a level equal to your own or greater?”
Again the elfin grin. “I do.” He wriggled his cold hands inside my big paws. “I really do,” he whispered.
“And do you, Matthew, commit your love and life to Jeffrey, in times of powerful love and in times of weak? Do you promise to respect and cherish him for the man he is, when he is at his best and when he is not? Do you promise to place his happiness on a level equal to your own or greater?”
Oh, shit. Shit! I looked upward, willing my eyes not to overflow, but the sun made the tearing worse. The right eye lost it first, quickly followed by the left, and of course the top part of my nose started stinging inside, indicating there was lots more where those two came from.
Tears streaming now, my nose clogged with them, my voice hoarse, I said, “I do.”
Jeffrey pulled his hands from my grasp and clasped them around mine, as much as he could. His voice was soft. “Every person here wishes their man cried at the wedding. Commitment ceremony. I’m going to treasure this, Matt.”
Mara placed one hand on my shoulder, like I was a skittish animal she might soothe. The steadiness of her touch, the strength of her friendship, and her maternal warmth helped. “It’s fine, sweetie. I have a hankie if you need one.”
I sniffled. “I’m good.”
“You’re better than good, and you know it, too,” Jeff said.
“Ready to go on?”
We nodded. Jeff’s smile wasn’t the cute one I knew so well, but from some deeper store of happiness that radiated from his entire face.
Mara raised her voice again. “I now ask that you seal the vows you made to one another by the giving and receiving of rings. Their circle is as eternal as your love. Their metal is as strong as your love. Their gemstones are as beautiful as your love. Jeffrey?”
Now came the scary part, and the reason no children were here. I unzipped the trousers of my new suit and lifted my cock, exposing my balls. Jeff knelt in front of me, crushing petals with the knees of his suit, adding faint perfume to my fear sweat.
A few gasps came from the folding chairs behind us. I was glad neither one of us could see whose they were, although I’d have happily bet on Karen, Donna, and Jeff Senior.
My piercing had fully healed, and it was easy for Jeff to slip the surgical steel post from its position on the bottom of my sac and thread the silvery ring through, then screw tight the metal bead with its small sapphire that held the ring in place.
“Repeat after me,” Mara said. “I, Matthew, commit my life and love to thee, Jeffrey.”
I said the words in a daze. Although it wasn’t heavy, I was overly aware of the ring dangling, the bead and its blue stone at its lowest point. The sensation did not stop when I zipped up and helped Jeff to his feet.
I didn’t have his grace as I got to my knees in front of Jeff. His zipper was stubborn for a moment, but at least no one gasped when it opened audibly. His piercing was simpler and healed earlier than mine. I unscrewed the ball at one end and slipped the steel barbell from the base of his cock, directly before my eyes and just below his pubic curls.
The ring didn’t want to go in, and I was so afraid of hurting him. Finally, he helped by pulling the skin to make the opening in his flesh just a little wider to get me started, then tugging down to make the tunnel through his flesh impossible to miss. I nearly dropped the ball that threaded onto its ends, making the ring a complete circle that twinkled with his emerald, and I was sweating by the time Mara asked Jeff to repeat her words.
They both helped me up. The knees of my new suit were damp, crushed flower petals clinging to the fabric. I was still crying. And committed, for life.
*
“Matt, did you die in there?” Karen again. Shit, we were supposed to walk down the aisle two minutes ago.
“It’s this tie,” I lie, undoing my perfect Windsor knot. “Can you give me a hand?”
She is happy to tie it for me, not as well as I’d had it but with love, which is better. I hurry toward the family room and its French doors leading to the yard, where Jeff and I will meet. We put those doors in ourselves, two years ago, with much swearing and some heated words that required dinner out, a few tears, and an evening of lovemaking to cool.
After so many years together, it often takes something like that to get us started. We talk about our diminishing frequency now and then, agreeing that if we’re both okay with how things are, then it isn’t a problem. “What we have isn’t even about sex,” I remind him. “It’s about love. About us as a unit.”
“What, you want to see my unit?” He leered at me, ending it with a wink.
“Ha-ha. You know what I mean.”
“I do. I just worry that you’re not really okay with it. That you need what I’m not giving you often enough, and that you might get it somewhere else.”
“Oh, right. Like they’re lining up for me.” He doesn’t need to know how every so often some young guy will come on to me, seeking a bear type. I try to be nice while I reject them. I remember perfectly well how scary it is to approach a stranger because you’re so strongly attracted you can’t not approach him. “You’re a nice-looking guy, for sure, but I’m in a committed relationship,” I say, then make conversation for a while, ensuring they know about the places they might meet guys like me, or like themselves.
“You’re woolgathering again,” Karen says.
“Don’t I know it. Every little thing is setting off some memory, you know?”
“Save it for later. Jeff’s waiting.”
“Got it. Go sit with Mom and the kids.”
Her kids aren’t kids anymore, of course, but she still inquired whether there’d be anything piercing-related. I assured her there would not.
Jeff stands at the glass, outwardly calm as always. “Thought you might’ve changed your mind.”
“Thought about changing this tie. It’s okay?”
“It’s fine. You look good. We should dress up once in a while.”
“I’m free most Fridays after six or six thirty.”
This time we walk down the aisle to music from a string quartet in the shade of our willows, which I trimmed high enough to keep the dangling leaves out of their hair. The aisle is real, made of circular pavers we’ll use for a patio. The guests’ chairs and high heels sink into the ground, just like last time.
Reverend Cole leads us through the traditional wedding ceremony, which we’d practiced at the rehearsal because this is really important to Jeff. When his parents’ church officiates gay marriages, when their own pastor Reverend Cole marries me and their son, they have to let go of their bias. Or at least try to.
This time, when we exchange rings, they’re gold bands each with a small stone, the same sapphire and emerald as on those earlier rings many of these guests don’t know about, which we still wear. Right on schedule, I tear up. The guests make that “Aww!” sound people do at baby animals, and I laugh a little right through the tears. Jeff hands me a handkerchief, bought new for the occasion and kind of hard to find in stores.
We’re married, at last, in the eyes of the law, in front of our mothers and his father, our coworkers, our friends and family. As married as anybody. I hadn’t thought it would feel any different, but it does. It feels right, like it’s about fucking time.
*
We feed our guests and give them a little too much to drink. Jeff Senior, Donna, and Karen arrange rides for the people who really shouldn’t be driving, then it’s literally fucking time, and I’m as nervous as a bride as I get into the car, a pristine vintage Lincoln manufactured the year we held our first ceremony, on loan from a friend of Pat and Lydia’s.
I park it with great care in the hotel’s lot and check us in. Do the clerks at the desk, the other guests being waited on or lounging in the lobby, realize we’re just married? Or do they think we’re two businessmen saving our company money by sharing a room?
Upstairs, I lead Jeff to the double doors. The corridor is empty. I unlock the door, blocking him a little, then scoop him in both arms, carrying him across the threshold.
“Oh, my!” Jeff gushes while laughing. “Look at this place!”
I did, before I reserved the suite. It’s perfect, and the management did everything I asked and more. “There’s champagne on ice,” I show him, sweeping my arm at the tray with pearl-draped goblets.
“Crystal flutes!” Jeff says.
Right, flutes. “There’s canapés and fresh fruit. Bubble bath.”
“Seriously?”
“Sure. Don’t you want to take a bubble bath with your new husband?”
“Of course I do. But first I want to fuck his brains out.”
That tells me he’s had a bit much to drink already; he’s not usually that direct. Which is fine, and why I drove. It’s our wedding night. “Right this way.”
The bed is turned down, the sheets sprinkled with a few yellow rose petals.
It’s Jeff’s turn to tear up. “For me?”
“You’re the yellow rose of Texas.”
“I love you so much. Come here.” We kiss, and it only starts out the pure love kind before mutating into the horny kind, with some tongue and bodies pressing through navy suits.
It’s been a while since we did it. Planning a wedding and doing as much of the work yourselves as you can takes all your spare time, for months and months.
“I did something for you, too.” Jeff sounds almost shy.
“What?”
“I’ve been thinking a lot about the first time, the commitment ceremony. God, it was so long ago. And we were so out-there, with our piercings. Nobody straight had them back then.”
“Yeah, probably not. I still love looking at your ring when I give you head.”
“That’s why I put it there, for you to have something beautiful, literally and as a symbol, to look at.”
“Are you trying to make me cry again? Because that handkerchief is already a mess.”
“No. I’m trying to make you happy. Look at what I did for you this time,” he says. His zipper is loud in the stillness.
Oh. My. God! “What is that?”
“It’s called a magic cross. An ampallang piercing—that’s the side to side one—and an apadravya going up and down. With little barbells in each.”
I’m sinking to my knees already. What will all that metal taste like? What will it feel like?
“You be careful,” Jeff says. “The piercer said it’s easy to break a tooth.”
“I bet.” The stupid fucking insurer says I can’t be added to Jeff’s dental plan until after the wedding. I told Jeff he’d better call from Vegas, honeymoon or not. “I’ll be careful.”
“So will I,” he says, “when I put it up your ass.”
The thought of that does something to me. I fold up inside, my needs and desires forgotten in exchange for his. This is my man, my husband, and I am his. I truly want nothing more than whatever my husband wants to give me, including a magic cross I’m not entirely sure I can take. I’ll learn, I know I will.
I wait until morning to tell him about my wedding gift. The things we packed for Vegas will do, so we don’t even need to stop at home. It’s not Tahiti but a full week at a beach resort in Hawaii, and I got a package that includes everything, even tips.
By the time we fly home, we’re lightly tanned, happy, and by-God married. Jeff has bought me so many Hawaiian shirts we had to get a cheap backpack to add to our luggage. I got him a bracelet made of silver and koa wood, a carved bone pendant on a leather cord, and a short necklace that’s tiny disks of pale pink shell, which makes his skin glow bronze. I wanted to get him a rosewood watch, but he got a little snippy about overspending ourselves, soothing me by swearing he’d wear at least one of my gifts all the time.
In Hawaii, I came to love the magic cross. We agree we need an annual beach vacation because we have never been so relaxed, or so sexual, and that when retirement comes around, it will be in a beach community. “A little house someplace warm. Not necessarily a tourist destination or anything. We don’t need that.”
“Or the higher prices. Simple is good,” Jeff says. “Two bedrooms, one for guests. Morning sun in the kitchen. A patio. Tile everywhere. Hey, speaking of tile…”
The bathroom is gorgeous, with a terrazzo tile floor, walk-in shower with two heads instead of a tub, double sinks, and lots of cabinets.
“I had them mount one showerhead high enough for you,” Jeff says.
Naturally, I have to cry again, but there’s Kleenex in a holder that matches the tile. When we undress, he’s wearing all the jewelry.