My Thoughts on the Gay Marriage Victory

I was 20-years-old when I came out of the closet.  Growing up in a small town in rural Minnesota, I didn't really entertain most of my youth what it would be like to come out of the closet, because I didn't think that I would ever do it.  It didn't really feel like an option, quite frankly.  As weird as it is for someone who is part of the Millennial generation to give a speech about life before the internet, it's the truth that this was an era far removed from the constancy of gay today.  Sure there was Ellen and there was Will and Grace, but that was pretty much it.  But the concept of being gay was too dangerous to even allow in my universe.  I was frequently bullied, sometimes physically but most of the time verbally and emotionally, and I wasn't even out of the closet.  If I had a nickel for every time I got called a fag or a queer before I went to college, that tuition would have been a lot easier to handle.  I learned pretty quickly that you needed to become friends with the popular girls out of survival-no one's going to beat up the friend of the girl he's trying to get to second base with, and that was one of those life lessons I kept stuck away for every time I encountered a bigot: lay low and find out their priorities.

While I never thought I would come out of the closet, once I did, I was one of those people convinced gay marriage would eventually be legal.  It seemed like an easy answer.  Already we'd gone from DOMA and DADT to John Kerry espousing civil unions-gay marriage was just a hop-and-a-skip away.  Quite frankly, anyone under the age of forty who said they "never" thought they'd see this day are just being over-dramatic (which, not to generalize, is kind of the raison d'etre of the gays, and I say this as a card-carrying member).  And I was all for it.  I marched, I canvassed, I got out there and supported the gays (though I will admit that I did perhaps more in those early years in protesting the Iraq War than I did gay rights-suffice it to say there was a political fire in me that has never totally been doused).

So it's a little weird for me today to have sort of a blase attitude about gay marriage being legal across the country.  Me ten years ago would have been out tonight, kissing every guy that would have me (and I was cute-that would have been a long list), but it's a different sort of feeling.  You never entirely give up your passion for causes, but as you get older they become more focused and occasionally a little bit more self-involved because you see the clock ticking.  Maybe this will change.  Maybe a few years from now I'll realize I'd had a bad week at work, and that I was excited but too tired to realize it.  But I don't think so.  I think this might be one of those things that came a little too late for me to jump for joy regarding.

Don't get me wrong here, I'm happy about the decision.  I think this should have been legal years ago and for the people that I love (well, really only two of them, but they're two of my favorite people on this blue orb so it's a pretty big swell of adoration) and for the people whom I have never met but adore each other very much, I think that this is a beautiful day.  In an abstract sort of way, it makes me feel like someday we'll have equality for all people in all ways, which is a beautiful day.

But for me, personally, I feel like it doesn't affect me directly.  Yes, I'm gay, but after ten years of dating, I've resigned myself to not getting married.  This isn't for a lack of trying or want, for the record.  I've been on more first dates than anyone I've ever met, and have tried literally every strategy (including not trying) that I could think of, but to no avail.  I have had too little success in the dating world throughout my lifetime to think that it could happen now-too many lost opportunities, too little appetite as I get older for my personage.  My friends protest this, and at best my reaction to this scoffing is change-the-subject.  More and more though it's anger or resentment.  Perhaps this is due to a promise I made with myself many years ago, when I decided to throw my world asunder, giving up the security and stability of the closet for something potentially better.  That promise wasn't to have sex with guys or to march in parades or suddenly become emboldened, but for a guy to be there on the couch to watch movies with and for someone to raise a family with and for someone to share my life with.  It seems odd on a day of so many people's dreams coming true that I focus on one of mine fading, but major events in your life cause you to reflect in ways you didn't anticipate, and this is where my mind has wandered.  I think back on me at twenty, so brave and bold and willing to say something that had been bottled up all of my life, and I realize that if he knew that ten years later he'd be giving up on getting married, he probably never would have come out of the closet.  This isn't to say I regret coming out of the closet, but it is to say that I didn't do it to like myself more (which it did) or to fall in love with someone (which I did) or to cause me to feel a passion for a cause and my role in it (which it did).  It was to get married (which I didn't). And as much as my friends try to offer encouragement or brushing-it-off sentiments, their eyes have given themselves away for a few years now-it's no longer "well duh" but nervous pity in their glances when they say, "he's out there."

And I'm not okay with that.  So many people realize something terrible about their lives and state "I'm okay with that" mostly as a way to convince themselves of something or because it's polite, but if coming out changed me in any way, it changed me to become a person who doesn't lie about what's on the inside.  And for me, I hate the fact that I know I'm not going to get married.  I hate the fact that I will likely spend the rest of my life in a sea of couples, knowing that my day in the sun will never come to pass, and that I'll never have a real explanation as to why.  It kills me to realize that all of my hard work, dedication, blood, sweat, and tears (some of which are pouring a little right now, admittedly), going through the hardest moments of my life, will likely be something abstract, something that in many ways didn't really need to happen.  But that's life-the cruelest thing about time is that it never changes direction.  Each year compounds onto a clock that you don't know the end of, and each year gives me less and less hope in that regard.  I will never be okay with this, but at some point I'll probably not be so bitter regarding it.  As an inverse, the kindest thing about time is that it is constantly putting things into perspective.

Which is why I will only dwell on these bits of sadness for a moment, and then realize for so many people, that happiness they dreamt of for themselves at twenty was just realized.  And I am not a sore enough loser to not cheer out loud.  Go to the chapel, it's a nice day for a gay wedding!