Us

Over a month later, and I can't recount it with accuracy. Like forgetting a dream as soon as you wake up, then remembering it in the shower days later. You were there, and you were there, and you were there.

There was here. Right here in Kansas City.

Josh and I got married, though we've acted married the entire time we've been together. We met in 2004. I was a year out of high school, and Josh was a year out of college. Jumping from one institution into another. As a teenager I'd been obsessed with a future I couldn't quite imagine. I just knew the present was untenable and the only way forward was to keep my hands busy and maybe move somewhere I could meet the man of my dreams.

And I did.

The dreams weren't the ones anyone told me I should dream. I was working against the dreams I was given. Making up new dreams even before I could be grateful for that wherewithal. That privilege. I'd abandoned the afterlife, and this life became more urgent. Marriage seemed impossible and unimportant. Never in my lifetime, I thought.

And so what?

I moved on. It's hard to spare feeling for institutions that feel nothing for you.

So last summer when marriage became accessible to me for the first time, I wrote against it. Not marriage as something you claim when you're ready, but marriage as something you're finally allowed. Josh and I were in New York on the day the Supreme Court released its decision, which also happened to be Pride. We watched Ian McKellen walk down Christopher Street followed by a small car with his name on it followed by a happy rainbow of everybody else. Josh and I just wanted to cross the street to get to a bakery. We'd been together 11 years at that point. We were having a summer fling with a friend back home. Marriage did not exist on our level. We were above it, in theory, and we were busy testing that theory.

If marriage is just a commitment, we made it a long time ago. We made the only promise we can hope to keep as humans. We promise this life. We're partners on a level that operates against the cold machinery of the universe. We're one and we're separate at the same time. No wonder people in public confuse us for twins. It's not our faces. We don't look alike. But we're knitted together in a way most people never see two men knit.

More than anything else, we gave in and got married because of our one dividing line. I have a history of seizures. Josh has witnessed some of that history. It runs concurrent with our own, and likely will for as long as I live. We decided marriage was a pretty way to stay protected. If anything were to happen to me because of my family curse, Josh would have the legal right to be close when I need him most.

That closeness is love, of course, and we have more than enough. So much love we're sharing it with our boyfriend, Shawn. Another dream we weren't handed. A dream we found. Six months in and every lesson we learned with each other we're learning all over again with him. If you think you have something to say about this, you don't. You're not qualified.

We are.

In spite of mass murder against our community, we continue the work we've done our whole lives. We define ourselves while we can. I write the stories I wish I could have read when I was younger. I make the art I still want to see. We're visible now because we can't afford to be invisible. No wonder I used to try moving objects with my mind. It's the only tool I have to move you.

What I'm saying is look at us while you can.

We're beautiful, and we're here.