Derfner - Lawfully wedded husband: how my gay marriage will save the American family

LIVING OUT

Gay and Lesbian Autobiographies

David Bergman, Joan Larkin, and Raphael Kadushin

SERIES EDITORS

Lawfully Wedded Husband

How My Gay Marriage Will Save the American Family

Joel Derfner

The University of Wisconsin Press

The University of Wisconsin Press

1930 Monroe Street, 3rd Floor

Madison, Wisconsin 53711-2059

uwpress.wisc.edu

Copyright 2013 by Joel Derfner

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any format or by any means, digital, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or conveyed via the Internet or a website without written permission of the University of Wisconsin Press, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles and reviews.

Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Derfner, Joel, author.

Lawfully wedded husband: how my gay marriage will save

the American family / Joel Derfner.

pages cm(Living out: gay and lesbian autobiographies)

ISBN 978-0-299-29490-8 (cloth: alk. paper)

ISBN 978-0-299-29493-9 (e-book)

1. Derfner, Joel. 2. Gay menUnited StatesBiography.

3. Gay authorsUnited StatesBiography.

4. Same-sex marriageUnited States.

I. Title. II. Series: Living out.

PS3604.E754Z46 2013

811.6dc23

[B]

2013015044

for

my father

What are you guys wearing tomorrow? asked the assistant director of Girls Who Like Boys Who Like Boys, the reality show my fianc, Mike, and I were being filmed for in May of 2010.

Im wearing jeans and a nice vest, I said, and Mike will be in shorts and a T-shirt.

There was a brief silence on the other end of the line. Joel, the assistant director said, this Iowa wedding is the culmination of your story arc.

Right.

If youre not dressed up, people will think youre not taking it seriously.

Look, I said. I promised Mike that this would be as low-key an event as we could possibly manage, and Ive already broken that promise in more ways than I can count. Not dressing up is the one shred of evidence left that I actually care about his feelings.

This is bad, the assistant director said, and waited.

Okay, I said finally. Ill talk to him about it.

Great, said the assistant director. Itll really help the audience understand what a special thing youre doing. I put my cell phone in my pocket, went back to the table at the restaurant where Mike and I were having lunch with his cousin DJ and DJs boyfriend, Kevin, and promptly did not talk to him about it, because Mikes fury was already just shy of the boiling point, and the last thing I needed was for it to get any hotter less than twenty-four hours before our nuptials.

But then the assistant director called back, and then he called back again. In total he called four times during a one-hour lunch to ask about what wed decided. At some point I realized he wasnt going to stop, so, bracing myself, I said, very gently, Mike, the TV people called and they want to know, what would you think about... picking up some slacks, maybe? Mike stared at me in silence. And, um, a nice shirt? I could practically feel the waves of rage emanating from him.

Oh, fine, he sighed at last. I need a new suit anyway.

The next morning, Mike looking spiffy in his new suit, we drove with DJ and Kevin from their place in Rochester, Minnesota, to Mikes hometown of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, one of only three states in the union at the time where two men could legally marry each other, met my father, my stepmother, Mikes mother, and my brother at the magistrates office, and headed in.

After an attempt on my part, not remotely convincing, to feign surprise that my friend Sarah was waiting insidethe reality show was about the friendships between straight women and gay men, and she and I had both been forced to discuss on camera ad nauseam our disappointment that she wouldnt be at the wedding, but of course Id known all along that she wouldthe magistrate told me and Mike to hold hands.

Joel, repeat after me, he said. I take you, Michael, to be my spouse, to have and to hold, from this day forward, to love, honor, and cherish, to comfort and respect, in sorrow and in joy, as long as we both shall live. I repeated after him, and then he went through it again with Mike. Once we were finished, he said, And now, forasmuch as you have made your vows, each to the other, I pronounce you

But I suppose I really ought to start from the beginning.

I bought more ornaments for the Christmas tree! Mike called as he closed the front door behind him.

We already have too many ornaments for the Christmas tree, I said, not looking up from Persuasion. Louisa was about to get her concussion, and Id be damned if I was going to interrupt the story now just because my boyfriend had passed a store with shiny things in the window.

I know, but these were so fabulous I couldnt help myself. Come and take a look at them.

But Im reading.

Too bad. You have to come look at ornaments.

Fine, I snapped, dog-earing the pageCaptain Wentworth was unlikely to have a change of heart while I wasnt lookingand walked into the living room, where Mike stood beside the Christmas tree taking things out of shopping bags. (Im Jewish, but Mike is not, so I seize the holiday as an opportunity to decorate.) I sat down on the couch, picked up the nearest bundle of pink tissue paper on the coffee table, and unwrapped it to find a huge, glittering purple star. Oh, my God, I said; I could tell Mike was manipulating me by playing on my weakness for purple, but I was powerless to resist. Youre right. Thats gorgeous.

See?

Perhaps this was worth a few minutes before returning to my book after all. I unwrapped another ornament, which revealed itself to be a shiny tin ear of corn.

Hmph, I said. Mike is from Iowa and thinks of himself, because it drives me crazy, as a corn proselyte. He feels he has both the right and the responsibility to torment me by threatening to replace our chandelier with a corn-shaped light fixture or buying shiny tin ears of corn with which to titivate our Christmas tree. Its awful, but I havent figured out yet how to stop him.

I unwrapped a couple more ornaments, which were, I was grateful to see, closer to the purple star than to the ear of corn. The contents of the last box, however, when I got it open, looked, confusingly, not like an ornament but like a ring sort of thing. It was round and heavy and gold, with an engraved pattern and a little pink jewellovely, but far too small to be a Christmas tree ornament. I turned to Mike, puzzled, and saw that he was down on one knee.

Joel, he said, will you marry me?

And I looked at him, looked at the man who had been my comfort and my support for years, through trials and tribulations greater than I had ever expected to face, gazed deep into his eyes, so full of love, and said, Hang on a second.

What?

Ill be right back.

Where are you going? he asked.

Okay, I answered, I havent been an astrology addict for years and years but this is super-extra important so I have to go check and make sure the moon isnt void of course. Stay right there.