First, i want to be clear: I have great friends and I love them all dearly. Yesterday, I published on the social sites a post that said I had gotten married. Me! Now, I want to talk about it.
The Back Story
With all the recent news about Marriage Equality (and fake marriage equality, aka Civil Unions - something I'll unpack later in another post), a friend and I were talking about how far we'd traveled in so short a time. He was, and remains, super- optimistic that we will soon have marriage equality.
I too, remain optimistic. Evans V Romer wasn't that long ago. To go from that to where we live today in a relatively short period of time gives me hope. So when my friend and I were talking about pranks for this year, he stated fake weddings remained funny to him. I agreed they are. We hadn't firmly decided to do it despite some conversations and lengthy planning. We both agreed the announcements (the Prank) should be flity without being disrespectful of the institution of marriage. As an ally, he knew we're still in a fight for achieving true marriage equality. And I, as someone in the trenches, am still fighting for marriage since the best I can do today is still fake marriage here at home. So neither of us wanted the Prank to be so outrageous that it sounded like we were being flip to what we are still fighting for. What sealed the deal for us was a teevee show. The Telly show had a prank where one actor proposed to the other on a live broadcast and she clearly wasn't going to say yes which made all the hosts look unbearably awkward and uncomfortable. After talking about this prank, we agreed to go for ours. We both thought the announcement would be outlandish enough without either of us having to go completely over-the-top. He being heterosexual and I being nearly a perpetually confirmed bachelor by choice, we thought our respective announcements would be silly enough and we wouldn't have to really worry about repercussions or anyone believing either of us for getting married.
How It Played
We were wrong. Very Wrong. Laughably very wrong. When he posted to Facebook, he posted it publicly to the global audience. I only shared with the small cadre of people I share things with on Facebook. Because I've moved to near-exclusivity with Plus, I hardly ever post on Facebook. This further enhanced the silliness in our eyes; as I've stated, he's a great straight ally for marriage equality, but not someone interested in me or any guy really for that. And me, sharing with only a small pool of my dearest friends who are by and large incredibly bright people. Both of us got lots of positive remarks. In fact, we each only had one religious negative response. I feel bad that my religious friend hadn't realized that I'm gay and awesome which means one day I might meet someone even more awesome making me want to get married for realsies.
While my friends said really sweet things to me and about my fake nuptials, I had it better than my friend. I love how supportive all of my friends were but come on: I promise you'll all at least know I've meet someone before I run to Vegas and get all gay married. And really - you'll meet him first too. Someone has to tell me I'm not crazy in love and this guy is approved. It takes a village and the village deserves a little buy-in first.
The comedic fallout
His mother thought my friend truly was going to marry some "gay brokeback cowboy" which for the record, I'm not. It was so bad that I had to speak to her, on a phone to explain this was all a prank. Thankfully, she accepted the phone explanation because flying out to discuss in person still sounds hilarious. He had several people say things that are supposed to sound supportive but aren't (and no, none of these were from bitter exes):
- "I always knew you were gay."
- "I'm so glad you finally came out bro"
- "I know this is International Don't Trust the Internet Day, but I'm so proud of you man."
- etc
It took all night, but we did finally stop laughing and get everything in order. People asked us where we're registered (we're not). If I registered, I'd pick a homeless youth shelter, because they need shit way more than I do. The future mr Dubs will just have to accept that's where I want to register. They asked which courthouse in what state we married in because they totes wanted to be there to celebrate with us (you guys rock). Trust, when i'm getting married for reals, you'll all know waaaay in advance so you can buy up rice or whatever. They asked if we were adopting (guys, one mountain at a time). They asked where we were going to live (which always made me think of birds and fish trying to live together) and they wanted to help house shop (awe). In short, friends are awesome and we should all have more. Especially these kinds.
Lessons/Conclusions
Despite how far we've come, there's still some things that we all need to work on:
- The need for anyone to come out at all. I'd love for that future where we can just say we're dating someone without first having to "pick sides" and declare a preference. We aren't there yet, which harms people who are bi.
- Despite the last point, I think we also need to accept someone's declared identity. Accept and respect.
- we need to acknowledge that it isn't a binary option Bisexuality deserves attention too
- Never trust me on 1 April, my birthday, or when what I do for a living comes up.
I'm so pleasantly surprised by my very amazing friends. Although I thought you guys were impressive before, just knowing that you guys are this cool makes me even happier. So to recap: you guys rock and i'm not getting married. I'm very glad we just did status updates and didn't link our profiles as we had originally discuss. And remember to enjoy your burrito. Happy April Fools Day guys.
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