Last night I took a quiz on Facebook that determines from which area of the US my American English accent derives by asking several pronunciation questions. One of the questions was, “How do the words ‘Merry,’ ‘Marry,’ and ‘Mary’ sound to you?” I didn’t have to think about it. I pronounce them all the same, but the meaning of one of them was totally lost to me. Mary is a name. I know that one. Merry is joy, happiness and usually precedes the word Christmas. Got that one, but what the hell is Marry? I made the god-awful mistake of asking Kurt. I should really know better because he’s NEVER going to let me live this one down. I spelled out the version of marry that confused me. He raised an eyebrow and looked at me as if I was from the same planet as Mork. He may have actually been gauging to see if I was testing him or really didn’t know, then he showed me the shiny new ring on his left hand. “You don’t KNOW?” Oh yeah. Marry, as in, I’m now married. I’m a dork, and I’m sure to make a lousy wife.
I know some are very surprised that we actually did the ring thing, but you’ll be relieved to know that we waited to the bitter end to decide if we wanted rings or not. I don’t know why I brought it up but a week or two before the date we set for our wedding day, our tenth anniversary, I asked Kurt if we should get rings. “Do you want rings?” he asked. “I don’t know.” I said. Part of me figured since we’re already going through the ceremony we might as well get the rings too and the other part wants to hang on to the rebellion and say, “Fuck you society! I’m not wearing a fuckin’ ring, deal with it!” But then I don’t want to spend the rest of my life explaining why we got married but don’t wear rings, even though we spent the last ten years explaining to people that it’s possible to have a baby without being married. It’s actually been done for hundreds, nay thousands of years. It’s not some recent scourge of society caused by television. It’s merely two people living together without the pre-approval of a church or government meddling, both of which result in nothing more but some paper signing. Does this magically cause women to ovulate differently and produce non-bastard eggs that will somehow fair better through life based on some mystical notion beyond societal pressures?
The morning of the day of our ceremony Kurt and I finally made our decision after going to a jewelry store. Even there we were both looking at each other, should we? Rings? No rings? The sales lady behind the counter asked us a few questions and looked somewhat disapprovingly at ME when we told her that we were getting married that day, as if I hadn’t done my job as a woman to pick out the rings with enough time. She didn’t seem to get that it was ok with me that the ring wouldn’t fit for the ceremony. Never mind nether of us knowing if we wanted rings, I frankly I didn’t want to get married at all.
Washington State in its infinite psychosis won’t grant homosexuals to marry, yet will grant them a domestic partnership which extents employer health benefits to their significant other but wont grant heterosexuals who don’t want to marry the same benefit unless:
- Share a common residence; – Yes.
- You’re both at least 18 years old; – Yes, and we sometimes act over 18 as well.
- Neither of you are already married or in a domestic partnership; – Yes, we pass this hurdle too.
- Both of you are capable of consenting to a partnership; – Yes. Neither of us is a farm animal. He just acts like an ass.
- You aren’t related (nearer than a second cousin); – The tree branches don’t even come close to touching. I’ve checked.
- You are either both of the same sex or one of you is at least 62 years old. – Does it count if we’ve been having the same sex for ten years? Or if he acts 62? He does an awesome “Grandpa Simpson” voice. Shit, damn, fuck!
No matter anymore, we’ve tied the knot. I sent out an email notice to our families and the majority of our friends with the subject titled, “Public Announcement”. I sent out Kurt’s watered down version of what I wanted to say.
We would like to inform you all that Kurt and I are getting married on the 25th of February (our ten year anniversary) so that I can continue to stay home with Sophia and still have health insurance. We aren’t doing any sort of ceremony. This will just be a document signing in front of a judge.
My version went like this:
Kurt and I are getting married on the 25th of February (our ten year anniversary) so that I can continue to stay home with Sophia and still have health insurance. We aren’t doing any sort of ceremony. This will just be a document signing in front of some judge. If you feel compelled be there to hold a gun to mine or Kurt’s back to insure we go through with it, or wish to harass the judge by listing the myriad of reasons why Kurt and I shouldn’t get married because it would undermine the sanctity of the whole institution, I’ll make sure to send you more details as we make arraignments.
Because we needed two witnesses, I also sent out another email for friends working close enough to the courthouse or on maternity leave to stop by and make their mark on our marriage paper.
We are required to provide two witnesses for our wedding ceremony (official paper signing), which will be on Wednesday February 25 at 4:30pm in *name of place that passes as a city*. We can have more people, but Kurt and I don’t want to make this too big a deal. Please let me know if you’d like to be our witness on the above stated Wednesday. You will have to sign an official looking paper with your real name (no aliases) and it will be recorded with *name of local county* with official looking seals (not the cute little furry animals, sorry).
Unfortunately the officiator will not be an Internet ordained *name of out-of-the-closet-but-not-in-a-gay-way atheist friend* doing a combination of Princess Bride and the episode of friends in which Joey recites the speech he wants to give at Monica and Chandler’s wedding because he said he wouldn’t be able to keep a straight face.
“Mawage. Mawage is wot bwings us togeder tooday. Mawage, that bwessed awangment, that dweam wifin a dweam…”
“And wuv, tru wuv and the giving…and the caring.and the receiving and sharing of the loving kindness that will be given in such a caring and loving way with deference to the spirit of a loving, caring, sharing and giving relationship, will fowow you foweva…”
So we’ll have to settle for some stuffy Judge with the *local county* District Court.
Several people have told us we need to have a party to celebrate our ten obnoxiously long years together, but our house just isn’t big enough for that, and we’re doing this on a Wednesday.
After I sent out the we-won’t-have-a-party email Kurt decided that it would be fun to invite anyone that does come out to Buca di Beppo. That was a fun time fitting for a ten-year anniversary. As always, we told many stories and either referenced or retold some old ones.
One story that I haven’t written about previously is how Kurt received the nickname Terry. It’s a benign nickname, but I had to ask permission before posting it on the internet, so keep your pants on you might like this one.
Kurt and I were up in Canada for a motorcycle thing with a bunch of friends. We were in the narrow bathroom of our hotel room getting ready for the day. Both of us were nekkid and we passed each other butt to butt. That’s odd. I thought he was nekkid. I looked over at him and he was indeed nekkid. “What?” he asked. “It felt like you were wearing a towel.” I’m brutal, I know. Poor Kurtie. He was mortified, so much so that he told EVERYONE. And they laughed and dubbed him Terry. He’s an odd human. I wasn’t going to tell a soul.
By the way, our rings are inscribed with, “Kurt is my lobster”, and “Erica is my lobster”. We thought about inscribing angry messages like, “Society made us do it” or have it reference Lord of the Rings, “One ring to rule them all, one ring to find them, one ring to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them.” We were limited to about 15 to 20 characters so the latter was right out. We settled on something that reflected our ten years together instead of our forced conformity, except that I sent Kurt out to have them inscribed without me and he forgot to have the date of our first date included. *sigh*