Marriage!

So Mexico just upheld gay marriage, and Proposition 8 just got overturned in California, even though some losers out there just filed an appeal. All you homos already know this, so I’m just gonna say yeah. Pretty exciting.

The political winds seem to be blowing so hard from all directions that I don’t know how hopeful to be about the future. On the one hand, more people support queer issues than ever before, but on the other hand, there are actual people in our government who believe a woman and a woman should never even make OUT.   I’ve never heard of anything so assbackwards.

“I didn’t wanna look too gay.”

With most people who belong to a group that’s typically seen as a “minority”, there’s a concrete moment in your life when you realize what being part of that group really means. I mean, you’re not born knowing you’re supposed to be oppressed. You have to be told directly. There are countless instances in the memoirs and anecdotes of people of color where the narrator realizes what race meant in a sudden and visceral way, often by being betrayed by a close friend or getting kicked out of something they thought they had a right to be in.

Same goes for don’t-ask-don’t-tell. I don’t know if Captain Awesome had a moment like that. She tends to think things through more than I do, so maybe she already knew what was gonna go down.

I definitely had a moment. Like, I knew what the law WAS. I knew we were gonna be operating under some restrictions. But it didn’t really hit home until the day Captain Awesome graduated from dental school. She was just Lieutenant Awesome back then. You don’t get commissioned as captain until you graduate. So it was a big day. All her family came down from her home state to see it. It was great. She looked almost as sexy in her robes as she does in her uniform.

It wasn’t until after the graduation, when all the people had gone away and it was just her and me, me telling her how proud I was of her, that she said, “So… I had my commissioning ceremony today.”

I was shocked and hurt. “What? You mean I missed it? I thought you were gonna tell me what time it was!”

She shrugged and mumbled something that was not a reason.

“Aw, come on,” I said. “You knew I was excited about that! Didn’t it occur to you that I would have wanted to see it? Your family’s gonna think I don’t support you!”

She shrugged, not meeting my eyes. “I guess I didn’t wanna seem too gay,” she said softly.

That shut me up like a slap in the face. “Oh,” I said. “Sometimes I forget we’re gay.” I didn’t want her to feel bad about something she couldn’t help, so I continued in a bright tone, “I mean, it’s not important. You guys took pictures, so it’s not like I actually had to be there. I needed to practice piano anyway, so it actually worked out.”

I don’t know if she believed me. We went out and had a great evening. I mean, we couldn’t change it, so why worry.

But that was when I started watching my behavior.

I’m afraid that when the law is repealed, we won’t remember how to be out together.

Got Homophobia?

What up, queer-loving readers!  This is the Confirmed Bachelor, hollering at you live from the US of A.  Today’s queer partner topic: getting harassed about being queer when you’re not supposed to talk about being queer.  The general consensus: it sucks. If it happens to you, my only advice is to turn the other cheek and then blog about it so the whole world knows what a loser the person is.

When Captain Awesome left for her training, I offered to act as the “designated agent” who oversees the moving of her household goods. I figured the risk level was low. The military usually contracts independent movers. She put ‘friend’ on the paperwork and we were good to go.

The move went fine. The problem was the movers themselves. For you to understand what happened you first have to know that Captain Awesome’s apartment is a den of tribadism.  It’s a shrine to sodomy. It’s a pedestal to pederasts. It’s an altar in the temple of Saphho.

In other words, her apartment is Too Gay All Day.

The movers, two straight men, picked up on this immediately. Almost right as they came in they saw the elegant painting of two naked women on the living room wall. “So who are we moving?” the younger one asked me with a lewd grin. “Are you all just friends? Is she your roommate?”

“We went to the same university,” I said guardedly.

“I see,” he said, in a tone that meant he did see. All too well.

Less than half an hour into the packing, he comes up to me and says, “Look. Your friend likes my favorite show.”  Somehow – just call it blind intuition–  I guessed before I looked that he was holding one of her L-Word DVD boxed sets.  “You know anything about this?” he continued with the same pervy grin. “You seen it?”

Of course I had seen it. We spent hours cuddling and watching it together during the snow last winter.

“No,” I said.

He and the other guy got into a giant discussion of how they thought the L-Word should have been improved, which mainly involved more adding straight men to the cast.  I tried to practice Don’t Tell and refrain from saying anything, but when they started talking about adding scenes of Bette and Tina having sex with men, I couldn’t resist. “Did you ever think that maybe their world doesn’t revolve around pleasing men?”  I said.

More laughter. “What’s the matter?” the guy said. “You don’t like men?”

Normally I would have said something sarcastic about men like them turning me gay. Normally I would have been all OVER their asses. They knew that, and they knew I couldn’t be, and they thought it was funny.  That pissed me off to no end. It’s totally not cool when you know somebody’s in a position where they can’t say anything, and instead of respecting that you exploit it.

And they exploited it all day. The worst part was when one of them came out of the bedroom holding something Captain Awesome and I had been looking for for a long time: a cute black thong. “Check out what your friend has,” he said. “Did you know anything about this?”

That was it. I stalked across the living room and snatched it out of his hand. “Just pack her things!” I cried.

After that they mostly shut up. The thing is, they didn’t even realize how disrespectful they were being. If I had asked them I’m sure they would have said they were completely supportive of gayness (in women). They weren’t being purposefully malicious — they thought it was all one big joke, and it never occurred to them that I wasn’t in on it.  It didn’t occur to them that I might be livid enough to breathe fire, seeing them go through things that have special meaning to Captain Awesome and me as if they were at a yard sale.

But there are always small victories with these things.  One of the movers went excitedly back to packing Captain Awesome’s DVD’s, when suddenly he dropped one as if it had burned him. “Aw, sick!” he exclaimed.  “I hate seeing that shit!”

It was Captain Awesome’s giant DVD set of gay male porn.

Where I’m from we call that a taste of your own medicine.

Small Talk

Captain Awesome, via text: “I started talking to this dude. And then he asked me if I had any attachments, and pointed to his ring finger.”

What are you supposed to say?

As long as the law stands, innocent questions like this just remind queer personnel that they will never fit in.

No salutations. No signatures. No regrets.

One of the main pains in the ass while Captain Awesome was in training was writing letters. It’s probably gonna continue to plague us on and off until the law is repealed, so I’ve resigned to getting used to it, but that doesn’t stop it from being a pain in the ass.

Maybe it’s easy for some gay partners to write letters. Maybe there are some of you out there who just say, Hey babe, how you doing? I read a new book today! Etcetera. But that’s not how I roll.  My unedited letters usually go more like, Hey little dyke! My nipples are thinking about your nipples!

I’m not even exaggerating. That’s just how gay I am.  Captain Awesome and I are some of the gayest people out there. I’m so gay that I’m not even gay! I’m actually a pansexual playboy!

Anyway, I of course read immediately over what I’ve written and think, Crap. No matter what I sign my name as, that is still the gayest thing the military censors will ever read in their entire lives.

Maybe there aren’t censors. Maybe the military just lets any mail go in and out of their bases.

Right.

Either way, I’m not taking the chance. If it weren’t for Captain Awesome, I swear I wouldn’t let those fools control me. If it was MY career at stake, I wouldn’t care. I’d walk into that dog and pony show wearing a rainbow thong and DARE them to do something about it. But when it’s your partner and not you, it’s not your call.

So I — and probably the rest of you military-affiliated homos out there– have to edit severely. I can’t tell how many times I’ve written a letter, read it, reread it, and then not sent it. Which sucks, because I’m a pretty good writer of erotica. I would love to give Captain Awesome some warm and cuddly thoughts to go to sleep with. Since she can’t sleep with me.

It goes way beyond signing a fake name.

Which is why the minute she gets settled at her new base, I’m telling her to get a P.O. box. At least she’s in the States so she can do that. A lot of you don’t have that option. And I’m sure writing in a secret code would just cause your letter to get blown up, especially if it resembled Arabic script.

Must Be Nice

A random cottage with a picket fence, just like the one Captain Awesome and I do not have.

So Captain Awesome just got to her new base. She says it looks great, even though it’s in the middle of nowhere. Now she has to inprocess, which takes freaking forever. But within a week or two she’ll be examining teeth and gums to her little heart’s content.

On the way there she stopped at the house of some married friends of ours, one of whom is also an Army dentist. They all went to dental school together. His wife (who, let me just say, is gorgeous — I’m so mad she’s straight) just got a civilian job in an Army clinic. So, after a year apart, they’ve moved back in together and are ridiculously happy. I mean, they have each other’s pictures as their Facebook profile pics.

Captain Awesome says they have this adorable house with a fireplace, right next to the base.  They have a patio and a barbecue grill. They have a little Jack Russell terrier. They took her in and gave her the spare bedroom, which was made up nicely.

They had dinner together, and Captain Awesome talked about me basically the whole time, because she was so glad she was finally with people she could open up to. (The less said about the queer-friendliness of her officer training, the better — but I will say that I definitely heard the word ‘fag’ when I went down there.)

They cooked dinner together and ate at a cozy little table. The couple told her how psyched they were to be living together, and then they told her that they were planning to have a baby.

Poll: Upon hearing all this, should I smile or should I THROW UP?

Don’t get me wrong. I love these people. If they were coming through my territory I’d make sure they had everything they needed just like they did for Captain Awesome. But all I can say is that it must be NICE to be able to live together in an adorable little house with a DOG and a BABY in the works. And it must be nice to be able to get a civilian job on the base where your partner lives. It sure must be nice to be able to get MARRIED.

Whatever, man. I don’t want any of those things anyway. I mean, a baby? You’re gonna be covered in poop and baby food for months.

Alright, maybe I want a house and a dog.

And maybe I want the opportunity to interview for civilian jobs on base. I don’t even know what kind of job I would look for, but it doesn’t matter ’cause I’m not gonna be looking for them.

I think I’m gonna go with smiling instead of throwing up, though. Because I really like this couple, and if Captain Awesome and I can’t have all that picket fence happiness, then at least it’s nice to know that they can. (Queer people, this is the part where you sigh longingly.)