8 Gay Tips That Will Save Yo' Straight-Ass Marriage

I've been watching you struggle.  You come into the office with a bewildered look on your face.  It’s day three and you’re still not speaking to each other  That’s not entirely true, you’re talking but through the children, using them like little ventriloquist puppets:  “Tell your mother to pass the salt,” or “Would you please remind your father, as I have told him TEN THOUSAND TIMES, that tomorrow is the parent teacher conference?” The kids are confused and I’m tired of that mopey look on your face. 

You want to know why Paul and I seem so happy and why we never appear to fight.  I’m going to share some secrets of my marriage with you so that we can stop talking about how miserable you are and also? Because I love you.

But here’s the deal, we’re going to have fun by using song lyrics because ain’t nobody got time for boring advice.

“If I were a boy, even just for a day”

Drop the gender based roles: Paul and I are both men and therefore we don’t conform to gender roles.  We both take out the trash, we both clean and we both cook.  Problem solved.  False! Paul cooks and cleans almost all of the time, because that is what he is good at and because he works from home. I do things I’m good at, though I’m struggling to tell you what they are.  The point is, don’t ever let your gender define what your responsibilities are.  Are you both human?  Well then….

“You gotta’ have friends”

Keep the friends:   I’ve seen couples jettison their single friends when they get married.  Guess what, many of my friends could never get married.  Did that make them any less valuable?  Of course not.  My friends are every sexual orientation, men, and women, married and single.  We share our friends with each other and sometimes I need a night out with friends when Paul is not around.  Some of my best friends are gay men.  I do not, nor would I ever have sex with them.  Straight men can just be friends with straight women.  It really is that simple.

“'Cause after all, he's just a man”

Don’t blame everything on differences between the sexes: On the rare occasions when Paul and I fight, I need to talk it out and he wants to let bygones be bygones.  Does this sound familiar?  Am I a woman?  Not every difference between you is because you’re a man and she’s a woman.  The saying “Men are from Mars and women are from Venus” is crap.  You’re both Earthlings.

“Let’s talk about sex, bay-bee!”

Talk about sex!: I have access to the same equipment 24/7 therefore I must really know what turns Paul on.  Well, I do, but it’s not because it’s innate, it’s because we talk about it.  “I like the way you do that right thurr (right thurr).”  Bonus!  Two sets of lyrics.  Tell your partner what you want and sometimes, it’s OK if what you really want is quick sex because you’re bored.

“We are fam-i-ly”

One for all and all for one: Paul and I have a blended family with five children and damn if he doesn’t pick on me for not stepping up to the plate and having three like him so we could be the Gaydy bunch.  They are not his. They are not mine. They are ours.  No one’s mother or father was replaced in the process: remember that.

“You don’t send me flowers, anymore”

Don’t become a Hallmark-aholic:  Do you really need to send a bouquet of flowers and a frilly card to say I love you on every Hallmark holiday?  Paul and I are not bound by this tradition, thank goodness, because have you noticed the dearth of husband for husband cards?  Sometimes he’ll buy me flowers and sometimes I’ll do the same for him, just because.  Men like spontaneous tokens of affection just as much as women.  Not into flowers?  How about a pair of underwear?

“I wanna put on my, my, my, my, my boogie shoes”

I hope you dance-(sorry it’s a song lyric too):  We’re both gay men so you know we both like to shake our groove thing.  Wrong again!  I could dance all night while Paul would rather stick needles into his eyes.  But does he love to watch me dance and be happy? Sometimes it’s a precursor to the Best.Sex.Evah! Let her or him dance with others and once in a while get up there and make a fool of yourself.  Worried that people will think you look gay?  Accept it as a compliment, bud…

“The boy is mine”

Don’t compare yourself to previous partners: If you are straight, you probably never dated the same person as your partner. Paul and I dated two of the same men before we became a couple. I don’t compare myself to previous boyfriends, because I know; I truly know what they lacked. He or she chose you. Exorcise the ghosts of partners past.   

And here is a bonus tip, though you might have picked it up while you were reading this (God, I hope you did anyway) “Make ‘em laugh, make ‘em laugh.” We laugh at each other.  We laugh at ourselves.  Many times our children laugh at us and often we laugh at our children while pointing our fingers at them. You might have noticed that many gay men and women have a sharp sense of humor.  That’s because we developed it as a defense mechanism.  It works. It wards off anger and sadness and can bring you closer together. 

I want your marriage to succeed because there is something that I have learned.  When the marriages surrounding us are stronger and happier, then mine becomes more valuable and that makes me happy. And when I’m happy?  Paul’s up all night to get lucky.

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The Treasure We Seek

I suppose it happens to all couples after a certain amount of time.  You get to a point in your relationship where everything big has been discussed and what remains are the bits of conversation that you might have with a parrot.

 

“How was your day?”

“Fine.”

“How did you sleep?”

“Good."

“What do you want for dinner?

“I don’t know.”

Paul and I are no different, except that we added the following to our repertoire somewhere along the lines:

“How’d you get to be so cute?”

“I don’t know.”

“What’s your job?”

“To sit here and look pretty.”

“Who are you?”

“The big dog.”

The questions are always posed by Paul and if you were to eavesdrop on our conversations, aside from feeling terribly bored, you would perceive the passion in my replies to be comparable to your average fast-food worker and at times filled with the same contempt.  He likes to ask these questions when I am busy writing or when I have one eye open and a hand outstretched for the snooze button.

At some point he actually began to sing refrains to my replies.  For instance, he might have asked me if I was hungry and if I said “Yes,” he would sing something like “Willy is so hungrrryyy,”  in a falsetto rock star voice, no less.

He is in an interminably good mood juxtaposed to my often pensive one.

One morning recently the questions and singing reached a fevered pitch.  As I struggled to wake up and iron my clothes, I could take no more and asked Paul, for the love of God, to please stop singing.

And then there was a stunned silence. 

*********************************************************

It was the sound that made me open my eyes, like an insect buzzing but more digital.  With one eye squinting in the brilliant September sunlight I turned my head to see an old man in his seventies sweeping a metal detector in a two foot swath of beach, left and right, left and right.  He wore white ankle socks with sneakers and his head was covered with a beige brimmed cap.  He did not raise his capped head, keeping it always focused on that two foot wide path waiting for a signal.

I put on my sunglasses and looked around me.  The coastal autumn light in Maine paints the colors so vividly that you feel as if you have been lifted up close to the sky among the listless clouds. A woman stood facing the sea, her hands in her pockets and her head tilted slightly upward.  The dark sunglasses covered her eyes, but her immovable stance implied deep contemplation.  She stared out at the horizon where the water met the sky at some reflection of a memory.

She waited twenty paces ahead of her husband wrapped in her own thoughts.  They never spoke. He never looked up but would occasionally stoop down and dig a hole with his hands looking for a long lost treasure.

I thought how odd it was that he mined for someone else’s lost articles; a ring, a necklace or some coins, hopelessly searching that narrow band. I wanted so desperately for his wife to drop her ring in the sand and wait for him to find it.     

“What are you thinking about over there Willy?” Paul asked interrupting my reflection.

I thought about that question, about all of the Marco-Polo queries that he peppers me with throughout the day pinging through the emotional distance.  More than questions, they’re affirmations.

“Just thinking about how lucky I am,” I finally replied.

One more added to the repertoire; many more to be discovered.

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The Other Bill

We are two middle aged lesbians with two small non-shedding dogs. That is how it began. I was half way out, half way in and this would be my half way house; a place where I could transition from a fraction of a person to a whole.

When I began my apartment search after the end of a twenty two year marriage, I was looking for less of a place to live, and more of a place to begin a new life. Fearful of discrimination, I discarded potential apartments because of many perceived defects. The owners lived next door and would question why men stayed overnight, or the landlord was homophobic because he spoke of nothing but sports or the neighbors were so close they might hear me with someone. I must have anticipated a much more active and promising sex life than what came to fruition. In the end I was discriminating against myself. If I didn’t accept me, how could I expect others to?

Then I saw the advertisement for a basement apartment posted by two middle aged lesbians. It was close to the city, the price was well within my range, and if this was not an accepting environment what would be? I crafted a reply that summarized my life in four sentences. I was married with children. I am now separated. I am gay. I am homeless. These were not the exact words, but it all basically boiled down to the same.

The house was a colonial at the end of a cul-de-sac in a quiet neighborhood in a suburb fifteen minutes west of Boston. When I walked to the front door I was met by two small white barking fluff-balls falling over one another.

“Rusty, Lucas!” I heard someone yell.

This did nothing to stop the dogs from barking and in fact further incited them so that within seconds they were attacking each other. A woman appeared at the door, smiled and said

“You must be Bill, I’m Nancy. Boys, stop it!” She yelled at the dogs.

She led me to the living room, the dogs stumbling and running in between my legs. As I sat down they jumped up on the sofa and Rusty nervously began to lick my arm as if it were a juicy bone. He would do this for the better part of an hour.

“Do you like dogs?” Nancy asked amused.

“I love them,” I said as I looked down at Rusty’s pink tongue darting in and out of his mouth never taking his eyes off of my face.

“Apparently they love you. We think Rusty is gay,” Nancy said and let out a laugh. That was the beginning of our friendship. Within a month, I moved in the few remnants of my ex-wife’s unwanted belongings, cast-offs from friends and items bought from a yard sale. Somehow, it all worked. I was home.

Many times I would come home from work and find a plate of food, wrapped in plastic with a note from Nancy “chili verde, nuke in the microwave for two minutes” . I would devour the food; knock on the door at the top of the steps to return the plate and spend the better part of the evening sharing beers and stories with Nancy and Brenda. Just as I devoured the food, I devoured their lives and their experiences. They were my link to the history I had ignored and the future that I embraced. I learned that they had been together for twenty five years, Nancy was an accomplished cook, and Brenda was a social worker who passed up a degree at MIT. They consoled me when life became too heavy and celebrated my milestones, no matter how trivial, on the path to recovery. Their love for each other and for me was unconditional.

One evening in their home, I found myself reading a framed handwritten letter. In the same frame was a photograph of a handsome man with blonde hair and a moustache. As I examined it, I became self-conscious. It seemed too personal.

“That was Bill,” Nancy said. “When you moved in my friends said ‘Nancy, don’t fall in love with another Bill’. But I guess I have. He wrote that letter to us on the day he died. He had AIDS.”

“I’m so sorry,” I wasn’t sure if I was apologizing for being named Bill or for bringing up painful memories from the other Bill. Nancy shared stories of her friendship with him, his humor, and his love of life, of his disease, how they stood by him when other friends vanished and of the day he chose his exit from this life. Listening to the story, I couldn’t help but wonder if that Bill could have been me if my life had taken a different turn.

Eventually I regained the confidence that I thought was lost and through Nancy and Brenda’s encouragement began to date. I found the type of love with Paul that they shared. Then one night I broke the news that I was moving out and moving in with Paul.

“I wanted you to fall in love, just not so soon!” Nancy said through tear stained eyes and together we cried for what was found and for the closeness we would lose.

A year later, when Paul and I decided to get married, I asked Nancy if she knew of anyone that could officiate. It seemed too important to have a stranger perform the ceremony.

“I know someone who would be perfect,” She said.

Four months later on our wedding day, Paul and I stood in front of Jane and pledged our love to each other. The other Bill was with us on that day. In the heart of his sister Jane who performed the ceremony that would not have been possible in his lifetime. There was a sense of completeness. Without sadness happiness can’t exist. The two complete each other. On the day my life became complete Nancy and Brenda celebrated, for the Bill they could not save and for the one that they did.

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