Response to Dani's "Story-Cube Wedding Day" Prompt

Someday, I want to get married.  Someday I want to dress up in a big fancy dress - it might be black with tentacles draped off of it, it might be white with bling all over the bodice, it might be a regal ball gown or even something that I helped to sew myself, but it will be fancy and big - and I want to stand before my girl friend and fill in the blank speech bubble of vows with all the things that I will promise to do and try to do to make her life with me one that she won't regret.  The scales are not in our favor when it comes to such plans, however.  They are tipped toward poverty (which is a difficult hurdle in and of itself) but more than that, we are faced with the reality that our marriage would be one of words and not of legality.  Also there is the issue of Crim's grandparents who have a very 'don't hang your dirty laundry out to for others to see' sort of take on sexuality and alternative lifestyles.  Crim has even gone so far as to wonder if we shouldn't avoid marriage until after the grandparents have passed away so as to avoid seeing their unhappy faces should word of our vows reach their ears.  It's too bad.  It would be nice if they, as well as other various family members on both our sides, would not only accept us as a couple, but eagerly attend our wedding.  But that's not the world we live in.

As much as I want to believe that we are moving forward into a time where civil rights are granted to everyone, the human race seems determined as a whole to live in the dark ages where reason comes to us in small beams of light, but these flashlights only last so long before their batteries drain, before the insistence of zealots disheartens even the most important of strides toward human rights.  We try to dress up the chaos with pretty pictures and messages of hope but it doesn't change the fact that in this country, there are still people and organizations actively fighting against same-sex marriage and seeking to not only prevent such unions but criminalize the very act of homosexuality.

Someday, though, it could happen.  I wonder sometimes if Crim will take on my name and add LaFantasie to Richardson or if it will be me who adds an R to my list of initials: AJOL.  L and R, like left and right.  She's left handed and I'm right handed, and I am the L and she is the R.  Together we're ambidextrous... or something like that.  My left hand in her right, or the other way around.  Someday, we'll stand, hand in hand, in some combination of left and right, and a man, or woman, will open a book and recite passages from a bible (maybe something from the book of Esther) or maybe it will be passages from the Necronomicon, who knows with us, but whatever is said, it is sure to inspire and confuse, just as all wedding versus have a tendency to do.  

Will things be different afterwards?  Will it make us happier?  Healthier?  Braver?  Will it be like plummeting from a plane and frantically pulling at the parachute chords only to find that we are naked and doomed to die?  Would dying be so bad if we were at least married?  I don't know.  Because I'm not married and with the way things are going in this country with human rights - rights that we ought to already have as we are humans - obtaining legal protection at the break neck speed of a turtle, it is not likely that I will know what this feels like any time soon.  I suppose there's a part of me that is eager and there's a part of me that is willing to wait.  There is no need to rush, not really.  We aren't going to be having children biologically - not unless Gerard Butler generously offers to impregnate us, which would be splendid! - and as far as adoption goes, they tend to want you to be financially solvent first.  So it's just Crim and me for now and we're together, living in sin, pruning the family tree with our decision to cleave to one another rather than seek comfort in the males of our species.  I've sought comfort there, and so has she.  But it wasn't until we found each other that we started thinking about a wedding day.  Surely that means this is right.  Why can't the rest of the world understand that?

Amanda LaFantasie (Skoora) © 2012