Reading Rainbow: The Commitment

I used to think Ira Glass was a woman.

If you’re more familiar with The Diane Rehm Show than This American Life, and a friend invites you to go hear Ira’s live old-fashioned "radio show” at GW University, you might think that Ira is wonderfully hip for bringing old radio back to the youths of today. You would be wrong and horribly embarrassed.

But I have repented of my ways. Now I listen to This American Life when I brush my teeth, walk to work, fold laundry, and watch Project Runway. In fact, I carry a boom box on my shoulder, blasting the program everywhere I go. Now I know that Ira is a MAN, a wonderful man who should be president of everything, but I digress.

Dan Savage is a regular contributor to This American Life, and after listening to one of his stories, I went out and bought his book, The Commitment. I’ve never read such a personal memoir. When reading it, you wonder if you should feel guilty for prying into his personal thoughts.

Dan talks about the feelings of his boyfriend, their son, and extended family when it comes to marriage. Dan’s mother wants them to get married. His boyfriend isn’t sure. Their six-year-old wants them to “pinky promise, to seriously and forever promise,” that they will always love each other and stay together.

With my brother’s impending marriage, the subject has graced my mind. More honestly, the subject of marriage has been more of a throbbing headache beginning when I was born, climaxing the month after my mission, and only recently beginning to subside.

It was the next in a long line of accomplishments I had planned for myself.

I find myself in a strange limbo, unable to "move forward," into a phase I've always wanted, but isn't available to me, and one I'm not always sure is right for me. On the one hand, there is a legitimacy and protection afforded to married couples, a sense of possession, of permanence. On the other hand, being unable to get married keeps me from obsessing about a false endgame, and keeps me focused on quietly building a relationship without fanfare. Dan Savage:

“Before gay marriage became an option, no one expected a same-sex couple to put on a floor show for our families and friends about how much we really, truly loved each other. Straight couples that want their relationships to be taken seriously have always had to jump through the marital hoop, but not gay couples. We couldn’t cut to the front of the take-my-relationship-seriously line by getting married two days or two months or two years after we met. Unlike heterosexuals, we had to do the hard work of building a life together in order to be taken seriously, something we did without any legal entanglements or incentives.”

Of necessity, convention was discarded when I decided to live fully and unabashedly. But just because I discarded the default roadmap doesn't imply my destination has changed. Whether or not I will ever be allowed to get married, I will have tenderness, beauty, inspiration, love and growth in a relationship I commit my heart to. Married or not, relationships are difficult. But building them is the most brilliant thing we may create. I love this sentiment by Dan Savage:

“My relationship with Terry has always been our own creation, the product of a love some people believe isn’t even supposed to exist. With state and church against us, there’s a kind of dignity in loving each other anyway.”