“I’d marry you if I could.” Those words formed the first proposal of sorts I ever received, and it wasn’t as lame-o as it might sound. It didn’t come from a married man, either, or a prisoner, or a priest (hey, I know a woman who dated a priest, so apparently at least a few are into something besides little boys), or any other kind of man that might come to mind as not being able to follow through on the will-you-marry-me thing.
No, the person who uttered that almost-proposal couldn’t marry me because she was a she. Her sincere declaration swam back up to me out of the depths of my mental mothballs because of all the recent hoopla about legalizing gay marriage. Another memory trigger was reading that this newspaper’s critics and readers rated Scorpio as Charlotte’s best gay club, since she and I ended a few evenings together stumbling on the gravel of its vast parking lot toward our car, past stragglers still trying to connect.
It’s strange to think that the throbbing beat goes on at good old Scorps, as we used to call it, while my side trip to the Island of Lesbos recedes ever further into the smog of time. I always did enjoy the queer clubs, even before I ended up temporarily joining the natives. They draw different kinds of people more than the straight bars do, since many who are homosexual go to the same one or two places.
The only thing that used to bug me about the gay hot spots when I was hitting them regularly was that inevitably there was some guy in a wig in the ladies room who hadn’t had “the operation” yet, but was about to, any day now, just as soon as he had the money. He’d be earnestly declaring this while standing over by the hot-air machine, gripping a cigarette between dagger-nailed fingers.
I got the impression these guys enjoyed lingering in the bathroom, maybe because just being in a space labeled “ladies” made them feel more like one. It was kind of touching in a pathetic way, but my bottom line is, as long as you’ve still got that thang, go hang it over a urinal. Come back after you’ve gotten it chopped off, pal, and then we can powder our noses together.
Part of the diversity of the gay clubs is that there’s a wider age group, which relates back to gays not being allowed to wed, making them a sort of separate race doomed to date in perpetuity. Like the pirates of the Black Pearl who can’t die in Pirates of The Caribbean, they’re immune to the slings and arrows of matrimony, drifting eternally instead on the choppy seas of singlehood. This means they’re always cycling back into the club scene, where the more grizzled among them wearily scan the shadowy faces in search of their next true love.
On the other hand, the fact that nobody’s married, or admitting to it, anyway, gives homosexual society a zingy sexiness that’s just not there when you get a bunch of married people together, no matter how wild and crazy they may claim to be. Having to be secretive gives everything an extra tingle, too, with the bars being your big opportunity to openly kiss or hold hands, unless you’re in Asheville. I just wonder if gay establishments will be able to retain their dark, slightly dangerous, under-the-radar vibe if someday their pulsing lights pick up the glint of wedding bands.
There’s also something romantic about never getting married, at least if you’re on the outside looking in. Even the term “life partner” sounds more rose-tinted than “spouse,” and more smugly assured of sailing off into eternity as a twosome. It’s like “life partner” is the company china, and “spouse” is the crockery subjected to everyday chipping and cracking. Being a “life partner” is decorating a getaway mountain home together, and being a “spouse” is getting a 20th-anniversary card from your husband, as my friend did recently, that has your first name misspelled on it.
Still, I remember the robbed feeling of wanting to be married to a particular person, but knowing it wasn’t possible. There we were, dancing to delirium in the Scorpios of the state by night, and pining by day to be able to hang out a shingle with a single last name on it. Our desire to officially settle down was especially urgent because we couldn’t.
Actually, it turned out to be a good thing that we weren’t able to wed, because after about a year I realized that I really did miss that thang, and I’m with Eminem when he says that dykes with dildos don’t make no sense. When we broke up, my girlfriend told me darkly that “they say the ones who cross over once always come back,” as if speaking ancient tribal wisdom. Well, who knows, if the law gets changed, and if God forbid I should outlive my current male spouse, maybe I’ll get to have that gay wedding someday after all. Then again, maybe not.
This article appears in Oct 29 – Nov 4, 2003.
