DIGRESSION: First Comes Love

My earlier post (titled Maggie's Stupid Digression if you want to read it again) put me in mind to re-read Marion Winick's haunting, outside-the-box memoir, First Comes Loves (It is sadly out of print but you can order used copies here.) These are hardly role models (they fell in love over heroin). But it is a rare look into why one individual gay man chose to marry one individual woman, and vice versa. Of course, we only get her point of view (he died of AIDs). From time-to-time I will post little excerpts. Just because to me it is beautiful and interesting and terrifying, too:

"[w]e speculated that this old firend of Tony's couldn't handle the idea that he and I were a couple. He had betrayed his gay bethren; he was out of the club. Not every gay male friend reacted this negatively, but practically all of them were at least somewhat bemused by the situation, made more confusing by the fact that Tony never claimed to be bisexual. He was a gay man who happened to be in love with a women--who had forsaken all others to make his life with her. It was an odd choice, and for some gay friends, a threatening one--a kind of mixed marriage.

And what was it for us? Here we were, two people who would later joke thaqt if we invited all of our respective ex-lovers to our wedding we would have to rent a convention center, and we had each chosen a partner with whom we were less than compatible sexually. Hade we just had enough sex, or at least enough of sex being the most important thing? A convention center full of disappointed later, had we just developed other priorities? This must have been true for Tony, who became a virtually asexual being once he fell in love with me. I, however, actually believed our physical relationship would eventually work out the way I wanted it to, and failed to consider what life would be like if it didn't. . . .

More than lovers, we were like infatuated grade school best friends who spend every waking minute together and never tire of one another's company, experimenting with sex occasionaly at wil sleepover parties. My need for attention and closeness was one Tony was fully capable of filling. He never got sick of me, never wanted to go away, never needed to be alone. . . .Finally I was not too intense.

Not too wild. No stupid things I said or did when I was drunk or otherwise f**cked up were every a problem. . .

What we both wanted, deep down, was the security of unconditional love, the mo matter what you do, no matter what you say, I will always be right here. Even if you're gay and I'm straight. Even if you're beautiful and I'm just okay. Even if I have money and you don't. In fact, we melted into each other."

posted by maggie at 10:52 AM VOTE

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