Critical Exponent

Our marriage is less than a month away. Life feels full, as we try to juggle wedding tasks (the meeting of the parents went well), errands we want to get done beforehand (the picket fence is still an abstraction), and relaxation (hah!)

Obviously, I have marriage on the brain, but it seems like I’m not the only one. The New York Times has a retrospective on four years of gay marriage in Massachusetts, complete with a multimedia feature. Then, same-sex marriages are held up as examples of more equitable and non-gender-based power dynamics. And finally, in a shocking development, it seems that heterosexuals themselves are discovering equitable marriage roles.

These last two leave me shaking my head. Obviously in a same-sex marriage gender is not part of the power dynamics, but why should the power dynamics be affected by gender in the first place? And is it really that novel that some straight couples eschew gender roles? I certainly grew up with the expectation that both partners in a marriage share responsibilities equally, and that’s the norm among my friends, too.

The California Supreme Court, that’s who.

By now you’ve heard of the historic decision allowing same-sex marriage. Lambda Legal has a brief analysis of the decision, where they highlight the signficance of the ruling.

What this means personally is that Knox and I need could get legally married in California, though Vancouver remains closer. That’s in principle; it turns out that the ruling is not final unless no appeals or motions are filed within 30 days.

The decision caught me by surprise. Not because I expected the court to rule one way or the other, but rather because the case wasn’t even on my radar. Yes, I knew some cases were winding their way through the courts, but I wasn’t following.

This is a big change from the days of the Massachusetts legal victory and the rallies to defend the state constitution. Or even from more recent tracking of gay issues in the news. Why is this?

Part of this is political fatigue. Eight years of the national nightmare that is George W. Bush have taken their toll. I feel like I’m tuned out of the political process. Even in this presidential campaign, I’m tired of the posturing and plain-folksiness, the moralizing, the hyperbole.

Part of my encroaching apathy, too, is the volume and insignificance of the blogosphere. I’m not saying anything that hasn’t been said before, nor am I reaching masses of people. It’s just a fraction of my friends who bother to check my blog or RSS feed. And face-to-face debates? Much the same. No new points are brought up. Yes, talking to friends and neighbors about issues is a good way to effect change, but it is slow, laborious, and not scalable.

I care about the issues. I don’t care about the noise. More and more I seek refuge in the determinism of computer code, or the plainness of physical activity.

But I’m excited about the marriage victory.

Life has been filled with interesting events I’ve been wanting to put on this blog, but I haven’t had time. Luckily, the fianz is better about bloggoimg, so here’s a quick update with links:

• We went to Grayland State Park, where I got to fly my first kite.
• We picked out plants for the front garden and I put them in. Played in the dirt all day!
• We went to New York. We even ventured out of Manhattan to see the botanical garden’s exhibition on Darwin’s Garden.

I may get around to putting up more backdated detailed posts. Or not.

Sometimes you need to get away from it all: no internet, no phone, no time-pieces.

Knox and I loaded up our newly-acquired car with skis and backpacks on Friday, headed to Teanaway, and skiied to a Forest Service cabin. We expected to be outdoors all the time. In reality, save for a brief ski run and wood-chopping session on Saturday, and the gorgeous ski back on Sunday, we stayed in, reading and sleeping.

The only other humans we saw were a handful of snowmobilers, including a group that confirmed our cabin location when we first entered the forest later on Friday evening than we had planned. We were ensconced in that little cabin, keeping the fire going, melting snow for water, and absorbed in our books. Quite fittingly, I thought, I got through the second half of The Mists of Avalon, and I could swear that if I looked just so out the window I could see the fairy country of Morgaine’s tale…

This year, I “celebrated” Christmas for the first time. No, none of the baby Jesus stuff; just a lot of good cheer and a little of the crass materialism.

Knox and I put up a Christmas tree. More of a shrub, really, since we wanted a live tree that we could plant in our garden afterwards. When we went to the store to get lights and ornaments, I felt so, so,… goy. It was alien to me, participating in customs of which I’d only been an observer.

The presents we got, we put under the tree. The lit menorah and the model train set rounded out the Noël tableau. The anticipation built with a handful of holiday parties, dinners with friends, and gift-giving of our own—and of course, the obligatory yuletide soundtrack.

Christmas Day arrived and we rushed downstairs, giddy like children in our bathrobes and hot chocolate. The presents were a delight! We called our family and then partook in that most central ritual of Christmas, dim-sum.

And then it snowed!

The first week of homeownership has been…exhausting. We’ve been moving in and unpacking while trying to continue a semblance of normal life. Every detail is cause for wonder or worry. Do we really not have hot water? No, the thermostat was in vacation mode. Can we actually store our clothes without having proper closets? Yes, there are enough open shelves and rods and, hey, we were going to downsize anyway. Will the cat adjust to the new digs? She’s doing quite well, thank you.

Thanksgiving was spent thus, both of us negotiating how to set up house. So far so good: we’re still talking, and we’re still crazy about the house. In fact, life in Judkins Park is quite good: my bus commute is now entirely urban, and Salima, the Cham restaurant down MLK, is a new favorite. Some neighbors even dropped off homemade applesauce to welcome us to the neighborhood!

We’re buying a house.

The real estate market in Seattle has finally started to stabilize this summer. Though we hadn’t been paying particularly close attention, all of a sudden we started noticing “For Sale” signs. Online, we found that more and more houses were staying on the market longer—and even dropping in price.

The significance of this may not be obvious to those who’ve not experienced the recent urban real estate bubbles. The past several years have brought a steady stream of reports on the ever rising home prices in New York, San Francisco, and Boston. As recently as this spring, when two separate friends each bought condos, bidding wars were the norm here in Seattle: you saw a place, you wrote an escalation clause, you crossed your fingers.

Now, with the subprime mortgage bust to thank (?), all that’s changed. We actually have time to look at places a second, third, fourth time. Our realtor gets calls back from selling agents anxiously inquiring whether we liked their properties. We can be picky and watch prices slip as we we walk away.

Buying a home is stressful (more about that later), but one of the pleasures of the whole process has been reaching a long-term milestone. I’d started putting money aside for a down payment years ago, thinking that someday I’d be in a position to get into the market. The pennies piled up, I got on with my life. And now that the opportunity presents itself, we’re ready. How awesome is that?

I was ecstatic to hear that the anti-marriage amendment was defeated in Massachusetts. Marriage equality will continue there! Way to go!

Now, when do we get it in my new home, Washington? We can’t even travel to MA to get married because the state chose to enforce a 1913 law (intended to put the brakes on interracial marriage) that MA will not perform marriages that are not recognized in one’s state of residence. That means that Knox and I have to get legally married in Canada, where there are no residency requirements. As I understand it, the marriage will then be recognized not only in countries that allow gay marriage (Belgium, Canada, the Netherlands, Spain, and South Africa), but also in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and New York (these last two don’t yet perform gay marriages but recognize out-of-state marriages).

To be sure, today marks a major milestone, but until equality becomes a non-issue and couples like us do not have to deal with this crazy patchwork of laws and second-class status, the fight will continue.

The months of painstaking work and artistic obsession have come to fruition. Knox’s art show, whichever stone you lift–, finally opened. If you’re in Boston, check it out at the Brookline Arts Center.

And if you’re not in Boston, get in touch. We’d love to take this show on the road.