The Write Thing

What do you write about when you cannot think? What do you write about when you can’t deal with a lie, and the only thing that stays printed on your brain, in your heart, is the absence of words?

Perhaps you write about the nuances of words, so I should write about the odd conversation we had a few days ago, while you were still edgy with me because I stepped away from the peace and quiet you wanted that night over dinner. We talked about three verbs in English that are summarized into one in Spanish and two in French. We talked about wait, hope and expect. I asked you, the native English speaker, to pick one that would boil down to the very origin of the meaning, that could be the one that would eventually stand above the rest, if you had to choose only one. It was a tricky question, but I like to ask those, because you always find a way around them, and eventually I know that, just as in our conversation over dinner, I will end up struggling to steer my boat towards the shore I wanted to go to.

You picked “hope”. I think you got extra help there, because you do speak Spanish, although you won’t admit it. It does not matter, you still picked the only one of the three that clearly depicts an emotion. So it might all start with an emotion, but then as that emotion matures, we evolve into some form of passivity and then some form of impatience. I would agree with you, and start with hope, only because that’s the only choice in Spanish. You are definitely right. I would also start with the emotional “esperar”, instead of the passive or the certain versions of it. I would then grow into the less interesting “wait”, dispossessed of excitement and sequestered into the trap of clocks and Blackberries. Finally, I’d go for “expect”, the ironic combination for pregnancy while even that can fail, and leave you empty-handed six or seven months into the infallible future. I wonder…is the fall harder because you “expect” the child? Shouldn’t we wait for the child, or simply hope for it?

I wonder how it must have been for you, and whether you ever experienced the three. I wonder if you hope, because I feel that is the only one left for me when it comes to us. I know that you wait, mostly at airports, until I make my exit on time, like I did last week in the unusually hot Pacific Northwest. Something tells me you are good at expecting, but that comes elsewhere, and it does not involve me, but your priorities.

I used to think this absence in you, as I perceive it, was a temporary feeling, but now I’m beginning to feel it may not be. And it is too sad, because soon I may lose my root. And I may no longer hope.

I am reading Emi’s post on Don Giovanni and I just realized how much I’m missing an opera night. Here in Houston the season will open shortly, but for now opera is unfortunately a wish. However, I have already told her I’d like to see one of the highlights of this season Madama Butterfly with her. That is when she shared with me that her mother, in the final years of a long-lasting illness, had expressed a wish to see that Puccini classic.

So I am now set off to book our seats for one of the performances in October or November, as fall here once again signals the beginning of a working year. Before then there will be Buenos Aires, her own Portland earlier on and Seattle for my birthday. However, there is that specific image that I keep replaying on my mind, her hand on mine, enthralled in the story of Cio Cio San’s love belittled by Pinkerton’s «butterfly« desire. It is that vision alone that gives the wait its meaning. And I have waited for you. And I will wait for you as long as it takes you to trust the love I bring, knowing that you may be Pinkerton to my hope, but you may also stand up to it like the woman I think you are.

Regardless of outcomes, life, or potentially thwarted plans, Butterfly’s final scene will remain with me, like the first time I listened to the opera, which I have never had the opportunity of seeing live yet. The final aria, Con onor muore is Butterfly’s goodbye to her son as she puts an end to her life in search of the honor she failed to have when she was alive, according to her own traditions.

I, for all life is worth, will prefer to live with honor, with the truthfulness of a word that does not falter, a love that remains and gives, and the belief in the you I know, rather than the dim hope of your memory.

The news from Buenos Aires is not auspicious. Acceptance of marriage as a rightful option for gay couples still seems remote. There is a clash of powers, and the church has deployed all of its soldiers (including makeshift ones) to go fight one more battle before they win a partial war, a war of ignorance, a war of non-commitment. Let them out into the public square, have them express themselves and their self-righteousness.

A law for gay marriage may not be passed, and curious euphemisms will be invented to substitute the rightful status: civil union, domestic partnership, or the French PACS, which at least contemplated common taxes — a perk not to be neglected when looking at the hefty tax income percentage the common mortal is required to give the government in that society.

I can consider myself lucky. Because of my relentless pursuit of a nationality I was entitled to, I can marry the person I love, if she and I so desire. I can be a married gay person in Europe and legally enjoy the same benefits as heterosexuals. However, am I really an equal? There lies the question. Many years ago, while visiting a friend of mine in Denmark, she casually commented on a friend of hers who was married to a person of her own sex. The takeaway of that conversation was that, although gay marriage has been a perfectly viable option in Denmark since the late nineties, she still did not feel she could publicly announce her status without being looked at differently. And that was a shame, I thought, not yet knowing I would once find myself living as a gay person.

So today I know that money will be eventually the decisive element in shaping legal openness to gay families. It will take a long time, but at some point there will be no choice but to see the alternative family model coexisting with you, no matter how many people you can gather around a metropolitan landmark on a given day to go say that gay marriage is unconstitutional, perverse, and against nature.

In a silent, almost imperceptible way, this is happening here in the US, slowly, like the advent of the Spanish language which now has almost equal presence to native English. Slowly, economic power in the hands of the gay community will not leave room for anything but a legal status. Today, the country that hosts me does not accept marriage on a federal level, but gay people still have kids that do not know what a traditional household of mom and dad looks like. Still, US federal law does not grant reality a legal framework. There are kids in many states that are the product of artificial insemination regardless of whether that state has a law that will give their gay moms or dads the option of a legal contract. All of this reality is happening closer to me than I would have imagined. And that is right, that is the truth, regardless of the law.

I agree. The law would be the icing on the cake, le coup final that would make everything right and would allow us to put our heads on the pillow and sleep in certainty. Marriage is like a green card as opposed to a temporary visa. But we are far from that greencard on a global level, so we still go for the temporary visa. Eventually, the greencard will come and nationality will be an option. Today, we can only lobby for it, and hope that eyes will be opened soon to the new reality, once the economics of being gay tears down the barriers of the higher powers with less economic leverage.

It is still early for that. Patience will be necessary until the moment comes. And it will.