The Write Thing

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.

Hurricane Alex, humbly downgraded to Tropical Storm only minutes before it hit the Galveston shores, made it to Houston. It is the first major weather event in Hurricane Season to happen in June for over 45 years, which suggests that this season is going to be heavy on mother earth anger and last-minute evacuations. I will think about that later, once I need to get ready to load the car, grab the dog, close the house and leave for a more benign Austin or wherever north begins to look like an option of well-being.

Because of Alex, Houston was flooded today. It happened much in the same way as it does in Buenos Aires when it rains heavily. Here the rain amounted to 6 inches or more, and it went on for a full two days, more heavily today.

I went to work, but was wise enough to return home before the rush hour began. Part of that was my need to pick up the dog from his grooming appointment, which he hates. So at some point we found ourselves in the car talking to the woman I still love and eating a sandwich a few blocks away from the apartment. It was good to get home earlier, as recommendations on the TV by the time we arrived were to stay wherever you were and wait it out.

So Houston treated me to its bad weather reputation today and, interestingly, it was not much different from some things I have already seen: cars stuck with water almost reaching the roof, people wading through heavy rain oblivious to whatever lies underneath their knees, well-buried in the water.

By the way, a difference is indeed that the Mayor spoke on the radio and she was later on TV, but at no point was her administration questioned on account of a storm, which is a weather phenomenon and not a capricious human decision. I could not but feel this was a more pragmatic society than mine, which expects her to do her job without blaming her for absolutely everything, such as the weather or World War I.

I personally cannot defend any single Mayor of BA I have experienced in my several years of life there. They have all at some point or another failed me or others. However, I have always been kind of alone defending the point that, if it rains heavily and the city floods, it is not totally a person’s fault…it is the weather. There are no subsidies on offer here for those who got their cars stuck in the water, or whose shops got flooded. You knew that it would happen when a heavy storm came, so you are on your own if Houston’s climate does not suit you.

This is America, right or wrong. This time, scary as it may seem, I have the feeling it is right.