The Write Thing

Love is a complex feeling.  The intoxicating hyperactivity of its arrival is normally followed by the person’s natural magnet attraction to the loved one and her otherness, triggering the creation of an exclusive vacuum in which the two newly-connected beings finally generate a relationship.  At the time of conception, relationships go without much thinking…which is fine and adds spice to the whole game of lovemaking in and out of bed.  When relationships evolve, the thinking process begins and the lovers’ minds attempt complete the ellipsis of their significant other.  The goal is to fill in the gaps in our lover’s past and the windows of her present that we do not see, because life gets in the way through work or other obligations.  Will she be thinking of me right this moment?  What will she be doing?  Perhaps preparing for work?  She’s out with friends…will she lose track of time and delay her return, lost in conversation?

The inevitable comparison between the things we give her (or we think we give her) and the things others could give her can be heaven or hell.  If you are in the evolved species of people who are not jealous, you know that life is a bitch and then you die, so you can’t be bothered worrying too much about what is going on in between your incomplete present happiness and your future death .  But if you are the jealous type, the comparison between yourself and the rest of the world surrounding your object of desire and love becomes excruciating, and you feel that you are going downhill into the abyss of psychotic despair.  A typical reaction is to seek control, of yourself and of the other and her otherness.  What friends does she have?  What do friends do for her? How close are they to her that they might be or want to be more than friends with her?  Everything you don’t know about her eats out your flesh like a bad case of scabies.

In a long distance relationship, jealously has to be tamed unless you want to go mad with rage and anger at what may be happening, is happening or has already happened.  You cannot control anything, so you have to be wise and find the right dose of doubt or certainty about the other half of yourself doing things that you may or may never find out about.  Too much certainty makes the relationship a dull, predictable partnership.  Too much uncertainty makes the relationship hell.  Yes, you have to strike a balance.  Of course she might not be picking up the phone because she’s too busy exploring someone else’s mouth.  But she could also be as busy as you are at work now, or as you often are with your kids or with your former partner in Turkey or elsewhere.  We all have a past and a present that goes beyond the object of our love…and that is simply all right.

Jealousy makes us unreasonable, and it comes to haunt us when our insecurity is such that reality becomes anything but.  In a way, jealousy is a denial of the other’s love and a mechanism of self-defense.  However, it is completely our problem because we think we do not deserve what we have, instead of accepting that we have it.  Jealousy breaks whatever vacuum your magnet attraction to the other created.  It calls into question what is already unquestionable and unmeasurable…it is per se a futile task.  There is no measure for love and no way of knowing who loves more and who loves less in any relationship.  That is a primary rule in the game of love, but people forget because — silly them — they need certainty and reassurance that things will unfold according to a specific plan.  Yes, of course you can take someone, marry them, have kids with them and tick all the cases on your Miss Goody Two Shoes’ list.  But you can also fail, because anybody can plan, but not everybody can love.

Things I have learned so far, as another reminder of aging approaches:

- The fact that you can talk things over does not mean that they can be resolved
- The fact that somebody loves you does not mean they will necessarily do anything about it

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.