No More Mrs. Nice Gay

Beren deMotier * writer * artist * human

No More Mrs. Nice Gay

Right before my forty-first birthday, I cut my long, curly, positively pre-Raphaelite hair short. Two weeks later, I got a tattoo on top of my right wrist, my first in almost twenty years. Then, I dug out my Doc Marten’s, started wearing my retro reading glasses and my wife wondered aloud if she’d be given the boot next week.

As if she could get rid of me that easily!

It’s not just that I was in serious need of a make-over (it’s been a long time since the eighties), or that I was looking for a way to hide my growing gray, or that nobody’s gaydar was going to find me in a million years with my previous sense of style, all of which partially apply. Mostly, I’m pissed off and tired of being Mrs. Nice Gay, that sweet, unthreatening lesbian with the nice kids, the white mini-van and overdone lipstick.

It was while vacationing in Canada that I realized just how angry I was. We were actually in a nation that rushed us to equal status, not based on our being church-going, child-rearing, above-average earning citizens, but on the basis that it was the right thing to do. The Prime Minister of Canada stated that Canada was a nation of minorities, gays and lesbians among them, and the rights of one needed to be the rights of all.

Can you see Bush doing that?

If we are a democracy, and not a meritocracy (or a beauty contest), my looking like a soccer mom in a lame attempt to get “a place at the table” isn’t going to work any more than being exceptional has worked for the dozens of highly paid professional gays and lesbians who have been the poster people for gay rights over the last decade. Our lesbian friends include professors, 911 operators, the CIO of a Fortune 500 company, but they don’t receive legal equity any more than the proud blue collar bulldyke down the block, because we, as a class, are deemed unworthy of equal marriage, legal protection, or freedom from discrimination.

Why expend any energy on not being me, when being “not-me” didn’t get me (or my people) anywhere?

Not that I would ever be a clone of the bulldyke down the block (bless her studly heart), and I may regret my loss of hair yet. But the people who matter are broad enough to accept a tattooed mama in horn rims, just as they could accept a mom in Gor-tex. It was me who was editing, desperate to change the world by making myself palatable, acceptable, an ambassador for the “everyday gay” to further the cause of legal marriage.

And legal marriage matters. It mattered when we jumped through the open window of opportunity in Multnomah County in March 2004, it mattered even more when it was voted against by the majority of my fellow Oregonians, and it was more precious than I knew when it was thrown back at us, declared null, void and legally non-existent.

We didn’t expect what had been unprecedented joy to turn into the greatest sorrow our marriage has known in eighteen years. My wife has never recovered, and the dull ache of depression and anxiety that’s held me over the last year was unleashed anger at the insult hurled at us, undeserved.

Some might ask, “Why does it hurt so much to lose something you never had before anyway?”

I can only say that our reaction seems to be universal. The couples we know who married in Multnomah County on that rainy Wednesday, and in the few weeks following, were devastated by the legal loss of their marriage, even though those partnerships, their non-legal marriages, had existed for many years. One of our friends says she thinks the pain is because we dared to believe, we let ourselves take the leap of faith that our community would stand by us, uphold our legal equity, and let the marriages stand.

Certainly there were bold statements made by straight friends and family that the state could not undo what it had already done, that once the licenses were granted, what could anyone do? That our marriages would be annulled, against our will, didn’t even occur to them.

So you could say I’m in a second adolescence, reliving my rebellious, angry youth, or trying to recapture it like so many women my age (our budget doesn’t stretch to surgery, though it does fit “microdermabrasion” by Mary Kay). But it is merely that I won’t be candy coating my arguments, covering my soap box with embroidered appliqué, or aiming for unthreatening in the wardrobe department. My mini-van is covered with political stickers and my rainbow flag is flying. I’m an angry tattooed Mother, make way.