Marriage by Gillian

Hey, you only have to look around my family to see.

IT  …  DOESN’T   …   FREEKIN’ …     WORK!!

My paternal grandfather was what we would call these days a recovering alcoholic. In his day he was just one of several local drunks. The fact that he no longer touched the booze seemed to be ignored and he was still thought of as a drunk by neighbors and family alike. Certainly my grandmother never gave him any credit, or even acknowledgement, for having quit.

He had drunk his way out of a good job, lost the lovely old house that they had owned when my dad was a little boy, and had to settle for moving to the cold dark damp dreary dwelling I lived in as a child.

My grandfather rarely spoke, or moved for that matter. He sat in his armchair beside the fireplace which rarely had a fire in it, hour after hour, doing nothing.

For all the attention he paid us, we all might as well not have been there.

At least he was harmless; unlike my grandmother.

She never spoke a civil word to anyone, but droned on with an endless litany of complaints about my grandfather.

In some circumstances two negatives equal a positive but alas not in human relationships.

MARRIAGE  …  DOESN’T   …   FREEKIN’ …     WORK!!

My mother’s parents were very different.

Her mother actually did approach the storybook grandma image; endless hours in the kitchen in a faded flowered apron, and my Irish maternal grandpa was one of the delights of my youth. He was a stonemason, creating gravestones from the local marble. I loved to sit and watch him, and occasionally I was even allowed to help. He sang or whistled while he worked, or regaled my juvenile ears with endless fantastical tales in which I doubt there was an ounce of truth.

They lived in a gorgeous rambling old house, built in 1742. It was light and warm with welcome, and different in every way from that of my other grandparents.

But I can’t recall a single time when they talked to each other.

They lived separate lives, I think, and so survived.

MARRIAGE DOESN’T FREEKIN’ WORK!!

My mother hated my father.

It took me many years to understand why; he had done nothing as far as I could tell.

A therapist friend explained it to me many years after I left home.

My parents had two children who died of meningitis within a week of each other, before I was born.

Under such circumstances it is apparently not uncommon for one parent, more frequently the mother, to blame the other, not from any logical reason but because they have a huge need to hate someone for the dreadful thing that has happened, and raving at God or a disease is just not personal enough, not close enough, not cathartic enough.

At least, right or wrong, it’s an explanation that works for me as I remember my mother’s inexplicable seething hatred constantly simmering just beneath the surface, and frequently erupting, ostensibly over minor things.

These days they would have divorced, I’m sure, but in those days you just soldiered on.

MARRIAGE DOESN’T FREEKIN’ WORK!!

My aunts’ and uncles’ marriages were little better and would, I believe, also have ended in divorce had that been the ready option it is today. I did have one uncle whose fifty years with the same woman seemed to be mutually rewarding, but ironically we discovered, after his death, that they were in fact never married at all.

Needless to say, my family history did nothing to foster a particularly positive view of marriage.

I knew that MARRIAGE DOESN’T FREEKIN’ WORK!!

But I got married anyway. How else was I to prove to myself that I was NOT gay?

My ex-husband and I have personalities that were born to clash, so even without that teensy wee detail of my suppressed homosexuality, our marriage was doomed.

My cousin, who lives in London is on her third marriage so there you go…

MARRIAGE DOESN’T FREEKIN’ WORK!!

And it sure as Hell isn’t just my family.

Statistically, over fifty percent of marriages now end in divorce.

So what do we, the GLBT Community, seem to want most in the world????

Would we fight to get a surgical procedure that has a less than fifty percent success rate?

Would we rush to get on a flight with a less than fifty percent chance of ever reaching its destination?

Why are we rushing like some pack of crazed lemmings towards the sea, when …

MARRIAGE DOESN’T FREEKIN’ WORK!!

Of course I do understand; and agree.

We should have the opportunity, the right, to accept or refuse that seat on the doomed flight.

Yet, if it were freely offered, would we really want it?

Betsy and I sometimes mull over the question of whether we would in fact marry if the opportunity arose. (Not a question we are likely to have to answer in our lifetime, I think, though I do believe it’s coming.)

The answer is probably in the affirmative simply for practical fiscal considerations, but certainly not for spiritual reasons.

I have two dreams for Gay Marriage.

The first is that when it finally becomes legal nobody does it!

They give a party and nobody comes!

How great would that be?

Thanks but no thanks, folks, we are above your failed institutions.

I can see them now, the huge rainbow banners saying …..

MARRIAGE DOESN’T FREEKIN’ WORK!!

My second, serious dream, is that we can indeed be better than our hetero brethren

and perhaps even help them out of the marriage doldrums into relationships that actually work.

That should be our goal, way above and beyond getting that legal sanction.

What if we had such successful relationships ourselves that we could shine a light to guide the het-set out of the darkness they have created?

They would envy us, and copy us, and just maybe the world would become a better place.

I can see the banners now, all those straight folks coming over from the Dark Side, marching down Broadway.

GAY MARRIAGE FREEKIN’ WORKS!!!!!

About the Author

I was born and raised in England. After graduation from college there, I moved to the U.S. and, having discovered Colorado, never left. I have lived in the Denver-Boulder area since 1965, working for 30 years at IBM. I married, raised four stepchildren, then got divorced after finally, in my forties, accepting myself as a lesbian. I have now been with my wonderful partner Betsy for 25 years.