29 Days

When my cosmopolitan friends from sea to shining sea bother to contemplate my move to rural Kansas, I'm sure they shake their heads and cluck their tongues. It must seem like one of those moves people make to prepare for an imminent demise. And in a way, it was.

"Kansas," I can hear them whispering behind their hand at cocktail parties I should have been attending in Chicago or San Francisco. My mostly anonymous years in both cities were replete with opportunity and carnal education. I moved in circles that were but orbiting universes of even better circles. Far from the exotic allure of an Englishman in New York, I was a Middle-Aged Kansan in Chicago. No ring to that whatsoever. Not even a tinkle.

When time and circumstances converged, I made my way back to the flatlands to this town of 3,000 people, countless animals and one grocery store known by no name that is common among civilized people. Financially, I'd be comfortable for the rest of my numbered days. Socially, I'd be entertained - if only in the delight of observation. Sexually, I'd be challenged beyond all the limits intended for human endurance. I adopted a life without capital letters. This life would be so lower-case that t.s. eliot would shit himself. k.d. lang would re-capitalize if she knew what lower-case really looked like. I am the Little 'Mo on the Prairie.

I live in a time and place where the nicest of 78 year-old ladies thinks nothing of calling up and asking if I can play piano at the Brush Arbor Revival meeting two counties over for "the real nice colored man" who will be singing. The lack of palpable animus in the worst of racism makes for challenging moments when I'm glad the phone doesn't transmit the dropping of jaws. I've stopped doing double takes at men who carry transparent spit cups through the grocery store. The Mennonite waitress on roller skates with her bonnet and ankle-length dress at the drive-up hamburger joint doesn't register as odd anymore. I'm still all me. I'm just all here.

Today I watched with muted glee as the Senate failed to muster even a simple majority to condemn the curious notion of Gay Marriage. Those who work themselves into a dither over the matter - on both sides - should know some of the people I know. They'd find more important things by far to occupy their time, I assure you. I tip my hat (John Deere nowadays) to those ubiquitous uni-gendered couples who have managed to endure each other's company for decades. I haven't managed to maintain brand loyalty to a potato chip for that long. I know that I'm not designed for Gay Marriage. I hope everyone gets what they want in the end. They should know my friend David, however.

David is the unwitting poster child for the absurdity of Gay Marriage. He is smart, funny, cultured, educated, well-employed, housed exquisitely and he possesses poise beyond the prediction of his upbringing. What's more, David is a resident of New York City. New York City! Only if the baths went condo could his socio-sexual options be any better. The best of the gayest at least drop in for a visit every few years, giving him a shot at some of the finest available deviants this planet has to offer. On the day that Congress dismissed the dissing of our Holy Matrimonial Future, my phone rang at 10 p.m. Eastern (9 p.m. Central and Pacific).

"Dahling," he slurred. "I'm in love."

Two parties...maybe three, I thought to myself. He's half in the glass, if not the bottle. This isn't the first time I've gotten this phone call from David - or someone like him. It's not even the first time this month. To wit:

"David?"

"Yes, dear?"

"How long have you known this person?"

"That's not important."

"I know it's not important on the scale of hangnail to Apocalypse, but I'd still like to know....How long have you known this person?"

A long, slightly slurred pause ensued until he coughed up,
"More than a month."

"32 days?"

"Yes, 32 days."

I was trained as an attorney, so I know when to concede a point. Thirty-two days is, indeed, more than any month. He had me there.

"We've exchanged rings," he gushed.

"You what?"

"Rings. We exchanged rings."

"Oh sweet Jesus on a Triscuit," I muttered

I allow myself the indulgence of a second date with the same frequency that Haley's Comet makes a cameo appearance in history. This was as true during my years in Chicago and San Francisco as it is today. It's just more easily explained today. The excruciatingly quick pace with which my people tend to couple and un-couple has in no small way contributed to my steadfast solitude. It's the Davids in my world who confirm at every turn that I'm not cut out for the hustle and flow of whirlwind romance and crashing defeats on the rocks of love.

"Here, talk to him," he insisted.

"Oh dear God no, don't..." I pled to no avail. Before I could inhale twice to clear my head, I was speaking with Him.

"Hi!," He managed to lisp and lilt simultaneously.

Well, at least He's homosexual, I reasoned. That's never a given with some of my Davids. My people have been known to poach from the other camp in ill-fated and worse-advised shopping excursions for husband material.


"So how long have you known my friend," I asked.

"In two days it will be a month!" He gushed.

"So you don't mind that David sounds like Carol Channing when he gets excited?"

"Who?" He asked.

"Carol Channing. Hello Dolly??"

Nothing. Dead silence.

"Tell me that you know who Carol Channing is," I ordered. I picked up the Gay Hotline and put my finger on the Revocation Department's pre-programmed speed-dial number.

"No idea," he blithely admitted.

"He gave you a ring?" I asked.

"Oh yes!"

"So tell me," I jabbed "is it good jewelry or cheap jewelry?"

Forever etched in the annals of my memory will be this unlikeliest of responses from the New York City Homosexual:

"It's in the middle."

"Put David back on the phone," I barked.

I heard the tell-tale clink of ice in glass and the not-quite-silent splash of something which reminded me that I lived in lower-case letters and not the outsized cursive of coastal homosexuality. To argue the absurdity of this charade with my most cosmopolitan of friends would be like debating the origins of the universe with my Yorkie. There would be barking, licking, and eventually someone would have to pee. But there would be no meeting of minds and no talking sense where sense could not be heard.

David had let himself off the hook of temporary madness by laying claim to more than a month of coupled happiness. Mathematically, the beautiful young boy wearing David's ring had copped to a maximum of 29 days. That, I told myself, is the difference between us and them. We're so damned anxious to rush toward ordinary that we'll make 29 days into 32 days just to be that much closer to 'Til Death Do Us Part certainty.

You have to give us that. At least we're sincere. We mean well. No harm, no foul. David will enjoy the delusion for the few more weeks that it lasts and will call in waves of grief at The Decline and Fall of Gay Civilization when one of them moves on. And that boy with the ring? He'll be gone by the time I forget that I knew this. That's how I comfort myself on the prairie, to be brutally honest. They think me deprived of all that is good, gay and right.

Some days, I grant them all of the above. But it passes.

In about 29 days...give or take.