Mark and I were wed in the Great Rotunda of San Francisco City Hall, on the 16th of February, 2004, after two days and some 19 hours of standing in line, with thousands of our Gay brothers and Lesbian sisters, on City Hall's square and it's sidewalks, all about the building. Although the photographs don't show the weather as anything but a little overcast, the actuality was that for the majority of our time in line the winter storms that year were icy cold, extremely wet and wild with wicked Zephyr blustering through every layer of clothing we had on - and neither I or Mark shall ever forget, or I dare say, regret, one moment of those glorious hours. It will be difficult for any but our dear Queer friends to understand what it meant to be allowed to marry each other that day. Mayor Newsom's politically savvy move was, at the time, just as likely to become his political death nell. I admire him to this day for the great risk he took upon behalf of all of us. Months later, when the California Supreme Court annulled all of our weddings we were deeply hurt. Our American government's inability to grant us the equality of our heterosexual peers continues to be the great debate of our time. I believe at races end we will duly win our freedom to marry, and God willing, Mark and I will return to the City by the Bay, where we've indeed left our hearts' and their desires, and stand together once again, beneath the great Corinthian pillars of our Beaux Arts masterpiece, and hear, once and for all, "I now pronounce you Man and Husband!"
Until that day, we look back at these photographs and dwell upon the sweet memories of our 'official' wedding, realizing that it commemorates a marriage already made by God (and we two small foolish souls) from the thousand days before and since...
...some full of Strife and Sorrow's Pangs and others Brimming Full with Eros' Bliss and Unparrelled Joy (Belin, of course)!
I Hold No Diary of Fortune. Nor Know I What Lies Ahead. I Know Not what the Morrow or Year Next Shall Convey Us, but This I Know: A Fine and Rainy Day Three Years Ago in February is the Greatest Treasure I Do Own in this World. Yet should this World Pull Apart all Which We Do Bind Together in this Time, the Love and Faith Rejoined in Us that Hour Shall Ne'er Be Put Asunder.
So, Dear Friends and Family, Wish Us Both All that is Lovely and Gay, Sequined and Shiny, Frilly and Pink as a Rosebud: for Though Indeed Butch and Hyper-Male We Doth Appear (Ha! Well, Very Good, Only at Times and Only if We Art Found Stock-Still in Dimly Lit Expance)
We Have Been Linked by Cupid's Dart as Sure as Apollo Swooned and Felled His Hyacinthus and Zeus did Soar Off to the Distance with His Own Sweet Ganymede; or as We Surely Well May Say in Kindlier Vernacular:
Big Tab 'A' Must be Inserted Soundly into Tight Slot 'B' to keep the Whole Damn Thing from Falling the Fuck Apart!.
Mark, My Sweet, Here's to the Next Twenty Off!
My Mark of Honor
Spoon and Swoon with Me, My Badge Divine!
To Fork My Swollen Moons Thy Herculean Tine
Is Boon To Me as Pan's Hot, Sweet Red Wine's
Unruly Rush at Noon. Sated Do You Keep Mine
Tumescent, And Soon, Split Wide Our Skines
Together! Splendid Ruin! Do We Not Superbly Dine!
To Fork My Swollen Moons Thy Herculean Tine
Is Boon To Me as Pan's Hot, Sweet Red Wine's
Unruly Rush at Noon. Sated Do You Keep Mine
Tumescent, And Soon, Split Wide Our Skines
Together! Splendid Ruin! Do We Not Superbly Dine!
(for Mark from Donnie upon our Twentieth Anniversary, February 16, 2007)
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