On the Gay Lifestyle

On a bright, sunny Saturday, after the writing is done, we find ourselves outdoors on a cool November day.

We stop in at New Vibrations, Karen Parker’s amazing new age store, to pass along a signed copy of the new book. From there, we walk to Basil’s for pretty good panini — sandwiches stuffed with meat and veggies and olives. Fondren, Jackson’s funky, artsy neighborhood, is bustling; we spot at least five other gay couples taking a stroll.

On a whim, we stop at Greenbrook Florists for the Christmas Open House. Decked out for Christmas, the store, located in rambling, two-story home, sparkles — but we’re even more taken with the drama unfolding outside. There, a mother, determined to generate Christmas memories, stuffs her screaming daughter into a makeshift sleigh. The other occupant, a man in a Santa suit, tries to comfort the girl; she responds by howling and kicking.

The reluctant driver tells the unfortunate-looking horse to “Giddyap,” and the foursome takes a quick spin around the Greenbrook parking lot and nearby side streets. The girl shrieks in terror the entire time; thanks to the Doppler effect, her voice shifts in pitch, as a siren might, each time she passes us. (Now there’s a Christmas memory for ya.)

From there, we head out to Tinseltown for a quick movie — the remarkably shallow Prime. Prime appears to have been written by a twelve-year-old: someone enamored of the adult world, but with no experience in it.

Meryl Streep is there, playing a Jewish mother/psychiatrist who, conveniently for the story, does not feel to compelled to do what any ethical or responsible psychiatrist would feel compelled to do. Uma Thurmin is there, apparently working as a fashion photographer, but never obligated to do much with cameras that would demonstrate her expertise. Bryan Greenberg looks foxy enough with his scruffy chin and man/boy charm, but we are asked to take him seriously as a passionate painter — yet we never see him paint, or hear him talk about his inspiration, or overhear any conversations about his training or his technique.

For dinner: a bowl of cereal at home. Something very satisfying about that.

We’d picked Sunday as our day to decorate the house for Christmas. (Last year, we waited until December 14th or so, and, with our aggressive travel schedule, we didn’t get to enjoy our work.) So we’re up early, with breakfast at Broadstreet (good granola, made in the shop, plus minted fruit salad), followed by stops at Lowe’s (Christmas decorations), Wal-Mart (Christmas decorations), Home Depot (Christmas decorations), Calloway’s Garden Shop (Christmas decorations), and Target (Christmas decorations).

(Hey — give us a break: it’s our first Christmas in the new condo, and we sold all our big-scale Christmas decorations when we moved out of the Big House last spring.)

The afternoon and evening is spent erecting the slender new Christmas tree (a fabulously artificial one, made of lime green foil with lime green lights, just the right size for the one corner in our house capable of supporting a Christmas tree), unpacking and setting up the snow village buildings, and wrapping the bannisters with lighted garland.

There’s nothing remarkable here, you see … nothing out of the ordinary. And yet, because I did all these things with Clyde, the person I love most in the world, every moment was remarkable. We couldn’t have had a better time in Atlanta, or Paris, or Amsterdam, or Bangkok.

We were at home, together, just the two of us.

And this is, I think, what so many critics of unions like ours overlook. In the rush to see us as gay couples, they forget to see us as couples — just two people, better together than they would be apart.

The Rabid Religious Right would have you believe that gay couples are all about sex. (I would argue the obsession with sex is theirs, not ours.) But the simple truth is this: being a gay couple is far, far more about little moments like these: watching a sleigh ride gone horribly wrong, shopping for garland, sharing a sandwich, stringing lights on a tree, and doing nothing more remarkable than enjoying a weekend at home together.