I hardly know anything about love and certainly less about weddings and marriage, but you can still dream about things you don't personally experience...and know that love, fidelity and commitment are as part of your make-up as your eye and hair color. If you can't find someone else who is made up like that as well, then searching for love is incredibly (incredibly!) difficult.
Having been torn most of my adult life between trying not to be something my parents despise and longing to find true love, I honestly believe it's only circumstances and stereotypes I wish weren't true that have kept me single and celibate. I have never ever been an advocate of generalizations and smear campaigns, but it seems to me it's very hard to meet other gay women who believe in old-fashioned love and romance, not to mention marriage.
I have spent much of the past few years replacing my non-existent love life with romance novels. Some times, I'm lucky and find ones that reflect my values. At others, I find ones like these...
While nowhere near as good as her Forbidden Passions, Ruth Gogoll's L as
In Love is fast-paced, interesting and like a much less dramatically
draining PG version of Showtime's L Word. Major pet peeve: lack of
character descriptions and the character of Marlene (with her verbal abuse and use of sex as the answer to everything) is so unbelievably dislikeable it's
hard to fathom anyone going near her. I keep reading because Ruth Gogoll
and Susan Way make a great writing team.
The lack of being faithful to their girlfriends on the part of most of
the characters is why I found L Word so hard to watch at times. The
amount of people in the novel keeps any one story from being fully
realized, so this is part of a four book series. I suppose I'll start the next one in the hopes that someone finds true love. :)
And on the themes of love and marriage (ideally together and never apart), this is a little story I wrote from my heart and imagination:
Wedding Night
Jitters
My brand new wife
was finishing up in the bathroom and as I waited for her in our honeymoon suite
bed I became a nervous wreck.
There was no
guidebook for this, despite how many romance novels I had read in my lifetime.
Andi and I had been a couple for over a year and our situation was so uncommon
that if we had told anyone else about it they would have thought we were
insane. These days who waited for their wedding night to have sex with each other
for the very first time? And how often were at least one of them still a
virgin?
Andi had sworn the
whole time we dated she was okay with it and I had believed it, still believed
her. It seemed incredible, looking back now, that she had never once given me
even a moment’s lip about my being a virgin and wanting to wait for marriage.
So the fact that she
was hiding in the bathroom and I was the one eagerly waiting for her to come
out would have made it all a bit funny if I wasn’t so damned nervous.
“What’s wrong?” I’d
whispered during our quiet and very intimate oceanside dinner, the waves a
wonderful soundtrack to our heightened emotions. “Your hands are shaking.”
Andi had put her
wine glass down and stared straight into my eyes in this way she had that
completely undid me every time, made me believe we were each other’s home,
always and forever..which given how each of our families had permanently
abandoned us upon coming out was no exaggeration. She laughed, but it was a bit
hysterical, the way she laughed when she had something unpleasant to tell me.
“It just hit me.”
“What?” I asked
gently, taking her hand in mine, loving that she didn’t hesitate to take it in
her hands, never hesitated, no matter where we were.
“That I’m going to
be your first.” She paused, then laughed again, even more shrill this time. “I
think I’m going to throw up.”
“What?!” This time I
wasn’t so gentle, panic and fear choking my throat. “Are you suddenly sorry
that we waited? Are you sorry about-”
“No! No, sweetheart,
of course not. I love that we waited and I think it’s very special that you
feel how you do about…you know,” she leaned forward and whispered in my ear,
“love and sex and marriage.” She paused as she straightened back up a bit.”But
it just hit me that I-I have never felt less jaded or been more scared about
being with someone that way. It just…it just really hit me. That’s all. I’m
shaking because it’s here, our night…it’s here. You and me. Tonight. Together.
In one bed.”
“Wow.” I felt like
Christmas morning and Happily Ever After and all the other wonderful things
that didn’t last long had buddled themselves up together, ready to stay put for
as long as I wanted.
“Wow?”
“We’re finally here
in Hawaii and all I want is to go back to our room. Right now.”
“But our food hasn’t
gotten here yet.” Her eyes twinkled.
“I know. But I don’t
think I can wait another second. We’re married now. It’s official. And I love
you so much I can’t see straight. I think my eyes are actually starting to
cross.”
“You know, now that
you mention it.” She still held my hand.
“I’ll be a good girl
and wait, if you like.”
“I can’t wait
another second, either. Even if they can’t send the food back, I don’t care.
Let them bill us. I just want to get back to the room.”
And we had gone
back. But Andi had been in the bathroom a long time and I was starting to worry
it was because she couldn’t face me, that she was wondering what she’d gotten
herself into with this.
I had just slid out
of bed and started to the other side of the room when the door opened and she
stepped out.
I swallowed so hard at
the sight of her you could hear the sound all through the room. “Oh, Andi.” I
paused, searching for the right words. And I could do was say was her name
again.
“I’m sorry I stayed
in there so long, Teddie. I’m so scared. I didn’t think I would be. But I am.
Terrified, actually.”
“Terrified?” By now
I stood in front of her, reaching out to stroke the side of her face, loving
that she looked so hearbreakingly vulnerable in her sheer but stately floor
length nightgown.
“Before I met you, I
slept around a lot. I…I never ever thought I would want to wait like we have
and now here we are, waiting, and I am both so ready and so scared and I…I feel
like the virgin. I do.”
“You do?” I kissed
her cheek. “Really?...And…and you’re not sorry that I am?”
“No, not at all. Do
you mind about my past?” For a second, fear seemed to flash in her eyes…fear in
my Andi’s eyes!!
“Of course not. No
way. I love you and I hope I can always show you how much. Tonight is one of
the ways I hope to, but I don’t want to disappoint you.”
“You could never
disappoint me, sweetheart.”
“But…”
“Maybe it’s time we
both stop talking.” She took me in her arms and that was it. My trembling took
over and all I could see was her mouth moving closer to mine.
“This is it, isn’t
it? Oh, Andi.”
“Shush,” she said
and I could feel her smile against my mouth as she walked us backwards to the
bed and we started falling, in slomo, it seemed.
When we hit the bed
it felt like Cloud 9, below, above and everywhere else, not because it was
straight of Hollywood, but because each of us, in her own way searching and
wading through loneliness, had finally found our elusive, perfection connection
with another soul.
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