“Married Bitches” by Nicole Santalucia

We are having a shotgun marriage, well, except we are not pregnant.  The marriage equality act goes into effect on the 24th of July! Binghamton is opening their offices on the 24th (Sunday) for us gays to go apply for a marriage license so that we can get married on the actual day the law goes into effect.  I thought that was pretty cool.  It is funny how the marriage thing all turned out for us.  We've been together for almost ten years and have always been weirded out about the idea of ever having a wedding. Marriage kind of never was on our list of things we've wanted.  I think we have always just considered ourselves married/committed to each other and that was that.  But, I have a professor who approached me at the end of last semester saying that she could get me a grant that goes out to a married grad student with low income.  She said, “go get married and I will work on getting the grant. “ So, I came home one afternoon and told Deanna that we ought to get married, what better reason to marry besides for money.  So, we planned a trip to Vermont and made an appointment with a Justice of the Peace at the end of July.  The Justice of the Peace, Lainey, suffers from fatigue syndrome. When I spoke with her on the phone her expression of enthusiasm didn't match her words.  I found a bit of humor in this because she kept saying how excited she was to marry us, yet she sounded like she was going to fall asleep as she said it.  Then, NYS passed the law and it is now legal for us to marry in our home state.  Of course it's the week before we planned to go to Vermont to get the deed done.  We canceled with Lainey, but will still take our trip to VT.  She wants to have coffee with us when we are there.  I wonder if she will have decaf?  Anyway, we are actually pretty excited to make history in NY and marry on July 24th.  Oh, and the grant for the married grad student, well, I already received it.  The professor stood up and made a point about how gay people can’t legally marry in NY and somehow convinced the committee to give me the grant.  It turns out we are not marrying for money after all.  It wasn't very much money anyway.  At this point we already spent it before ever getting it: between getting our rings, going to VT, and, well, we like to eat good food and have a high grocery bill.

 

Now, when bitches love each other sometimes they shouldn't get married too.  I happened to witness a conversation recently that can best be described in the form of a poem:

 

Bitches on the Roof

 

I love the bitch, said the guy with no teeth.

Then, he took a swig from his can of beer,

climbed back up the ladder onto the roof,

and started hammering.

 

You can’t live with that bitch anymore,

said the other guy with a bigger tool belt and two teeth.

The bitch won’t even cook, said no-teeth man.

 

I sat quietly on my porch listening to these men bitch

as they fixed the neighbor’s house. I secretly wished their

bitch-asses would fall off the roof, and I wanted to tell them

to stop bitching, to take off their bitch costume and strap on

a real cock.

 

It was late May and the men kept coming to work on the house.

Sometimes they would wake me up.  They slurped their beer and bitched

about their baby mommas.  I started dreaming about tool belts and memorizing

their conversations as they hammered each shingle.

 

Now, it is June and I’m wearing my own tool belt and sitting on the porch.

Every once in a while I look next door

as if to agree with the men who re-roofed the house last month

and want to climb on the roof and scream,