David Sedaris and Gay Marriage

OK, let me clear one thing up right off the bat about Susi's photo of Olga, which I linked to yesterday. Those are NOT my pants. I don't know who that person is, and in fact I didn't even see them when Susi and I went to the Heath the day that photo was taken. Just some colorful passerby!

(I do admit, however, that in the past I've had pants that are just as terrible.)

I got a kick out of David Sedaris' recent piece on gay marriage in The New Yorker. I loved how, until they saw the tax benefits, he and his partner Hugh were so resistant to marriage or even civil partnerships:

"The whole thing felt like a step down to me. From the dawn of time, the one irrefutably good thing about gay men and lesbians was that we didn’t force people to sit through our weddings. Even the most ardent of homophobes had to hand us that."

But what was even better was his description of a fight with his mother when he was a teenager, in which she called him "queer":

"Then I ran down to my room, which was spotless, everything just so, the Gustav Klimt posters on the walls, the cornflower-blue vase I’d bought with the money I earned babysitting. The veil had been lifted, and now I saw this for what it was: the lair of a blatant homosexual."

I completely identified with this. Did I ever show you a picture of my room when I was in high school?

Yeah. My vase was beige rather than cornflower blue, and I had Garfield rather than Gustav Klimt. (As well as a Budweiser poster, my one concession to teenage masculinity and a byproduct of my days as a beer can collector.) But still, same idea. I was a very neat kid, if somewhat prone to clutter.

For the record, I did not choose those curtains.

Anyway, Sedaris and his partner wind up deciding to get married for financial reasons, as understatedly as possible -- kind of like what Dave and I are doing. At least we're having a party, though. We're still debating whether to have rings. When I hear how much rings cost I can't help but think I would much rather spend that money on a trip to Helsinki or Tanzania. I mean, why do I need a ring?

Like all of us, though, Sedaris was "overcome with emotion" when he heard about the recent Supreme Court decision that made same-sex marriage legal across the United States. Of course he gave his feelings a wry twist:

"The Supreme Court ruling tells every gay fifteen-year-old living out in the middle of nowhere that he or she is as good as any other dope who wants to get married. To me it was a slightly mixed message, like saying we’re all equally entitled to wear Dockers to the Olive Garden."

(Top photo: A colorful shop in Leyton, East London.)