Good for the Goose, Good for the Spouse
Alan had just finished his evening shower and shave and walked out of the bathroom into the bedroom. Denny had turned down the covers on his side of the bed. Alan walked into the bedroom naked and scented with Chanel's A Gentleman's cologne, his skin still moist and glistening with it's golden body fuzz, soft and tempting to Denny, who wanted to know why he had bathed not before work, but just prior to bed.
"If you must know, I had a beastly day, and couldn't imagine myself very tastey or tempting tonight."
"So this radiance is just for me?" Denny wanted to know.
"Yes, lover, who better?"
"Sometimes you seem so logical and emotionless that I can never imagine you any other way!" Denny confided.
"Really? Denny, I have been more open and honest with you than I ever have been with anyone else in my life!"
"That is both comforting and puzzling!" Denny exclaimed.
"Why?" Alan wanted to know.
"Who can be so logical and on-top-of-it all the time?" Denny asked, incredulous.
"Would you like to see a little more spontaneity?" Alan asked, innocently.
"Why not?" Denny queried.
Alan laughed and jumped to the opposite side of the bed, on top of Denny.
"Now, that's more like it!" Denny crowed. Denny huffed as Alan landed. "So, what was the major screw-up in this 'beastly day?"
"Oh, Denny, it's just me, I guess! Gay marriage is barely in its infancy, and already there are at least 10 couples coming into the Legal Aide group seeking help in being divorced! It just breaks my heart! I fear that a lot are attracted to the Legal Aide group because of the noteriety of our marriage and that joke of a trial seeking to set an injunction against our marriage. It has been anticipated by gay groups for so long and already it is becoming like heterosexual marriages! What a disappointment."
"Isn't that what they wanted? To have all the rights of heterosexual couples?"
"Yes, of course. But what good does it do any one if they are as bedevilled and faithless as the hets
"Yes, I see what you're saying, but did you really think gay-love would turn out to be as laughable as het's love?"
"Of course not, Denny, but this makes it as useless as straight love!"
"I don't think any one expected any more! Did you?"
" Without doubt, no one did!"
"I would never have married any of the women I did without divorce laws! Would you have with me?"
"Who would?"
"But I certainly did not consider myself as capable of divorce after only 7 months of marriage, or I would have felt a fool for our having done so!"
"I seem to remember the night of our wedding, you complained of my having a wandering eye, already, even though it was for my already beloved Shirley. And, by the way, I have not once been with Shirley Schmidto since our marriage!"
"No one ever asked that you not do whatever it is you do with her, by the way! I have never expressed a desire for you to be a saint, Denny. As you said from the beginning you recognized that the sex in this marriage would not be something to awe us!"
"And yet I get the impression that you expect fidelity and wifelyness of gay people."
"That is not what I indicated, sure it would be nice if all committed people were actually able to be committed. Luckilly, neither of us is so poor as to have to live like the "simple people." I don't think that either of us would like to clean all the laundry of the other, as well as ourselves. Nor probably would either of us care to do all the cooking or gardening. Or driving, we have drivers and restaurants to allow us to avoid squabbling over such things. Probably if we needed to maintain a traditional home, I would probably be stuck with the cooking, if either of us could bear that! I don't see you vacuuming or changing the sheets or polishing the furniture, or arranging the flowers from the garden or maintaining the car. Really luckily, neither of us can produce a child or maintain it! Although I can see you getting a lot of fun out of teaching him or her to fish or shoot targets. The hard and unappealing parts of child rearing are perhaps only desired by the women who have the patience and courage to do it, maybe only women, who have been discouraged from the workplace by lower wages and regard so as to spare men the more 'glamorous' chore of working in the world and showing off their alpha-male personalities. Of course with a gay couple either of the pair is probably equally suited for either role." So what is left? Sex, of course, neither of which either of us supposedly enjoys with the other! Gay people, however, do. So they are better suited for providing the others' sexual needs. There are so many things which can drive people apart, that I wonder that any gay people do stay married, except for love. Love is a rather rare thing for most of the world. Fortunately for us we started out loving each other. I wonder that more gay people don't! Disappointment with the other's body being so different, and such different expectations! Heterosexual divorces I can totally comprehend. But gay marriages have so much going against them to start that it must require a lot of determination to get married to start with in that case!."
Denny looked thoughtful and placed his chin in his hand on his knee. "I've never heard you so passionate about gay rights, and now you are nearly apoplectic on the subject! What's going on here, Alan," Denny rolled his eyes.
"My husband doesn't understand why I am so worked up about the rights of his self-identified social group's rights to participate in the larger society's rights?" Denny rolled his eyes, and said,"What does this have to do with you and me?"
Alan rolled his eyes as well. "I did not do this marriage for a stunt or a prank or to get my jollies out of a marriage that perhaps others see as a joke! Denny, I was as serious as a heart attack when I said "I do! " to the justice! I had hoped that you were as well! You may have had so many divorces that it has inured you to the process, but I haven't! I do not want to lose you! What ever else happens to me, I want it to happen to us! I mean to take care of you and have you take care of me for the rest of our lives. And yes, cherish also! It makes me almost physically ill to see others who seemed so dedicated to each other giving up and not even trying!"
Denny's eyes grew red, and his demeanor became dead serious. "Lover, how many years have you been a lawyer now? And haven't you noticed that a lot of people don't really mean what they say. So, they have to be given an out when it comes to taking anything so sobering to heart! Haven't I told you that I love you and have given my heart and soul to you? Do you think me so dis-ingenuous and dishonest as to mislead you and your tender heart? Don't you think I know how soft your core is and how you take everything to heart? It almost breaks my own heart to think of the pain it would cause you, and therefore, me. You are a lot like a child. You pour your soul and spirit into almost every thing you think serious! Could I hurt some one who is like my own child?"
Alan's face became scarlet, as if Denny had hit on something that particularly goaded Alan. "I am not your child, Denny. I never have been! No matter how many times, you have made it seems so. I am a middle aged man who loves you with all my heart!"
"As do I you!"Denny bit back.
"Why am I less believable than you? You don't hear me going on and on about the fear that you might divorce me! And you have always been the one that women preferred. The more attractive one, the more eloquent, the more beautiful! The healthier one, and for whom do you think I would leave you?"
"You're right, lover! It's just that I have lost those for whom I yearned the most! Your reputation and standing and respect make me so much less in the world's eyes, Denny..."
"Aren't you supposed to be the greater prize?" Alan was almost whimpering now, seeing Denny's great red eyes. And why do you think I came in here tonight so carefully prepared?"
"Who is supposed to judging me the 'greater prize'? Alan, isn't that a question that can only be answered by me. So when you are so concerned about all these possibilities, why not consider the words of the spouse in question? Now I know that I am the litigious one in the relationship, all those divorces under my belt. I fear that I have been so busy building up my own reputation, that I haven't reassured you enough, After all, I am the one who asked to build this relationship. And I got just what I wanted. Yes, you got some one who will love you to the end of time. And to the extent that I have failed to build that confidence in you, I am at fault. Even in the sex, I fear that I am the one who dragged his feet and played macho male, but by now you must know how much I enjoy sex with you. Hell, you got me so hot tonight, coming in here naked as a jay bird, fresh and scented and your peach fuzz practically glowing in the semi-dark! You almost made me come right on our sheets! And I am no spring chicken for that matter!"
"Sorry to test your weak resistence, but if that is what I did, then I accomplished my purpose. Safer to try that with a shiney, squeaky clean body than with the sweaty, stinky, ill-humored person I was when I walked in our door! Now, have I ruined the mood, or may I assault your manhood?" Alan turned face down on Denny's chest and began covering it with tiny moist kisses. Denny shook his head in denial that Alan had ruined the mood, and half sat up in bed to better respond to the love assault., enveloping Alan's freshly scented body in his bear hug and moaned in delight, and all discussion of separation of any kind ceased.