After not seeing you for more than a month,
Your greeting to me came as more than a surprise,
And here I thought I was surprising you by even showing up that day.
But what is it you’re suggesting to me?
I don’t even have a proper label for your question yet.
Like out of some television program I’ve seen,
You suggest that if things don’t change,
If we both continue to find ourselves confronted by darkness
Punctuated occasionally with only the fragile starlight of love
Instead of the blazing suns we seek,
That you would be willing, would like,
To have a family with me.
But unlike the examples seen lately in mass media,
You suggest more than just an exchange of genes,
Or falling in together because of some wild “accident”,
Rather you suggest a life—
A life that begins with children,
Bright and beautiful ones you think with a smile,
But ends in living arrangements that resemble an unbroken home.
It is not merely genes you offer me, nor merely access to a father,
But rather a family you propose to create complete.
Complete for everything but a shared bed.
My mother thinks of this as a cold and strange sacrifice,
And I fear in the five years to come,
While we settle our lives and make one last bid for normalcy,
That she will pressure me to behave as I have not,
To search in desperation to avoid this awful fate.
She will only succeed in failing to change me.
And you, what shall we call this now?
You propose a family, and I would expect no less.
A family built from friendship instead of love,
But no less deeply felt.
A family not based on modern models where sex is the primary purpose,
But a family based as much on older principles
And infused with the reality of still newer openness.
A family as families have always been—for children.
A kind of political alliance with no estate or politics.
A marriage of equals, of independent beings with a common purpose…
But see now, what is that term I’ve just used?
Is not marriage, in fact, not exactly what you’re suggesting?
A marriage with an understanding, but marriage nonetheless?
If you and I seeing a movie should still be called a “date”,
Let us acknowledge the usual term here as well, for lack of another,
Even if only to make defining what you suggest easier,
Instead of some modern legal term for which every concept must be given anew.
And how like a marriage from here:
To live together, to have children together, to raise them together,
And because of that last fact, we’re speaking of time,
Time to see the youngest safely into adulthood,
Time that runs to around twenty-five years if I’m not mistaken.
And how many marriages have the fortune to survive that long?
Without this what even shall I call you?
Not lover, surely. Mate is perhaps too technical and rather stilted.
Partner? Father of my children? (Somewhat cumbersome for my taste.)
The terminology, needed as much for ease of reference as definition of roles,
Awakens old memories inside me.
Given the way I’ve run from interested men,
It should come as no surprise that marriage has not been high
On any list of topics for contemplation of late.
Not really since my teenage years when everyone’s hormones led the way
Has an in-depth train of feeling really been engaged.
The technical problems remain and have grown:
How shall I avoid lace and god and all things traditional?—
Not to mention the god-awful mess of a huge family.
But so too the living problems that are harder to solve.
When are such things ever truly equal?
So I have watched my parents’ relationship crumble and change unequally.
How is it that she pleads she’s a feminist in the worse way
But goes on working for him, sacrificing her independence, fighting for every token freedom?
Who loses then if they part?
Glorified secretaries are easier to replace than his sales figures and his house.
And what of my freedom and self-sufficiency?
All the independence I’ve worked for and feared to sacrifice…
So my thoughts ran long ago, at a time when such things were far away and intimately at hand.
It was mostly from the loss of independence that I’ve run.
How could it be otherwise? Too headstrong.
And while my mother protests your proposal,
Having long since accepted the unequal nature of love.
I cannot help but wonder if this is what I’ve needed all along.
I cannot help by be curious if this is not the 'next best thing',
But for me, at least, far better than I ever expected, the best thing indeed.
And now you see I was right all this time:
Perhaps I will “marry” my best friend after all.
What say you now? It’s your turn to define terms…