Modern Love

LaVieEnRose

"Two years ago that day, we'd gotten up early, dressed in our finest jeans and ratty t-shirts, and driven ourselves up to Vermont and gotten hitched. Justin was carsick and cranky and we argued about music most of the way up and stayed in some crappy motel he paid for. Even though we were still talking then, we looked up how to say “I do,” in sign language before we got to the state house and signed it out for each other while some bored secretary married us in about two and a half minutes. We gave each other a perfunctory kiss, walked out into a cold, sunny afternoon, and had lukewarm delivery pizza as our big post-wedding meal, after we fucked up an appetite. We stayed up late looking for gay porn on the motel's pay per view and drove home in the morning, stopping at the pharmacy to pick up a prescription Justin no longer had to worry about affording."

It was, I am absolutely certain, the greatest wedding this world has ever seen, and you fuckers can eat your hearts out.

Let's expand.

**********

“Do you want to do it today?” I asked him at the loft one Saturday morning in April, just after he'd turned twenty-four, just before I turned thirty...whatever. We were fresh out of the shower, and his hair was starting to get long again, dripping onto his shoulders and making them sparkle in the bathroom light.

“What?”

I rolled my eyes. “Put your hearing aids in.”

“I don't know what you're saying.”

“Oh my God,” I said, and I took his hearing aids off the counter and thrust them at him. He rolled his eyes and put them in.

“Can I help you?”

“I was asking if you wanted to head up to get married today, but now I'm so goddamn annoyed with you that I think I'm just gonna put out a personal ad for literally anyone who wears their fucking hearing aids and marry him instead just to piss you off.”

“That sounds fun!” he said. “Ooh, like Deaf sister wives.” Probably we weren't thinking with a capital D Deaf back then, but there's no going back and all that.

“No, I'm not also marrying you in this scenario. I'm removing you from the loft. You're out, new Deaf guy is in.”

“We can teach other sign language, and write letters to movie theaters complaining about the captions, and have sex only you can hear...”

“No, I'm kicking you out of the loft. Goddamn, you do not hear fuckin' anything.”

He stood on his toes and kissed me. “We can do it today. Let's get it over with. How long's the drive?”

“Ten hours and change. I got you one of those motion sickness bands, we'll try it out.”

He hopped off to the kitchen. “I'll get snacks!”

“We're not eating in the car!”

“I can't hear youuuu!”

I got dressed, intentionally choosing something no one with any respect for the institution would ever wear to get married, and looked around the loft. Tried to imagine the Brian who moved in here all those years ago, what he would think about the fact that I was about to go tie to knot to some little twink so he could have health insurance. God, I could almost feel my ass getting kicked through the space-time continuum.

And then I heard Justin's fucking tuneless singing from the kitchen and thought about hearing that every day for the rest of my goddamn life and thought, well, you know. Why the hell not.

**

The fact of the matter is, I wasn't that worried about getting married. I knew Justin didn't have any delusions that this was going to change the state of our relationship. This wasn't some symbolic “taking the next step,” bullshit, and that's not me being in denial, here, it's me telling you, clearly and simply, with the benefit of perspective, that there wasn't a “next step” from where we were. We were already where we are now.

This was about legal protection, and about my neurotic need to immortalize him, but you've heard all that already. The whole 'forever,' thing didn't worry me, because it had been years since I wasn't sure that Justin would always be in my life in some way.

I think I figured that out, actually, while he was with Ethan. Because he liked the fiddler, he did, but we were never free of each other. We circled each other, made eyes at each other, were kind to each other in small, involuntary ways. So I knew...this wasn't going to end, this thing was never going to be over.Things would change, morph, maybe get bad before they got good sometimes, but freedom from this bastard had not been in the cards for a long time. I'd made peace with it.

And understand that I'm not being delusional here, I'm not even being hopeful, really; I don't think it's out of the realm of possibility that another Ethan could come along someday, or that I could get overwhelmed and take off, that Justin could someday move somewhere I wouldn't follow. It could happen. I can see situations in which we'd go weeks, months, years without seeing each other. I'm not trying to bum you out or anything, and I'm not saying I'm anticipating it, but...it could happen. It just wouldn't be the end of the world if we did, that's what I'm saying. It wouldn't be the end of anything.

We're never going to be rid of each other. I've known that since he walked out that door and still wasn't gone. I complain about him leaving, but...he can leave a hundred times. It's annoying, but it doesn't really matter, in any kind of cosmic way.

This is the kind of shit that the normal people and their normal love, they're never going to get it. We can't break up, because we're not...even that phrase is so fucking stupid, if you're trying to apply it to us. We're not the same as people who break up. That's fucking stupid.

I can't explain it to you. I'd never try. I'm just saying: it is written, it is signed, it is sealed, and that has nothing to do with a marriage license.

So in case you were expecting the story about our wedding to be all romantic, there's your romance. Now we'll get back to Justin whining in the car.

**

“This thing is not working,” Justin said, touching the band on his wrist. Ever since he started losing his hearing he'd had trouble with motion sickness, and we knew the car ride was going to be a bitch, but at least we were alone instead of him feeling like shit in an airplane full of strangers.

“You have to face forwards,” I said. “Look out the windshield.”

“I can't hear you if I'm facing forwards.”

“I'm not saying anything worth listening to.”

He reached forwards and turned up the music, again. I swatted his hands away. “Stop it. It's too loud.”

“You're just old.”

“Sure, that's the problem.”

“What?”

“Sure, that's the problem,” I said, louder. He hated if I just said 'nothing,' like most people did if he missed something, so I'd just repeat myself endlessly until he got it. You get used to it.

He was messing around on his phone. “I think you just fingerspell it,” he said. “But I can't find any footage of Deaf weddings.”

I do, I tried out.

“Yeah, like that.”

“Officiant's gonna wonder what the fuck we're doing.” I glanced over as he took a deep breath. “You need to pull over? Don't puke in the car.”

“Not yet. I'm gonna have some crackers, okay? Yeah, I'm gonna have some crackers. I'll feel so much better.”

“Christ, I'm gonna be vacuuming for a week.”

“I'll vacuum.”

“I've never fucking once seen you vacuum. Go ahead, fuck up my car.”

He nibbled on some saltines. “Isn't this our car at this point?”

“Fuck, the way you drive? No, I'll be just fine if you never get a car. I'll buy you a limo and a driver before I'll have you drive a car.”

“I can buy myself a car,” he said.

“Can you?”

“Theoretically.”

Justin had wanted to do a pre-nup, get everything squared away, but the whole thing just seemed so fucking stupid to me, I don't know. First of all, that we'd ever go through the fucking heterosexual hassle of divorcing, even if we decided we never wanted to see each other again, and second, that I'd leave the fucker destitute if we did. I've never been what one would call careful with money, and Justin had been factored in as an expense for six years at that point, much to his endless guilty bitching, so where the fuck was I supposed to gather some concern that he'd try to take all money someday? Again, just this fucking...pedestrian shit that people—and in this example we're including Justin—try to make a part of our lives, it's ridiculous.

He reached for the stereo again and I said, “Christ, weren't you just complaining that you couldn't hear me? Fuck, I should have just put you on a plane and sat you next to some stranger to puke on for two hours.”

“You'd think you'd want me to be able to hear the music,” he said. “You'd think you'd be all melancholy about the limited music days I have left and want me to experience everything the world has to offer, because you love me soooo much.”

“You would think that, wouldn't you?”

“Yeah.”

“But no. I guess I'm just full of surprises.”

“You're what?”

“Full of surprises.” I reached over and cupped the back of his head.

“Where did you tell Michael we were going?”

I snorted.“Philadelphia. Said I was bringing you to a concert.”

“See, I bet he cares that I have limited time left to hear music.”

“Yeah, he got real emotional about it. I think he wants to sign you up for one of those Make a Wish trips. Give Justin sound before it's too late! Maybe he'll start a fundraiser. You can put it towards your car.”

“When do you think people are going to find out the truth?” he said.

“Never. I want to tell them on my death bed. No, I want them to find out at the reading of the will. That's better.”

“Brian Kinney leaves all of his vast estate to Justin Taylor.”

“Yeah, and everyone kind of nods at that, I mean, Lindsay's all offended Gus didn't get it, but she's too WASPy to make a scene. And then there's a dramatic pause—”

He said, “That'll be written into the will.”

“—Oh yeah, of course, stage directions will definitely be included. And the lawyer goes...'to Justin Taylor...HIS HUSBAND.'”

“A hush falls over the room.”

“A hush? Are we talking about the same people? Debbie's going to be shrieking up a storm.”

“Why are you dying before Debbie?”

“She's immortal.”

“Anyway, to me it'll be a hush.” He shook his head a little. “That is so fucking weird.”

“What is?”

“That I'll still be Deaf then, I don't know. I get being Deaf a year from now, that's one thing. But the fact that I'm going to be Deaf when I'm old is like...I don't know. It doesn't feel real.”

“So you do it for a few years and then you outgrow it?”

“Yeah.”

“Would make a good memoir.”

“A what?

“Memoir.”

“Oh. 'Deaf Like Me.'”

“There you go.”

He yawned and stretched in his seat, making baby animal noises. “I'm gonna have to tell my mother at some point. And she's going to cry.”

“Lord.”

“Can we have cake?”

“No.”

“I'm having cake.”

“Not in the car, you're not.”

He laughed. “What if it helped motion sickness?”

“Bridge too far.”

“What?”

“Bridge too far.”

“Oh.” He paused. “Is that annoying?”

“No,” I said. He gave me a look like he didn't believe me. “It's not,” I insisted. “It's annoying when you get lost with other people but you won't ask them what they said, so then later you want me to replay the whole fucking conversation like I'm a damn tape recorder and fill in all the gaps for you.”

“No, you love it really.” He sighed. “My head hurts.”

“Probably because the music is so fucking loud.”

He shook his head. “The aids are bugging me, I'm gonna take them out.”

“You're never going to adjust to them if you keep taking them out all the time.”

“Hmm,” he said, and then took them out.

“That's not going to help you hear the music, you know?” I said.

“What?”

“That's not going to help you hear the music.”

“Still didn't get it.”

“How about this?” I said, and I reached over and put a hand on his crotch, and he laughed. I wondered then if the sound of his laugh would change someday; his audiologist had warned us that, while he'd probably always be fairly easy to understand, his voice wouldn't always sound like a hearing person's. His laugh did change, eventually, but I like it more now.

“Are you nervous?” he asked me.

I shook my head, figuring I was spared any larger discussion of it by virtue of him not being able to hear me. Why did I object to him taking out the hearing aids, again?

“Me neither. It's weird. I would have thought I'd be nervous. Daphne thinks I'm too young to get married.”

“Christ, you told Daphne?”

“I assume that's you being pissed that I told Daphne. Yes, I told Daphne.”

“Jesus, you're incorrigible.”

“I'm adorable? Thank you.”

“You damn well know that's not what I said.”

He grinned at me, the little shit.

“You are too young to get married,” I said. “You're too young for the dirty shit I did to you last night. You're too young to be going Deaf. You're useless.”

He rubbed his forehead. “Pull over, I'm gonna throw up now.”

“Okay.”

**

Vermont isn't much for luxury hotels, so our choices were either a B&B where a fucking eighty-year-old woman would ask us all sorts of questions so she could better fetishize our gay asses or some shitty motel, so we went for the shitty motel. Justin paid. It was nearly midnight at that point, since we'd stopped for food a few hours ago, so obviously the actual marriage would have to wait until tomorrow. We'd already called ahead and made our appointment, so we were good to go. “Getting married on a Sunday,” I said. “My mother would be so proud.”

Justin flopped backwards on the bed. “This place is gross. I hope you want to do this thing stoned on Benadryl tomorrow.”

“Only way I'll have you. Why the fuck are your clothes still on?”

He started taking them off, but he was too lazy to get up or even fucking sit off, so it was just some sort of strange wriggling around like a snake. I watched him, wondering if the fact that this turned me on was something I should be concerned about.

I went over to the bed and crawled on top of him, kissing where his neck met his shoulder. “Your waist is small,” I said, facing him so he could understand me.

He laughed. “Is that a compliment?”

“Yeah.”

We got undressed with a lot of urgency after that, and moved quickly—up against the headboard, bent over the rickety table, against the wall of the shower. He was practically falling asleep on his feet afterwards—he got tired so suddenly nowadays, from awake to out like a light in a heartbeat—and he blinked at his reflection while he brushed his teeth. I clamped my hands on his shoulders and he tilted his head up and smiled at me.

“What are you so happy about?” I asked him.

“I just love you a lot for some reason.”

“Jesus, you marry a kid one time and he thinks he can get all sappy.”

“You're the one who keeps saying it. Marry, marry, marry.”

“I'm excited about you having health insurance I don't have to pay for.”

“What are you gonna do with all your extra money?”

“I don't know. We'll go to Mexico. Sunbathe naked.”

“What?”

“Mexico.”

He nuzzled me. “When I'm feeling better, okay?” he said, but we never ended up going, mostly because he never really ended up feeling better.

“Need me to carry you over the threshold?” I said.

“We're not married yet.”

“True. Walk your own damn self.”

We went to bed and he promptly fell asleep with his head on my stomach, and I tugged out his hearing aids and turned on the TV and thought about telling him I loved him.

I didn't want to do it tomorrow. It was just...so fucking goddamn cliché, and it would make saying it seem so important, and God, we were already getting married, I needed to keep the heterosexuality to a minimum here. When I put too much thought in it, the idea of saying it at all seemed ridiculous, because there was no real reason to do it. It wasn't going to be a surprise to anyone. Justin obviously knew, and I knew that he knew, and he knew that I knew that he knew. No one was trying to fool anyone on anything. And he didn't need to hear it, had never asked for it. But the fact of the matter was, yeah, of course I had feelings about the fact that he was losing his hearing, Christ, and he deserved to hear it once in his life from someone who wasn't his mother or a fucking violinist, and we were running out of time.

I wanted to look nice when I told him. I'd get my hair cut, get a facial, the whole nine.

We still had a few months, the doctor said.

Justin shifted against my chest in his sleep, mumbling a little to himself.

“You okay?” I said, even though there was no possible way he could hear me.

He settled down with a sigh.

“I love you,” I said, just to try it out.

The world didn't end, so that seemed like a good omen for tomorrow.

**

Justin was gone when I woke up, and back ten minutes later with two styrofoam boxes. “Breakfast in bed!” he said.

I stretched. “You went out by yourself.” He wasn't doing much wandering around on his own at that point, because he was self-conscious about missing things people were saying.

“I went out by myself,” he said, tossing me a box. “Got you hash browns.”

“How's the weather?”

“Cold, but there's sun.”

“Feeling okay today?”

He gave me a so-so hand. “I had to get up early and draw some panels for Michael. He texted me in the middle of the night freaking the fuck out that the art for our last scene wasn't right.”

“What the fuck, he's interrupting your Philadelphia vacation?”

“I know, right? Imagine when we're in Mexico.”

“Mexico, Christ. This is the problem with that thing you do with your tongue. You did it it to me in the shower, the next thing I know I'm promising to bring you places.”

“Sorry. Should I do it again?”

“Yes, immediately.”

So we ate, and we fucked, and he made me beg, the bastard, and then we got dressed in more shitty clothes to show our continued appreciation for the institution of marriage, and off we went to the state house.

**

The woman at the reception desk had the hugest eyes I'd ever seen, and Justin, unsurprisingly, started sketching the second we were sitting down to wait.

“Oh, God, I don't like this at all,” I said. It was some weird, experimental style, and it gave me the creeps.

He laughed. “I'm just trying something.”

“This is going to haunt me. Jesus.”

“See, you would have thought you'd be freaking out about getting married...”

“And instead I'm freaking out about the creepiest fucking drawing I've ever seen. Interesting strategy.”

He got all serious and said, “Brian...you know you don't have to do this, right?”

I gave him a look and crossed my legs. “I'm the one who asked you.”

“I know, I'm just...I'm just saying. You can back out. If you want to. I won't be mad.”

“We're good, kid.”

He nodded, and after a beat said, “Well?”

“Well what?”

“Aren't you going to tell me I can back out of it and you won't be mad?”

“No, I'd be really annoyed if I drove you all the way here and got you a shitty motel and it was all for nothing.”

“Excuse you,” he said. “I got the crappy motel.”

“Oh, all right. Back out if you want.”

He shook his head, smiling a little to himself, looking down at his paper.

“I can't believe I did it,” he said after a minute. “Made an honest man out of you. All I had to do was come up with some lie about losing my hearing and bam, you throw it all in.”

I shoved him. “Twat.”

He looked up and grinned. “You believed it for a second, though, didn't you?”

“Well, you are devious enough.”

“What?”

“God, you're fucking cute.”

**

We got a guy there to contest a parking ticket to agree to be our official witness.

“Do you have anything personalized you want to say?” the officiant asked us, checking our IDs against the paperwork. He was about a million years old and looked like he could do this in his sleep, and practically was. “Vows, anything like that? Your appointment's ten minutes, so there's usually a minute or two to spare if you have anything you want to say.”

“No,” I said.

“All right. Exchanging rings?”

Justin shook his head. “Uh, no, we didn't—”

“Fine by me. Let's get this started. We're here today to participate in the marriage of Justin Taylor and Brian—” He paused and checked the paperwork, “Kinney, conforming to the rules and regulations of the State of Vermont. Join hands.”

So we did. Justin only got lost a couple of times, so all in all it went pretty smoothly. Better or worse. Richer or poorer. Sickness or health, and I pretended I didn't hear him get a little choked up on that last one.

I do, we signed, feeling a little stupid at the time. Not so much now. Now I'm really glad we didn't have our whole wedding in fucking English.

We signed the papers, shook hands with the officiant and our witness and wished him luck with his ticket, and Justin gave me a quick kiss in the hallway as we left.

“I might not have heard him right, but from what I gathered I think he really did deserve that ticket,” he said.

“No, you heard him right, he definitely did.”

“I mean, I still wish him all the best and everything, but if there'd been a fire they would have needed that hydrant.”

We walked out of the state house and blinked at the sun on the steps. Justin's hair was almost white in the light.

“Back to the motel?” he said. “I don't think there's much to do around here. We can raid the minibar.”

“Sounds good.”

He tilted his head to the side. “Are you freaking out?”

I put my hands under his thighs, pulled him up around my waist, and kissed the ever loving shit out of him.

“Oh,” he breathed, when I finally let him up for air.

**

“Is this how you pictured your wedding?” he asked me, later, lounging in the motel bed.

“I'm sorry, have you met me?”

“I know, I just want you to ask if it's how I pictured mine.”

I rolled my eyes and turned over to face him. “Okay, dear, how did you picture yours?”

He smiled a little. “I always thought I'd get married in the church where my parents did. Organ music. My cousin's kid is the right age to be a flower girl now. There'd be a huge reception, with toasts, and a slideshow. Dancing. Signature cocktails.”

“I assume you'd write your own vows.”

“Oh, of course.”

“Your mom reads First Corinthians?”

“She must.”

“Who's your wife?” I asked.

“Hmm. Kind of a hipster type. Cute, dark hair. Like the kind of girl who used to be a goth in high school, but now she just buys a lot of stuff at thrift stores because she doesn't have any money.”

I tossed a cashew into my mouth. “You know you just described Ethan.”

He froze. “Oh my God. Oh my God,” he said, and he practically fucking screamed, and I couldn't stop laughing, and shit, we laughed until we couldn't breathe. “Oh God,” he said, wheezing. “I think we just solved five years of trauma. Who needs professional help when you have a boyfriend who will roast the shit out of you?”

“It's worked for me so far.”

He covered his face with his hands and giggled, and God, that might have been just the fucking...purest, simplest moment of happiness I've ever had in my fucking mess of a life. Just right there, on that shitty motel bed, watching my fucking husband cover his face in delight because I'd called him my boyfriend.

I peeled his hands away and wrinkled my nose at him. “So what's the verdict, Sunshine? Do you miss your church wedding?”

He laughed. “Fuck. Imagine.”

“I don't know,” I said. “I bet you look hot in a tux.”

He yawned. “You can dress me sometime.”

“After I undress you,” I said, working my hands under his shirt.

“Hey, can I have a nap first? I'm tired.”

I laughed. “Yeah, you mess. Come here. Make it quick, though. There's some weird stuff I want to do to you.”

“Just a little dizzy right now,” he said, tucking himself under my arm.

“There's time.”

**

I picked a date to tell him I loved him on the drive home. I chose July 29th, because it was the date of absolutely nothing. And I thought about how he'd be surprised. How he'd smile. How fucking devastatingly handsome I would look, and how I'd say it so casually, and at first he'd wonder if he'd really hard me right, and he'd be afraid to ask, so I'd repeat it, and he'd cover his face with his hands...

Anyway, he lost all his hearing on July 12th.

It would have been nice.

**

The wedding papers went into my filing cabinet, the one picture our witness had taken for us got saved in a file on my computer, and the day after we got back, Justin had a breakdown, crying and shivering under the covers when he found out a band he loved was releasing a new album that December.

Back to real life.

I brought him dinner in bed, joked, begged, and yelled at him to get his shit together, and, when none of those worked, finally just sighed and said, “Come on, get up.”

“Leave me alone, Brian, fuck.”

“Come here.” I found his iPod and put on an old song by that band, one I knew he loved. “Aids out,” I said.

He stood up and took them out, still sniffling a little. I pulled him out to the middle of the loft.

“Here.” I put the earbuds in him, cranked the sound up as loud as it would go, and moved his arms to my waist and mine around his shoulders. “We never did our first dance.”

We stood there swaying, his cheek against my chest, continuing to ruin my shirt with his damn tears. I put a hand on the back of his head and held him there, listening to the tinny music I could hear blasting around his poor shitty ears.

“It really was a nice wedding, wasn't it?” he said, when the song was over.

“It was all right.”

He looked up at me. “What?”

His eyes were red. He looked beautiful.

“It was perfect,” I said.