On the Mediocre Engagement Story

When Bug and I were talking about getting engaged, I had no idea that the wedding blogosphere existed. I didn't know about the Wedding Industrial Complex. I sure as hell didn't know any married (or engaged) gay people. I had looked at the knot, and it made my head spin (has anyone actually finished that checklist? Christ.) As much as it meant I didn't have any support or ideas for inspiration, it also meant I didn't feel any pressure or envy or concern that my proposal wasn't cool enough. And it didn't really matter.

Honestly, giving Bug the ring isn't totally connected to our decision to get married. We were already committed -  we lived together, she had graduated from college and chosen to take a job in the area (and continue living with me, even though her job was an hour and a half away). There were already some serious choices made there. 

We decided to get married gradually. I'm skeptical of lasting love, and I'm not quick to trust, so it felt better to make a decision after serious conversations than it would have to be asked such a huge question without having time to process. So the rings, really, were a formality. It was a way for other people to see that it's not a temporary relationship. And they're shiny and fun.

The Proposal

I did not pull off a creative and romantic proposal. If you're looking for pulled heart strings, shocking creativity, and profound discoveries of self, this is not the time or the place.

I didn't even have particularly high proposal aspirations - Bug is not a grand gesture kind of lady. Which is ideal, because I do not have the money, or the support network of sickeningly creative crafters, that a grand gesture requires. So I decided to propose at home - something sweet, intimate, and simple. Make a little dinner, plan a little speech, dazzle the lady with my charm, and get myself a fiancee. 

A week before I was going to propose, Bug got needy. She demanded to know, in excruciating detail, exactly why I loved her. 

"You're adorable."

"And?"

"You're clever, and sweet."

"And?"

"You make me a better person."

This went on for about five minutes, and she just wasn't having it. She could not be placated with general (but true!) statements. 

I'm not proud of what happened next, or the reasoning behind it. I gave her my sweet, tender, passionate, and endearing proposal speech a week early, sans proposal. 

Just to get her off my back. 

So now in addition to needing dinner plans, I needed a new speech. 

I knew myself well enough to know not to cook anything crazy the night of the proposal. If it went badly I'd get distracted and throw off the entire plan. And with the level of pressure and nerves riding on the proposal, cooking was going to go badly. So I went simple: crab cakes, a summer pasta salad, and a bottle of white wine. For dessert, some cinnamon sugar biscuits with caramelized peaches. Served on our balcony at sunset, it would be delicious summer time perfection. 

So I waited. The day of, J took me shopping for ingredients. I cooked, put on my fanciest dress, set up the balcony, and waited for Bug to get home from work. 

When she got home, she immediately vetoed the balcony dinner. It was too hot. I pressed a little, but she wasn't having it. So we compromised - dinner inside, dessert outside when it cooled down. Not ideal, but livable. I don't remember anything at all from that dinner. At some point we must have finished eating and cleared the plates, because I managed to get her onto the balcony for dessert. She even closed her eyes. 

So I pulled the dessert plates together, put her ring right on the plate, and brought them outside. I told her to open her eyes, and she saw the ring on her plate. 

"WHAT?!"

I froze. After I gave her my proposal speech the week earlier, I couldn't come up with anything that sounded halfway decent. So I kind of didn't rewrite the speech.  I just said the first thing I thought of: 

"I was hoping you'd marry me." 

She said yes. And then we called our friends, and they came over and we all talked and laughed and drank champagne out of solo cups. 

Hells yes!

Marriage equality was legalized in New York on Friday night. It seems appropriate to celebrate it during Pride week, one day from the Stonewall anniversary. My grandparents sent me text message updates because they were watching the state senate vote. And now I have the option to be married where I grew up, where my family lives.

Her Ring

Finding Bug's ring was painless. She knew she wanted a channel set diamond band. It works perfectly for her - shiny, pretty, but practical and not too girly.

So I took to the internet to find one I could afford.

source

I got it delivered to the apartment - it's a little terrifying to have something so expensive shipped. But it got to me, and I hid it away while I tried to figure out how to propose.

Chosen Family

I feel like I should explain why I decided to propose. And there's a specific reason that it felt right. 

The scariest thing about Bug was how easy it was to fall in love with her. After a month, I was done for.

But it takes more than love to make a marriage work. So I started asking myself the bigger questions. Do our career goals line up? Do we have similar views on finances? Will she love me even though I’m an intolerable control freak? Can she tolerate my extensive collection of cover songs? Or the way I charge after my goals like a deranged bull?

And every time, the answer was yes. She stayed up late with me at night so that I had company when I was finishing my work. She vacuums when I ask, and doesn’t get mad when I vacuum again right after her. She sings along to songs when I play them on repeat for months at a time. She moves every year so I can be closer to school or work.

No matter what she did, I still didn’t believe that we could actually last long term. And that’s because there’s one big question left on those “life partner” checklists: Do you want to make this person part of your family?

And I didn’t. Families are not supposed to break. Divorce happens, but the general rules of polite society say parents are supposed to pull it together, “for the kids.” Mine didn’t.  The people who were supposed to be there for me, no matter what, hurt me worse than I ever imagined possible –and they did it repeatedly. I ended up angry, jaded, and fiercely independent.  

When I was in high school, I met an amazing group of people. The group started out pretty small, but it kept growing. By the time we were getting ready to leave for college, there were seventeen of us. And there was something about that group of people, and about the fierceness of adolescent friendship, that makes you feel like people really understand and love you for the first time in your life. Some of us had shaky home lives, but most of us really didn’t. A lot of my friends from high school have amazing parents, who were supportive and were only marginally annoyed to have a large group of teenagers in their basements until 4 am, three nights in a row. We’re in our twenties now, and we still do that. And they still don’t get mad. (Thank you, and also, I’m sorry for any strained relationships you may now have with your neighbors).

So the night that I realized I was in love with Bug, I kicked her out of my dorm room and ran straight to the computer. I found a friend online, and I told her I was in love. And then I freaked out. This was not a tender admission, it was not a sweet and adoring gushfest. I panicked. When I finished telling my friend the ways in which this was terrifying and overall the worst thing that could possibly happen, she paused. “Marabear. This actually sounds like a really good thing.”

There’s a tradition in the gay community of developing a “chosen family.” There was a time when very few gay kids could tell their parents that they were gay, and still expect their love and support. For too many kids, that’s still the case. So gay teens and young adults moved away to big cities. When they got there, they found people who were like them, and people who accepted them, and supported them unconditionally. They developed such strong friendships that they realized they had basically remade their family structure. These lifelong friends became their chosen family.

My family certainly didn’t kick me out for being gay. But it was shaky enough that I did start to supplement it with people that I chose to love – and people that loved me. I could make my family look like I wanted it to – use the really good parts that I had, like brothers, grandparents, aunts, uncles – and then add new people as I went. Friends from high school and college, teachers, students – they’re all part of my family now.

Forty-five of the Fifty states in the U.S. won’t recognize Bug and I as being legally married. But I can still ask her to be a part of what I’ve made with the rest of my family, whether they’re blood or chosen. I’m also asking her to start a new family with me. So if she’ll take me, along with all the people I’ve gathered up in the past twenty-two years, I’d like to marry her. 

An Interruption

Reality kind of kicked our proposal plans in their overly optimistic faces.

Before Bug's brother-in-law proposed to her sister, he asked her parents for permission. Everyone hugged and cried and tried not to ruin the surprise while they waited for him to ask. Bug craved the same kind of moment, but there were some problems with it. My dad hasn't been a part of my life since I was 15, and my mother's fiancé, whom no one particularly liked, had just died. I have three brothers who would be good candidates, if Bug's first interaction with my older brother hadn't gone as follows:

We enter my mother's apartment the first weekend my family is meeting Bug. My brother walked in from the laundry room, wearing boxer briefs. Only boxer briefs. 


Brother *glances down*: Ah. Well, try to stay a lesbian. 


So instead of asking my family for permission, Bug decided to just tell her family what the plan was. I'll gloss over the more painful details, but her parents asked her not to propose.  For Bug, this was absolutely game over. She called me immediately after she got of the phone with her family, crying and heartbroken. I was furious, and the more I thought everything through, the angrier I got.

So I decided to do the proposing myself.

The Ring Hunt

About a year and a half after Bug and I started dating, we started talking about getting married. Not in the "lets run to city hall" sense, but in the "I really think this might last" way. I am unreasonably picky, so Bug asked me to come up with some examples of things that I would like.* 

Engagement rings were an entirely new concept to me. I never imagined myself getting married when I was little - pin in on whatever you'd like, be it parent issues, body image trouble, an inability to accept myself as gay - but I just didn't think it would happen. So I was starting from nothing. I was just faintly aware that I wanted something different. At first, I interpreted different as "dripping in diamonds." 

When I showed Bug, she went a little crazy in the eyes and stayed  silent. 

Bug gently suggested that we should go to a store and actually try some things on. I went into the store with a slightly more reasonable idea of what I wanted: 

This second ring was a little closer to reality. But in the store, after I tried it on, it became clear that not every ring suits everyone. I have thicker fingers - three smaller stones in a band made my fingers look even smaller and stockier. Plus, it lacked that little something extra I wanted. 

So we left the store, with a better idea of what we were looking for, but without an actual ring. 

* I might have made this up in my head - it's equally likely that I started looking at rings and foisting them on her when she least suspected it.