By Huck Beard
First off, know that this narrative is not my own. It is not about me or my own marriage. It’s a projection, my way of trying to understand some friends that we have lost.
This is the story of a marriage between two men, between two parties, between two hopes, between two hereafters. To be fair, remember that this short narrative is only one side of that marriage. I used to feel that I was an equal half, but I feel my role shrinking by the day.
At first, because of me, we lived on the North Side. My house was there, my friends were there, I could walk to work. I met a man and soon made him my husband. He sold his house in Ambridge and moved in with me. We painted walls and bought porch furniture and adopted a dog. We traveled to Portugal and Italy and France. We sent out holiday cards. Together we chose kitchen knives and a new car and a dentist. We moved our bedroom from the ground floor to the fourth, despite his fear of heights. Day by day we were coupling, blending, sharing clothes and bath towels and a mailbox. We walked our dog and waved at our neighbors. I loved being married, every minute of it. I felt lucky and known.
This was our first year together, 2015.
Political ads and political commercials soon appeared, much too far in advance of the election. A trickle at first, and then a monsoon. Bumper stickers and Facebook posts and red hats. Debates and revelations and scandals and accusations, all chewed up and digested and begging for more. I knew where I stood. I thought my husband stood near me.
We walked our dog and I waved at our neighbors. My husband waved less and less, his eyes on our neighbors’ houses. He kept track of the political signs he saw, which houses skewed which way. Pride signs angered him. He watched basement television late into the night, muttering under his breath about birth certificates and crime and offshoring and immigration.
“Surely he’s not voting for —” my friends would say.
“We just don’t talk about it,” I would say.
And why couldn’t we talk about it?
Maybe it was how we grew up, lonely little boys who felt different and alien and afraid of any spark of confrontation. Our parents knew what we were, but they refused to talk about it, even between themselves. If you don’t talk about it, it’s not real.
Years later, and I must have learned nothing from that. If I don’t talk about it, if I don’t ask the hard questions, if I avoid knowing the answers, we can stay together and we can ride things out. The Ferris wheel rises. I thrill at the rushing height, the promising view expanding before me. I am high and happy, but he has a fear of heights. He grips the rail in terror. He closes his eyes, hating the view. He holds his breath and gnashes his teeth until we are back on the ground, back to his safe place, back to the way things have always been.
That election was an upheaval. A disbelief. A Ferris-wheel car crashing to the earth.
“Surely he didn’t vote for —” my friends would say.
“We just don’t talk about it,” I would say again.
The term passed. Another election, and the Ferris wheel began a new revolution. We rose again, and my hope returned for a time. Maybe this is what life and marriage is all about, I thought. Taking turns, taking the lead, taking time to appreciate the good things I saw in him. We added a cat to our household. We knocked down a wall and remodeled the bathroom. We traveled to the Grand Canyon, because he was too afraid to leave the states, too afraid of the world outside. He insisted we buy a generator and an alarm system. He said he had grown tired of the North Side. Tired of city life, tired of our home. Tired of our neighbors and their so-called pride. So many excuses for why we couldn’t go to this party or that dinner. He only felt safe at home, all the doors locked. I had to say no to too many invitations. My friends stopped calling.
Next thing I knew, unbelievably, another election. This one broke me. The Ferris wheel had descended again, much too fast, creaking and shaking, gears and spokes twisting and corroding before my eyes. I felt terror, sick to my stomach.
He insisted we move. We sold our house and left the city. He had found a cabin in a small town, two counties away, where we knew no one. We built a fence. He wore a red hat and bought a gun.
“Now I feel safe again,” he said.
But outside the city, people rarely welcome men like us, in a marriage like ours. My Ferris wheel had crashed in a small town.
“We don’t need anyone else,” he said, his feet planted feet firmly on the ground amid the wreckage.
