babydramatic_1950

At 25, clueless after awakening from the drug, alcohol, and apathy-induced fog of what people refer to as the “Sixties” (which actually ended in the mid-1970s), I fell in love. Betty was 15 years older than I and probably hadn’t had a real job in 7 or 8 years. Her apartment was full of broken furniture, outmoded business attire, and antique china from old, discarded selves. She dined on tinned soup but always had money for a theater ticket. Knew all the places you could get free clothes. Was a perennial guest at other people’s holiday parties.

As madly in love as I was, the idea of marriage never crossed my mind. As a girl I had read Jane Austen and knew that one of the main reasons for a woman to marry was to “better herself”. When I was growing up, 150 years later, friends used to joke “Marry a nice Jewish dokta”.

There were people you married and people you didn’t. Other girls may have wanted children and a house. I wanted an earth-shattering romance, excitement, danger (not too much, of course), and surprise.

“An army of lovers cannot fail”. That was the mantra that kept us Amazon Dyke Warriors going throughout the 1970s. There was even a T shirt. Our army was fighting for anti-discrimination laws, staging sit-ins, boycotting Florida orange juice when Anita Bryant was the spokeswoman (for those too young to remember her, Anita Bryant, a pop singer from the 1960s, ran the "Save our Children" campaign in 1977 to repeal a local ordinance in Dade County Florida that prohibited discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation). Laughing when we were offered orange juice in a restaurant and saying “only if it comes from California. We don’t drink Florida orange juice, sorry.” Wearing a button saying “Boycott Florida Orange Juice” and giggling at our big secret.

“An army of wives” doesn’t quite sound the same really.

As the decades went by I became a suit. Not one trapped in a closet, but a suit nonetheless. If I hadn’t been so obviously the “girl,” I suppose I would have been the traditional working husband to Betty's stay-at-home perpetually unemployed something, but I didn’t want to think about that. True, some of my heterosexual friends, stuck with older bohemian husbands they had acquired in another life, were in a similar position, going to work every day year after year while their husbands lounged about drunk or depressed (or thought that they were too “artistic” to pull up their socks and go to work), but in my situation it was harder to keep things clear. So the less Betty worked, the more skirts and dresses I wore. Breadwinner or no, I couldn’t bear anyone to think that I “wore the pants in the family.”

In 1993, after 17 years of couplehood, we had an informal ceremony, where I got to be a bride in a dress, complete with a bouquet, which I tossed toward the prettiest-looking femme in the room. Betty and I exchanged vows: for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health.

Another decade went by and the army of lovers was gone. Many married (it was beginning to be legal in several states), birthed or adopted children, and bought houses. For us, nights at women’s dances and weekends spent at consciousness-raising workshops were replaced by calls to social workers about how to help Betty apply for various benefits. The bohemian of yesterday had become the supplicant of today.

If you and your loved one are poor, (on paper) it’s better to be single. If you’re middle income, and your loved one is older and poorer, (on paper) it’s better to be single. It’s really only better to be married if you have children or own property and we had neither—or if the richer partner is older and is likely to die first. While so many of my friends were jubilant about US v. Windsor, the case that in essence legalized same-sex marriage nationally, I felt that as it was first and foremost about a six figure tax payment, required because the two women were deemed legally single, it was really not about people like me or Betty. We already had wills, power of attorney forms, and healthcare proxy forms. What Edie Windsor had to pay in taxes was close to twice my and Betty's net worth combined. And as far as my self-esteem was concerned, I realized that if I had married charming, funny, sweet, work-averse Betty, I would have had to admit that I had “married down,” whereas as things were, I could relish the warm glow that one feels giving selflessly to someone who has less.

As a legally single person, she was able to do a Medicaid spend-down. She now has 24 hour home care and everything she needs. Barring a twist of fate, she will die first, and I can grieve with my meager savings intact.