Episode III: What Did…I Do?

Zap!

Ow!

Oh, come on! Stop it, pixie Valerie Perrine! I’m getting married. Can’t we do this later?!?!?

She smacked me hard across the face.

Whap!!!

Get it together, she scolded.

I was suddenly über-conscious of the fact that I was standing before friends and family, witnesses. I wondered, are they witnessing this?

Frantically searching the room I found only gentle smiles, soft tears, long-time couples holding hands, welcoming us into the fold. But not a concerned face to be found. Nothing.

I checked back in with my very-soon-to-be husband. Using his eyes again as anchor, safe, and compass, I regained my balance, placed myself in context, took a deep breath. A wedding. My wedding. Guests. Nausea. Breath. He, too, registered nothing of my experience. Shaking my head vigorously, I Etch-a-Sketched away the bad dream and questioned the intelligence of getting stoned and falling into a Village People YouTube hole at 3am the night before my wedding.

Silence…

Silence…

A chair creaked.

A throat cleared.

Zooming out from Magnus’ eyes, I read his face.

He’s waiting. Everyone is waiting. For me? Oh shit, for me!

I do.

(It was a total Hail Mary, but really, what else could it have been?)

The floor beneath me cracked open, separating my feet, sending a shaft of purple light into me from below.

Valerie urged me on.

Take it. Take it all!!!

The pain! I felt like I was being split in half, but I knew what I had to do. I listened to Valerie. Let the light enter me, fill me. And when I thought I couldn’t take any more, I took more. It kept coming. I kept taking.

I took it all. For me. For Valerie. For Tinky Winky. For my LGBT brethren. I didn’t know what it was yet, but I knew it was my duty. My calling. My destiny.

I do.

I spit the words out thoughtlessly, mechanically, just trying to get through whatever it was that was happening to me so I could sit down in private for a moment.

But the words became things, tangible things that charged through time and space and filled cavernous, columned buildings where such vows had never been, at least not for people like me. They scraped off layers of dust and rage. I do, feathered and plumed like a militia of Phyllis Dillers, boldly flamboyant in those sterile, marbled spaces. 

The ceiling crumbled, turned to glittering dust and disappeared up into wisps of winter breath. I floated in a snow globe of lube and sparkly rainbow sequins.

My body felt flimsy, ill-equipped. I felt ill-equipped. And yet I sensed something primordial. I sensed the power of Gayness past, present, and future coursing through my veins.

Valerie buzzed up, inches from my nose, then zipped to my left ear. She whispered:

We’ve been waiting. Now that you’re homosexually gay married, the last piece of the puzzle has been set in place. You’ve been chosen to destroy heterosexual marriage, and then, when you’re done, America.

WHAT?!?!?!?!?!?