I hadn't seen Twiggy in days and, in the streets and alleys, Cleo and Slicer were walking about like the amorous pair they were and it was all driving me crazy. So, when I curled up with Skeeter for our afternoon laze I sighed deeply—without even realizing it—and mumbled, "Love is complicated.""You said a mouthful, little man," he said.
Okay...
Now I didn't know if Skeeter was consciously opening a conversational door that he wanted me to walk through, nor did I know if I wanted to walk through such a door. Don't get me wrong! I've got nothing against queers and their complicated love lives. In fact, when it comes to queers, I'm a fairly sophisticated observer and, if you'll permit, commentator. For instance, I'm not the type of moron who will ask someone in a queer couple, "Who's the woman?" 'cause I know that is rather too tight a stereotype. However, I also realize that there are certain fairly narrow categories of queers—many of them—that straights are not even vaguely aware of.
Take my two homos.
It would be truly dumb to ask of them, "Who's the woman," because they both are. I'm not saying they're girlie, effeminate, dress-up queers. No. They are like lesbians, really, from the old days. Back then lesbians were called Old Maids or Maiden Aunts. They lived in apartments with a "friend from girlhood" or "a friend from college"—a friend who never moved away or got married and that was fine. It was fine because it meant no one else in the family had to worry about the Aunt who always had "her friend." No one ever imagined the two ladies having sex or, perhaps, no one wanted to imagine it. All that mattered is that they dressed well (always with a nice hat and gloves), gave generous gifts and once in a while would send you a postcard from the Greek Islands. They nattered together as they aged and then one of them just died and the other went into a nice nursing home (financed by the fortune the deceased had left as, apart from the trips to the Greek Islands, they never spent a dime from their well-paying jobs on frivolities).
For all intents and purposes, Skeeter and Boo-Boo are like your Maiden Aunts. Nattering away at each other, tending to each others little wounds (real and imagined) and getting by with the occasional trip abroad. So did I really want to know about the Maiden Aunts' passions?
What the hell...
"You can't say you have a complicated love life," I challenged.
"No. Not now. But at the beginning it was awful."
"Really? Why?" My curiosity was seriously piqued.
"Fighting all the time. We moved in together after just a month and I had the two dogs and he was set in his ways. But then all that just went away. And Cosmo was the reason. We both loved that dog."
"Baby substitute?" I mocked.
"Maybe," he said quietly. Hm.
"Did you ever have a really bad fight?"
"Once," he said. "It was bad and it was dumb. He had been at my throat for weeks. Just nattering and nagging and bitching and his job was going badly and he was using me as a whipping boy. One night I'd had enough and I walked out. I put up in a hotel. He went mental. When I came back the next day—because he begged me to—he told me that he was sick. That he had kidney stones, he thought (because he'd had them before), and that he had been in agony. He hadn't told me because he knew that I would force him to go to the hospital. I did and when he got to the emergency room, that very day, he passed out on the floor. They rushed him in. When he woke up, it was done. The stones had passed and he came home. You see? Dumb. But it nearly ruined our life together. We laughed about it. Still do. But it was bad."
I nodded but was really thinking, "What a pair of 'tards!" and that we were hardly talking about Cathy and Heathcliff here...more like Gertrude and Heathcliff (Google it, punks).
But you see, here's the thing: living with two Aunties is comforting. It's easy. There's no Sturm und Drang like I see in other couples—gay or straight. You know the food will be there at the right time, that the walks will happen and that when you pee in the bed, they will adapt. And that, my friends, is love.
Uncomplicated.
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