Do I sound like an asshole when I criticize my siblings’ handling of their marital (and quasi-marital) problems? My own marriage has enough issues to fill a newsstand, which one could argue is disqualifying, but I’m not sure if that pencils out when there’s no such thing as a perfect marriage. We know that because there’s no such thing as a perfect relationship of any sort, other than maybe that of Balki Bartokomous and Cousin Larry from Perfect Strangers. Vendredi soir, as good as it was, was fantasy, not documentary.
Over the last 48 hours, I’ve vacillated between thinking I was too hard on Tom in “That Boy Ain’t Right” and not hard enough. The latter is where I’ll probably end up, which she might appreciate in some way as a student of the “throw the whole man out” Internet culture, whose inclination is to want any public figure, relative or casual acquaintance who doesn’t meet her lofty standards to be drawn and quartered or made to recreate Cersei Lannister’s walk of atonement.
Tom referenced that in our conversation, saying something like “Now I’ll lose moral high ground with some people.” It struck me that it didn’t sound self-deprecating; she was more concerned about the hit her image was about to take than what she’d just done to someone who spent a decade doting on her, sacrificing dreams for her, and carrying her dead weight. I didn’t interrupt her to solemnly agree “That would be like missing out on the wisdom of Solomon,” partly because she wouldn’t have gotten the joke but mostly because I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
While she worried that others — mostly her inferiors, who look to her for guidance — might detect a whiff of hypocrisy, I tried not to gag on it; it permeated the air as heavily as Felix’s AXE body spray circa 2002. My litmus test is simple: how would Tom have reacted if, to borrow an oft-used descriptor of hers, a “cishet man” told her the story she related to me on Thursday?* She would’ve thought he was the scum of the earth and called for his head on a platter while tossing around adjectives like “toxic,” “abusive,” “gaslighting,” and “narcissistic.” Would she say the same thing now?**
My intention was to conclude this with a few paragraphs about the big towering issue in my marriage, one we can’t seem to get past, and to explain why it’s something I don’t discuss with my family. But marrying that (no pun intended) to what I’ve already written in this post would require more time than what’s left in the evening and my eyelids are already heavy, so here are some ridiculous postscripts. Enjoy your Sunday.
* I don’t say ‘cishet’ since I’m past the emotional age of 13, but that’s what she would call them. She’s also fond of ‘heteronormative,’ spat like an obscenity, which is curious because there’s nothing more heteronormative than what she just did to her girlfriend. That would make her gasp indignantly since the Tom brigade — among women in their forties and under, they’re legion — prefers to pretend they’re gay men in spirit and sensibility.
The amount of time they spend humorlessly processing feelings, ‘holding space’ and assessing harm should tell them otherwise, but they’re blind to it. That’s partly because they unconsciously (and ignorantly) view gay men as women, and partly because the ‘gay men’ they’re friends with are predominantly FTMs (or trans men, if you can’t keep up with all the acronyms) who date other FTMs. If I wanted to continue emulating Tom, this is where I’d say “But y’all ain’t ready for that conversation” while pretending I’m a tea-sipping Kermit the Frog in the Untucked Lounge from Drag Race, but I’ll spare you that since, as this footnote demonstrates, it’s quite annoying.
** That’s a rhetorical question, but if I asked her that two months from now she might have an answer at the ready about how it’s different when sexual minorities behave poorly because they hold no political power.