"Married Bitches" by Nicole Santalucia

Deanna Dorangrichia (l) and Nicole Santalucia, July 25, 2011 (photo by Cheryl Pawlowski)

We are having a shotgun marriage, well, except we are not pregnant.  The marriage equality act goes into effect on the 24th of July! Binghamton is opening their offices on the 24th (Sunday) for us gays to go apply for a marriage license so that we can get married on the actual day the law goes into effect.  I thought that was pretty cool.  It is funny how the marriage thing all turned out for us.  We've been together for almost ten years and have always been weirded out about the idea of ever having a wedding. Marriage kind of never was on our list of things we've wanted.  I think we have always just considered ourselves married/committed to each other and that was that.  But, I have a professor who approached me at the end of last semester saying that she could get me a grant that goes out to a married grad student with low income.  She said, “go get married and I will work on getting the grant. “ So, I came home one afternoon and told Deanna that we ought to get married, what better reason to marry besides for money.  So, we planned a trip to Vermont and made an appointment with a Justice of the Peace at the end of July.  The Justice of the Peace, Lainey, suffers from fatigue syndrome. When I spoke with her on the phone her expression of enthusiasm didn't match her words.  I found a bit of humor in this because she kept saying how excited she was to marry us, yet she sounded like she was going to fall asleep as she said it.  Then, NYS passed the law and it is now legal for us to marry in our home state.  Of course it's the week before we planned to go to Vermont to get the deed done.  We canceled with Lainey, but will still take our trip to VT.  She wants to have coffee with us when we are there.  I wonder if she will have decaf?  Anyway, we are actually pretty excited to make history in NY and marry on July 24th.  Oh, and the grant for the married grad student, well, I already received it.  The professor stood up and made a point about how gay people can’t legally marry in NY and somehow convinced the committee to give me the grant.  It turns out we are not marrying for money after all.  It wasn't very much money anyway.  At this point we already spent it before ever getting it: between getting our rings, going to VT, and, well, we like to eat good food and have a high grocery bill.

 

Now, when bitches love each other sometimes they shouldn't get married too.  I happened to witness a conversation recently that can best be described in the form of a poem:

 

Bitches on the Roof

 

I love the bitch, said the guy with no teeth.

Then, he took a swig from his can of beer,

climbed back up the ladder onto the roof,

and started hammering.

 

You can’t live with that bitch anymore,

said the other guy with a bigger tool belt and two teeth.

The bitch won’t even cook, said no-teeth man.

 

I sat quietly on my porch listening to these men bitch

as they fixed the neighbor’s house. I secretly wished their

bitch-asses would fall off the roof, and I wanted to tell them

to stop bitching, to take off their bitch costume and strap on

a real cock.

 

It was late May and the men kept coming to work on the house.

Sometimes they would wake me up.  They slurped their beer and bitched

about their baby mommas.  I started dreaming about tool belts and memorizing

their conversations as they hammered each shingle.

 

Now, it is June and I’m wearing my own tool belt and sitting on the porch.

Every once in a while I look next door

as if to agree with the men who re-roofed the house last month

and want to climb on the roof and scream,

I love the bitch.

----

Comments

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Love this...wish I had a toolbelt, too.

[Stacey]

The fact that you were ineligible for the grant is just more proof of the injustice of denying gays the right to marry.
Congratulations on your nuptials. The top photo reminds me of this poem by May Swenson:

Four-Word Lines

Your eyes are just
like bees, and I
feel like a flower.
Their brown power makes
a breeze go over
my skin. When your
lashes ride down
and rise like brown bees'
legs, you pronged gaze
makes my eyes gauze.
I wish we wer
in some shade and
no swarm of other
eyes to know that
I'm a flower breathing
bare, laid open to
your bees' warm stare.
I'd let you wade
in me and seize
with your eager brown
bees' power a sweet
glistening at my core.

(from Half Sun, Half Sleep by May Swenson. Scribner, 1967)

[The Best American Poetry]

Bitchin' good! And apt as an apiary is May Swenson's swinging poem. -- DL

[Franz Kafka]

After all your long
dreadful years
Of unflinching endurance
Of voracious clinging
by tooth skin
You've discovered the secret
Of keeping a veggie burger
together

Tuppence two fist
Nose gush
There's a good lad
Face meet warm mix asphalt
Drops egg yolk
Slathered on wounds for
recalcitrant fibromyalgia

She's married you say?
How many years now?
One
lash
Two
floggings beneath lashes
Three
slits to make under gill skin
Lest the soul out of tortured repressed memory
Lets the soul sputter out

A whimper.
A wheeze?

Pondering
If I could muster the wherewithal
To find it in my heart of hearts
To give leave for additional concern

That fibrotic granuloma
That parasitic plaque
Borne on ancient sutures

Poke at it with a finger!
Nudge it with a scalpel!
Stab it with a cudgel...

A long
drawn out
sigh...

I ask Dave if you can die of boredom
He says he's trying
I tell him to let me know when it happens.

A slit here a slit there and then
tasteless oblivion
A slithering worm that comes out of the slit and
dials the number next to the bedside table
Shivering with
excess capacity for desperation

Next day
Inside gray cylinders
I ask Dave again

The pattern on the carpeting
Merges with the pattern on the walls
The sleepy signal noise
Merges with the fluorescent lighting
The hours here end and
quickly begin again

I am awake

and

I am asleep

I am the cat in the box

And I've
stopped
squirming

I am dead/not dead

Now if you're the poet you tell me
Am I lying?