So serious it's funny

I have a wonderful wife (no matter what the cowardly State of Massachusetts and City of New York, with their crappy compromises, think) who knows how to make me feel better. She won’t admit to feeling sad over the Massachusetts court decision and the subsequent legal limbo we’re in like I am. She’s just angry. She has already pulled a favorite sparring partner into an empty room at her gym and started fighting. (She and a few other martial arts instructors and students there have an arrangement—that when they have emotions to let out, they are available to each other for a fight. I think I’ll stick with blogging, myself.) We want to do something more concrete, something that does better, not just feels better. We don’t know what, aside from donating money and time. We’ll see it, I’m sure, when it’s time.

Anyway, she woke me up at oh-dark-thirty this morning. She thought I needed a pleasure I haven’t experienced in over a year—a nice pool to myself for an hour!!! So she checked out the schedule and called us a cab to her work. Oh, it is better than chocolate, better than taking the checkered flag!!! Hear me out. I could play any music I wanted, good and loud so it reverberated in the water. (Underworld and M.I.A. and Ghostface Killah are *good* for this.) I didn’t care how I looked in my swimsuit. I could swim as fast as I wanted, as many laps as I wanted. I could stay under as long as possible and a little bit more besides, with no comments from anybody. (I scare L’Ailee and several other people with it—I can go almost two minutes, sometimes a little over.) My soul just felt like it had been thoroughly bathed. I understand, I do, why there are ritual baths and baptismal pools.

And then we went to breakfast, and we saw squealing, screaming little kids all over the place. One kept screaming “Please, please, please,” and another screamed about having to go potty. I suddenly felt so much better about not having kids or being able to have them “naturally”!!! (To anticipate some questions—L’Ailee’s current job wouldn’t allow a pregnancy, and she makes more than I do. She is very adamant about adopting rather than using IVF if we feel like having kids. We do not have room in our home or budget to adopt as yet.) Today I remembered, we like being able to give ‘em back! “So I don’t have to take you to McDonald’s to remind you?” she asked with a smirk. No, not necessary…

And then I made her laugh. My mom called; she told us we could be intimidating. (Don’t ask about context. Family stuff, work stuff.) When I told her nobody’s intimidated by me, she cited my vocabulary, and said that I sound educated without even trying, and this scares insecure people. “Well, to hell with ‘em,” I replied. L’Ailee laughed first, Mom followed quickly. My intimidating vocabulary at work! I love to make L’Ailee laugh, even by accident. She has the most beautiful throaty laugh, and for the longest time, she couldn’t use it very often. Also, she told me she saw the picture of Sinead smoking with a baby belly and agreed that “it’s so ugly when women do that”; I told her maybe I’d been too harsh since, after all, she clearly abstains from hair dye and perming solution. L’Ailee’s face went into her hands, and she looked like she was weeping, she laughed so hard.

She told me that one thing she loves about me is that I am hilarious even when talking about something serious. “I think you may even be your funniest then,” she said. She brought up the day we got our medical powers of attorney and wills updated. I made the lawyer doubt my seriousness, because I kept making jokes throughout the whole thing. I joked about vanilla vodka IVs and not taking out too significant a life insurance policy and how important it was to have “kiss my burnt black ass” engraved on my cremation urn. It was reflexive; I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t have gotten through it otherwise. L’Ailee told the lawyer, “The thing about her is, these things are too serious for her not to make jokes about.” And I knew I was doing the right thing, turning everything over to her. She got it, totally and completely. She got me. I could literally put everything I had into her hands.

At least we still have all those damn papers, and they’re good in most states and cities in America. At least I have someone I can trust. She can trust me, too. Absolutely.