Oh, Gay Can You See

Last week, Riz and I had a big conversation about us gays and our marriages. Riz helps me to understand things that I cannot wrap my mind around.
When I wanted to get married, I went to Canada.
I figure, if married Canadians are still considered married when they come the the U.S, then so are me n’ The Wife.
Voila, married.
I am indifferent about taxes and health insurance. I don’t have any assets so my taxes don’t amount to much. Health insurance and western medicine seem like insufferable scams to me, so I rely on forms of healing that are considered “alternative.”
I don’t put much store in the legal rights of marriage. This is more a reflection of my social worldview than anything else. I am kinda Ludditie, kinda Quakerish, seasoned with punkrock and hippie roots.
I am married, I feel married and it is no one’s business unless they want to give us a belated wedding present.
This is my reality, and like many of my realities, it is one I constantly protect.

Here is another one of my realities:
I find white supramacist racism to be deeply and personally offensive. I am willing to hit the ring and go toe to toe on this issue. I am not compelled to fight this fight because I am “sticking up” for anyone else. It is my reality that white supremacist racism damages everyone and I am part of that group.
And another:
Sexual violenct and terrorism is completely unacceptable. There’s another fight, another reality to protect, because sexual violence and terrorism is one of the hallmarks of U.S. culture and history.
In deeply intimate, daily life ways, I fight these fights.
Protect these realities.

I am used to living my life like this. I know my culture and myself well, and part of being me in this culture means fighting. This is just a given. So the fight around gay marriage just kinda fits right in there, it’s just another reality of mine that does not sync up with my culture.
It is completely unacceptable that my marriage is not legal. But since it is illegal, then I fight and protect my reality.
Wheee!
And truly, in the midst of all this, I am married.
The Wife is a joy and a pain to me, I am a joy and a pain to her.
She does the laundry, I do the dishes.
Marriage.

I can’t wrap my brain around the concept of constitutionally banning marriage, I really can’t. I also have a difficult time seeing the fight people are fighting in protests and mass gatherings.
In the three years I have been married, there have been lots of fights. These fights are intimate. We are almost always isolated and alone.
Our fights do not take place in huge protests in parks and on city streets. For us, this fight takes place when the mailperson wants to know if we are sisters cause we have the same last name, or we correct a family member who manages to dysfunctionally, passive aggressively allege that our marriage is not somehow “real.” In seemingly millions of ways, the fight for gay marriage goes down in our daily life.
I am inside of this reality, and so when I see thousands of people protesting for the right to be legally married, I think, “Dang, where were you all when people’s kids get taken away?”

Read this article: http://www.mercurynews.com/news/ci_10978629

That is what me n’ Riz were talking about because he went to a huge protest and I told him I did not see the fight there. But Riz says it is all Of A Piece and I am not seeing the whole picture.
I am too close.
So, after I got off the phone with Riz, I decided I would try to take a few steps back.
But on that very day, The Wife went to the hospital in an ambulance.
I decided to take some steps back, but instead waltzed into the vortex of the fight.

Here is a letter I wrote about that:


Dear Nurse Manager,


On November 18th, I came home from work to find my partner bleeding internally, waiting for an ambulance. While I packed her bag and made phone calls, the paramedics took her to Vagina Mason. I knew she was going to be admitted to the hospital and suspected she’d probably end up having surgery on her colon. I drove to the hospital in a state of terror. I was so distraught, I had to pull over and call a friend, Sullivan, to meet me at the hospital.
We met out front and made our way to the emergency room around 3:30 or 4 p.m. We found The Wife. She was in excruciating pain. Together, the three of us waited for tests and results.
At one point, I bent over the bed, kissing The Wife’s forehead, smoothing her hair back. Her emergency room nurse, Nurse Montana, came in to the room. She stopped and stared at us. It was only a moment, and no untoward words were spoken, but I felt very uncomfortable with her response to what I suddenly recognized as our homosexuality. In general, I don’t think of myself as “gay.” I just love the person I love and it seems normal to me. To a lot of people, I know it is not that simple, but to me it is and always has been.
It is also no one else’s business.
In that awkward moment, it certainly appeared that Nurse Montana did not consider us “normal.” The odd tension in the room also bespoke this reality. It is a very strange feeling, sensing someone’s judgment and disapproval in such a painfully intimate context. It was like finding out you had a deep cut because someone jabbed their fingernail into it.
At a truck stop in Nebraska, feeling this way is not so bad, but here in the hospital, fearing for my spouse’s life, it was really, really bad. Nevertheless, I was too upset to reflect upon it and just hoped that Nurse Montana would be gentle and kind to The Wife.

I feel the need to mention that I am not particularly sensitive about homophobia. I am a writer and a public speaker. In my work, I encounter pretty much every form of ignorance and prejudice. I know homophobia exists, I understand why it exists and my approach is to understand as many perspectives as possible so that I am able to articulate my position. This is my job. I am not on the rampage, seeking out homophobic slights.

Eventually, a different nurse came in to give The Wife her test results. At this same moment, Sully was about to leave. The nurse said something about this being private information and asked us both to leave. Partially because I knew in my heart that she was going to tell The Wife that she would be needing surgery and partially because Sullivan was leaving anyway, I did not mention that The Wife and I are married and I had every right to remain in the room. I figured I would let her know after I said goodbye to Sullivan. While it is trying to have to assert my relationship status with almost every health care worker we come into contact with, I do understand the culture I live in and know it is something to deal with.
Having to deal with it while I am emotionally taxed and really frightened is a bit much, but, again, there is nothing I can do to change this reality in moments like this.
I understand that.

Sully and I stood in the hall outside of The Wife’s room for a few moments, quietly making plans for the next day and saying our goodbyes. Nurse Montana walked up to us and loudly stated, “The patient has asked that her diagnosis be private. You need to step into the waiting room. Leave now.” She did not address this to Sullivan and I together. She was looking directly at me, and speaking only to me. Before I could respond, she said the same thing again, in a louder and firmer voice. At this point, I was shocked that she was speaking to me in this manner and was stunned into silence. She took a step towards me and again said, “The patient has asked that her diagnosis be private. You NEED to go into the waiting room NOW.” Two other nurses heard Nurse Montana’s broken record technique and tone of voice and assumed there was someone making trouble in the hallway. They came from either direction and stared at me, arms crossed, standing firm. Their body language conveyed the possible need for action. All of this had taken place in less than two minutes, and in that time I did not say a word or move a muscle. There was no need to speak to me as if I was a threat, but Nurse Montana’s choice of words and actions led everyone to act as if I was some drunken, violent person, causing havoc. All of the patients and their families who could see me also stared at me.
It took me quite some time to gather my wits about me. I was truly stunned, no less than if I were physically attacked. In the meantime, Nurse Montana loudly asserted that I NEEDED to go into the waiting room two more times. I finally mustered the wherewithal to say that The Wife and I were married and that my purse was in The Wife’s room.
She was telling me I could get it when The Wife called out that she wanted me in the room with her.
I felt utterly humiliated and demoralized.
Nurse Montana saw me kissing The Wife’s forehead. She had every indication that we were more than casual buddies, but she nonetheless chose to humiliate me in the hallway. At no point did she seek any confirmation about who The Wife and I are to each other. I strongly suspect that if we were not the same sex, none of this would have ever been an issue. I doubt if she would have stopped and stared if I was a man kissing my wife’s forehead, and I doubt that she would have verbally attacked and humiliated me in the hallway, either. I believe she would have politely asked me if I was The Wife’s husband, and if so, to please step out of the hallway.

She did not tell Sully and I that we were causing any kind of disturbance. We were standing close together and quietly saying our goodbyes. If there was a problem with us lingering in the hallway, that issue was at no point addressed.
I went back into The Wife’s room, humiliated beyond belief.
I asked The Wife if what Nurse Montana said was true, and she said no, she never said anything of the kind.
The other nurses treated me as if I had done something wrong for the rest of my time in the emergency room. I do not blame them for this. One of their colleagues pointed me out as some kind of problem and they were naturally leery of me. Nurse Montana’s treatment of me set the tone for everyone else and I was in no place to stand up for myself. Indeed, I stood silently as Nurse Montana came into The Wife’s room again, completely ignoring me. The humiliation did not end in the hallway. It lasted throughout my stay in the emergency room.
Sullivan was also quite horrified with the way Nurse Montana spoke to me, and how the whole scene happened. She saw everyone staring at me, and saw how deeply embarrassed and confused I was.

When I got home that night, I called my mom. She was an RN, supervising an entire hospital for over 30 years. I wanted to know if I had done something wrong by standing in the hallway. She told me that emergency room hallways really need to be clear at all times, but there was absolutely no reason for Nurse Montana to treat me the way she did. Never was I asked to step out of the hallway. From the moment she spoke to me (and again, not to both me and Sully), she was threatening, dehumanizing and incredibly rude.
I would really like to see Nurse Montana sign up for some sensitivity training. I have been around nurses all my life. I used to wait for my mom to come home from work and listen to what she’d gone through that shift. I understand, from second hand experience, the stress and hardship of nurses. I know nurses face violence, disease, abuse, and untold trauma every time they step into the hospital. I also know that good nurses, the best nurses, are folks who are nonjudgmental and compassionate. Maria and Regina on the 12th floor are classic examples of this phenomena. They never batted so much as an eyelash the time I lay next to The Wife in her bed, watching television with her. Whether or not Maria and Regina, personally, think we are aberrations, I do not know. And that is the point. Their personal opinions did not come into play at all. They treated both of us with dignity, kindness, humor and absolute grace.
Nurse Montana would be well served to spend some time silently shadowing either of these women. She (and much moreover the folks she tends to) would benefit from a crash course in compassion and nonjudgmental caring.
I still cry inside when I think about all those people staring at me like I was doing something horrible, when I was also feeling so scared about The Wife’s life. This is one of the worst feelings I have ever had.

I’d really like to know what kind of follow-up happens here, and some kind of assurance that Nurse Montana is learning different ways of treating people she may or may not identify with.

Thank you.
Inga M. Muscio