My Three Husbands (4 page)

“I may as well tell you now,” I panted.

He reached around and popped my breasts out of the sexy little black French bra I'd found on sale at Victoria's Secret. “Let's not talk. Let's just suck.”

He pulled me down to the bed and slid his tongue into my mouth. I had a sudden fear that my breath stank of coffee and cigarettes and the meat that I told him I didn't eat anymore. “You'll laugh,” I said, pulling away.

“Okay.” His lips slid up into an anticipatory smile.

“They want us to go on our honeymoon with them.”

Tremaynne scratched his chin.

“To some wilderness resort. My dad was the architect. Whitman's writing about it. It would all be free.”

“What resort?”

“I think it's called Pine Mountain.”

“Pine Mountain Lodge?” He propped himself up on an elbow. “Your dad was the architect for that?”

“You've heard of it?”

“Yeah. It sounds familiar.”

“We'd have our own luxury suite,” I said. “There's a spa. It would all be free.”

Tremaynne suddenly leapt off the futon and headed for the computer. He was completely naked. I had a flash of his hard, tight little buns. I could hear the mouse clicking, the sound of the keyboard being tapped, the hushed shrieks and boings as he connected to the Internet.

He was always doing that. Sometimes in the middle of a conversation he'd raise a hand and say, “Wait a minute, I've got to check something out.” Sometimes I'd wake up in the middle of the night and see him sitting there in the dark, his body washed by the gray light of the computer screen.

“So I'll tell them no,” I said.

He was clicking away, reading something. “Who?”

“The dads. I knew it was a crazy idea. Whoever heard of going on a honeymoon with your fathers?”

He stopped clicking, read a little more, and then looked at me. “Call them right now,” he said. He pointed to the telephone. “Tell them we'd love to go to Pine Mountain Lodge.”

R
emember when my dad told me that “just a few friends” would be at his and Whitman's DP ceremony?

Yeah, right.

What really happened was so typical of how they operate. Or how Whitman operates, I should say.

“We're just letting a few close friends in on this,” he insisted. “If they
want
to show up, they can.”

“Aren't you sending out invitations?” I asked.

“Oh God, no. There's no ceremony of any kind. Nothing romantic. It's like registering a dog. You sign a paper and give them a check for sixty-five dollars. That's it.”

“Doesn't anybody pronounce you husband and husband or something?”

“No, sweetheart. Nobody speaks through the entire procedure except to ask how you're paying. It takes place in this really ugly office building in need of major feng shui.”

I felt sorry for them. They're both so into making their surroundings so perfect. This was a big deal for them, but there was no way they could make it romantic or special.

They couldn't get legally married because according to state law only a man and a woman could do that. They weren't allowed any kind of civil union that gave them any legal rights or status as a couple. All they had, as Whitman pointed out, was this local registry thing. It had no legal bearing outside the county and gave the signers no privileges within.

“It's the crumb they've thrown us so we won't revolt,” he said.

But the dads were determined to be there the first day the registry opened. And that just happened to be July first, three days before Tremaynne and I were getting married. So I had a lot on my mind as I ransacked my messy apartment trying to find the only show-offy dress that I owned.

Tremaynne doesn't worry about clothes because he doesn't own any. All he owns is what'll fit into his backpack.

He didn't own a car either, so I had to drive us to the registry office. By the time we arrived, about a hundred people were already gathered outside and more were arriving every minute. These were the dads' “few close friends.” I saw so many familiar faces that at first I thought it was a humongous party. Then I saw a large, angry-looking man holding up a sign that read “Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.”

Then I saw a local television news truck.

“Oh shit.”

“What's going on?” Tremaynne asked.

My adrenaline kicked in hard and fast. “It's the first day of the registry. So they're protesting.”

“Who is?”

“Who do you think?” I snapped. It just made me so mad I wanted to start swinging. “I'm not going to let those assholes ruin this for the dads!”

“You're beautiful when you're pissed off,” Tremaynne said. “Come on, let's get into the action.”

I had to park my junky old Toyota blocks away, amidst a shining sea of Mercedes, BMWs, and forty-thousand-dollar SUVs. We walked fast. Easy for Tremaynne in his blue jeans and hiking boots, murder for me in my heels and tight evening dress. I wobbled down the uneven sidewalks, wishing Tremaynne would slow down and give me his arm.

“There's Venus!” someone shouted as we turned the corner and approached the registry office. Everyone looked in my direction. Some of my friends whistled. I waved, feeling like a five-second movie star. I'd never forgotten that Sylphide, the dads' pretzel-thin yoga teacher, once said I looked like Marilyn Monroe in my tight red dress.

Everyone I'd ever seen at one of the dads' parties was hanging out in front of this nondescript office building. Most of my best friends were there, too, because the dads were like their dads, too. Everyone was dressed up, but I was the only one showing a bit of skin.

It was a bright, windy day. Mount Hood was glowing in the distance.

As a seasoned party girl I can usually gauge the mood of a gathering pretty fast. Everyone who'd come to celebrate the dads' DP was excited, but they didn't quite know what to do. They wanted to be happy, the way you're supposed to be happy at weddings. But there wasn't any sort of ceremony to look forward to, or a church where you could sit down. And there were seven people hanging off to one side like an ominous storm cloud.

“God hates homos!” they chanted.

I could feel my bare skin turning really hot. Ed and Thisbe Nesbitt were serving champagne from the back of their Lexus SUV. In crystal glasses, very classy. Thisbe airkissed me and whispered, “It was all so nice until those unpleasant people showed up.”

“Nobody told them that dinosaurs are extinct.” It was Marielle, the gorgeous six-foot-two Dutch woman who was Whitman's best friend. She'd set up a table on the sidewalk next to Ed and Thisbe, laid it with a white cloth, and was serving sushi canapés.

“Are my dads here yet?” I asked her.

“No, but they're due any minute.”

“I wish we could do something,” Thisbe said anxiously. “This is such an important event. Those extremists shouldn't be allowed to spoil it.”

Fokke, Marielle's venture-capitalist Dutch husband, angrily bulldozed his way through the crowd. “Muricans,” he grumbled, shaking his head. “Ya, I told doze bastards to go but dey-dey-dey want a fight.”

“Ya, all they want is the publicity,” Marielle said.

“Okay,” I said, feeling reckless and insanely protective of the dads, “I'll give the fuckers some publicity.”

“Nay,” Marielle scolded. “You can't fight in that pretty dress.”

“Watch me.” As I sized up my targets, Tremaynne slipped his hand into mine.

“At least have some sushi and champagne before you attack,” Marielle said.

Tremaynne shook his head. “None for me, thanks.”

“What?” Marielle looked offended. “You don't like sushi?”

“Fish,” Tremaynne said. “I don't eat anything that has eyes.”

Marielle squinted, puzzled, then shrugged and looked at me. “You, Venus, you love my sushi.”

“I sure do.”

I stared at her jewelry as she quickly served me pieces of raw, liver-red tuna with wasabi and soy sauce. Marielle always wore huge handmade pieces of platinum and gold inset with the jewels her husband bought for her in South Africa. A yellow diamond the size of an elf's eye winked in her ring. Something I would never have. I wouldn't even come close. Tall beautiful Marielle and her short pushy husband (pretending not to eyeball my cleavage) lived in a world beyond my dreams. The world of millionaires.

Tremaynne and I were paupers. We'd never even been rich before we went bankrupt, just bogged down with credit-card debt.

I had a sudden sinking feeling that it was always going to be like that. Tremaynne wasn't interested in making tons of money and I hated to work. I floated from one boring, dead-end job to the next, much to the dads' dismay.

Thisbe handed us flutes of champagne. “I hear you're getting married on the Fourth of July and then you're all going off together on a family honeymoon. I just think that's so . . .
unusual.”

“Is dis the guy you're going to marry?” Fokke wanted to know. He didn't give me time to answer. “What do you do?” he demanded of Tremaynne.

“I work for the earth,” said my fiancé.

“Ya,” Fokke the developer said, “what does that mean? What does the earth pay you?”

While they were talking, Lorenzo Lopez passed by with a tiny cell phone held daintily to his ear. He was an interior decorator from a rich Argentinian family. “Venus, darling.” He airkissed me. “Congratulations!”

I thought he was referring to my impending marriage. “Thanks.”

“When is it due?” Lorenzo asked.

“When is what due?”

He pointed his cell phone at my stomach. “The baby!”

Mortified, I sucked in my belly. “I'm not pregnant, Lorenzo.”

“Oh, darling, I am so sorry.” He smiled, showing a mouthful of teeth so bright you could read by them at night. “I truly didn't mean to humiliate you.”

“Come on,” I said, pulling Tremaynne away from Fokke's harangue. “Let's go kick some ass.”

 

 

As the seven homophobes brayed their slogans, Wendell Tuttle from the symphony sat playing his huge gold harp near a rhododendron bush. It was so weird: a party and a protest in one. Like some new kind of performance art. Love and hate, hand in hand.

My old girlfriend, JD, provocative as ever, stepped in front of me with her arms spread. She was wearing the teeniest miniskirt I'd ever seen and huge platforms, like those tottering Japanese girls in Tokyo. “Hey Venus,” she said, ignoring Tremaynne and pulling me into a kissy embrace. “Let's get hitched like your dads.”

“Isn't it kind of early in the morning for Ecstasy?” It had to be drugs talking because JD undrugged was terrified of intimacy. That's why I had to break up with her. It was like making love to a Popsicle.

She caught sight of a news-cam pointed at us and pulled me closer, posing like it was a photo op. “I'm JD, and I used to be with Black Garters, but now I'm lead singer with Go-Go Girls. And this lovely girl next to me is Venus Gilroy. She's the daughter of the dads.”

“Daughter of the Dads?” The newsman was confused. “Is that a band?”

JD laughed. “No, stupid, the dads are her dads. You know, like her male parents. They're coming here today to get married.”

“Not married,” I corrected, “domestic partnershipped.”

“What do you think of the demonstrators?” the newsman asked me.

“They have their rights, but if they don't shut up I think there's going to be trouble.”

Of course they didn't shut up. They got louder. And the dads' friends started to get angry, like me. Nobody wanted to get violent, but we all wanted them to shut the fuck up.

It was Whitman who taught me how to heckle. When I was about twelve and visiting the dads in New York, he dragged me along to a big political rally down by City Hall. Something to do with AIDS. There were hundreds of angry gay men. I'd never seen such a sight. I watched Whitman jeering and making fun of the politicians. It shocked and excited me because in Portland everybody is always so nice. At least on the surface.

Even now, faced with fanatics, the dads' friends were exhibiting the kind of polite self-control that's always eluded me. “You goddamn gay-bashers!” I shouted at the fundamentalists. “You don't know anything about God or love!”

Horribly, everything got real quiet. Everyone looked at me. I stood there in my low-cut red dress and red high heels, a cigarette in one hand, and felt like I'd stepped into a dream.

“Go, girl,” JD murmured.

“Give 'em hell, Venus,” Tremaynne urged. “Right now. While everyone's listening.”

One of the protestors, a man with scary glistening eyes, took advantage of the momentary lull to shriek, “Homosexuals recruit children! That's why they try to adopt them!”

When I heard that, I just went ballistic. Someone tried to hold me back, but I charged into the homophobes' picket line and grabbed one of their signs. The man holding it wouldn't let go. Tremaynne joined me. I heard a “Wheee!” and looked over to see JD applying her Bic lighter to another sign.

Then others moved in and started to grab at the signs. The funny thing was, people were trying to do this without mussing their beautiful clothes. It was the politest fight I'd ever seen. The protestors looked scared but hung on. You could see they wanted to be martyrs. They wanted it to be rougher than it really was.

A perspiring official from the registry office came rushing out and threatened to have us all arrested for trespassing and creating a civil disturbance. Someone threw a handful of rice in his face as he was speaking. In that moment, one of the protestors swung his sign and hit me broadside. It didn't hurt but threw me off balance. One of my heels buckled and I went down with a scream of surprise. As I fell, my evening dress somehow got yanked up to my underpants and one of the spaghetti straps tore.

The whole crowd surged forward. The registry official scurried back inside, brushing rice out of his hair and saying he was going to call the police.

Tremaynne whisked me to my feet. His face had that excited glow it gets when he confronts authorities. I was a little dazed but could hear angry taunts and snapping branches as the 'phobes were pushed back into the rhododendron bushes in front of the building. Then, suddenly, there was harp music again and JD shouted, “They're here! The dads are here!”

 

 

My heart just melted when I caught my first glimpse of them. Dad One was driving. He stopped the car and I ran over to them. My dress was all grass-stained and wrinkled and I had to hold the bodice up to keep my left boob from plopping out. I don't know what happened to my shoes.

Whitman's window came down. He gave me a puzzled stare, quickly surveyed the brawling crowd, then opened the car door and pulled me inside, onto his lap, into his arms. “Are you hurt?”

My dad kissed me and brushed my hair with his fingers. “What happened?”

They were both wearing black tuxedos. Whitman was wearing what looked like a little black pillbox hat. They listened, peering out the window and stroking me as I breathlessly rattled off the events. “Venus, calm down,” Daddy said. “Everything's all right.”

“No, it's not!” I cried. “I wanted you to have such a special day. Everyone did. And those goddamned assholes ruined it!”

“Nobody's ruined anything,” Whitman said. He was supernaturally calm, the way he always is in the midst of an emergency. “We're still going to do it.” He turned to my dad. “Aren't we?”