Kristen Henderson is the co-author of Times Two, Two Women in Love and the Happy Family They Made and the founding member and bassist of the rock band Antigone Rising.
As a kid growing up, there were certain things I knew as fact. Women cannot be President, and neither can black people. And gay people absolutely cannot get married. These facts never appeared in writing in any of the textbooks I was reading. Nobody announced it over the loud speaker at school after the Pledge of Allegiance. But there was this one time when my eighth grade science teacher slammed a yardstick against a chalkboard denouncing homosexuality. He didn’t mention anything about Presidents. But he did say we’d go deaf or blind if we touched ourselves “inappropriately,” or if we were (shhhh) gay.
I never imagined my own wedding, especially my own gay wedding. That might make me go deaf AND blind, at least according to Mr. Taylor. I don’t mind mentioning his real name.
But then the impossible happened. New York State granted marriage equality to all its tax paying citizens, even the gay ones. And suddenly I started to have these extremely elaborate (and somewhat unrealistic) visions.
Sarah and I would be whisked in via helicopter or airboat or on water skis or maybe jet skis! We’d get dropped off on the dock of our Yacht Club and we’d exchange vows in front of all 1,500 of our Facebook friends, and our friends friends. Then, during the cocktail hour, my band mates would perform The Beatles Abbey Road album from start to finish. Followed by The Allman Brothers Band (reunited with Dicky Betts) performing at the reception. We’d serve lobsters for the main course, not just the tails, and The Cake Boss would bake our wedding cake!
For all these years I was not allowed to envision my own wedding. But now, with New York State’s passage of the marriage equality bill, I’ve been bombarded with a non-stop flow of completely unaffordable and unattainable wedding delusions! Have I mentioned that Jillian from The Biggest Loser is going to move in to my house and train me so I’ve got the hottest body on the planet by October 22nd of this year? Seriously! The visions just keep coming!
It’s 2011. Barrack Obama is President. Kristen Henderson and Sarah Ellis are getting married. And one day, our daughter will be President…
