"And what is his relationship to you?" We were standing at the reception desk in the hospital ER, and the nurse had just asked my better half who his contact person and next of kin was, and he had just given her my name. He had gotten deathly sick over the weekend and we both had feared for the dreaded Swine Flu, or worse, Valley Fever. He seemed to rebound a bit on Sunday and actually seemed much better on Monday morning. He had decided to call in sick all the same, the better to fully recover. But by late afternoon he had gotten much worse again. I'm sure it had nothing to do with sitting on the couch for hours watching "Trauma:Life in the ER" - I couldn't even sit through 15 minutes of it without feeling sick. At any rate, here we were, and there it was...
"And what is his relationship to you?"
That's a good question - what are we these days?
"Husband" was off the table, thanks in no small part to our new found neighbors. We had dithered around about getting married when it was legal, thinking there was no rush since there was no putting that genii back in the bottle. WRONG. People who thought that have never been to Kern County - Proposition 8 (repealing gay marriage) passed by a whopping 75% here.
"Boyfriend" is just too... gay. You can kinda get away with it in print, but spoken by a man my age is just down right creepy. Makes it sound like our house is decorated with "Twilight" posters and stuffed animals. No, we'll leave that one for the ladies.
"Spouse" sounds like a fungal disease.
"Longtime Companion" is too 80's.
"Roommate"... meh. At our ages, being "roommates" isn't fooling anyone.
Which pretty much leaves "Domestic Partners", which legally we were, although just saying it sounds so Soviet. Something hatched by the People's Committee on Homosexual Relationships. In LA, you just shortened it to Partner and called it a day. Short, sweet, to the point. Everyone got it.
But what to do in Bako? The few times the subject has cropped up with some of the people I've worked with here, and I described him as my "partner", it was met with blank stares. One woman actually asked me what business we were in - she assumed business partner. Obviously they never got the memo here. In such a homophobic place, what could we safely refer to each other as? I was about to find out.
"And what is his relationship to you?"
"He's my SPECIAL FRIEND."
WTF? Special Friend?!?!? What the fuck is that? Barney? Richard Simmons? Could he have thought up a gayer answer? Or retarded. Special Ed, Special Needs, Special Olympics... the word "special" doesn't mean what I think he thinks it means anymore.
Dropped jaw. Grimaced face. Look of disgust. Get up and walk away.
That wasn't the nurse's reaction, that was mine.
She was actually completely unfazed, for which I give her mad props. The doctor, on the other hand, was another story. Cold and curt, after a cursory exam, he fled the room , never to be seen again. Even sent the diagnosis and prescription in with someone else. But it's the ER in flu season, so I'll give him a pass.
The diagnosis? "Acute bronchitis". They claim it was brought on by the actual honest-to-god Swine Flu, but of that I'm dubious - it's highly contagious and I've been living and sleeping next to my "special friend" for days now without so much as a sniffle. No, I'm going to chalk it up to breathing the toxic brew that passes for "air" here - equal parts dirt and dust, poisonous spores and aerial-sprayed pesticides.
But the good news is he's on the mend and should be back to work tomorrow. And the only remaining scar from this whole situation is the mental image of the two of us, riding the short bus, licking the windows.
Isn't that Special.
