No Wife in Sight

By Ren Jender

“He talks about the wife a lot,” my girlfriend said of the straight guy who shares her office.

“Like ‘the car’, ‘the house’, ‘the dog’,” I offered.

“Yeah,” she said. “Women don’t do that.”

If she had been talking about straight women she would have been right. They rarely refer to “the husband.” They say, “my husband,” the same way they say “my mother, my father, my aunt, my uncle.” But in liberal Massachusetts, “the wife” endures – even in queer psyches. Barely a year after queer marriage became legal I read a post on a queer women’s mailing list that began, “Over the weekend the wife and I went to this great new bar…”

Whether it has a definite article in front of it or not, “wife” is one of those names whose proximity can poison the words around it. Any banker, plumber, or garbage collector can hold his or her head high if he or she is called “accomplished”, “top-tier”, or “first-class”, but put any of those descriptions next to “wife” and a tang of sarcasm leaks into them.

“Wife” has a taint equaled only by the “Miss America” title. If the next Miss America had a pierced clit and bright blue and green fire-breathing dragon tattoo stretching from her shoulder, across her back, and ending on the front of her upper thigh, not only would she not be considered cool, but huge ornate tattoos and clit piercings would, in an instant, become as stale and outdated as a grandmother’s dentures and “Evening in Paris” perfume. Most grandmothers are wives too.

The coolest dyke couple I know, after being together for years married soon after the law changed. I had to ask one of them, “Do your refer to each other as ‘wife’?”

She narrowed her eyes and shook her head. “We prefer partner. ‘Wife’ is kind of a loaded term.”

A corporate lawyer friend who also writes poetry is of the generation that tends to smile and give clueless straight people a pass. But when her writers’ group was looking for new members she made her one preference clear, “No more doctor’s wives,” she said.

When I first started to frequent lesbian bars I avoided the seventies-style feminists perched on their stools not just because of their bad haircuts and outfits but because I couldn’t get past their self-righteous disdain for lipstick, razors, and sex toys: the best things in life. When queer marriage became legal I really missed these women. Whatever faults they had they wouldn’t be, like so many engaged dyke couples interviewed in the media, gushing, with all the depth and incisiveness of a bridal magazine, about how wonderful becoming a wife would be. Friends of friends well into their thirties who had been through ever other permutation of relationship among the Boston dyke dating pool, got engaged after they’d known each other two months – just like we used to make fun of straight people for doing.

Still, when I was invited to this wedding, my first legal same-sex wedding I not only accepted, but promised, “If I find the right dress, I’ll wear it.” Before Gillian Anderson’s sensible pant suits in The X Files, and Hillary Clinton’s Senatorial campaign wardrobe I was the woman who wore girl clothes and makeup but never donned dresses or skirts no matter what the occasion. A decade ago I wrote a poem about making one exception to the no dresses policy: if I won an Academy Award – I’d have to know beforehand I was going to win, though: being nominated wouldn’t be enough. Since I hadn’t written a screenplay and had no immediate plans to do so, I thought I was safe. To one of my cousin’s weddings I wore a satin blouse cut from a vintage wedding dress and tails with my dress pants – and still got disapproving looks from my mother.

For this wedding I tried on a lot of terrible dresses – decorated with two many bows and baubles, laughably overpriced and ranging from a too tight size 10 to a billowing size 6. I settled on this all-silk crimson secondhand number that cost $18. It fit like a glove, but I can’t get into it without assistance – a problem that doesn’t arise with pants that fit. The dress also necessitated my cutting back on dessert consumption for a month beforehand so that pulling up the last inch of the zipper wouldn’t regress from being a challenge to an impossibility. Like most dresses it doesn’t have pockets, so I had to buy the first – and last – purse of my adult life.

Why go to all that trouble for a celebration that will create not one but two wives? Maybe because one time sifting through the sweaty crowd at a 90 degree Pride I saw Eve and J. L. give each other a spontaneous kiss that didn’t seem perfunctory – or like a last ditch effort to keep either party from committing murder. Maybe because even though queer marriage became legal in Massachusetts over a year ago – for which there was a big midnight celebration at Cambridge City Hall – I couldn’t find a marriage card that featured a couple different from the one-woman-and-one-man ethos even in my two favorite, funky stores near Harvard Square. Maybe those of us who have been the confidante for women of all sexual orientations hope for more to change instead of just a switch from saying, “That’s terrible what he said to you” to “That’s terrible what she said to you.” My advice is, no matter what your legal status is don’t let anyone be the designated wife. Have a marriage with no wife in sight, you’re off to a good start.