Fagabond

Another new word from yours truly. A new entry in the Chris-lexicon: Fagabond.

It came about spontaneously in a conversation with a friend of mine, Kris, about a guy I've been "seeing" for a couple of months. Let's call him JR. It's a triple-entendre. I might have sprained something.

JR told me last week that his job was ending this week. Mind you, it is a temp job, so I asked whether his agency had anything else in the pipeline for him. Sadly, it looks like there is no immediate placement looming. On the plus side, he doesn't have a lot of overhead.

I joked to Kris that while it was sad, this would likely be the catalyst that moved JR from wanting to "see" me once a week to actually dating. The evolution is unlikely in my mind-he's 21, barely more datable than an animal, really-but still a nice guy (and sexy as all hell, great kisser, fairly articulate...but the 21 still shows through). I hate to see him struggle, especially since my jaded mind pretty fluidly goes to scenarios like, "I don't have rent money, Chris". Which to a 21 year old can be easily solved two ways. Older "boyfriend" gives him the money or lets him move in.

No biggie, right? Problem solved.

Right.

Well, let's presume-correctly-that I don't have the extra flash to pay someone else's rent. That leaves us with scenario number two. Number two...funny, since that option would create a scenario described by another entry in the Chris-lexicon: shituation.

I told Kris that to a young person moving in is no big deal, the home they have created isn't a nest so much as a den. They can likely pick up and change the location of their living quarters with nothing more traumatic than how to put down the deposit for the new cable service. While I think I am pretty generous and would love to share my home with someone when the time is right, I know at the same time (despite my frequent dating mis-actions) that that someone has to be a significant person, not someone who kept me at, um...let's say arms length until there was a need to close that gap. That younger person hasn't yet learned to balance the two facets of life that created that gap in the first place, having friends and a lover in your life.

To the younger individual, not just JR but any-or most any-young person, if a month or two passes and the "honeymoon" ends and there is actually relating that needs to be done in this living situation that they are unprepared for, simply pick up and move again.

Problem solved.

I told my friend that vagabond lifestyle is typical for younger folks, in my experience. Having moved up to six times in a 12 month period in my late teens and early 20's, I figure I can make that statement fairly.

A moment clicked by and I thought of all the jokes about gays and lesbians rushing into relationship situations to validate their emotions for someone, in the absence of a government sanctioned, legally valid manner of expressing their relationship. The one that stands out most in my memory goes something like, "What's the setting of a lesbian second date? A U-Haul."

It really reinforced the term vagabond I had used in our conversation. Putting it into a homosexual context, I corrected myself and used the term "fagabond" to describe the situation in shorthand.

I'm not an overly political person, but as a gay man, I feel that this fagabond quality to the gay and lesbian life experience is unique to us. While heterosexual youths may infrequently bounce from living situation to living situation the reason for the bounce is-from my observation-usually less a factor of a bum relationship. I know many straight men and women who are in dating relationships that span weeks to months to years and less often see them result in co-habitation prematurely than their homo counterparts. Sometimes I even find myself projecting my desire to see these couples move in together, using my tainted timeline to evaluate the success and validity of their relationship.

So, back to the politics of Chris. It seems the major obstacle for legalizing same sex marriage is really the word "marriage". It is a religious term that was co-opted by the government in an act of short-sightedness that is crippling our country's ability to ensure civil rights for all citizens two hundred plus years later. For all the foundations of our country, two stand out. The first, a country founded on a separation of church and state; the second, our right to pursue happiness. Out of the gate, our founding fathers' failure to create a legal entity for marriage using a secular term has rippled forward in time to today where many religious entities-most notable, the Mormons-are blocking the civil rights of homosexuals to defend an institution that they have a valid claim to.

I'll wait while the minions pick up their computers off the floor.

I say let the churches of our country have a friggin copyright to the damn word.

The failure here is to correct the original error. I think we are beginning to round that corner with marriage equality. Perhaps the final step in the evolution will be to take the word marriage out of the legal vernacular altogether, for homos and heteros, and revisit something like civil unions. If we do convert the legal meaning of marriage to civil unions, it destigmatizes the process, it is no longer villainy to see fags and lesbos engaging in something that the pious do when they meet their mate. It is, indeed, separate but equal. Separate from the Church, which is where this should have began.

As a matter of fact, we should look at a civil union for religious folk no differently than we do for marriages between a Catholic and a Jew, where you can usually find a blending of the two culture's ceremonies. For a hetero couple getting married that wishes to have a religious stamp placed on their relationship, there could be a Justice of the Peace and a Religious Officiant. Or a church's leader could play a dual role. Either way, the religious aspect of the union becomes secondary, not primary.

To further finger fuck the church, we could insist that legal rights of civil unions not be granted to marriages performed outside of a state or federally recognized Justice of the Peace. See how they like that. Sure, let hospitals decide whether or not to recognize visitation rights for married individuals, but the financial benefits of civil unions would not be extended to these religious based marriages unless they were certified by a legal representative of the government as well. See how they like that.

Hey, I just sit here and quietly solve the world's problems. I figure if I tell enough people the right answer will bubble up in some form or another. Look at me and the democratic split over Obama and Hillary's campaigns for the presidential nomination...I simply suggested a Hillary/Obama ticket. While we got close to my solution eventually, with Obama as Prez and Hill as Sec State-a solution I am totally on board with, I think Obama is gonna rock-my solution paved the way for sixteen years of these political forces working in the White House. This solution, really, I only see eight...but you can't knock them all out of the park, right?

Anyway, once the religious connotations are removed from our government's sanctioning of relationships I think that gays and lesbians will make a significant step-one that many homo couples have already made in the shadows of an impotent government's approved religious oppression-forward in making more mature relationship and life choices. Until then, I think we will either scramble as a sub-but-not-subversive culture to find meaningful, if not premature, ways to validate our relationships or use the lack of government equality as a shield for sexual deviancy that would make our mothers wonder where they went wrong.

Either way...we're fagabonds-ie: relationship retards-until the government corrects it's problem for us.