Steven Harper Piziks

So with Darwin living part-time in Albion and Max graduating this spring with plans to move out, we realized we needed to deal with The House.

The House, the one Darwin and I bought together just before same-sex marriage became legal, is huge.  It has three bedrooms upstairs, a living room, dining room, breakfast nook, huge kitchen, two bathrooms, and a main-floor laundry area.  The basement is completely finished, with a kitchenette, a sitting room, a rec room, a bathroom with a whirlpool tub, two bedrooms, and lots of storage.  It has a huge back deck and an enormous, shady front porch I use as my summer office and adore.

When we moved in together, there were four of us, and the house was nicely roomy.  Now, however, we're down to two-and-a-half people, and one of them is planning to move out in June.  This will leave me rattling around in this giant-ass house all by myself five days a week. 

I love this house.  I love the layout and way it's built to entertain.  I love the cool front porch and the way I can basically move out there during the summer to write.  But it's ridiculously large for one person and one part-time person to inhabit, and it's silly to pay the mortgage on space we simply don't need.

So we came to the reluctant conclusion it's time to sell.

This spring, we'll put The House on the market and start looking for another, smaller place in this area.  Much as I'd like to, I can't relocate to the house in Albion--the drive is simply too far, especially in winter. 

But whatever house I find will need to have a shaded porch for summer writing.

Because Darwin has a favorite snack:

DARWIN'S CLEMENTINES

In a township, in a suburb
Where he loved to spend his time,
Ypsilanti was his plan, he
He loved his luscious clementines.

I sang it to him, and now he's humming it as he wanders about the house, trailing little orange peels behind him.

Today I persuaded Darwin to go on a bike ride with me.  He's not a big fan of bike riding--his bike spends most of its time hanging from the garage ceiling--but I get around this by simply telling him I'm going on a ride and if he wants to spend time with me, he can come along.  Even when he knows that's what I'm doing, it works...

There's simply nowhere around our house to ride a bike decently, so we have to drive to a trail to ride with our bikes on the back of the car.  The section of trail we usual ride, however, has a long, long section with no shade on it, which is fine in the spring or fall, but miserable in summer.  I looked up a section of the trail a little farther down and we drove down there to start our ride.

This turned into a miniature Afternoon Outing.

We rode along a nice, shady biking trail, which eventually took us through the town of Orchard Lake.  I'd ridden around the downtown area years ago and knew Darwin likes exploring downtowns, so I suggested we leave the trail and go exploring. He liked this idea.

The first thing we saw off the trail was a sign for a real estate open house, and it pointed toward a huge 19th-century brick mansion.

"We should go look inside!" I said.

"Let's!" Darwin said.  He parked his bike and strode up to the door.

Darwin and I love old houses, so this was fun for us.  The real estate agent probably knew we weren't serious lookers, but he had literally nothing else to do, so no one minded.

The house was empty, and I think the owner was down-sizing.  It was built in 1860, and very well kept--and updated.  Everything was wood floors and crown moldings and grand fireplaces.  A staircase curled up the front hall, and I found a servants staircase going down the back.  The second floor had a master suite and a guest suite and servant's quarters (off the master suite).  The basement was room after room of fieldstone and ancient wooden doors, and included a small safe that looked to be original to the house.  But the place was updated to include a gas furnace and AC and a huge modern kitchen.  And it had several hundred feet of lakefront across the road.  Asking price?  $999,000.  Whew!

We left the house and biked into town, where we found a diner called the Early Bird Cafe for lunch.  Darwin adores diners.  I hate them--their menus are always exactly the same.  (I think that's why Darwin likes them.)  But he went on the ride with me, so I went into the diner with him.  This is marriage.  And we had a very nice lunch.

Afterward, we rode back through lovely Michigan summer weather.

Last weekend was my and Darwin's first anniversary.  We've now been married for one year!

We did sort of a multi-day celebration.  On Friday, we went out to eat at Casey's, which I call the Irish Sushi Pub.  It's an Irish-ish pub downtown that serves bar food (burgers, fish and chips, various deep fried objects) but also has a sushi kitchen in it.  Only in America!  I think the place is perfect because Maksim and I love sushi, but Darwin and Aran hate it.  Normally, we're at an impasse, but Casey's lets everyone have what they like!

As it happened, one of their specials the night Darwin and I went there was prime rib, which is Darwin's absolute favorite.  I ordered a caterpillar roll, an eel and cucumber roll, and a dragon roll.  The food, as it happens, was absolutely delicious.  The sushi was delicious--everything in the right proportions, both crunchy and soft, tangy and sweet.  Darwin's prime rib was fork tender and done to a turn and spiced just right.  On the way out, I paused at the sushi bar to tell the chefs they were =on= that night.  They appreciated the compliment.

Saturday for supper, Darwin wanted to go to Wendy's.  "Wendy's?" I said in a shocked voice.  "WEN- dy's?  You know that a year ago we were dining on roasted chicken, fresh vegetables, and dense wedding cake.  Tonight you want to go to Wendy's?"

"We went to a nice place last night," he said.  And so we went to Wendy's.  Sigh.

The meal was forgettable, but the company was nice.  :)  We talked about the wedding and how cool it was:



Afterward, it was so mild out, I insisted we go down to the woods for a walk.  We intended to go to a public nature trail we like, but ended up hiking through a meadow behind the place I lived when we first met.  A hunter's moon was rising above the trees, and we paused to watch it come up, full and heavy and bright.  The deer were out, all over the place, and they watched us warily.  We found the wild apple trees we remembered, and they had no apples on them at all.  They didn't have any last year when we checked, either, and I wonder if something's gone wrong.  We walked back to a little hill we used to sit on when we were dating and wanted privacy from the ever-present boys at my place.  It was such a pleasant evening.

I never thought I'd be able to marry a man.  But here we are, celebrating our first anniversary.  Wow.

I love you, Darwin. Forever and always.

During the rest of our trip, we visited other historical parks around Mackinaw City because we love them.  One of them (Mill Park) had a zip line and a reconstruction of the area's first water-powered saw mill.  Darwin couldn't bring himself to do the zip line, so he waited while I did, and here we ran into one of the problems of visiting a history park--The Lecture.

The Lecture comes whenever you visit an event at a history park.  First you get the call.  "Come see how the sawmill works!"  "Demonstration of the blacksmith in five minutes!"  "Firing of the cannon!  Come see the firing of the cannon!"  So you go, hoping to see something cool or educational or both, but when you arrive, you first get The Lecture.  Someone, usually a morbidly obese man in bad period dress, stands up in front of the crowd and gives an achlingly long lecture about whatever it is.

"Now this is a Bindlefuddle rifle. It was made in 1762 in the Bindlefuddle factory in Gricklecrabbingsmere, and only two of them were actually ever made because they were the least accurate rifles in all history.  We have them here because I'm the only expert in Bindlefuddle rifles in the world.  Isn't that great?  How about some applause?  Thank you!  To load a Bindlefuddle takes some practice.  First you use a klackermacker rod to clear out the snicksnacks inside the barrel. You have to ram the rod exactly eighteen times, and it takes forty-seven minutes to do it right.  We're going to do it right.  I want you to count with me. Ready?  Are you ready?  Is everyone ready?  Can you count to eighteen?  You sir--can you count to eighteen?"

"No," I say.  "I just want you to fire the fucking rifle."

At which point, an embarrassed Darwin drags me away.

I've learned over the years that whenever someone announces, "Flower folding demonstration in five minutes!" you can actually show up in thirty minutes to see the good stuff.

However, I got caught off my game during the zip line at Mill Park. A group of us donned the safety gear and dorky helmets.  (What, exactly, is the dorky helmet going to protect me from?  If all eighteen thousand things fail and I fall off the zip line, my head is the LAST thing that will hit the ground.  Not only that, this zip line was running OVER WATER.  Why was I not wearing a life jacket instead?)  Looking like Martians from a 1950s TV show, we dutifully trooped up the hill after the guide lady to the zip line.

She kept stopping along the way.  "Here we have an oak tree.  It's a really big oak tree.  Sure is huge.  Nice and tall.  Okay, let's keep going."  So we kept going.  "Here's some poison ivy.  Don't touch the poison ivy.  See that two-story sign that identifies it as poison ivy and warns you not to touch it?"

"Yes," I said.  "We all saw it on the way in.  We do know how to read."

"Leaves of--"

"Three, leave it be," I finished.  "We're from Michigan.  We know the rhyme.  Zip line?"

A little miffed, she lead us further along, then abruptly stopped.  "Now here we have some good news and bad news," she said in an exaggerated schoolteacher tone that I disliked immensely.  "The good news is the park has two special residents.  Can anyone guess what those residents are?"

"A pair of bald eagles," I said, pointing to a sign behind her that proclaimed this was a bald eagle habitat.

"That's right!" she gushed.  "They've lived here for ten years now.  They built a nest."

"Shouldn't that more correclty be called an 'aerie'?" I said in my own teacher voice.  I couldn't seem to help myself.

"Wow!" she enthused.  "You know your eagles!"

At this point, people were craning their necks, checking the treetops for eagle nests--or aeries.

"But the bad news is, we can't see them," she went on sadly.  "The eagles live far, far away from here, in another part of the park.  Bald eagles are. . . . "

And she launched into a canned lecture about these birds that could easily be found on a number of web sites, if we cared.  I didn't.  She wasn't telling me anything I didn't already know, and I'd paid for the zip line, not a gushing lecture on eagles.  I finally took my cell phone out and played video games.  My dorky helmet was getting itchy.

At last, the gushy lady said, "Does anyone have any questions?"

Thank heavens to was over.  But to my horror, people ASKED QUESTIONS!  At this point, the children in the group were becoming restless.  They wanted the zip line, too.  The gushy lady gushed on about more eagle stuff.  More children became restless, and the gushy lady said, "Uh oh!  Mama Eagle has noticed her babies are becoming unhappy.  Did you want to go on the zip line?"  I SWEAR that's word-for-word what she said.

"Yes!" the kids said.

"Does anyone have any other questions before we go?"

And another person RAISED HIS HAND.  At this point, I interrupted.  "I'll tell you what," I said, "why don't you send those of us who don't have questions down the zip line, and the people who DO have questions can stay a moment longer and get them answered?  It will save lives."

"Save lives?" gushy lady asked.

"At least one," I said, staring directly at her.  (This is why Darwin needs to accompany me everywhere.)

The gushy lady didn't get it, but this suggestion was greeted with nods of relief from everyone else in the group.

"So Mama Eagle's babies want to fly, do they?" she gushed.

My god, I swear I was going to hit her with my dorky helmet.

At last we mounted the steps to the zip line.  I zinged across without further incident and met Darwin on the other side.

"What took so long?" he asked.

"We were ambushed by eagles."

I posted a small album of honeymoon pictures at Facebook.  For some reason, LiveJournal rejects my pictures, so I can't post here.

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10154261533592170&set=ms.c.eJxlzckJwEAMQ9GOgqXxMu6~%3BsUAuAen60LcRqGSjzqklJh780jDhiEybjFY3VDZN7PKWbDK0ymiTkjsJ22B0Q~%3BtFq2gVvuoFl89AGg~-~-.bps.a.10154261533517170.1073741843.640037169&type=3&theater

Maybe I should write a book on this . . .

After I got divorced, my life was unabashedly difficult.  I was raising three special needs sons completely on my own.  I was separated by time and distance from nearly all my friends.  I was working two jobs (including some crushing writing deadlines) and trying desperately to clear up a divorce-created pile of debt.  It was a harsh time.

Eventually, however, things stabilized.  Even the deadlines eased.  I was able to take stock and think about where I wanted my life to go.  A big question was, did I want to be single?

I had already thought about this a number of times, but earlier my life was so dizzyingly chaotic, the thought of adding another person to it made me physically ill.  Now that I had solved a number of pressing problems and settled my life down, I had more room to maneuver, and I came to the conclusion that I didn't want to be single.  Sasha had already moved out.  Aran would follow suit in just a couple more years, with Maksim shortly after that.  I didn't want to be alone for twenty or thirty years after they left.

So I would have to find someone.  The question was, how?  I'm not naturally outgoing.  My job requires it, but that's my job, not me.  I'm don't strike up acquaintances easily, and I find it excruciating to talk to strangers.

Compounded was the fact that I was a man looking for another man.  Straight people have all kinds of venues for romance.  Straight people can make runs at each other without worrying about someone being mortally offended, and their choices are vast and varied.  The gay community, especially where I lived, is rather smaller, and LGBT people don't wear tattoos on their foreheads to tell you who they are.  This was also before same-sex marriage was legal, and I wasn't widely out, for fear of repercussions at my job.

I realized there was another obstacle in my way: my own house.  I looked around my house, my bedroom, my bathroom, and realized there was no space for another person.  My entire room and bathroom were filled with my stuff, and where would another person fit?

This was a mind-set thing, I realized.  Creating space in my physical life would create space in my psychological life, and allow me to find someone more easily.

I cleared out my room.  I rearranged my furniture so that half the room was empty, ready for someone else.  I emptied out a chunk of my closet for the same reason.  I created space in my bathroom.  There!

Then I made a list of characteristics a partner had to have.  There was an ABSOLUTE MUST column and a WOULD BE NICE column and a NO WAY column.  (Basically, the person had to be at the top of Maslow's hierarchy.)  I made a commitment to stick to that list, no matter what.

And then I decided to try on-line dating.  I went to a couple of different sites and danced around with their free versions, then said to myself, "Either you're looking or you arent," so I bought a full membership to one site.

One guy I talked to (by email) was so shy that he wouldn't even tell me what town he lived in until the third email.  I dropped him.

Another guy still lived with his parents and they didn't know he was gay.  I went on one date with him, and had to pick him up three blocks away from his house and drop him off the same distance away.  He kept checking his phone to see if his family was texting or calling.  "I told them I'm going for a walk," he said, "but they might get suspicious, so I have to have an excuse ready."  I dropped him.

And then this guy named Darwin McClary contacted me.  A message led to emails.  Emails led to texts.  Texts led to phone calls.  Phone calls led to a date, then more dates, then Wednesdays and weekends at each other houses, and then a house together, and then a legal wedding.

I credit the commitment.  I had to create space in my life, physically and pschologically.  I had to commit to finding someone.  I had to stick to the list.  I also got very, very lucky.  It still makes me shake just a little to think how lucky I got with Darwin.  I can't imagine life without him now.

Our society is becoming more progressive, but the majority of households still divide up the chores by gender.  Women do the majority of housework and men do the majority of maintenance.  (Yeah, yeah, yeah--your husband is a great cook and he helps with the dishes.  Great.  Does he vacuum, change the sheets, clean the toilets, do the laundry, mop the floors, dust the knickknacks, sort the video games, do the grocery shopping, and scrub out the refrigerator once a month?  Fewer than one in twenty do.)

So the big question comes up: in a same-sex marriage, who does what?

Theoretically, this happens in het marriages.  Wives and husbands sit down and discuss these things like adults and figure out--

Yeah, I couldn't keep a straight face, either.

Anyway, Darwin and I did have to work this thing out.  Neither of us gravitated toward one particular area based on gender.  However, Darwin doesn't like to cook or do anything much dealing with food, and he's (frankly) awful at grocery shopping because he won't use a list or comparison shop.  I hate anything to do with lawn and garden.  Neither of us much likes household maintenance.

In our house, I'm in charge of food and groceries, partly because Darwin rarely gets home before 7:00 (and if we waited for him to get home and cook, we wouldn't eat until 8:30), and partly because I'm a much better shopper and cook than Darwin.

Maksim and I are in charge of keeping the house clean daily. We decided on this because I have a 10-minute commute and Darwin has a 45-minute commute each way, so it makes more sense.  Darwin, however, handles occasional chores like mopping.

Darwin is in charge of anything outside.  If it's outdoor, I have nothing to do with it.  I don't rake, mow, or shovel.  We got into a couple arguments about this during winter when I asked him to clear the driveway and he wanted to know why I couldn't do it, since I was home all day, too, and I had to remind him that he'd agreed to handle the outdoor everything.

Everyone in the house does their own laundry.  It's easier that way.  You want clean clothes?  There's the machine.

We still get into difficulties with all this.  I get resentful because I do a lot more work around the house than he does, and he hired a lawn service to handle a great deal of the outdoor work.  He gets upset because he feels he works longer hours than I do and handle housework.  Sometimes this is true, especially when his commute is figured in, but when I'm under deadline, I'm working two full-time jobs and trying to handle housework as well.

But usually things work out.

Last night, I woke up around 3:00 AM. The other side of the bed was empty, and it took my sleep-fogged mind a moment to work out that Darwin was in the bathroom.  I lay there, realizing I should go, too.  When I heard water running in the sink, I got up and lurched unsteadily toward the bathroom door.

I'm six feet tall, and I have a broad build.  And our bedroom is dark at night--no street lights to lift the gloom.  My mouth was also dry, and I was making little "mmf mmf" noises while I stumbled for the bathroom and reached for the knob.

I later learned that while he was in the bathroom, Darwin thought he heard a man's voice emanating up from the basement.  Was it the house creaking?  No, it definitely sounded like a voice.  Was someone in the house?

So I suppose it's reasonable to excuse the already-nervous Darwin's reaction when he opened the bathroom door and saw a big, rumpled, groaning zombie with its arm outstretched.

It was his first chance to be on THE WALKING DEAD, however unwittingly, and I think he meant to say something coherent, but what came out was, "Gwrfstfflgl!"  He shot backwards into the bathroom and fetched up against the sink.

I, meanwhile, wasn't expecting a husband to shriek, "Gwrfstfflgl!" at 3 AM, so I jumped back and smacked against the bed.

Darwin recovered first.  He's never at his best at this time of night, and he grumbled and growled his way back to bed.  I had a hard time using the bathroom because I was laughing at both of us.  Darwin was pretending to be asleep when I got back into bed, but he wasn't.  I kept breaking into fits of laughter, which Darwin didn't appreciate, even though I explained to him I was laughing more at me than at him.

He just didn't believe me.  What's a guy to do?

I find myself cast in the role of political husband.  It's a strange place to stand.

Darwin manages the village of Lake Orion, north of us, and his job carries with it a number of public appearances.  A huge new restaurant opens downtown and the owner throws a reception for various local people connected to the project, including Darwin.  Every year, the village puts on a firework display that draws people all the way up from Detroit, and Darwin must attend.  A charity puts on a Christmas fundraiser, at which the police department buys an entire table, and the chief invites Darwin.  Every summer, the downtown businesses put on a flower show and art fair, and Darwin must go.

With all these events comes the unspoken rule that spouses come along.  This never occurred to me when Darwin and I started dating.  It sort of snuck up on me.  Darwin casually mentioned the flower and art fair one day.  "I have to put in an appearance," he said.  "You should come with me as my partner."

"Oh," I said, a little nonplused.  "Sure.  I can do that."

At the fair, I followed Darwin around like a duckling and quickly learned the art of standing around with a look of polite interest on my face while various people (LOTS of various people) came up to Darwin for this or that.  He always made introductions, of course.  And I did know how to schmooze.  Every mid-list author learns it as a survival skill.  I schmoozed with Darwin from one end of the fair to the other.

"I'm becoming a political spouse," I declared at the end of it.

And lo, so it has come to pass. I've attended a number of events (including some unexpected Independence Day yachting on Lake Orion) and met a number of local celebrities.  (Here my author training came into play--I've met lots of celebrities already and don't get babbly or star-struck.)  It's weird.  I'm a teacher and a novelist, about as far from the political arena as you can get, but here I am, learning to navigate the odd political waters of municipal government.

The places life will take you!