This post was submitted by Zack Rosen

If you want to annoy me at a family reunion, ask me when I’m getting married. If you want to super, double, steam-coming-out-of-my-ears annoy me, append that question with “You can now, you know,” as if I A) never read the news and b) will treat my boyfriend like some sort of tolerable roommate until the state declares that we can fuck and argue about china patterns.

As every queer blogger is obligated to point at least once, making your relationship official and eternal is extremely separate from any ceremony that happens in a church. And now I’m the millionth person to type that sentence. Do I win a free carwash? Unoriginal as it may be, the subject is on my mind because I recently came face to face with the difference between a loving, sustained union and the way such a union is codified by the government.

Last Thursday, as a health insurance-related formality, my boyfriend and I became registered domestic partners in the District of Columbia. We met with some attorneys, signed some forms, woke up early and went down to the Department of Health and filed said forms. He went off to work and I went home. It was the least romantic thing I’ve ever done, and that includes having explosive diarrhea at Wrigley Field. We had always figured that an official declaration of our love was in the works, but (like Tina and Ike) love had nothing to do with it.

No one asked us how we met, or what we saw in each other. We didn’t leave the DOH to a shower of rice and bubbles. There were no tin cans tied to the bumper of the 96 bus that took me home, and having any kind of intense post-filing consummation sex was precluded by the fact that it was 8:30 a.m. and we were in public. We could’ve been craigslist roommates or third cousins once removed and the morning would’ve played out the exact same way.

It’s crazy for me to think that this simple procedure could be the source of so much controversy. DP, and it’s nomenclaturally fraught cousin Marriage, should be available to everyone on the simple basis of their crushing mundanity. Buying a metro card is more exhilarating. I’d be lying to say that I haven’t daydreamed about my wedding — I think it will be in October, and somewhere outdoors, and Neko Case will belt “Go Places” in a soulful blue dress as we have our first kiss — but a domestic partnership is not a wedding. To be clear, a marriage is not even a wedding. “Marriage” is a set of official privileges conveyed with the meeting of pen and paper, not soul and soul or dick and ass. To think anything else is to buy into unwarranted hype.

My fight is to get the official recognition of the state, as I did on Thursday, and not change a single other thing about my life. I won’t gain forty pounds and lose my sex drive, or spend my Saturday nights having quiet dinners with quiet friends. I don’t think a jointly-signed piece of paper even means that I should stop ogling other guys on the street or making out with them at parties.

At least, I think it shouldn’t. Becoming a registered domestic partner is the first milestone of my gay life that doesn’t involve sex. While things like a first relationship and a first heartbreak are shared by all, I don’t assume that many of my straight friends know exactly when and where they first got fucked in the ass. First bar trick, first threeway, first AIDS scare. I’ve checked so many “I’ve nevers” off my list that I barely have any remaining celebacies to break. I don’t know whether to be excited at the prospect of embarking toward a new adventure in adulthood, or to be dismayed that I have to join the straight world’s constraining standards of time. First a domestic partnership, then marriage, then before I know it I’m getting pestered to have a baby before my arthritic fingers lose their ability to aim a turkey baster at the pelvis of a lonely, childless fag hag that I meet at the CVS Pharmacy when we reach for the same bottle of bactine at the exact same time.

When I first partook in the other kind of DP I told everyone I knew. It was crazy to watch the stuff of peep show flicks become reality with some patience, bucket of lube and a particularly accomodating young man. But I haven’t really told anyone about the DP I experienced last Thursday. Partly because when I actually get married I want to do it right, and partly because it seems like a non-happening in my life. Running out of detergent in the middle of laundry day? That’s something to get excited about. But getting official permission to live exactly as I already am doesn’t get my blood flowing.

But I guess in the end there aren’t many big differences between this DP  and the other. In both cases I went in with only a vague idea of what to expect, and await a rich vault of surprises as try something new. I know that it could get messy or complicated, and that your most thoughtful or tender motions might still result in someone getting hurt. But mostly, you know that you’re not alone, that you and another person are into something together, and there is little chance that your expectations could be anything but wildly, surprisingly and joyfully exceeded.

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