Raise your right hand and repeat after me.

If you read my previous post, you know that my partner, Dac, and I have the same last name.  It is always fun when people find out.  It seems like someone new finds out every day.  I began a new job last month, so I am still enjoying the shock on people’s faces until I get to the part of the story when I tell them that we are certainly not related.  Most people assume that one of us changed our name when we got married.  We always respond the same way to this inquiry, “We both came this way.”

We were a little concerned when we went to get our marriage license.  We live in Massachusetts so we went about getting the license in the traditional way at the city hall.  We wondered at first how they would treat a gay couple.  No one was alarmed.  Over 4,000 gay couples had been married in the state before us.  But still, a little shock and awe would have been appreciated.  I digress.

Once we were past the initial “we are two men and we want an application for a marriage license,” we were a little concerned with the clerk wondering if we were in fact related (though we could not look more different than one another).  We thought about bringing our birth certificates, but, get this, both of our mothers are named Denise.  So, essentially it would almost prove that we brothers (well, half-brothers because our fathers’ names were different).  We chanced it with nothing but a wish and a hope in tow.

The clerk looked a bit concerned so we made a joke.  She was not amused.  She pulled out a sheet of paper with a list of all of the people that you can’t marry in the state of Massachusetts (brother, sister, mother’s brother, father’s cousin, etc.).  She asked us both to raise our right hands and read it aloud and swear that we were not blood related.  We did.  We waited for the two days (the mandatory waiting period) and got the marriage license.   And then came the wedding preparations…stay tuned!

Jos76