Vox

by Christina Dalcher

Think about what you need to do to stay free. Well, doing more than fuck all might have been a good place to start.

I wonder what the other women do. How they cope. Do they still find something to enjoy? Do they love their husbands in the same way? Do they hate them, just a little bit?

You can take a lot away from a person—money, job, intellectual stimulation, whatever. You can take her words, even, without changing the essence of her. Take away camaraderie, though, and we’re talking about something different.

Of course, there aren’t any two-mommy or two-daddy families anymore; the children of same-sex partnerships have all been moved to live with their closest male relative—an uncle, a grandfather, an older brother—until the biological parent remarries in the proper way. Funny, with all the talk before of conversion therapy and curing homosexuality, no one ever thought of the foolproof way of getting gays in line: take away their kids.

They would use a mailman.