The Fixed Stars

by Molly Wizenberg

Marriage is like that too: a method we’ve devised to protect against the disorder of the outside world, to make sense of the wonderful nonsense that is love.

What if the one constant thing about you is that you’re changeable?

I mean, in lots of places it’s against the law for two women to have sex with each other at all. If we’ve already decided to break those rules, why create even more?

“The trouble with letting people see you at your worst,” writes Sarah Manguso, “isn’t that they’ll remember; it’s that you’ll remember.”32

What I want for my queer family is conventional. I want a partner who is home with me for dinner, who is an equal teammate in domesticity and parenting, who goes to bed at the same time I do.