I Have Something to Tell You

by Chasten Glezman Buttigieg

Cans come with a 10-cent deposit in Michigan, so after a few months of hauling trash bags full of sticky bottles back to Prevo’s, our neighborhood grocery store, we had a couple hundred dollars, enough to hire a local muralist to paint the school’s mascot, the Blair Bobcat, on our gym wall. The press seem surprised that I was considered an “asset” as a fundraiser for Peter’s campaign, but the fact is I’m a seasoned pro.

The next weekend, he took me to the mall, led me into Banana Republic, and bought me the first suit I’d ever owned. “You’re going to need that,” he said, and then vanished into the mist. (He just went to get a pretzel.)

Peter threw me a lovely graduation celebration, and even though I knew he was very proud of me, what really made me grateful in those days was just how proud I was of myself. For once, I was giving myself permission to feel and accept that pride.

First openly gay presidential candidate’s spouse: an objectively cool thing to be, but not one that came with a checklist.

It’s not as if I think Americans have put bigotry behind them. Not at all. And it seemed equally ludicrous to me that, while all this was going on behind the scenes and journalists were wondering if America was “ready” for a gay president, I also had reporters asking me things like “Do you think people will only vote for your husband because he’s gay?” “Honey,” I wished I could reply, “I think people will vote against my husband because he’s gay.”

I came to think of my role as being everything and nothing. If I messed up, I was everything, the center of attention; if I did a good job, I was nothing, just doing my job of being Peter’s husband. “There is only one star,” one campaign operative would tell me. Doing a good job, being perfect, is the job. You don’t get praise for not fucking up. That’s the job.

Part of the politician’s job is to make sure we show up and listen to people’s stories so we can bring those stories to Washington. As Peter kept pushing through early states, I kept traveling the country, listening, and bringing back the stories to our team as a constant reminder of who we were fighting for: the people whose lives had gone ignored by those in positions of power.