My friend Anne hosted a small dinner party at her house last Wednesday. She told us she had Great News, which can really only ever mean one thing.  She and her boyfriend – now fiancé – have already picked out the rings. She didn’t exactly need to be pressured into showing them to us. Two gold bands, one with a tiny little stone, engraved with each other’s names. She’s keeping her own, and good for her, too.

It’s a strange and foreign thing, sitting next to one of your best friends, listening to her talk about her upcoming wedding. She put her ring on, prompting a faux-startled remark from our friend Susannah that their marriage was now doomed. She didn’t listen. She didn’t when I told her killing the spider I spotted hanging from the windowsill would curse her house forever, either. I saved it, with a glass and my hand. A wedding. We talked about it at length after dinner, such a girly thing to do, sitting at the table in their spotless, high-tech kitchen. My mind kept wandering. Rings. Vows. The gold reminded me of my parents’ wedding rings. I remember my mother wearing my dad’s on a thin chain around her neck. She must have done this for years after he died. She still wears her own, on her right hand, the skin tanned and freckled around and sunk beneath it. I want a gold band exactly like that, one day. I don’t like gold. I don’t like rings. I like the message, the promise, the very clear signal – this is part of me now. The reality of it. I am bound to her. We belong together.

I wonder if they noticed I was quiet that night. When Anne asked, So what about you two? What are your plans for the future? Kearney was careful to emphasize our dedication to a shared future, not to rain on Anne’s parade and spoil the mood. Not to sound too angry and disappointed, at the approval on November 4th of every single proposition on the ballots making sure gay couples in the United States will never have the same rights as their straight counterparts. Not to rage at the homophobia of the voters that got those propositions passed. By the end of her response, I was sure I was going to cry.

That was when I spotted the spider. It helped steer their attention elsewhere; even Susannah, usually our superhero, jumped and moved away from where she was sitting when I pointed it out. I took a clean glass, caught the spider, and turned around to see they had all gotten up from their chairs and put a significant distance between the spider and themselves. Imagine that, me as the brave one. The one that almost cried.

Sometimes I forget that love, still, today, right this second, is being used as grounds to hate, exclude or look down on people. I forget this, sometimes, because I’m in a luxurious enough position to be able to allow that to happen. I can feel proud, strong and confident, inside my own skin and about my sexual identity. I know that I have nothing to feel guilty about or hate myself for. I know for sure that I shouldn’t – and, under the laws in my country, can’t - be punished for the way I choose to conduct my love life.

But I got involved with a woman who does not have the rights that I do. When I finally meet the (strict) Dutch requirements to bring a non-European Union partner into the country, we will be able to marry. But if we were to travel back to the States, in the eyes of any government official, we will be nothing to each other. God forbid Kearney has a medical emergency when on United States territory, that renders her incapable of making her own medical decisions; her mother – with whom our relationship is strained at best – will have the power of attorney, not me, and we already know her mother’s choices will likely not be the ones that I would make. The ban on gay marriage ensures that I won’t qualify for a residence permit in the United States based on my relationship with a US citizen, simply because we are both women. Kearney has no choice but to give up her life across the ocean and start a new one here. Because granting GLBTs the right to marry each other will somehow threaten the heterosexual institution of marriage. Did any of those voters ask him or herself how, exactly, this would happen? No no, don’t bother trying to justify it – like so many irrational fears, this one lacks any rhyme or reason.

“I'll just have to settle for place where the rape rates are half what they are in America,” Kearney stated, to keep things light, for the evening’s sake. “A place where I can drink water from the tap.”

Anne shared a story about how she used to convince herself as a child at night that there was a spider in the hallway outside her bedroom, keeping an eye out for her, ready to jump on her when she’d pass it by. She was scared to go to the bathroom. She was scared to run back. I used to be afraid of spiders. I used to be afraid of commitment, of being abandoned, left completely alone. It’s weird, the way we outgrow some of these fears, while others stay with us forever. It’s weird the way we all grow older, towards a more realistic version of the world we imagined when we were kids.

It’s a good time for Anne to get married. She’s at the right point in her life. I wonder when that will be for Kearney and me. Five years - we’re hitting the official mark by the end of next month. Will my life have shaped up a little by the time we get there? Will it have started to come together and begun to look as beautiful as I believed it would be when I was younger?

I want that gold band. I want my name in another. And a date. The finality of it and the mark. We’ve arrived. We’re finally here.

I ache for this future.

“It is the tainting of desire, it is the attribution of perversity and shame to spontaneous bodily affection, it is the prohibition of the expression of love, it is the denial of full moral citizenship in society because you are what you are, that impinges on the dignity and self-worth of a group.”

- Justice Albie Sachs, Constitutional Court of South Africa, 1998

You may have noticed that Talking to Strangers isn’t in its usual format this week. Kearney will only be in the country for two more weeks, and we have no way of knowing when we’ll be able to see each other next. Talking to Strangers will continue with its regular programming in two weeks, when I’ll be sharing with you the inspiring and infuriating (and sometimes both at once!) responses I received from eurOut’s correspondents about the matter of being open about your sexual orientation at work.

Be safe,

Katina