2 hours ago
3
The nighttime earlier I near my husband, I taught him however to marque mashed potatoes. Our friends had offered him a spot to enactment for the nighttime truthful I could beryllium alone. I wanted to stitchery my thoughts and my belongings for a formation backmost to my hometown the adjacent morning. We some knew helium was astir to locomotion retired the door, leaving maine successful our tiny flat successful Chicago, unsocial for the archetypal clip successful 7 years. He was successful emotion with a antheral he’d met astatine work. I was done trying to unreal helium wasn’t.
It was over.
Part of maine dreaded our separation viscerally, and I could consciousness the tendrils of that spot of my bosom grasping toward my hubby the mode I tin retrieve reaching out, panicked, toward my father, erstwhile helium was teaching maine to aquatics and dilatory backing up, conscionable inches beyond the farthest scope of my fingers. Another portion of maine was relieved that it was each ending — months and months of insomnia and misunderstanding and isolation and wounding connected some sides. I was acceptable for peace, nary substance however lonely it mightiness be.
As my hubby was grabbing his overgarment and backpack, prepping himself to accidental goodbye to me, helium paused for a infinitesimal successful our room and asked what I enactment successful my mashed potatoes. It wasn’t that helium didn’t cognize however to cook. He was conscionable ne'er the 1 who made our mashed potatoes.
So, I showed him. Waxy reddish potatoes, unpeeled. Tony Chachere’s successful the h2o with a fewer ail cloves. A instrumentality of butter. A mayonnaise and sour pick slurry, sometimes with horseradish, sometimes not.
When helium turned up his chemoreceptor astatine the thought of each the mayonnaise he’d unknowingly consumed implicit the years, we some laughed until we cried. The crying persisted for a bit, but nevertheless, the laughter shook thing escaped successful america and helped america some endure those last moments with a spot much resilience.
In the 22 years that person elapsed from that night, I’ve heard truthful galore akin stories from friends and household who’ve been divorced. How determination sometimes comes a infinitesimal erstwhile you’re done warring to prevention oregon to revenge anything, and each the logistics person been settled. Suddenly, you’re conscionable 2 radical who don’t hatred each different due to the fact that you nary longer person to emotion each different the mode you’ve been trying and failing to.
And it’s conscionable casual again. Quieter. Sweet.
Seven years earlier that past nighttime of our marriage, my archetypal hubby and I met astatine a blimpish Christian summertime campy wherever we were some counselors. Within a week of gathering 1 another, we stayed up until 5 a.m. talking. Over the people of that archetypal summer, we’d bash that dozens of times, and that constant, casual connection would proceed erstwhile we returned to our abstracted assemblage campuses, and we often stayed up until daylight talking for hours and hours connected the phone.
While my archetypal hubby was the 1 who spent his adolescence successful “reparative” therapy for “same-sex attraction” (a information I didn’t cognize until good into our marriage), we some began our narration believing that the extent of our relationship and emotion could transmogrify america into norms we desperately wanted to embody.
For me, that meant starving myself into a benignant of symmetrical quality I thought mightiness marque maine consciousness much similar a main quality successful my ain life. I’d spent my precocious puerility and aboriginal adolescence arsenic a kid actor, being reminded astir perpetually however overmuch I looked similar Judy Garland, who was famously made to feel as if her look and assemblage disqualified her from being anyone’s romanticist lead.
My archetypal hubby looks uncannily similar Montgomery Clift, the square-jawed histrion whose queerness the Hollywood workplace strategy did its champion to hide. These resemblances are coincidental and ever shifting arsenic we age, of course, but the narratives that travel them — the ways we construe and worth peculiar symmetries — had shaped our lives dramatically by the clip we met.
The lone movie Clift and Garland ever appeared successful unneurotic was Judgment astatine Nuremberg, a movie that interrogates corporate and idiosyncratic motivation work successful the aftermath of genocide.
My implicit favourite representation of the 2 of them connected acceptable was snapped down the scenes. They are gazing worshipfully astatine 1 another. Five-foot-nothing Judy has her large brownish eyes raised 10 inches upward toward Monty’s grey eyes. He drapes his arms connected some her shoulders, inclining his caput toward hers arsenic if they are astir to kiss.
Like Monty’s eyes, I americium besides gray. That is to say, my mediate sanction is really Gray. It was fixed to maine successful grant of my grandmother’s surname, but I’ve ever thought of it arsenic being a benignant of metaphor due to the fact that possibly the superior happening I learned from my archetypal matrimony was however to relinquish my ain hunger for black-and-white absolutes — to clasp and worth my ain gray.
We crave black-and-white patterns and categories, the predictability of them, the ways we deliberation that anticipating the repetition of them mightiness prevention america from pain.
During the past 22 years, the fig of radical who’ve said to me, “But you HAD to cognize helium was gay, right?” exceeds a 100 by a bully bit.
And yes, determination are immoderate stereotypically ironic elements of the extent of my not-knowing, which I usually bash my champion to thin into erstwhile telling this tale, often arsenic a mode of inviting radical to laughter with alternatively than at me.
For his archetypal day aft we started dating, my ex requested a pinkish Oxford garment and a conduit of sun-ripened raspberry hairsbreadth gel from Bath & Body Works. He went backmost to schoolhouse aft we divided up and became an interior designer. He loved divas (when we were together, it was mostly Faith Hill and Celine Dion). He meticulously ironed ALL his clothes. ALL of them. Even his underwear. He had an alphabetized VHS catalog of “90210” tapes. Just yesterday, helium texted maine to fto maine cognize that the 2nd way connected Taylor Swift’s medium was titled “Elizabeth Taylor,” which, to beryllium fair, helium did much due to the fact that I’m arsenic obsessed with Elizabeth Taylor arsenic helium has ever been with Taylor Swift, but determination you person it. To beryllium clear, I’ve known plentifulness of consecutive men who are funny successful each of these things, and adjacent much cheery men who would beryllium funny successful nary of them, but if you’re looking for signs I missed, they aren’t not present.
The ironies deepen erstwhile you recognize that the nighttime earlier helium got outed to me, I was dressed arsenic Liza Minnelli astatine the yearly Halloween connected Halsted parade successful Chicago’s historically queer Boystown neighborhood, wherever we lived astatine the time. We were with 5 of my closest friends, who were each cheery men.
After years of uncovering much inspiration and extent successful literate studies than successful astir of the churches I’d attended, I had begun the agelong process of deconstructing from the blimpish religion I was raised in. I was getting my Ph.D. successful queer theory, which my friends and I jokingly referred to arsenic “getting a Ph.D. successful boys.”
If I’m being honest, determination are a 100 antithetic reasons I mightiness person begun that degree, and adjacent aft taking 20 years to constitute astir that time, I’m inactive not definite which 1 was astir true. Was I trying to supercharge my deconstruction? Was I trying to recognize my ex-husband? Was I trying to alteration him done that understanding? All valid guesses, but the information remains that for each of my expected expertise successful theories of intersexual identity, I didn’t recognize until respective years into our matrimony that my archetypal hubby was cheery and that he’d fallen successful emotion with idiosyncratic else.
What radical presume erstwhile they presume I knew astir my ex-husband’s sexuality varies from idiosyncratic to person, but here’s a abbreviated database of conscionable a mates of things I’ve heard:
You indispensable person known helium was cheery erstwhile you ne'er had sex (we had enactment each the time).
Gay men who are different lone attracted to men are universally repelled by women’s bodies (see above).
Everyone ever knows from puerility connected whether they are cheery oregon consecutive oregon bi oregon immoderate of the dozens of different possibilities (no, they don’t).
The taxable of my dissertation successful queer mentation was 19th period American writer Walt Whitman, whose astir celebrated quote is arguably, “Do I contradict myself? / Very good past I contradict myself / (I americium large, I incorporate multitudes).”
For a small Judy Garland-looking kid who grew up successful an highly black-and-white religion devoted to the binary absolutes of close and wrong, eden and hell, beauteous oregon plain, saved oregon damned, it’s intolerable to overstate however overmuch I clung to that beauteous grey complexity successful Whitman — the motion of the shoulders it conjured for me, the vertebrate it flipped to the soul-killing request for rigid ideological purity.
And it was mostly due to the fact that of Whitman, mostly due to the fact that of Boystown, due to the fact that of the boys I met successful Boystown, due to the fact that of the beautiful, beloved lad I joined first, that I learned I could cull each that achromatic and achromatic I was raised with, and that my ex-husband and I could merchandise each different from the hellhole our matrimony had gradually go for america both. We didn’t locomotion into immoderate benignant of eden aft we got out, but boy, has each time since been amended for america both.
Of course, immoderate black-and-white judgments astir close and incorrect are unavoidable and necessary, similar the 1 depicted successful Judy and Monty’s movie astir Nuremberg. So are the judgments we indispensable proceed to marque astir ongoing genocides, adjacent the quieter ones occurring domestically. The systems that constabulary the shapes of bodies and desires inactive endanger to cannibalize. Disordered eating kills. Conversion therapy kills. Full stop.
But arsenic defence lawyer Hans Rolfe (played brilliantly by Maximilian Schell) argues successful 1 of the climactic scenes of “Judgment astatine Nuremberg,” portion the evil done by the Nazis is undeniable, erstwhile it comes to navigating complicity for that evil, things get a small murkier. In Rolfe’s case, helium reminds the judges that the Russians erstwhile signed a pact with Hitler, that Churchill erstwhile praised Hitler, that American Industrialists were the ones who helped money and past nett disconnected the militarization of Germany, and the Jim Crow laws of the South helped animate Nazi radical laws.
One of the superior things that drew maine to constitute astir my analyzable archetypal matrimony was teasing retired a akin thought of complicity — identifying those moments when, contempt my champion intentions, I was culpable successful the systems that wounded america both. I ne'er sent him to conversion therapy, of course.
But I was his conversion therapy.
It’s a harder emotion communicative to archer than the 1 wherever lone helium messed up due to the fact that helium wasn’t ever honest. It’s a harder emotion communicative to archer than the 1 wherever it’s everyone else’s responsibility that either of america ever got hurt. But that harder emotion communicative has been the amended 1 to tell, and I’m thankful regular for each the grey it gave me. The grey has grown maine successful ways achromatic and achromatic ne'er did.
I americium fortunate that implicit the years my ex-husband and I person go friends again. Despite everything, it is arsenic casual to speech present arsenic it erstwhile was erstwhile we stayed up each nighttime astatine camp. And helium has ever graciously supported my penning astir our matrimony and what came earlier and aft it. My publication is dedicated to him for that and truthful galore different reasons. He volition beryllium astatine my publication launch, and he’s bringing friends.
This past weekend, I was backmost successful Chicago, wherever helium inactive lives. We met up again successful Boystown for brunch. We discussed Taylors of each sorts, some Swift and Elizabeth. He met my 2nd hubby for the archetypal time. The 3 of america talked for hours.
In a classical drama (especially of the romanticist sort), the communicative ends with a wedding. Our communicative began with a wedding that ended successful divorce, but the relationship and emotion we’ve recovered connected the different broadside of it has been truthful overmuch much existent and meaningful to maine than immoderate romanticist comedy.
We’ll spot each different again successful Chicago successful a mates months, and who knows? Maybe we’ll adjacent bid mashed potatoes.
Kelly Foster Lundquist teaches penning astatine North Hennepin Community College successful Brooklyn Park, Minnesota. She is primitively from Mississippi. Kelly’s poesy and nonfiction tin beryllium seen successful galore places, including Villain Era Lit, Last Syllable Lit, Whale Road Review, and Image Journal. Her enactment has been nominated for 2024 and 2025 Best of the Net Awards arsenic good arsenic a Pushcart Prize. She is the recipient of grants from the Minnesota State Arts Board arsenic good arsenic the Central Minnesota Arts Board. Her book, “Beard: A Memoir of a Marriage” (Eerdmans), debuted connected Oct. 30, 2025. She lives successful a small reddish location successful Minnesota with her spouse and daughter.
This nonfiction primitively appeared connected HuffPost successful November 2025.
English (US) ·