oh.. thas bepis....

♡ angel | 25 | pan | she/her ♡ mood of the day: h.........horn- *gets shot*

[thinkingabout-girls]

the funniest moment in dungeon meshi is when marcille is having her nightmare and brings up her dead bird while also talking about her dead dad, saying “papa and pipi” and laios automatically assumes pipi is marcilles third nonbinary parent on top of her mom and dad

[ouppygirlcity]

[cherubheartz]

favorite phenomenon

[queenaegon]

is that song actually character-coded or is your brain a character-shaped hammer looking for lyrics to nail down somewhere

[verittean]

[yuribomber-deactivated20251222]

day 1 at the communal puzzle club: i see a puzzle with a sign next to it that says "please help with our communal puzzle" and i say to myself "don't mind if I do" and did the whole thing

[yuribomber-deactivated20251222]

day 2 at the communal puzzle club: i get gently reprimanded for not sharing the puzzle experience with the others. in my defense I thought they needed all the help they could get

[yuribomber-deactivated20251222]

day 3 at the communal puzzle club: we start a new puzzle and i put one of the pieces in my pocket and save it for later so i can be the one who puts in the last piece

[yuribomber-deactivated20251222]

day 4 at the communal puzzle club: the puzzle is almost complete so i reach into my pocket and realize i left the last piece in my other pants which are currently in the washing machine. i feign ignorance

[yuribomber-deactivated20251222]

day 5 at the communal puzzle club: the others are suspicious but they have no proof. they check my pockets before i leave but little do they know that this time i ate the pieces

[yuribomber-deactivated20251222]

day 6 at the communal puzzle club: i put an entire bottle of miralax in my coffee to get the pieces out of my digestive system but they are too far dissolved to be usable. my stomach is in so much pain and i can't stop shitting but i rinse off what's left of the pieces and make it to puzzle club anyway, only to find out they don't meet on mondays. i am inconsolable.

[yuribomber-deactivated20251222]

day 7 at the communal puzzle club: i realized those pieces are incriminating evidence so i slipped them in someone else's pocket. i should be good as long as they don't find residual traces of my dna

[yuribomber-deactivated20251222]

day 8 at the communal puzzle club: there is an odd feeling in my gut. i feel as if something has been awoken in me

[yuribomber-deactivated20251222]

day 9 at the communal puzzle club: i am in such deep focus that the others are starting to fear me. either that or they are cowering away from the communal puzzle out of sheer respect for my skills

[yuribomber-deactivated20251222]

day 10 at the communal puzzle club: i'm getting better and better, i can now do several puzzles in one day. the others are discussing what to do about me in hushed tones. little do they know my laser focus allows me to hear everything they say. they aren't a threat.

[yuribomber-deactivated20251222]

day 11 at the communal puzzle club: the club manager unlocked the door but already i am inside. ive been here all night doing puzzles in the dark. they threaten to ban me from the club so in response i pick a 500 piece puzzle at random and complete it in under 45 minutes, just to show them who the real authority is

[yuribomber-deactivated20251222]

day 12 at the communal puzzle club: i have been officially banned from the communal puzzle club. in a fit of rage i grab as many pieces as i can and eat them, making sure to thoroughly chew and swallow every single one. if i can't do them, no one can.

[yuribomber-deactivated20251222]

day 13 at the communal puzzle club: it's monday again. the club doesn't meet today. it's the perfect opportunity to break in and do as many puzzles as my heart desires, without any of the club's petty drama to distract me

[yuribomber-deactivated20251222]

day 14 at the communal puzzle club: i am in jail because the club manager snitched to the cops like the pathetic weakling they are. this is the worst night of my entire life there aren't any puzzles here

[yuribomber-deactivated20251222]

day 15 at the communal puzzle club: the judge let me off with a restraining order since I didn't actually steal anything. i show back up to communal puzzle club just to make a show of ripping the order to shreds. no piece of paper will dictate my life, only jigsaw-cut cardboard has that power. nothing else.

[yuribomber-deactivated20251222]

day 16 at the communal puzzle club: everyone is so quiet today when I walk in. I eat some pieces in a show of force, just to remind everyone who's in charge. I comment that they taste somewhat like strychnine, they say it's just because Ravensburger has a new method of chemically processing their pieces. sounds plausible. 30 minutes later i am convulsing violently but i beg them not to call an ambulance until i finish the puzzle i was working on. but the bastards don't listen and I'm shipped off to the hospital kicking and screaming.

[yuribomber-deactivated20251222]

day 17 at the communal puzzle club: i spent the night in the hospital. a detective comes in and says they're investigating the manager of the communal puzzle club for attempted murder and asks what i know. i tell him honestly that i ain't no snitch and spit in his face. he says they have more than enough evidence to prosecute regardless.

[yuribomber-deactivated20251222]

day 18 at the communal puzzle club: the club manager is on trial for attempted murder and i am called as a witness. i tell the judge that i ain't no snitch and spit in his face. i am held in contempt of the court

[yuribomber-deactivated20251222]

day 19 at the communal puzzle club: the defense makes a plea of justifiable self defense, citing the restraining order that isn't even 1 week old. somehow the judge buys that flimsy defense. i mean, this is the same judge who didn't even recognize me from that same case despite being the same judge. i think the poor old man has dementia so i make a motion for a mistrial. it gets shot down because the system is corrupt.

[yuribomber-deactivated20251222]

day 20 at the communal puzzle club: the judge says i should get jail time but he decided i should be in a mental facility instead. i don't know why he would think that, i have been nothing but sane my entire life. god forbid a woman have hobbies

[yuribomber-deactivated20251222]

day 1 in the psych ward: they have puzzles in here this is amazing

[yuribomber-deactivated20251222]

day 2 in the psych ward: all the puzzles are missing a few pieces. this is unacceptable. im going to go insane

[yuribomber-deactivated20251222]

day 3 in the psych ward: i have been informed that they do not use the word "insane" in here so i take back my previous statement.

[yuribomber-deactivated20251222]

day 4 in the psych ward: i need to find those missing pieces i need to find them i need to find them i have been questioning everybody all the nurses all the doctors all the patients all the miscellaneous hospital staff but nobody knows anything. this is hopeless. i will never be able to overcome this trauma. my life is over

[yuribomber-deactivated20251222]

day 5 in the psych ward: it's so boring in here. without complete puzzles there's nothing to do except watch tv but the only channel they get is the local news. i begrudgingly watch out of nothing but all-encompassing ennui. but one of the stories is about the communal puzzle club and suddenly i am overcome with nostalgia. turns out there was a series of alleged poisonings attributed to that location. strychnine was found in three people so far, one of whom was myself. but the others didn't survive. this confirms my suspicion that i am in fact the chosen one

[yuribomber-deactivated20251222]

day 6 in the psych ward: with a renewed sense of purpose i will attempt to convince the doctors of my "sanity," but i also came to the realization that they don't care about sanity, they only care about sedation. they want to supress my passion, eradicate my truth, condition me to fall in line with the rest of the "sane" people. with that knowledge, i was able to tell them everything they wanted to hear. i acted polite, pretended i was cured, i even feigned complete disinterest in puzzles! it made my stomach boil but i did it, i convinced them, and just like that, i was free.

[yuribomber-deactivated20251222]

day 28 at the communal puzzle club: i don't know why everyone was so surprised to see me again, it's only natural that i'd come to finish what i started

(i know this is supposed to be day 27 at the communal puzzle club but day 27 was a monday so nothing happened) like what am i gonna say, "day 27 i sat alone in my studio apartment eating cereal and biding my time"

[yuribomber-deactivated20251222]

day 29 at the communal puzzle club: the communal puzzle club has been disbanded, the club manager has been arrested, and the whole place is swarming with cops. i watched as they hauled off a bunch of expensive looking printers and like a billion reams of paper and loaded them onto a big police truck.

apparently, the communal puzzle club was just a front for document forgery and counterfeit cash, and i had been inadvertently sabotaging them this entire time. which is sad because i support both of those things. but it also explains why they met 12 hours a day, 6 days a week and why they had their own building despite having no profit model and also why i was the only one who seemed to actually care about the puzzles. everyone else was too busy making fake passports to care.

in hindsight, i always knew they were all a bunch of casuals. but i didn't mind because they had so many excellent puzzles. I asked one of the officers if i could at least have the puzzles but he said they were already taken and locked away in the evidence room. the thought sickens me- all those puzzles, gathering dust, never to be assembled again. or maybe the pigs just took them for themselves! so they could have all the puzzles they want while the rest of us ordinary, law-abiding citizens have nothing to do except die of boredom!

the moral of the story is that we can never have nice things because of the fucking pigs. fuck the police.

[dat-physics-gal]

the fuck did i just read?

[yuribomber-deactivated20251222]

my local library was having a puzzle swap and there was a puzzle with a sign next to it that said "please help with our communal puzzle" and i thought "wouldn't it be funny if i did the entire thing by myself" and then i did the entire thing by myself while rolling that thought around in my brain and as it rolled it started picking up all the various mold spores and fungus i keep up there. like a katamari

[aleespace]

[shyyren]

op i hope you don't mind but i made this gif non-looping and it has been sending me into hysterics every time i think about it

[treasuredplanet]

I think that when you're overstimulated you should appear kind of grayed out and no one should be able to interact with you like a locked character in a video game

[thememedaddy]

[gaycop]

STOP SANITIZING THE INTERNET

[salorade]

for every stress life brings youre one step closer to a new and exciting relationship with a fictional character

[therealbeachfox]

Twenty years ago, February 15th, 2004, I got married for the first time.

It was twenty years earlier than I ever expected to.

To celebrate/comemorate the date, I'm sitting down to write out everything I remember as I remember it. No checking all the pictures I took or all the times I've written about this before. I'm not going to turn to my husband (of twenty years, how the f'ing hell) to remember a detail for me.

This is not a 100% accurate recounting of that first wild weekend in San Francisco. But it -is- a 100% accurate recounting of how I remember it today, twenty years after the fact.

Join me below, if you would.

2004 was an election year, and much like conservatives are whipping up anti-trans hysteria and anti-trans bills and propositions to drive out the vote today, in 2004 it was all anti-gay stuff. Specifically, preventing the evil scourge of same-sex marriage from destroying everything good and decent in the world.

Enter Gavin Newstrom. At the time, he was the newly elected mayor of San Francisco. Despite living next door to the city all my life, I hadn’t even heard of the man until Valentines Day 2004 when he announced that gay marriage was legal in San Francisco and started marrying people at city hall.

It was a political stunt. It was very obviously a political stunt. That shit was illegal, after all. But it was a very sweet political stunt. I still remember the front page photo of two ancient women hugging each other forehead to forehead and crying happy tears.

But it was only going to last for as long as it took for the California legal system to come in and make them knock it off.

The next day, we’re on the phone with an acquaintance, and she casually mentions that she’s surprised the two of us aren’t up at San Francisco getting married with everyone else.

“Everyone else?” Goes I, “I thought they would’ve shut that down already?”

“Oh no!” goes she, “The courts aren’t open until Tuesday. Presidents Day on Monday and all. They’re doing them all weekend long!”

We didn’t know because social media wasn’t a thing yet. I only knew as much about it as I’d read on CNN, and most of the blogs I was following were more focused on what bullshit President George W Bush was up to that day.

"Well shit", me and my man go, "do you wanna?" I mean, it’s a political stunt, it wont really mean anything, but we’re not going to get another chance like this for at least 20 years. Why not?

The next day, Sunday, we get up early. We drive north to the southern-most BART station. We load onto Bay Area Rapid Transit, and rattle back and forth all the way to the San Francisco City Hall stop.

We had slightly miscalculated.

Apparently, demand for marriages was far outstripping the staff they had on hand to process them. Who knew. Everyone who’d gotten turned away Saturday had been given tickets with times to show up Sunday to get their marriages done. My babe and I, we could either wait to see if there was a space that opened up, or come back the next day, Monday.

“Isn’t City Hall closed on Monday?” I asked. “It’s a holiday”

“Oh sure,” they reply, “but people are allowed to volunteer their time to come in and work on stuff anyways. And we have a lot of people who want to volunteer their time to have the marriage licensing offices open tomorrow.”

“Oh cool,” we go, “Backup.”

“Make sure you’re here if you do,” they say, “because the California Supreme Court is back in session Tuesday, and will be reviewing the motion that got filed to shut us down.”

And all this shit is super not-legal, so they’ll totally be shutting us down goes unsaid.

00000

We don’t get in Saturday. We wind up hanging out most of the day, though.

It’s… incredible. I can say, without hyperbole, that I have never experienced so much concentrated joy and happiness and celebration of others’ joy and happiness in all my life before or since. My face literally ached from grinning. Every other minute, a new couple was coming out of City Hall, waving their paperwork to the crowd and cheering and leaping and skipping. Two glorious Latina women in full Mariachi band outfits came out, one in the arms of another. A pair of Jewish boys with their families and Rabbi. One couple managed to get a Just Married convertible arranged complete with tin-cans tied to the bumper to drive off in. More than once I was giving some rice to throw at whoever was coming out next.

At some point in the mid-afternoon, there was a sudden wave of extra cheering from the several hundred of us gathered at the steps, even though no one was coming out. There was a group going up the steps to head inside, with some generic black-haired shiny guy at the front. My not-yet-husband nudged me, “That’s Newsom.” He said, because he knew I was hopeless about matching names and people.

Ooooooh, I go. That explains it. Then I joined in the cheers. He waved and ducked inside.

So dusk is starting to fall. It’s February, so it’s only six or so, but it’s getting dark.

“Should we just try getting in line for tomorrow -now-?” we ask.

“Yeah, I’m afraid that’s not going to be possible.” One of the volunteers tells us. “We’re not allowed to have people hang out overnight like this unless there are facilities for them and security. We’d need Porta-Poties for a thousand people and police patrols and the whole lot, and no one had time to get all that organized. Your best bet is to get home, sleep, and then catch the first BART train up at 5am and keep your fingers crossed.

Monday is the last day to do this, after all.

00000

So we go home. We crash out early. We wake up at 4:00. We drive an hour to hit the BART station. We get the first train up. We arrive at City Hall at 6:30AM.

The line stretches around the entirety of San Francisco City Hall. You could toss a can of Coke from the end of the line to the people who’re up to be first through the doors and not have to worry about cracking it open after.

“Uh.” We go. “What the fuck is -this-?”

So.

Remember why they weren’t going to be able to have people hang out overnight?

Turns out, enough SF cops were willing to volunteer unpaid time to do patrols to cover security. And some anonymous person delivered over a dozen Porta-Poties that’d gotten dropped off around 8 the night before.

It’s 6:30 am, there are almost a thousand people in front of us in line to get this literal once in a lifetime marriage, the last chance we expect to have for at least 15 more years (it was 2004, gay rights were getting shoved back on every front. It was not looking good. We were just happy we lived in California were we at least weren’t likely to loose job protections any time soon.).

Then it starts to rain.

We had not dressed for rain.

00000

Here is how the next six hours go.

We’re in line. Once the doors open at 7am, it will creep forward at a slow crawl. It’s around 7 when someone shows up with garbage bags for everyone. Cut holes for the head and arms and you’ve got a makeshift raincoat! So you’ve got hundreds of gays and lesbians decked out in the nicest shit they could get on short notice wearing trashbags over it.

Everyone is so happy.

Everyone is so nervous/scared/frantic that we wont be able to get through the doors before they close for the day.

People online start making delivery orders.

Coffee and bagels are ordered in bulk and delivered to City Hall for whoever needs it. We get pizza. We get roses. Random people come by who just want to give hugs to people in line because they’re just so happy for us. The tour busses make detours to go past the lines. Chinese tourists lean out with their cameras and shout GOOD LUCK while car horns honk.

A single sad man holding a Bible tries to talk people out of doing this, tells us all we’re sinning and to please don’t. He gives up after an hour. A nun replaces him with a small sign about how this is against God’s will. She leaves after it disintegrates in the rain.

The day before, when it was sunny, there had been a lot of protestors. Including a large Muslim group with their signs about how “Not even DOGS do such things!” Which… Yes they do.

A lot of snide words are said (by me) about how the fact that we’re willing to come out in the rain to do this while they’re not willing to come out in the rain to protest it proves who actually gives an actual shit about the topic.

Time passes. I measure it based on which side of City Hall we’re on. The doors face East. We start on Northside. Coffee and trashbags are delivered when we’re on the North Side. Pizza first starts showing up when we’re on Westside, which is also where I see Bible Man and Nun. Roses are delivered on Southside. And so forth.

00000

We have Line Neighbors.

Ahead of us are a gay couple a decade or two older than us. They’ve been together for eight years. The older one is a school teacher. He has his coat collar up and turns away from any news cameras that come near while we reposition ourselves between the lenses and him. He’s worried about the parents of one of his students seeing him on the news and getting him fired. The younger one will step away to get interviewed on his own later on. They drove down for the weekend once they heard what was going on. They’d started around the same time we did, coming from the Northeast, and are parked in a nearby garage.

The most perky energetic joyful woman I’ve ever met shows up right after we turned the corner to Southside to tackle the younger of the two into a hug. She’s their local friend who’d just gotten their message about what they’re doing and she will NOT be missing this. She is -so- happy for them. Her friends cry on her shoulders at her unconditional joy.

Behind us are a lesbian couple who’d been up in San Francisco to celebrate their 12th anniversary together. “We met here Valentines Day weekend! We live down in San Diego, now, but we like to come up for the weekend because it’s our first love city.”

“Then they announced -this-,” the other one says, “and we can’t leave until we get married. I called work Sunday and told them I calling in sick until Wednesday.”

“I told them why,” her partner says, “I don’t care if they want to give me trouble for it. This is worth it. Fuck them.”

My husband-to-be and I look at each other. We’ve been together for not even two years at this point. Less than two years. Is it right for us to be here? We’re potentially taking a spot from another couple that’d been together longer, who needed it more, who deserved it more.”

“Don’t you fucking dare.” Says the 40-something gay couple in front of us.

“This is as much for you as it is for us!” says the lesbian couple who’ve been together for over a decade behind us.

“You kids are too cute together,” says the gay couple’s friend. “you -have- to. Someday -you’re- going to be the old gay couple that’s been together for years and years, and you deserve to have been married by then.”

We stay in line.

It’s while we’re on the Southside of City Hall, just about to turn the corner to Eastside at long last that we pick up our own companions. A white woman who reminds me an awful lot of my aunt with a four year old black boy riding on her shoulders. “Can we say we’re with you? His uncles are already inside and they’re not letting anyone in who isn’t with a couple right there.” “Of course!” we say.

The kid is so very confused about what all the big deal is, but there’s free pizza and the busses keep driving by and honking, so he’s having a great time.

We pass by a statue of Lincoln with ‘Marriage for All!’ and "Gay Rights are Human Rights!" flags tucked in the crooks of his arms and hanging off his hat.

It’s about noon, noon-thirty when we finally make it through the doors and out of the rain.

They’ve promised that anyone who’s inside when the doors shut will get married. We made it. We’re safe.

We still have a -long- way to go.

00000

They’re trying to fit as many people into City Hall as possible. Partially to get people out of the rain, mostly to get as many people indoors as possible. The line now stretches down into the basement and up side stairs and through hallways I’m not entirely sure the public should ever be given access to. We crawl along slowly but surely.

It’s after we’ve gone through the low-ceiling basement hallways past offices and storage and back up another set of staircases and are going through a back hallway of low-ranked functionary offices that someone comes along handing out the paperwork. “It’s an hour or so until you hit the office, but take the time to fill these out so you don’t have to do it there!”

We spend our time filling out the paperwork against walls, against backs, on stone floors, on books.

We enter one of the public areas, filled with displays and photos of City Hall Demonstrations of years past.

I take pictures of the big black and white photo of the Abraham Lincoln statue holding banners and signs against segregation and for civil rights.

The four year old boy we helped get inside runs past us around this time, chased by a blond haired girl about his own age, both perused by an exhausted looking teenager helplessly begging them to stop running.

Everyone is wet and exhausted and vibrating with anticipation and the building-wide aura of happiness that infuses everything.

The line goes into the marriage office. A dozen people are at the desk, shoulder to shoulder, far more than it was built to have working it at once.

A Sister of Perpetual Indulgence is directing people to city officials the moment they open up. She’s done up in her nun getup with all her makeup on and her beard is fluffed and be-glittered and on point. “Oh, I was here yesterday getting married myself, but today I’m acting as your guide. Number 4 sweeties, and -Congradulatiooooons!-“

The guy behind the counter has been there since six. It’s now 1:30. He’s still giddy with joy. He counts our money. He takes our paperwork, reviews it, stamps it, sends off the parts he needs to, and hands the rest back to us. “Alright, go to the Rotunda, they’ll direct you to someone who’ll do the ceremony. Then, if you want the certificate, they’ll direct you to -that- line.” “Can’t you just mail it to us?” “Normally, yeah, but the moment the courts shut us down, we’re not going to be allowed to.”

We take our paperwork and join the line to the Rotunda.

If you’ve seen James Bond: A View to a Kill, you’ve seen the San Francisco City Hall Rotunda. There are literally a dozen spots set up along the balconies that overlook the open area where marriage officials and witnesses are gathered and are just processing people through as fast as they can.

That’s for the people who didn’t bring their own wedding officials.

There’s a Catholic-adjacent couple there who seem to have brought their entire families -and- the priest on the main steps. They’re doing the whole damn thing. There’s at least one more Rabbi at work, I can’t remember what else. Just that there was a -lot-.

We get directed to the second story, northside. The San Francisco City Treasurer is one of our two witnesses. Our marriage officient is some other elected official I cannot remember for the life of me (and I'm only writing down what I can actively remember, so I can't turn to my husband next to me and ask, but he'll have remembered because that's what he does.)

I have a wilting lily flower tucked into my shirt pocket. My pants have water stains up to the knees. My hair is still wet from the rain, I am blubbering, and I can’t get the ring on my husband’s finger. The picture is a treat, I tell you.

There really isn’t a word for the mix of emotions I had at that time. Complete disbelief that this was reality and was happening. Relief that we’d made it. Awe at how many dozens of people had personally cheered for us along the way and the hundreds to thousands who’d cheered for us generally.

Then we're married.

Then we get in line to get our license.

It’s another hour. This time, the line goes through the higher stories. Then snakes around and goes past the doorway to the mayor’s office.

Mayor Newsom is not in today. And will be having trouble getting into his office on Tuesday because of the absolute barricade of letters and flowers and folded up notes and stuffed animals and City Hall maps with black marked “THANK YOU!”s that have been piled up against it.

We make it to the marriage records office.

I take a picture of my now husband standing in front of a case of the marriage records for 1902-1912. Numerous kids are curled up in corners sleeping. My own memory is spotty. I just know we got the papers, and then we’re done with lines. We get out, we head to the front entrance, and we walk out onto the City Hall steps.

It's almost 3PM.

00000

There are cheers, there’s rice thrown at us, there are hundreds of people celebrating us with unconditional love and joy and I had never before felt the goodness that exists in humanity to such an extent. It’s no longer raining, just a light sprinkle, but there are still no protestors. There’s barely even any news vans.

We make our way through the gauntlet, we get hands shaked, people with signs reading ”Congratulations!” jump up and down for us. We hit the sidewalks, and we begin to limp our way back to the BART station.

I’m at the BART station, we’re waiting for our train back south, and I’m sitting on the ground leaning against a pillar and in danger of falling asleep when a nondescript young man stops in front of me and shuffles his feet nervously. “Hey. I just- I saw you guys, down at City Hall, and I just… I’m so happy for you. I’m so proud of what you could do. I’m- I’m just really glad, glad you could get to do this.”

He shakes my hand, clasps it with both of his and shakes it. I thank him and he smiles and then hurries away as fast as he can without running.

Our train arrives and the trip south passes in a semilucid blur.

We get back to our car and climb in.

It’s 4:30 and we are starving.

There’s a Carls Jr near the station that we stop off at and have our first official meal as a married couple. We sit by the window and watch people walking past and pick out others who are returning from San Francisco. We're all easy to pick out, what with the combination of giddiness and water damage.

We get home about 6-7. We take the dog out for a good long walk after being left alone for two days in a row. We shower. We bundle ourselves up. We bury ourselves in blankets and curl up and just sort of sit adrift in the surrealness of what we’d just done.

We wake up the next day, Tuesday, to read that the California State Supreme Court has rejected the petition to shut down the San Francisco weddings because the paperwork had a misplaced comma that made the meaning of one phrase unclear.

The State Supreme Court would proceed to play similar bureaucratic tricks to drag the process out for nearly a full month before they have nothing left and finally shut down Mayor Newsom’s marriages.

My parents had been out of state at the time at a convention. They were flying into SFO about the same moment we were walking out of City Hall. I apologized to them later for not waiting and my mom all but shook me by the shoulders. “No! No one knew that they’d go on for so long! You did what you needed to do! I’ll just be there for the next one!”

00000

It was just a piece of paper. Legally, it didn’t even hold any weight thirty days later. My philosophy at the time was “marriage really isn’t that important, aside from the legal benefits. It’s just confirming what you already have.”

But maybe it’s just societal weight, or ingrained culture, or something, but it was different after. The way I described it at the time, and I’ve never really come up with a better metaphor is, “It’s like we were both holding onto each other in the middle of the ocean in the middle of a storm. We were keeping each other above water, we were each other’s support. But then we got this piece of paper. And it was like the ground rose up to meet our feet. We were still in an ocean, still in the middle of a storm, but there was a solid foundation beneath our feet. We still supported each other, but there was this other thing that was also keeping our heads above the water.

It was different. It was better. It made things more solid and real.

I am forever grateful for all the forces and all the people who came together to make it possible. It’s been twenty years and we’re still together and still married.

We did a domestic partnership a year later to get the legal paperwork. We’d done a private ceremony with proper rings (not just ones grabbed out of the husband’s collection hours before) before then. And in 2008, we did a legal marriage again.

Rushed. In a hurry. Because there was Proposition 13 to be voted on which would make them all illegal again if it passed.

It did, but we were already married at that point, and they couldn’t negate it that time.

Another few years after that, the Supreme Court finally threw up their hands and said "Fine! It's been legal in places and nothing's caught on fire or been devoured by locusts. It's legal everywhere. Shut up about it!"

And that was that.

00000

When I was in highschool, in the late 90s, I didn’t expect to see legal gay marriage until I was in my 50s. I just couldn’t see how the American public as it was would ever be okay with it.

I never expected to be getting married within five years. I never expected it to be legal nationwide before I’d barely started by 30s. I never thought I’d be in my 40s and it’d be such a non-issue that the conservative rabble rousers would’ve had to move onto other wedge issues altogether.

I never thought that I could introduce another man as my husband and absolutely no one involved would so much as blink.

I never thought I’d live in this world.

And it’s twenty years later today. I wonder how our line buddies are doing. Those babies who were running around the wide open rooms playing tag will have graduated college by now. The kids whose parents the one line-buddy was worried would see him are probably married too now. Some of them to others of the same gender.

I don’t have some greater message to make with all this. Other then, culture can shift suddenly in ways you can’t predict. For good or ill. Mainly this is just me remembering the craziest fucking 36 hours of my life twenty years after the fact and sharing them with all of you.

The future we’re resigned to doesn’t have to be the one we live in. Society can shift faster than you think. The unimaginable of twenty years ago is the baseline reality of today.

And always remember that the people who want to get married will show up by the thousands in rain that none of those who’re against it will brave.

[starfieldcanvas]

you want to read this

[themythicalcodfish]

you really do

[cacodaemonia]

Me and my baby on a February holiday 'Cause we got the news Yeah, we got the news 500 miles and we're gonna make it all the way We got nothing to lose We got nothing to lose

Been ten years waiting But it's better late than never We've been told before We can't wait one minute more

Ohh, me and my baby driving down To a hilly seaside town in the rainfall Ohh, me and my baby stand in line You never seen a sight so fine As the love that's gonna shine at City Hall

Me and my baby been through a lot of good and bad Learned to kiss the sky Made our mamas cry Seen a lot of friends, after giving it all they had Lay down and die Lay down and die

Ten years into it Here's our window At the Vegas drive-thru chapel Ain't too much for 'em all to handle

Ohh, me and my baby driving down To a hilly seaside town in the rainfall Ohh, me and my baby stand in line You never seen a sight so fine As the love that's gonna shine at City Hall

Outside they're handing out donuts and pizza pies For the folks in pairs In their folding chairs My baby's looking so damn pretty with those anxious eyes Rain-speckled hair And my ring to wear

Ten years waiting for this moment of fate When we say the words and sign our names If they take it away again someday This beautiful thing won't change

So ohh, me and my baby driving down To a hilly seaside town in the rainfall Ohh, me and my baby stand in line You never seen a sight so fine As the love that's gonna shine…

Ohh, me and my baby driving down To a hilly seaside town in the rainfall Ohh, me and my baby stand in line You never seen a sight so fine As the love that's gonna shine at City Hall

[hugsohugs]

can't stop thinking abt this image. he smelled an icky smell and it was soscary

[ex-riddlecats]

if i had the sims i would make the riddler in it and trap him in a room until he died badly

[ex-riddlecats]

[ex-riddlecats]

do not tag this dano riddler... dano riddler has NEVER worn a green suit and a funny hat and silly purple shoes. dano riddler will NEVER be him

[hometoursandotherstuff]

[geminiagentgreen]

[system-a-naturae]

[silbervvind]

[micromontage]

[alivehouse]

motherfucker. wait 3 dangerous crow jobs??

[maidthings]

how do i clean my room if i dont own a maid dress?

its over. you're fucked

[powderfawn]

im dropping out of college thanks to whoever put this up

[powderfawn]

bringing this back

[cikero]

tried to sleep but I’ve fallen into a fit of laughter thinking about the why does bikini bottom have this device image

[cikero]