love conquers all

One great thing about great loves is that just when you think you couldn’t be more in love, you find yourself turning it up another notch. Today, my love affair with this city called San Francisco went up to eleven.

Standing in the morning light in the rotunda of City Hall, with the bust of Harvey Milk beaming at me, I, for the second time this lifetime, performed a wedding ceremony for my friends Morgaine and Lann. It was nineteen years ago today that I handfasted them on the beach at Point Reyes in Northern California. Afterwards, the wedding party went back to their Lagunitas home to feast and celebrate into the night. I still can remember the mountain of summer strawberries. Today, there was no feast or party afterward, except for the cupcakes that were given to each couple when they received a marriage license and the cheer that went up when they flashed it to the crowd that was waiting outside of City Hall. My friends were legalizing something that had come to fruit many years back. We took only a few hours off this morning to get it done. But, those few hours proved to be potent.

I didn’t expect to cry so much. Is there any force quite as powerful as love? The slyness of it never ceases to amaze me. I invoke love often, but still, so often it sneaks up on me. The way the heart seems to catch, and then expand, the welling up of inexplicable tenderness…it comes when it will, and I should have expected it to hit me like tidal wave today, but somehow, I didn’t. No matter how often invoked, there's no way to prepare for when it truly comes and for the workout it gives the heart when it fully inhabits it. There's a reason some pray on their knees. When love overtakes you, it both exalts and drops you down.

Last night, watching the news, my girlfriend sobbed watching Del and Phyliss make their vows. I was moved, but was also savoring what Jewelle Gomez, a black lesbian who got married last round when it was an act of civil disobedience and wasn’t going to this round when it has become legal, recently said; “Just because we sat in at Woolworths didn’t mean we liked the food”.

But there I was today, crying my eyes out in the rotunda, my heart opening like a golden gate, falling all over again in love with San Francisco, in awe of the craziness of licensing love, and the exquisite wackiness of humans and their rituals. A Pagan Priestess legally marrying her lesbian friends in the rotunda of City Hall, with cameras clicking and love conquering all.

I live in a city that has a bust of a gay rights activist smack dab in the middle of City Hall. He caught and held my eye in the midst of it all. I think that golden idol was as alive as anything. He was smiling today.

I am too.