Page 47 of Husband Material
Well. Fine-ish.
Fineoid.
Definitely heading in a fineular direction.
Maybe.
ONCE THE CEREMONY WAS OVERand the new couple had finished kissing—which took longer than it had to—the celebration jumped straight to no-fucks-given dancing. Food was provided via a buffet along the sides of the room, and speeches were made intermittently by microphone from the main stage. In a lot of ways, had the context been very different, it would have been a great evening. I’d loved Bridge’s wedding because I loved Bridge, but sitting around while elderly relatives made corny jokes over a meal that, while exquisite, you’d never have ordered in a restaurant, wasn’t exactly the way most people I knew would choose to spend a Saturday. A gigantic party in a train tunnel with live music and speeches largely made by professional cabaret artists, on the other hand, was.
Or rather, it had been. Now I spent my Saturdays doing boyfriendly things like hoovering the living room and going to art galleries and/or IKEA, occasionally fielding calls from the James Royce-Royces because Baby J had done something so unbearably adorable that they had to tell everyone immediately. And it wasn’t that I missed my party days—at least not the way they’d ended with me drinking, dancing, and fellating my way into oblivion. But it had been good for a while, and looking back, it didn’t feel so much like something I’d grown beyond as something that had been taken from me.
So I looked around the room with this weird mix of nostalgia and… Actually, maybe it was just nostalgia, but in the serious pain-for-something-lost sense. And then I looked at Oliver. And his reaction was very muchnotnostalgia. It was the opposite of nostalgia. Like fuck-this-shit-algia or something. I think he’d have been more comfortable at a bullfight.
“Are you hating this?” I asked.
He had to raise his voice to be heard over the music. “By what metric?”
“Um? Any metric?”
“I believe I can honestly say,” he shouted in that nightclub nobody-can-hear-this-because-nobody-can-hear-anything way, “that I cannot imagine a scenario in which I would enjoy watching two people I don’t know get married in a disused train tunnel full of repetitive electronica and flashing lights more than I currently am.”
I tried to be cool with that. Or even to be flattered by it—after all, it would have been a bit weird if my boyfriend had been super happy at the wedding of my arsehole ex. But the truth was, the arsehole ex wasn’t the only issue. This issue was that Oliver was…well.
Okay, this was difficult. Because the reason I’d needed to date someone like him to begin with was that I’d needed to distance myself from the parts of queer culture that looked bad to a certain kind of rich straight person. And while I’d come to realise that Oliver was more than a respectable job and a wholesome jumper, it still weirded me out that he found so little value in what I’d always instinctively thought wasourcommunity.
“You don’t feel, like, connected to any of this?” I asked, even though I already knew the answer.
He winced. “I wish I did and I’m sure I should. But no.”
“It can be fun, though,” I tried. “I mean, isn’t it great to be in a place where you know nobody’s judging you for who you are?”
There was whatever passed for silence in a room full of wedding noise. I got that sinking sensation that I hadn’t had for a while, where I knew I’d said the wrong thing but I wasn’t sure how.
“Lucien”—Oliver had a pained, sincere look about him, and I wished I’d kept my mouth shut—“I love that you feel accepted by this world, and I’d never want to take that away from anyone. But I’ve never felt any of”—he made a slightly helpless gesture—“this is for me.”
“It could be for you.” That probably wasn’t right. “I mean, it is for you.” That probably wasn’t right either.
He leaned a little closer to my ear so that he could stop having to yell complex things about his relationship to identity politics over wedding music. “I understand that you’re trying to make me feel included, but I’m afraid you’re doing the opposite.”
Fuck.How was I doing the opposite? “I didn’t mean to,” I whisper-yelled. “I just mean—you know—you’ve got a right to be part of this.”
“That’s not the reassurance you think it is.”
Shit, this was turning intoDrag Raceall over again. “Can’t you let it be?” I tried. It was the wrong thing to try.
“Lucien.” He was using my namea lot, which was never a good sign. “I absolutely don’t want to denigrate anybody’s values. But places like this are… Well, I’m sure for people who like to express themselves in this kind of way that they’re very empowering. But for me…” Now he ran a hand through his hair. Also not the best of signs. “It’s like this whole event is telling me I’m doing my identity wrong if I’m not draping myself in rainbows at every opportunity. Ironically, it makes me feel judged.”
It was nothing he hadn’t said before. It was just extra weird for him to be saying it at my ex-boyfriend’s wedding while we were surrounded by my ex-friends. Because there was a part ofme that still belonged here and hated that he didn’t. “I think that’s just in your head.”
He gave a cool blink. “I’m aware. But I’m also aware that I’ve told you on more than one occasion that I don’t feel especially represented by this kind of thing, and you’ve consistently failed to believe me. So I sometimes think it might not be quite as much in my head as all that.”
Fuck, were we having a fight? Was this a fight? Had I tried to show off my amazing barrister boyfriend to my arsehole ex and wound up having an embarrassing fight in the middle of said ex’s fabulous queer wedding? “Oh my God, Oliver,” I hugged him in the hope of de-escalating. “I didn’t mean to make you feel… Shit, I’m a crappy boyfriend and you’re so great for doing this for me and you don’t have to like anything you don’t want to like and we can go if you—”
“Luc? Luc O’Donnell?” I turned to see a man with an obscenely expensive suit and no sense of timing making his way around the edge of the dance floor towards us.
It took me a moment to recognise him. “Jonathan?”
We didn’t hug. Even at university Jonathan had never been the hugging type. Honestly, we hadn’t massively got on. On account of him being driven by a passionate desire for success and me being driven by a passionate desire for naps. He was one of those people who had sort of aged laterally, in that he looked almost exactly the same as when he was twenty. He’d somehow picked up a single grey streak in his hair, which gave him a bit of a werewolf vibe—only not in a sexy way—but otherwise he was the same lanky, grumpy git I vaguely remembered.
