Page 85 of Husband Material
“Sure,” I said. Because what else could I say? I mean, it kind of wasn’t okay. Not because I was desperate to listen to a podcast but because I was incredibly worried that Oliver didn’t want to. Listening to documentaries and whimsical radio dramas was the closest he got to vegging out. So I hated to think what he was feeling right now that evenThis American Lifecouldn’t soothe him.
It didn’t entirely surprise me that Miriam and David Blackwood had insisted on taking their vegan son to a gastropub with exactly one vegan option on the menu. After Oliver had ordered his superfood salad, and I’d ordered the same out of masochistic solidarity, his parents tortured the waiter for a while—David by demanding a fillet steak with a very specific set of instructions about how it should be prepared and Miriam by politely but unswayably insisting they make her a vegetable risotto that wasn’t currently on the menu.
Once that had been resolved to their satisfaction, we all sat in silence until David Blackwood finally said, “So you’re still getting married, then?”
“Yes,” replied Oliver, sounding calmer than the tension in his jawline showed me he felt. “And we’d like you to be there.”
Miriam, who had been checking the cutlery for cleanliness, set down her fork. “Well of course we’ll be there, darling. That was never in question. We just want to be sure you’re making the right decision.”
Given that the Blackwoods seemed determined to talk as if I wasn’t in the room, I was beginning to wish I hadn’t been.
“I’ve already told you”—Oliver’s voice got calmer and his jaw got tenser—“that I am. And it’s not up for debate.”
“But marriage,” protested Miriam, “when you’re still so young.”
Oliver cast a longing glance at a bread roll. “I’m older than you were when you got married.”
“This isn’t about your mother and me,” said David predictably. “Things are very different for your generation.”
“And,” added Miriam, “different for…for…” She waved her hands in a way that was probably intended to communicatefor gay peoplewithout her having to say the words. “Men aren’t like women. You have different needs.”
I wanted to ask what kind of needs, exactly. But I wasn’t here to challenge causal gender-essentialism-slash-homophobia, I was here to support Oliver. So I stayed quiet.
“You wouldn’t understand this,” Miriam went on heterosplaining, “but women need commitment.”
“Whereas men,” David chimed in, “are dogs.”
Oliver glanced sharply up from his own hands, which he’d spent most of the conversation staring at. “Have you dated a lot of men, Father?”
There was a very nasty silence. The worst thing about David Blackwood—from an extensive collection of bad things—was that he looked a little bit like Oliver. The same slightly square features, the same hard grey eyes that, on him, I’d never seen soften. It was like a glimpse of the future if I accidentally wound up marryinga terrible person. “I suppose you get this attitude fromhim.” He didn’t even deign to look at me.
I like to think that the fact I didn’t respond to this at all, in any way, counts as one of the seven most noble things I’ve ever done in my life.
“I’m sorry,” said Oliver quickly.
Which wasn’t quite the rush to my defence I’d hoped for. But then again, we were here for our wedding not my ego, and pissing off David Blackwood before the main course was a bad strategy.
The uncomfortable silence that followed lasted just long enough for our food to arrive. And then Miriam piped up with, “I must admit, I don’t really understand why gay people want to get married at all.”
“Equality?” I suggested, hoping that this counted asengagingand nottalking back.
She seemed to be genuinely thinking about this. “But isn’t that a bit selfish?”
I glanced at Oliver for help but got nothing. He was gazing into his superfood salad like it contained the mysteries of the universe. And maybe it would have been a good idea to let it go, but I hoped if I kept asking open questions, I could at least avoid another excruciating silence. “Why selfish?”
“Well”—Miriam looked faintly pained—“for normal people, marriage has a tradition behind it. And it seems a shame to try and change that for everybody else just because you feel left out.”
“For what it’s worth,” I said, “I don’t consider myself abnormal.”
That got Oliver off the bench but not for the team I wanted. “She didn’t mean it like that.”
“I think she probably did,” I began. I’d been about to addBut it’s okay, I get that a lot of people think that way, but I never got that far.
David Blackwood surged to his feet. Which was actually pretty intimidating in a cosy gastropub in Milton Keynes. “How dare you. You come up here, you let us pay for your lunch, and that’s how you talk to our son?”
It wasn’t the most furious anyone had ever got with me, but it certainly had the highest anger-to-provocation ratio. If I’d been in a more charitable mood, I might have said that at least he was protecting Oliver and I could understand the instinct to protect Oliver. Except I wasn’t in a charitable mood, I hadn’t asked them to buy me anything, and David Blackwood was an arsehole.
I was just psyching myself up to give a deeply insincere apology when there was a tiny clink as Oliver put down his salad fork.
