EXPERIENCING BELGIUM
Tuesday, March 23, 2004
 

Samesexer Bi-Nationals Mr and Mr Van Brussel

Posted by Matthew Crouch at 11:20

Having just married after 12 years this weekend my partner now husband and I had a shotgun wedding of sorts after Belgian law enabled us to marry recently. With only a couple weeks to plan what was really only a formality we pulled off a rather impressive ceremony and dinner on a shoestring.

Friday was sunny and warm until late afternoon and the rain didn't arrive until after the guests departed. One memorable moment was standing on a not crowded Grote Markt/Grand Place under the Belgian sky and sun in pleasant warmth feeling a specific sense of place outside. A sense of place in other ways. Bart's family now feels like family too.

You just would not believe the medieval halls our signature signing ceremony took place in!
I made a joke as there was a old Flemish tapestry with two girlish looking men on it
- that it was the Tapette Tapijt - the first word is French slang for fag because gays wrists move like a mouse trap/tapette and tapijt being the Dutch word for tapestry. Not an easy thing to do to instantly coin a joke in three languages that has everyone laughing at the same moment!

When we kissed Barts family cheered - the mayor asked us to kiss as its not a normal custom at this ceremony. Then we had to kiss again for photos in this alcove facing the square as we exited and tourists stopped to take our picture as did the wedding parties that followed ours.

When I recovered at home I remembered the statue on the Grote Markt/Grand Place that I had once rubbed wishing for something not unlike what we have here...

It's just criminal that people even question this sort of samesexer unions being possible in the states.
Separation of church and state! Has its priviledges, Amerikkka!!! Is all I can say.
It was fun to be with the mayor in a court like setting and having him make commentaries on Bush and then to hear everyone clap and laugh. That made me proud to be among the Belgians like this. Proud and confident of my origins and happy to be such an American dissenter that I am! Oh yeah and the mayor said I was the first American samesexer to be married into the Brussels commune. I am content to live and die here now.

Bart wants to take our marriage to the courts in the states and I see his point but both of have zero interest to return there at this time.

The food at the cafe was mostly Moroccan which we wanted - set out on the tables. We were packed in so tightly shoulder to shoulder like we were all in one big bed. Normally such confines make me claustrophobic - but this time - it felt like belonging...

I haven't drank so much and had such a feeling of being a part of life on the surface of planet earth. When I think about that I have to agree on James Howard KUNSTLERS writing on public space and the tragedy of the American man made landscape devastating lives played out in malls and from cars in parkinglots all on too wide roads to nowhere.

Strange connections... My next door Rumanian neighbor was there at the town hall because she is an interpreter and she was working for the wedding following ours - who the mayor was not servicing - the marriage before us was also samesexer (no mayor)... Then when we were finished with the day and walking down the street my fab Moroccan next door (other side) neighbor was in an ambulance with presumably her elderly mother in the back. That observation got to me actually because they are great neighbors - strange how only 30 centimeters of brick mean such different realities.

"I get this feeling when I look to the west"... Borrowed Led Zeppellin lyric
to which i now ad:
and increasingly the feeling is disinterest.

This is going to sound silly but bear with me... Toni Morrison's book Beloved, being something about Ohio once upon a time about a place I really love and am affected by - a radical and independent Ohio that is now sadly gone - but that sort of vibrant human refuge of a place across water is for me now here in these here southern lowlands of Vlaanderen. Thanks to the Ohioan "powers that be" doing what they can to prevent samesex unions in the future in old Ohio.

One of our pals, Rene, stayed on in our house when we all left to the cafe dinner and he cleaned up the whole mess we had left without either of us asking... It must have been a lot of work because he was gone awhile - we having thought he left without a goodbye.

The collection of empty champagne bottles waiting to be taken to be recycled is rather impressive. Perhaps everyone should drink champagne before 11am everyday.

We ate so much cous cous and lentil's and quiche - purposely ate and ate because we never do.

Both the gathering at our house and then in the cafe across the street were in old Brussels rooms barely three meters wide! With that many people in such small spaces we never heard the city works of jack hammering outside the doors on the narrow street going on. The endless building site of Brussels. Although the workmen did stop when we came out on the balcony with jockstraps in our hands to sling into the street in place of the bouquet and garter rituals.

I'm gushing senselessly but never have I had a day like this... At the end of the Town Hall/Gemeentehuis/Hotel de Ville ceremony we exited through this massive stone everything hall stairway to little porch on the square and suddenly everyone in Barts family following us is kissing us each three times (the architecture having guided us into this alcove to receive us) - I realized that Bart and I are seeing for the first time what it's like to be on the otherside of all these weddings we have gone to. Weddings I always resented because we were always excluded by society for being the way we are.

Needless to say our Jesuit priest neighbor friend was not around today. I read something last nite in Coleman Barks Essential Rumi book about the solitary life of Jesus being unwed unlike Mohammed and the sad virtue of that.

An astonishing thing to have a wedding without having to drag along automobiles. To walk in mass to these things unencumbered by the automotive beast of the Apocalypse.

The virtue of small lives in small buildings played out over small places. Belgium is irrestible this way once you accept these dimensions.



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