It was one of those choking summers, when the humidity grabs you in June and doesn’t let go until October.  Every day was a different chapter on suffocation.  Mom in the backyard relieving the flowers with a hose and Dad sweating his free days out on the golf course.

I’m sprinting between the packs of shirtless boys.  Catch it! Catch it!  Throw it to first.

It is a boy’s world, you must keep up.  Explode your lungs if you have to, get them the ball.  And when it’s not headed for you, which is almost every hit because you got put in far right field where the ninnies get sent, pick a dandelion and try to dye your chin yellow.

Summers in the suburbs drone on like AM radios, scattered between mixed signals and yearning.  I want some kool-aid.  I want some UV.  I want the forgiveness of a neon-blue pool.

Sister sits at the edge of the sandbox baking mud pies and shouting at brother to be careful.  In my more distracted moments, I go to her and beg a snack.

But the mud is not food, she explains.

Then why bake it?  Why call it pie?

It’s for fun, she says.

Pancakes are fun.  We should eat those instead.

I will make you mud pancakes, she offers.

What’s the difference?  Same as the mud pies.

The difference is I made them for you.

Lately, I find myself wishing on the next big season.

I wanted autumn to shake off,

winter to freeze it out,

spring to thaw me,

and now, summer to free.

Am I antsy? Thankless?

Or do I keep betting on a season

during which we can lie

pancake flat, numb and warm?

I’m protesting straight marriage.  That’s right.  I think straight marriage should be illegal. For a long time, I kind of supported straight marriage.  I benefit from the privilege of my whiteness, my class, and my citizenship, and while I fight against those privileges, I also know I get by on them all the time in ways that I can’t even see.  So when straight people wanted to reap the benefits of marriage, I felt a bit hypocritical saying they shouldn’t do it.  Plus, I’ve long thought that marriage was wildly stupid, and should be therefore be reserved for straight people (not that straight people are wildly stupid, just that it’s nice to see them be flamboyantly bad at things sometimes… like marriage).

But lately all the gays are in a huff over this marriage business.  Apparently, the abominable disaster that straight people have created is our golden ticket now.  With it, it is believed that we might purchase such goodies as visitation rights to our dying partners, possible health-care benefits, tax breaks, and a false sense of security against STIs.  Never mind that such things should be fundamental regardless of partnership status, these perks can be achieved through participation in a system that will make us grumpy old cheaters and wistful divorcees.  I say that if gay people want to get married, let them.  We’ve suffered enough.  We’re been kicked out, beat up, killed, and spat on for years.  If gay people have the cash for divorce lawyer’s fees and they want in on the world of catastrophic bridesmaid’s dresses and regrettable one-night stands, fine.

Straight people are another matter entirely.  See, all this time, I’ve been against the same-sex marriage movement for such silly reasons as its erasure of queer history, its maintenance of class privilege, its reliance on the gender binary, its unawareness of race, and its denial of the actual life or death issues that afflict our communities. But you know, my gay cousin is not only trying to battle stage-4 colon cancer, she’s probably filling out power-of-attorney paperwork so that her partner can be present now that things are getting really bad.  And my queer housemate fears deportation to Mexico because she can’t marry her partner of five years.  Any solution would be good right now.

So there’s not room for marriage all around?  Fine.  Let us (the homo sinners) run this broken institution into the ground for a while.

Illegalize heterosexual marriage.  That’s my new slogan.

Think about it. There are lots of reasons to rally against straight marriage:

1.The heteros suck at it- Seriously.  More than half of them end up divorced, and almost all of them end up unhappy. Plus, they fill up our facebook newsfeeds with endless blurry pictures of people in rented clothing, make us to attend marathon-length parties where they force us to watch them open the over-priced gifts we were guilted/ registered into purchasing, and fatten us with cake that doesn’t even taste good (the cake part alone is reason enough to illegalize).

2.It isn’t fashionable- We may be stereotypically bitchy, but we’d never allow our best friends to wear ruffled green dresses in front of hundreds of people.  At least we’d make the process of marriage look sexy.

3. It’s wholly unnatural- Come on.  You honestly think she wants to cook you dinner? Or that he wants to take out the trash always?  Straight gender scripts are creepy and weird…

4. It’s not God’s will- Google: divorce statistics 2008.

5.It goes against traditional values- these include monogamy, free speech, and self-determination.

6.The party need not move- Bachelorette parties already happen at all the gay bars because straight women decided a few years back that it was better to invade gay men than get hit on by preying straight ones.  So, gay bars won’t lose any business… or tiaras.

7.Straight white people follow their weddings with babies- Only the heteros could make having babies seem unappealing.  I mean, come on. Babies are the most delightful things on earth.  But straight white folks have to ruin it with baby showers (no one wants to go to them), baby books (after the first four pictures, I’m good), and constant updates on how smart little Johnny is (he’s like every drooling clueless baby, that’s why he’s cute, duh). Thanks to technology, they have figured out ways to bother you with the sort of behavior 24/7.  They post videos of their kid doing such mundane tasks as eating and smiling. They make entire blogs where they post pictures of the kid in ugly Christmas sweaters.  You know that if the homos pulled that sort of thing, we’d be like “flamboyant” or something.

Don’t get me wrong: I don’t hate straight people or their very interesting lifestyle (I hate sins, not sinners).  I have one straight friend, and she sometimes takes me with her to this straight bar she goes to, and I got hit on by a straight person, but I didn’t mind because I’m really secure in my sexuality… Also, my brother is straight so I love straight people.

I just think that there’s a time and a place for everything.  And the straight people have used theirs up.  Marriage is absolutely the least successful, least enjoyable, least useful, least interesting, least inclusive, and least appealing institution around.  I don’t think the heteros will miss it once we disenfranchise them.  In fact, maybe they’ll thank us for taking it on.

Illegalize straight marriage.  For the good of us all.

It’s only Tuesday and already the Chicago Tribune is filling up the airwaves with some of the best (and some of the most useless) gossip in town.  This week could not get weirder and so I share with you, my favorite media moments from the last 72 hours.

1. Rod can’t go to Costa Rica- a judge denied the former Illinois Governer’s request to travel to Costa Rica to participate in NBC’s reality TV show, “I’m a Celebrity.. Get me Out of Here!”  According to the Tribune, the judge told Blagojevich that while he sympathized with Rod’s financial situation, there were other ways he could make money.  Apparently, putting leeches and worms down your pants is not a common career for ex-governers.

http://www.chicagobreakingnews.com/2009/04/blagojevichs-reality-show-on-courts-agenda.html

2. The water you grew up drinking probably glowed in the dark- Over the weekend, the news broke that the Village of Crestwood knowingly let residents drink dry-cleaning run-off for over two decades.  Among chemicals cited are known carcinogens.  I especially like this story because not only did I grow up drinking the water, I happen to know the village attorney… Dad.

3. Dude writes Obama to quit smoking, Obama writes back and dodges the question- In an altogether un-newsworthy moment, some guy asked Obama to quit smoking in a letter.  Obama wrote back and said, “thanks.” The Tribune, starving for funds and stories, took that exchange and published it for us in today’s paper.

http://www.chicagobreakingnews.com/2009/04/man-writes-obama-on-smoking-he-writes-back.html

4. White people put on oversized blankets with sleeves, call it a “Pub Crawl”- As noted by best friend/ wife Sara, drunk white people across the country hopped from bar to bar this weekend dressed in “Snuggies,” or giant wearable blankets.  Pictures linked below.

http://chicago.metromix.com/bars-and-clubs/photogallery/photos-snuggie-pub-crawl/1109559/content

5. Miss California loses out for being raging homophobe- Carrie Prejean cost herself the “Miss USA” crown when she told gay judge, Perez Hilton, that marriage should be between a man and a woman.  Hilton was so upset that he said he would have “ripped the tiara off of her head” had she won.  Prejean acknowledged Hilton’s anger noting that it was a touchy subject for him because “is a homosexual.”

http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/ny-etmiss2112675670apr20,0,2777847.story

http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid14059898001?bctid=19191746001

Students at the New School take over a building and are beaten and pepper sprayed in the street.  Copied from New York Times