This is the latest installment in my memoir project, written as a series of letters to my future daughter. Here are the previous entries: Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five, Part Six, Part Seven, Part Eight, Part Nine, Part Ten, Part Eleven, Part Twelve, and Part Thirteen
Fun fact! When your Mama Crass first met me, she hated me. Like, a lot.
We met because she was dating another girl in the program. I latched onto them while they were walking to grab some books, since I too needed books and had no sense of self-awareness. I figured it was college, I was hot now and everyone wanted to hang out with me anyways, and they could use the company, right? Had I been more self-aware, I would have noticed how your mother’s eyes were daggers the entire walk there and back.
I didn’t see her much freshman year, after I had invited myself on her and her girlfriend’s excursion to the bookstore. The next time we actually talked was the Best Day Ever.
I was outside in the quaint courtyard between our two dorms, playing harp like a little angel, when Mama Crass passed me on the way to her room. She was having a terrible day, probably the worst day ever. But I recognized her from the bookstore trip and knew she worked at the newspaper as well, so I interrupted my playing to yell out a “hi!” And to my surprise, she came over and talked to me. I guess she figured her day couldn’t get any worse, so might as well see what the weirdo with the harp had to say.
“There’s a festival thing over at the Student Center,” I said. “Wanna check it out?”
And her saying yes to my spontaneous adventure was the catalyst for many, many years of friendship. We were inseparable from that evening forward. I’d never had a best friend I clicked with like her. She was my other half, to the point where people became concerned if one of us was somewhere without the other. Me, her, and eventually your aunt Mel (who was a nerdy meerkat of a human and not the badass confident woman you know now) became something of a power trio. We went on vacations together, stayed up late studying (and smoking a certain herb) together, we even ran the newspaper together. We had our inside jokes and knowing glances and for the first time ever, I felt completely, wholeheartedly loved by someone who wasn’t my parents.
One night, Mel was asleep next to us. I felt your mom brush her hand against my thigh. Normally, I wouldn’t do this kind of thing, not the good little Christian girl who’d had the whole “homosexuality is evil” thing hammered into her brain from a young age. But something came over me that night. I figured girls experiment in college all the time. When in Rome, do gay shit, right? I’ll spare you the details, but everything changed from then on. In all but name, Mama Crass was my girlfriend. I’d just never admit it.
(And yes, that happened next to Aunt Mel. No, she hasn’t let us live it down.)
I had my boyfriends, but none of them stuck, and she was there the whole time, trying to figure out what my confused bisexual ass was thinking. I even got married, and she was the maid of honor, naturally. She didn’t look all that maidenly at the wedding — she was really leaning into the more butch look at the time, with her cropped hair and suit and tie. There exist pictures of us at this wedding, and you’ll probably flip if I ever show them to you. I probably won’t, because I looked equally awful at the time, having cut all my hair off in an attempt to pull off a flapper bob. But I digress. This was a bad time for both of us, as evidenced by the questionable haircuts.
At some point when I was married to Josh, I came to this striking realization — whenever I was hanging out with him, why did I wish I was hanging out with her instead? And that was the moment I knew this marriage wasn’t going to work. I mentioned earlier that I moved out to Ypsilanti to be closer to my school and job, but I didn’t mention all the BS that came with that.
At the time, all I could afford was a room in these shitty apartments where someone got murdered almost yearly. The apartment complex operated similarly to a dorm, where tenants were matched with each other based on interests and roomed together. Unfortunately, the system was not foolproof, and I got stuck with a pair of evil lesbians (pro tip: not all queer folks are cool, sadly). They didn’t like me or my cat, Krubby, so they tried to get rid of us the only way they knew how — by calling animal control.
On Christmas Eve.
To get Krubby taken away.
(I told you they were evil.)
Needless to say, the animal control worker came in, inspected the apartment, and saw no reason to take Krubby. But I was furious. In fact, I’d never been more furious. And so was your mom. So much so that she left the safety of her parents’ house, where she’d taken refuge after graduation, and came to stay with me and Krubby until we could break the lease and leave.
And only then did I realize what I was missing. Why I didn’t want a family with Josh. It was your mother all along. I saw how loving and maternal and warm and protective she was with Krubby, and I knew she was the one I wanted to mother my children someday.
It wasn’t easy — despite having come out as pansexual, I’d never actually dated a woman before, so the social transition to outwardly queer was uncomfortable at times. Some members of my own family have distanced themselves from me. But the ones who matter have stuck around. My dad called me up in this serious tone shortly after getting together with your mother officially, saying he needed to talk to us about something important. So he took us to a Coney Island and sat us down and basically said “Fuck what the rest of the family says, I love and support you no matter what.” And my mom, after years of denying the fact that I was probably some kind of gay, came to terms with it. “Now I get two daughters,” she said.
We married in a tiny ceremony with both my parents present by the Detroit River on Valentine’s Day. I was never really a romantic, at least not until I met your other mom, but standing there in our casual but pretty dresses on that windy winter’s day, I felt like I finally believed in true love. I felt like happy ever afters not only really existed, but I could have one. I had a love story, a truly marvelous, one-of-a-kind love story, and it was hers and mine.
Marriage is a beautiful thing, and it’s even more beautiful when the person you marry is your best friend. It’s not all rainbows and roses, but when you’re fighting side-by-side with your favorite person, everything seems to come together. I pray you find someone (or multiple someones) who make you feel the way your Mama Crass makes me feel, because the people you spend your life with make everything worth it.
JESSA JOYCE 