A Gay Love Story (Ours)

Resharing the story of how my wife and I fell in love for Valentine's Day

Dear fam,

Last night, I was thinking about what I want to share with you for our mid-week post as I drifted off to sleep. As I’ve written, I think about falling asleep as unspooling — all the threads of thought I’ve collected during the day coming undone until my mind can relax into a bed of tumbled wool. This is when my best thoughts float to the fore, and I suspect this is because it’s the only time of day when I’m not actively trying to filter and control my ADHD impulses and noticings.

Drifting through the flashing, whooshing thoughts last night, one thing came through to me with perfect clarity: I want to share some love.

Especially now, in a moment of shocking hatred and anger. Especially now, as gay love and queer existence is under attack. Especially now, as the world spirals into more and more darkness. I wanted to take a moment to notice the light.

Barefoot Angels was one of the first essays I ever wrote, long before I knew I would be a writer for real. It tells the story of how my wife and I met at music school, both closeted gays, and fell in love. It’s about being lost, and figuring out how to find the courage it takes to live in your truth. It’s about the power of love to heal the pain of societal rejection. It’s also just about two lesbians being cute.

I wrote this in 2017 and it was initially published in 2020. Reading it now, I’m struck by how long ago that all seems. Not just in a geopolitical way (although, yes, that as well) but as a pair of people in the world.

We’ve been through so much in the past almost-decade of love and partnership! We became parents twice, lived through a pandemic, got a cat and lost a cat and got two more cats, got mental health diagnoses that changed how we view ourselves in the world, learned how to navigate the special education systems in both New York and New Jersey, bought a house, moved, launched careers… I could go on.

I also want to note that there are sections of this essay relating to the struggles my family and I faced when I came out as gay, which also feel wild to read now. Even though I know they’re true. We all had a lot of growing to do, but we grew. The idea that my wife and my folks wouldn’t get along seems very, very far away. I left it in because it’s part of the story — sometimes things are hard before they get easy.

So much of this had the potential to break us. Instead, through very hard work and dedication to facing the hard things head on together, it made us stronger. I can unequivocally say that we are a better couple today than we were when I wrote this (even though we were pretty great then, too). Where will we be five years from now? Ten?

So, this is my gift to you, fam. A story with darkness bending towards light.

And to my beautiful, inspiration of a wife who I love with my whole heart (and who reads this newsletter diligently, bless her) —thank you, thank you for making my life constantly better.

Happy Valentine’s Day,

Mikhal

Barefoot Angels

Our first kiss was equal parts intention and hallucination. I don’t remember which poem we were reading — when did the air get so thick with desire? I remember shallow breaths

I didn’t even know her that well.

Her whole room was a mattress on the floor surrounded by piles of clothes strewn everywhere. And two young women, frozen by the enormity of this feeling. What is this?

Silent, we waited for it to pass. It didn’t.

So I kissed her.

And she kissed me back.

***

“If I could make this go right I’d go home. Then all I’d ever learned would fade away, like a photograph, a word in a mouth…” the sound of her voice fills the room, accompanied by folky guitar fingerpicking, “We’re like barefoot angels that glow in the dark. Sing it hard, sing it hard, sing it lonely….” her voice trails off and now the guitar is left alone, filling the room with stardust and visions. I’m mesmerized, and frankly, a little stoned. But regardless of the weed-induced lethargy creeping in my muscles, I can’t stop staring at this woman who is casting a spell on everyone present, seemingly without too much effort. Just by being herself.

My chest is choked with contradictory feelings. I feel free, which only makes me more aware of how ensnared I am. How many times have I gone over this in my head? Too many to count. I cannot be gay. Not now, not ever.

If I repeat the same sentence to myself enough times, does it become true? How many times until it works? I am a good daughter. I am a good girlfriend with a good boyfriend from a good family. I am happy, I am happy, I am happy. I can be perfect. Brick by brick I had constructed a sturdy structure of identity, bonding together each statement with the thick mortar of fear and shame at the possibility of being caught.

There are ten or so of us sprawled on floors and couches in this humid Tel Aviv apartment. The air oozes in the gaping windows, hot like a breath. My shirt is sticking to my skin. The room smells like stale beer and joints. The girl with the guitar is still singing and I close my eyes. I take a breath.

Later, on the ride home, I look around at these new friends and wonder: Is this what belonging feels like? Just a car full of people getting lost together.

***

Two, maybe three months after that first kiss we’re lying in bed, the lights are off, and I’m almost asleep. I don’t have a fan, and it’s hot, so we’ve left the bright blue hardwood shutters open to let in the heavy night air.

The girl with the guitar and I have been secretly dating for a while now and tonight she snuck over to my place, late. No one at college knows. Neither one of us is ready for that.

We’re both nervous about what people might begin to assume about us. We don’t even know what to make of all this. In most of the country, being openly gay is unthinkable. It’s 2009, just a few years after an ultra-Orthodox man stabbed three people at Jerusalem Pride — in my hometown. The year after the stabbing the parade was cancelled and the international LGBT community decided to hold WorldPride in Jerusalem, resulting in violent riots for months on end.

This turned into an enclosed gathering instead, with heavily armed policemen surrounding the queer community on all sides, and screaming fanatics protesting outside the arena. Tel Aviv is easier, but it’s still an uphill battle. People stare, mutter under their breath as gay people pass by, cross the street, offer unsolicited comments, ask hurtful questions.

We had recently told our families. My mom got uncharacteristically quiet and told me that she’s not angry, “just disappointed”, as if that was better. My dad was quiet, too — eyebrows raised in an unspoken question. Now, neither one mentions the girl. When I go home for a weekend, I make a point of mentioning her as often as possible (am I the asshole?) because I want to be as in-their-faces as possible. My mom looks pained every time this happens.

But none of that frustration or fear matters right now, in this room.

“You know something?” the girl says, her voice warm with sleep. “I think, maybe, I might kind of love you.”

Caught off guard, my eyes open wide, but all I see is the dark room and the streetlight glowing yellow through an open window. She hasn’t ever said anything remotely close to this before. I’ve been trying to play it cool for months. Not very well, I think, but still. I’m terrified of scaring her off.

“OK.”

“That’s it?” she turns to me, surprised.

“I mean. I think, maybe I sort of love you, too.” Now I’m just trying to keep up. Hopefully this is the right answer.

She grins, snuggles closer. “I think you more than sort of love me.” I snuggle closer, too. The city swirls around us and we lay completely still, dreaming together.

***

“You’re like a word on the tip of my tongue, and suddenly I remember your sound,” Just one year after I admitted to the girl with the guitar that maybe, probably, I may be out of my mind in love with her, I’m singing to her on the navy-blue corduroy couch in the apartment we now share. We inherited the couch from the previous tenants. We have an upright piano and two guitars. We sing each other songs, and work hard, and sweat, and cook for each other with the cheap veggies from the local market “I’m like a mess that’s finally clean, like the best version that I’ve ever been, like a sky touching the ground.” We sing each other songs, and work hard, and sweat, and cook together in our tiny kitchen. We look at each other in wonder.

We also fight. She won’t kiss me, or even hold hands, in public. I get it, but I’m still frustrated and mad. She doesn’t want the stigma. I’m ready to rage at anyone. I want to rage at them.

One night, we’re walking back home from a date when two guys try to hit on us. “Actually, we’re kind of together,” I say, grabbing her hand.

They laugh, and not in a kind way.

“No, for real. She’s my girlfriend.” I’m trying to be stern. She’s standing there, waiting for this to be over, her eyes somewhere else.

“Ok, kiss her then.” They laugh again, keep laughing as we walk away.

***

One night, in that teeny two-bedroom in Tel Aviv, she stays up all night writing a song on our piano. “When everything’s a lie, there’s nothing to hold on to. You can see it in my eyes, my dear, the weight has tired me,” she sings it to me the next morning, over ice-coffee, “My love is leaking.” Her long, lovely fingers stroke the keys lightly as the sun comes in our bay window, shaded pink by the curtains we had sewn together. Afterwards we talk about the song, and she swears it isn’t about us. But I know it is.

That morning, after she left for the day, I wondered if our relationship could hold water. We may have met too soon. We both have so many dreams, and with this much confusion about who the hell we are, how can this stick? A friend tells me that if I’m so miserable I should just call it quits, enough already.

Maybe it’s because I’m stubborn. Maybe it’s because we more than sort of love each other. Who knows why anyone does anything? We stay.

***

I am Ella’s first (and only) serious lady and she is mine. All of my previous explorations were drunk, disastrous, and fraught with the terror of actually being gay. By the time we met, I’d spent hours arguing with myself about the idea of actually dating a woman and had reached a very clear conclusion: Not a good idea. It’s not worth the rejection, the stigma. Some people are just not destined to enjoy sex, I tell myself, Why be greedy? There are other things to enjoy about life. Many nights, I end trying to drink it away.

One such night, long before we’d met, I got drunk enough at a house party to kiss a woman. I knew she was into me. She knew I was into her. Both of us were supposedly straight. She leaned over me to say goodbye and her hair made a soft curtain around our faces. I went for it. She kissed me back, but then quickly pulled away, shocked.

Later that night, barefoot and filthy, I sat down cross-legged in the street outside the party and wept on a friend’s shoulder, makeup running in thick black rivers down my cheeks. “The worst part is I meant it.” I couldn’t stop repeating those words, loathing their truth. “I meant it, I meant it, I meant it.” This was not the dramatic, beautiful crying of the movies, right before the heroine discovers her true self and is redeemed. This was ugly crying. Snot and salt and puffy eyes and shame.

The more I tried to like men, the more I failed, the more I drank. I shrugged it off. Everyone drinks too much in their 20s. Everyone’s hiding something. I told myself, maybe this is all there is, and growing up means being ok with that.

***

We’ve been living together for a few months when the girl with the guitar decides to move to Boston, to go to Berklee College of Music. I don’t even know what Berklee is, but I know I’m going. We audition, and she receives a hefty scholarship. I receive admission and that’s it.

The jealousy nearly tears us apart.

For the next few months, my arguments with my mother and father turn from skirmishes to full blown warfare. They think that this is a terrible idea, and they make their point vividly — I have no money and no plan, and all I’m doing is following this woman they think I shouldn’t be dating.

In response, I spend six months finding money in various places and enroll in my first semester at Berklee. I buy a ticket to Boston. I find an apartment. Never mind that I can only afford that first semester, these things will figure themselves out.

***

I don’t think either one of us believe we’d make it through that first year in Boston. The first few months, we live in a tiny studio apartment above our landlords who asked us to please not walk after 9:00 pm. Ella had never even seen, let alone shoveled, snow before that New England winter. Both of us studied every waking hour, and I worked any leftover hours at various odd jobs. Every cent counted. The stress on an already tenuous relationship should have broken it, but somehow it didn’t. Instead, far from home, we could try on our new identities in earnest. It feels like a long exhale.

At Berklee, we sign up for different majors, begin forging our own distinct musical identities. We have space. Space to try on new skins. Space to be different. Space to support each other in ways we didn’t know were possible. We hold each other’s fragility in our hands. We grow.

***

That first Christmas morning we move to our second Boston apartment, a ridiculous basement situation with no kitchen. For six months, we wash our dishes in the bathroom sink, but it doesn’t matter: the place is cheap and furnished.

Later that winter, my mom and little sister come and stay with us and, over the course of a few days, something shifts. Begins to thaw.

This visit is followed up by increasingly regular Skype calls. Them and us. Over time, my parents start to ask how she is the minute we start talking. They listen to her music. They call her sweetie. When we visit Israel, we stay in my childhood bedroom.

***

Two years after we move to Boston, the girl with the guitar writes me a love song. “My love keeps her sleep beneath her eyes and wakes slowly, as the sunrise. Angels rest beneath her wings.”

Our bedroom in Boston is flooded with sunlight and looks out onto autumn leaves and a rainbow of New England houses. She is shaking me awake, and seems to be asking me something. My eyes, still blurry and heavy with sleep, squint open and I see a box in her hands. Wait. Wait, wait.

All at once I’m awake, upright, holding her hands in my hands. She’s putting a ring on my finger and the room is full of love, and disbelief, and, once more, the wonder that comes with us wherever we go. The ring is inscribed with Hebrew words that read ‘אל אשר תלכי אלך’ — ‘wherever you go, I will go’ (Ruth 1:16)

***

On an overcast day in mid-May we stand under a canopy crocheted by my great-grandmother and receive seven blessings from our family and friends. By the banks of the Charles River we stand, overcome with too many emotions, surrounded by our community and declare our intentions to love each other with respect and compassion for as long as the earth will let us. Each set of parents reads our marriage contract aloud – once in Hebrew, once in English – and two of our dearest friends sign it into Jewish law. We had worked for months with our friend, the rabbi who married us, to write out our vows. “Let it be known that our souls have become entwined in love and mutual devotion, and that we intend to live a life full of passion and curiosity, a life of wonder and thankfulness.”

Then we’re dancing, and dancing, and dancing, until our legs are weak with joy and whole world is spinning.

***

This morning I woke up and looked at those promises we made to each other, where they still hang on the wall above our bed. “We commit to create a home that will contribute to the community in which we live, a home that respects people whoever they are. May we cherish in our home love, companionship, peace and friendship.” I looked over at Ella, sleeping the deep slumber of an artist who’s working on too many projects. “I’m so glad you’re my teammate,” I whispered, and she smiled, her eyes still closed. Then I got up to make us coffee and breakfast.

Welcome to the Chaos Palace is the space where I write about ADHD, queerness, Judaism, and how to navigate the mess that is the world. You can support my work by sharing this post with others, subscribing, or just clicking the like button. That makes the algorithm send my words to other folks who might enjoy ‘em. Or just read! That’s huge, too, and very appreciated! Thank you!

Here are some of the songs in this essay: