To wed or not to wed.

• Author: Fairyington, Stephanie
• Position: FIRST PERSON SINGULAR - Short story

"It's a crisp sunny morning in late December. I'm sitting in my therapist's lobby in Midtown Manhattan, anxiously waiting for my girlfriend, Sabrina, to arrive. She s visiting my shrink with me so we can duke out our premarital differences, which can be boiled down to one, ever-nagging question: Why, after three-and-a-half happy years together, do I still cringe at the thought of getting married?

Now that same-sex marriage is legal in New York, our home state, this question shows up in conversations with friends and family on a regular basis and lingers like a houseguest who won't leave. For Sabrina, who's old-fashioned on matters of love, it's an uncomplicated I do. But each time I think yes to matrimony, doubt and anxiety undermine my confidence. My ambivalence, however, doesn't at all reflect on my love, desire, or devotion toward Sabrina.

I met her three summers ago on the roof deck of a lesbian bar in Brooklyn. I was on a second date with a fiery Italian girl from Long Island. When my date went to the bathroom, Sabrina swooped in--with liquid courage on her breath--and boldly asked for my number.

Maybe it was the cocky way she crashed my date or the strength and vulnerability I saw in her dark brown eyes; maybe it was her Rubenesque curves (which could out-sexy Scarlett Johansson's) or the delicate features in her feminine face. All I knew in that moment was that something about her moved me, and I wanted her with an urgency and tenderness I'd never felt for another. Three years in, I can't imagine a better woman to spend the rest of my life with.

But the very thought of walking down the aisle, even with Sabrina at my side, feels like running a marathon on old and arthritic legs. Everything in me protests: "I can't do this." And it's taken months to figure out why.

When I entered puberty at the freakishly early age often and realized that I was gay, it was 1986. AIDS was killing thousands of gay men while our President, Ronald Reagan, remained silent, refusing to speak out against one of the worst viral scourges in human history. Reagan's apathy toward the "gay cancer," as it was known in the early '80s, is a good measure of how little our lives were valued back then--and how far removed the concept of same-sex marriage was from the popular imagination. The point is: I didn't even know I could have matrimonial aspirations. So I never did.

By 1998, I was a junior in college, getting schooled by queer and feminist critiques of marriage...