Playing House

When I was in 2nd grade I got married on the playground. Her name was Lauren, and it’s fair to say she was one of my first loves, at least a close second to Missy, whom I explained in Kindergarten what sex was (or what I thought it was) when we got to share the class tent at nap time. You see, I’ve been doing this for a long time, in fact I explained sex to my entire class in third grade, quite clinically and accurately I might add, like that kid in Kindergarten Cop, but I digress. I don’t recall much about our wedding day except that it was spring; the trees were in bloom, and next to our impending First Communion, planning our Honeymoon was of utmost importance.

Why little kids act out adult rituals or situations would probably not take a child psychologist to explain. As a means for understanding their world, children constantly are encouraged or decide on their own to care for stuffed animals and dolls, play with miniature cars and sporting equipment; even fake kitchens and restaurant supplies seem to rank high among items in children’s playrooms. Kids learn the basics of being a grown-up from a young age and seem to relish the responsibility of preparing a meal of rubber eggs and imaginary tea for their teddy bear.

Growing up I was always in charge of what we would play. During the summer we built forts down by the creek and I would direct my neighbors as to the best method of grass weaving and stick placement to make our makeshift domiciles inhabitable. Other times our favorite game was office. An old phone, my children’s fax machine, and an encyclopedic catalog of chemicals and supplies my father had discarded, was all we needed to run our business of creating a Noah’s ark style bio-dome. Our business trips were bike rides around the neighborhood, or simply sitting on the couch in the living room, and we would even go next door to my neighbors’ kitchen for ‘happy hour drinks,’ apple juice for beer, grape juice for wine. We’d sit back and talk about our workday, and then don our shawls and capes from the dress-up bin, which I demanded we wear for such outings, and head back to work saving the world. At this point it’s a relief that you already know I’m gay, lest any of this sound the least bit surprising.

Looking back, these games and scenarios seem more than surprising, but downright extraordinary for a group of seven, eight, or nine year olds, to build elaborate forts in the basement and pretend these homes they constructed were under the threat of wolves and other natural enemies not actually present in a Midwest tract home community. But I suppose like any adult scenario we’d divined from movies or television it seemed just as likely for wolves to attack our make believe homes as it did for a three person office to be in charge of the construction of a bio-dome.

Since I only briefly even lived in an apartment while I was in college, I didn’t recapture that sense of whimsical adulthood until I moved into my own place last year. Though the subtle thrill that accompanies being on one’s own, making dinner, cleaning up, and making a home, wears thin after a particularly hard day at my real office with real fax machine, or post real happy hour in the wake of co-worker revelations and poor decisions that can’t be covered up by an old shawl or cape. Nevertheless, sometimes that call to autonomy, that was only the faintest whisper when we were young and still relied on our parents to take care of our actual needs, can be the siren’s wail that keeps us afloat and strong in the sometimes-mundane existence of adulthood.

Perhaps some of us approach relationships in the same way. The first serious boyfriend we encounter allows us to play out every fantasy of domesticity we have practiced since we were old enough to tie our own aprons. In times like this, in a city like this, no one can deny the simple comfort of taking care of being taken care of by another. But does this signal our true arrival into adulthood, or do we just use these new relationships or even casual paramours as partners in playing house? Are some of us so eager to assume the roles we were programmed to fulfill that we settle for the first person that can tolerate us consistently? Are these just playground matrimonies, doomed to fail when the realty can’t live up to the dream?

It’s funny how work and setting up a home didn’t turn out all that different than I had imagined. The technology is better, and my commute is a little bit longer, but I don’t recall that our game, like my job, ever changed that much. I’ll never forget the day I married Lauren, or the necklace I bought for Megan in the 5th grade, or when I knew that I would never pretend to like a girl again. But I’m grateful that my ideas of love have moved beyond tradition and what we believe is expected of us. We are lucky that when we find that someone, not just someone to play house with, or plan a pretend honeymoon to the far side of the playground, the promise of real matrimony and to see our own kids serve rubber eggs and imaginary tea is no longer just a fantasy.

Originally posted on 10/22/2008 on http://www.homo-neurotic.com/2008/10/22/everybody-does-it-playing-house/