The Sunday Read

By Renée Bess

     Every Sunday I greedily guard enough time to read one feature in particular of the New York Times’ “Style” section. I don’t waste more than a moment scanning the postage stamp size photos that fill the “On the Street” page or the “After Hours” section, although I’ll own my penchant for glancing at the pictures in search of revelers of color. I’ve read the Sunday New York Times since I was a teenager, and I’m happy to report that the photos in the two aforementioned pages portray much more racial diversity than they did forty years ago.

     What kept me glued to the “Styles” section then was the same feature that keeps me glued to it now, the parade of marriage and wedding announcements. During my adolescence, I’d read the blurbs and then fantasize how the text might describe my own nuptials. Don’t scoff. If you were an African-American child who grew up in an integrated neighborhood, went to racially integrated public schools, and had parents who modeled a sense of self-worth, you had the audacity to believe you were equal to the people whose wedding announcements you read every week. I used to scan some of those notices and replace the bride’s name with my own.

   

  “Renée Bess, the daughter of …and the late…married XYZ yesterday at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church…”

      After I earned my college degree and started a career, I did get married. Neither the New York Times nor the Philadelphia Inquirer reported my wedding. That turned out to be a good thing because the marriage ended before the ink would have dried on the newspapers’ pages.

    A short while after I came out joyously to myself and somewhat traumatically to my family, I stopped reading the “Style” section of the Sunday N.Y. Times. I no longer related to its content. Although I’d found my truth and discovered my soul mate, I knew the Times would never publish a small article about this new union of mine.

     Now, three and a half decades later, once again I look forward to perusing the “Styles” section. I set aside time and space to spread the newspaper’s pages and carefully examine the three or four pages filled with accounts of various couples’ weddings. Why do I do this? After all, these are descriptions of events about people I’ve never met. Yet, each time I read about the marriages of same-gender couples, I feel that I’ve known their struggles and triumphs. I’ve participated in their decisions to get married.

     Each Sunday I grin broadly and count the number of male and female duos who’ve cast aside the old unjust civil rights-robbing prohibitions and claimed their right to be joined in matrimony. I clap my hands each time I read about people who’ve been committed to each other for twenty years or more. Many of them are well past fifty years of age. I know their joy. I feel their pride. My smiles acknowledge our shared history of traveling with the proper legal documents to ensure our rights to visit our partners should they need hospital care; of protecting our wishes vis-à-vis who can make certain decisions should that be necessary; of proving that we are in a loving relationship with one another.

     Thank you, New York Times, for offering me an opportunity to smile each Sunday. Thank you for reporting the celebrations of our love in a most public and normal way. Our marriages deserve to be announced in the same few inches of newsprint as all other unions. One day soon, all of us in every state will be able to marry legally, and all newspapers that print wedding announcements will be inclusive of ours. It’s simply a matter of time and fairness.

Renée Bess is a Philadelphia native, and she and her partner reside in a northwest suburb of that city. Renée taught Spanish and French in a city high school for quite a few years. At the age of six, she was captivated by the plot of Dr. Dan The Bandage Man. She subsequently became enamoured of Nancy Drew, the Hardy boys and years later, Celie and Shug. Books became a necessary part of Renée's life, and writing became the natural corollary. She expects that there are more stories eager to come tumbling forth.

Email: novelas@ReneeBess.com
Web site: www.reneebess.com

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