aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South

Monday, January 29, 2007

Married____ Single____ Widowed____ Divorced____ (Reprise)

Still riled, I’ve decided to reprise this from last March…

Regular readers will remember that I had quite a number of dealings with the rural Georgia medical establishment recently. Their profligate use of the Social Security number aside, a distinguishing characteristic of their paperwork is the limited number of relationship options offered.

They are: married, single, widowed, divorced.

The very order of these options seems laden with meaning. It honestly doesn’t occur to them that there could be any other. Then, under “who to notify in case of emergency,” they propose options: “mother, father, sister, brother...” Even “friend” doesn’t put in an appearance!

Two quick anecdotes…

In the first the nurse asks me, “Does your wife teach at the college?” She had my insurance card and I work at the college, so I was baffled that she had asked this question. Why would she think I am on my wife’s insurance? (Oh, now I get it, duh! Kind, friendly small talk.)

Given that I had just had a disconcerting experience with the surgeon, I wasn’t in tip top intellectual shape. So I blurt out, and again I have no idea why beyond awkward innocence, “No, my husband does.” Fumbling to fix that took us from bad to worse.

In my second anecdote, Doug and I show up for my surgery in the dark of morning after a long drive with no eating (or coffee) in prep for surgery and the nurse asks Doug, “Would you like to accompany your father to the room.” Father???

Doug, properly feeling as awkward as I, answers, “he’s not my father he’s my lover.” Now, I prefer the term “life-partner” (I’m not simply some hottie on the side) and I’m sure Doug does too but he was so nonplussed that the word lover was the one put out there. The nurse replied, “Hey that’s even better.”

These people may or may not have trouble dealing with the fact that I’m a gay man, but they give no indication that they do and so it just seems to me that it would be easier all around if the form could give them that little heads up that, hey, this guy’s not married, not single, not widowed and not divorced!