(Content Notes: References to medical and dental issues, homophobia, transphobia, and poverty-related suffering.)

A number of years ago, Buster was hospitalized due to a disastrous combination of untreated pancreatitis, pneumonia, an ungodly number of gallstones, and dangerous fluid build up in their abdomen. Because we were poor and had no health insurance, they refused to go to the hospital despite excruciating pain until they fell in the shower and I absolutely lost my shit. This months-long delay in seeking care nearly killed them, and resulted in a month long hospital stay during which Buster was only vaguely conscious.

Because we lived in Kansas and the hospital shooed non-relatives after visiting hours, I had to lie and claim I was Buster’s sister to remain by their bedside. It was terrible to watch them be in such horrible pain for so long, and to be so afraid of being found out by staff and sent away. Even though Buster was out of it, I still had to assert myself to the revolving door of staff to make sure I was kept in the loop, because while spouses get updates and a say in their partner’s care, sisters? just get vague platitudes by default.

Recently, Buster went to the emergency for the first time since their hospital stay. This time it was for debilitating pain we thought it was a nasty ear infection… it was actually their teeth. (Buster has endured tooth pain on and off for as long as I’ve known them, because we haven’t been able to afford the extensive dental work necessary to sooth it. Thanks, America.) During the visit, I was anxious and protective – probably too protective – because all I could think about was our last hospital experience.

But we live in Orlando now. We’re legally married. It’s been at least eight years since that last experience, and a lot of how queer people are treated in the media and in public has changed. (It hasn’t changed nearly enough – and in some ways, it’s gotten worse for the most vulnerable members of the community – but there’s an air of inevitability to social acceptance now. It’s slow but it’s coming.)

Nobody was going to kick me out of Buster’s ER room. In fact, each doctor and PA went out of their way to interact with me too, making it clear they acknowledged me as Buster’s spouse. I held Buster’s hand on and off throughout our wait, and suppressed the learned instinct to pull away when footsteps neared.

Honestly, I could write a whole post on our history with hand holding.

How in high school it was a tiny yet brave gesture of affection to sneak brief moments of entwined fingers.

How the number of times we held hands in public between 2006 and 2013 is in the single digits.

How when we moved back to this blessedly blue county in central Florida, we still only started holding hands in diverse, crowded places like theme parks and malls.

How after Pulse, I went right back to obsessively calculating the risk even the public spaces we’d come to trust.

How after seeing Trump supporters on every corner for weeks – and those bigots being validated that same November – made every casual brush of hands anywhere outside of fucking Disney feel just like those first delicate, terrifying moments in high school.

How it’s still like that more often than not.

These days, we’re noticeably queer in ways we carefully avoided a decade ago. We have weird (although trendy) hair cuts and we wear a lot of rainbow t-shirts and roll up the sleeves of our button-downs. Depending on my mood, I sometimes actively try to obscure my minimal chest with baggy layers. But if you’re queer, you know how weird walking the tightrope of Being Queer in Public is, even as bigotry of the homophobic variety is going out of style.

For the uninitiated, it goes like this: We’re far enough along (at least here) that it’s largely considered douchebaggy to harass people just for being visibly gay, so bigots self-police their urges… But if you push the envelope – if you invite their objection through shoving it down their throats by, say, entwining queer little paws like some kind of sex pests – then the think of the children! and/or aging dudebro crowd has the opening they need to say or do something. I don’t have a problem with gays, your honor, I just don’t want to have to see that shit.

Anyway. The doctors were nice to me.

I know the reassurance and acknowledgement I received in this professional/medical context is an enormous privilege awarded to me in part because of where I live and the fact that I’m white and pass as a woman (and white presumed cis lesbians are often politely tolerated in spaces that trans folks and cis queers of color are not.) But fuck, it was such an intense relief. I love Buster with every spec of cosmic stuff that forms my being, and then some, and it is something truly profound to be allowed to love and worry and suffer with them in public. Even selectively.

I can’t make them better. I can’t take their pain. But I can love them, and sometimes even do it openly. I want to live in a world where we all can, all the time, without having to contemplate the risks.

And, like, universal health care would be cool too.