First Comes Love: On Marriage and Other Ways of Being Together

289 Pages·2021·10.562 MB·English

by  Tom Rasmussen

FIRST COMES LOVE
by the same author
Diary of a Drag Queen
F I R ST

CO M E S LOV E
On Marriage and Other Ways
of Being Together
TOM RASMUSSEN
BLOOMSBURY PUBLISHING
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
50 Bedford Square, London, wc1b 3dp, uk
29 Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin 2, Ireland
BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY PUBLISHING and the Diana logo are
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First published in Great Britain 2021
Copyright © Tom Rasmussen, 2021
Tom Rasmussen has asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted
in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in
writing from the publishers
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
isbn: hb: 978-1-5266-2687-5; ebook: 978-1-5266-2686-8; epdf: 978-1-5266-4532-6
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For Shugs – who I would marry, if we believed in that

sort of thing.
For Mum and Dad – whose marriage taught me to
believe in that sort of thing.

Contents

Introduction: Every Second Someone in the
World Gets Married 1
1. A Classy Wedding 7
2. Not All Marriage is Created Equal 29
3. The Queer Opiate? 61
4. Married to Freedom 83
5. Ghosts 115
6. The Business of Dreams 153
7. The Holy Trinity 183
8. Forever, Over 213
9. Audiences 241
Acknowledgements 271

Introduction: Every Second

Someone in the World Gets Married
It’s a Sunday afternoon in May, and it’s excruciatingly
hot on the Central Line. I’m offensively hungover,
rolled in half on the tube after a very late night at a
friend’s wedding at which a group of us sat drinking neat
vodka (why?), espousing the idiocy, the sheer lunacy, of
marriage.
We’re the guests people dread at their own weddings: the
queers, the non-conformers, the eye-rollers, the critics,
the bitchers, the moaners. I don’t know why we’re invited.
And I don’t know why we go.
We love our friends who got married: we love their love,
and appreciate their right to marry, but we can’t quite
understand what the point of all this is.