So yeah, Missy and I were living together for like, I don’t know, ten or twelve years? We both taught in the public school system, and I remember someone saying something about “spinster teachers,” which we thought was really a riot. And we were fine. But then everybody saw that Massachusetts had legalized same-sex marriage in 2004 and all the gals we knew were talking about going to Massachusetts and getting married. Funny, I didn’t even know much about Provincetown, we’d always gone to the west coast for vacations, sometimes to Florida, so it wasn’t really on my radar.
Anyway, our best friends, Cammy and Suzanne, they decided to go to Ptown and get married, and they asked us to go with them. Turns out you don’t need a witness, but we didn’t know that, and they wanted us to be their witnesses. So we all planned the trip right before school was starting back that fall, we flew into Boston and took the evening ferry to Provincetown.
And you know there’s nothing more romantic than the ferry, right? I mean, you’re out on the water and you see the lights disappearing as you’re leaving and then it’s just like the rest of the world doesn’t exist. It’s this big boat in the middle of this water. Like you’re there all alone. And I was looking at Suzanne and Cammy and they were laughing and all excited and just standing at the railing having the time of their lives, and I thought, this is it. I didn’t even think any more about it. I turned to Missy right then and there and said, “let’s do it, too.” And she said, “What?” And I said, “Let’s get married. In Provincetown. Will you marry me?” And she gasped and threw herself at me and kept saying, “yes, yes, yes!”
We had to go to court, I think, because of the three-day waiting thing. But Cammy and Suzanne came with us, and we all four of us got married together on the beach. And I’m not sure I’d ever have asked, if we hadn’t been on that ferry.