The minute we saw the cover of the Boston Globe Sunday magazine promising six kitchen makeover stories, we knew one would belong to a homosexual couple. (See "Yankee Ingenuity" for the gay couple's kitchen makeover.)
What even MassResistance wouldn't have expected was a second feature story in the same issue, called of all things, Coupling: Seats of Power. We read a male wife's simpering, affected confessions about his inability to drive, and how that onerous responsibility falls completely in his "husband's" lap.
The cutesy, excusifying tone is enough to make you nauseous. This fellow has truly taken on the identity of an annoying, demanding wife. For all his protestations of normality, their false, unnatural union is staring us right in the face.
"Our partnership is equal on every level except for one: He drives, I ride, and that's that. ... I don't drive.
"There, I said it. Let the snickering and eyebrow-raising begin. Like a dirty little secret that isn't that dirty (having a foot fetish, say, rather than shooting up drugs with used hypodermic needles), not driving isn't illegal, but it still occasions disbelief, judgment, even pity – and that's just from my husband.
"Considering that I have no good reason for this, and keeping in mind how long-suffering my husband has been, you might think I would have the good sense to keep my mouth shut when we're on the road and he's doing all the heavy lifting. Oh, no. I am the only traveling companion more irksome than a back-seat driver: a front-seat driver, directing my chauffeur from right there next to him in the passenger seat.
"If I think we're headed the wrong way, or going too fast, or annoying other drivers, I blurt out, 'Honey!' That's an innocuous word, you think, until you hear me say it, rendering the first syllable as a growl, and the second both high and shrill."
Etc., etc. Bear in mind we're not reading this in Bay Windows. It's the Boston Globe. Can you take it?
