Carlos and I were not married for decades. And I didn’t care. I created comedy material from it and used it in Los Angeles clubs like Ice House and Comedy Store:
“I’ve been in the same relationship for 25 years and I’m still stuck on the word ‘boyfriend.’ How come we come up with new words for technology every two minutes? Texting, sexting, Googling, pinging. But when it comes to long-term relationships, we have: lover, roommate, girlfriend, long-term friend. Someone recently mentioned a new term to me: spouse equivalent. Spouse equivalent! Why does this sound like a sugar substitute to me? Carlos is my partner’s partner.” equivalent. A husband’s great taste and devotion are only half of it.”
The audience laughed all the time. And if Carlos were in the room, someone would inevitably look at him and nod as if he were the one dragging his feet. The truth is, not being married was okay with me. It wasn’t just him. Tot.
Outside of comedy clubs, when asked why we weren’t married after nearly 30 years, I’d say: “We’re just waiting to see if it works.” People thought it was hysterical. It wasn’t meant as a joke. We were very different people.
There was a period when I started calling him my husband to keep things simple, but there was still a good chance I would call him my boyfriend. “You are very open about your relationships,” a woman said to me on Day 2 of a two-day conference. It took me a minute to realize that the man I called “husband” the first day thought he was different from the man I called “boyfriend” the next day.
For a long time, marriage wasn’t something we needed. We had already built a home, a life, a circle of friends and a level of trust. But then I made a big career change. After more than 30 years in advertising (comedy was my side gig) I stepped back from full-time agency leadership and voluntarily started working part-time, eventually giving my workaholism less oxygen. However, with this election, I lost my healthcare. Suddenly, marriage was no longer the punch line.
Carlos had SAG-AFTRA insurance, a type of “forever” insurance that comes with eligibility. If I were his legal wife, I would be protected too. So after three decades of spousal parity, we tied the knot. For love, yes, but also for health insurance.
But “forever” wasn’t forever. During the COVID-19 pandemic, SAG-AFTRA has been deprived of health care for top performers. Carlos lost coverage. Spouses of senior performers had to stay on the plan until we started at age 65 (the age I entered this year). The promise of permanence is gone.
It turns out that marriage doesn’t just change our situation. This also changed our relationship with home. We previously owned the place as “tenants in common,” each owning a 50% interest. We could keep it as joint property after we got married. We both own it completely. This felt permanent too.
Until one day he hears about racial agreements being made in Los Angeles real estate. I pulled out the original deed from 1921 and saw the words that would bar us both from living where we lived:
“No portion of said property shall ever be rented, leased, sold or conveyed to any Negro or any person of African descent, Mongoloid race, or any race other than white or Caucasian.”
When this article was written, neither Carlos, who is Afro-Panamanian, nor I, who is Jewish, would be allowed to live here. The only reason we are here now is because after 1948 the courts said such contracts were unenforceable.
Suddenly all I saw were parallels. The first is “forever” insurance, which is not forever. Then “community ownership” which comes with a deed that denies our once existence. Now, even the protections that allow an interracial couple like us to marry (Loving v. Virginia) are shakier than ever. It turns out that both interracial marriage and racial compacts are protected by 14th Amendment rights. Just like Roe v. It’s like the Wade case and we all know how that turned out.
I didn’t think much about permanence until recently. I was happy with spousal equality and the idea that Carlos and I were choosing each other every day without needing government approval. But age, illness and insurance have a way of forcing pragmatism into romance.
Permanence has always been an illusion in Los Angeles. The slopes give way to landslides. Fires destroy entire neighborhoods. Sanctuary policies are being challenged and immigration raids are tearing families apart overnight. Even highways that we once thought were immovable are splitting and bending over time. Why should marriage or property be any different? Documents are being rewritten. Laws are being repealed. The protections you thought were in place are suddenly up for debate.
The city reminds us every day that permanence is fragile. But we stay anyway. Not because the documents bind us, but because we choose to do so. After all these years of joking about “spousal parity,” it turns out that real equivalence is: permanence on paper, permanence in practice. We will always take the latter.
The writer is a writer and storyteller for the page, stage and advertising. She lives in West Hollywood with her husband and the cat and dog that went viral on Instagram. Visit the website at: rochelle-newman.com.
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