Cambridge City Hall at Midnight

Last night, Cambridge city hall opened at midnight to hand out marriage applications to same-sex couples. My soon-to-be-wife and I decided to go, not because we're in a particular hurry, but because we wanted to be a part of the celebration.

In order to get married, you need to have some blood work done by a doctor, to show that you don't have rubella. Only then can you pick up the application from city hall. And after you get the application, there's a three day waiting period before you can actually be married.

Unfortunately, we realized around 7pm that I had misplaced the letter from my doctor stating that I had had my blood work done. This caused much frustration and a small amount of panic, while we searched the entire house several times trying to find it. I even went to work to see whether I had left it on my desk somehow. After about three hours of searching it finally showed up -- in a pile of papers that we had both already searched through twice.

By then it was 10pm, and we had heard that they would be cutting a wedding cake at 11pm, so we hurried to get ready and then drove over to Cambridge. The traffic was much heavier than you would normally expect late on a Sunday night. We parked in a parking lot where it wasn't quite clear whether we were going to get towed or not. But since it was filling up fast (another car every 30 seconds or so)o, we decided to take the risk.

All the streets surrounding city hall were blocked off by policemen -- even the little residential one-way streets. On the main street there were dozens of policemen, about 20 protestors (on the far side of the street), a few thousand supporters, and a dozen television trucks. We showed up just in time to see about 15 policemen dressed in full riot gear (plastic face masks, body armor, etc) march up the street right in front of the protestors. Presumably that show of force was intended to remind the protestors not to try anything.

City Hall sits on a large grass hill, and the hill was covered with people. They overflowed onto the street and into some of the neighboring blocks. The 1369 coffee shop, which is right around the corner, had a line extending well outside the door. Everybody was laughing, cheering, clapping, smiling. Lots of people had brought cameras, and there were flashes every few seconds.

Eventually my wife-to-be decided to try to get in line. It wasn't very obvious how to do that. We searched around the edge of the crowd until we saw a temporary barrier, which turned out to be the line for "applicants". We had to push our way through the first bit, because there were so many supporters crowding around. Eventually we got far enough in to see that there was a clear aisle all the way up the main steps of city hall. The sudden appearance of so much empty space in the midst of such a large crowd shocked me.

Once we got far enough in that it was clear that we were in line, a few people started asking us "are you intending?" When we replied that we were, the supporters cheered us, and congratulated us, and gave us flowers, and roses, and cake, and little cards in envelopes.

On the way up the steps, we passed by hundreds people lining the steps, all of whom were cheering and clapping and smiling, and it was really really overwhelming. I was amazed and awed and smiling like a child who just tasted sugar for the first time.

Towards the top half of the steps, it was crowded with reporters with microphone booms, expensive cameras, and impeccable makeup. We were asked at least five times whether we'd be willing to be interviewed, but we turned them all down.

Finally we got to the top of the steps, and right then an official came out with a megaphone. He had a couple policemen body guards. We were about five feet away from him when he announced, "City Hall is at capacity. No more people will be allowed in until some people come out." We tried to ask him whether that included couples, but his policeman bodyguards blocked us from getting too close.

At this point, a reporter from USA Today came from behind us and tried to get in because he was from the press. I told him, "Dude, there's no way you're getting in there before we are". He responded, "I'm here to cover the event". And I responded, "We are the event." Anyway, it turned out that they were still letting couples in, so we got in ahead of the USA Today reporter. As we passed in the door, the policeman called out "couples only". That made me so happy -- to hear a policeman refer to us as just "couples", without having to qualify it with "gay".

Once inside, it was a lot less crowded, but still crowded nevertheless. There was a table with a white tablecloth, and two people sitting at it giving out tickets. Our ticket was number 511217, which meant we were the 217th couple to come through the door. They gave us two tickets: one to hand in when our number came, and another I guess to keep as a souvenir.

The place was filled with hundreds of people, all standing on the stairs, sitting against the walls, and generally milling about. We found a spot on the floor where we could sit down. Then I set out in search of some cold water.

There were some people standing on the stairs dressed in angel costumes, with banners around their chests with words like "Honor", "Justice", "Love", etc. There were delegates from various Unitarian Universalist churches, letting us know that their churches were available for marriage ceremonies. One church in Dedham is even going to have free weddings on Saturday. The main hall had a couple tables with cakes, provided by the Hyatt Regency. One woman went down the hall with a basket of little baked twists of dough with powdered sugar, that she called "love twists" or something like that. Wainwright Bank gave out little promotional bags with buttons, glow pens, and a little "congratulations" card. Reporters wandered around, asking random people if they'd be willing to be interviewed. Someone from the Boston Globe asked us for demographic information (how old are you, have you been married before, any kids, etc).

We eventually realized that there were some city councilors giving speeches in one of the rooms, but the door was shut -- presumably that room had filled up long before we arrived. There were a few televisions in the halls, showing the speeches. On the bottom floor they had several white tables lined up, which was where the couples would actually be filling out their forms. It was very quiet down there, and it was packed with television cameras.

When midnight came, everybody shouted out "5...4...3...2...1", and cheered and made noise. I whispered to my partner "we're legal now", and she smiled. It really felt like something had changed in the world. I felt happier, freer.

They started calling for couples to come line up in batches of ten, in the same room where the councilors had been giving speeches earlier. They had them line up two batches in advance, so that while #10-19 were filling out forms, #20-29 were ready to go and #30-39 were getting in place. Every ten minutes or so, a batch would file out of the room, down to the bottom floor where they would fill out their paper work. And as they went, all the other people would cheer them and applaud.

By the time it got to 1am, and they were still only in the sixties, we decided that they weren't going to get to us (#217) before they closed that night at 2:30. So we went home. On the way out, the head security guy (the one who had come out with the megaphone earlier) congratulated us (I think he thought we had actually gotten through the line), and then warned us that there was a big mob waiting for us outside. We took a glance at the door and it looked like there were six cameramen squeezed up against the two doors. We paused in trepidation. The security guy then said "or you can go out the back exit". So that's what we did. On the way out, the policeman manning the door warned us that there was no readmittance, and then we were out in the back parking lot, alone.

We started heading for the car, but my bride-to-be got nervous about using the back streets. So we went back out to Mass Ave and took the main roads instead. Somewhat ironic that even though gay rights have clearly come a long way, we still feel the need to avoid quiet streets late at night, only two blocks away from a large police presence specifically tasked with protecting us.

We called this morning to see whether we could use our ticket to get back in line this morning, but they said they're not using the tickets anymore, and that the line was really long. So I think we'll wait until Thursday or Friday, when the rush has settled down a bit.

I'm glad we went, even though we weren't far enough up in line to actually get the paperwork. I hope I never forget how wonderful it felt to walk up the steps to city hall, with hundreds of people cheering and laughing and smiling and being proud of what we were doing.

Thank you to everybody who came out. It really made the evening a tremendously special experience.

Followups to Cambridge City Hall at Midnight:

• We're Married

Posted on May 17, 2004 12:10 PM
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