Posted by Lydia
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A year ago I could not have imagined typing this sentence, but here we go: The news is out in Vanity Fair today that I am going to marry Curtis Yarvin.
Many aspects of this story are absurd, and also, I am very happy. Furthermore, I’m psyched to plan the wedding, and to invite all our friends. The ceremony and reception will take place sometime towards the end of this year. We just got engaged recently, and we are still finding the right venue. This is why no one has received a Save The Date yet. We’ll know the date soon, I promise!
I have begun to draft many heartfelt personal essays about this situation. None are finished. I thought the Vanity Fair piece would be published mid-May, so I kept thinking I had more time to write something that could do justice to this relationship, to capture the ways Curtis and I challenge and inspire each other. I was obsessed with telling the whole story perfectly, my way, before anyone beat me to it — until I found out yesterday that the VF article would be out today. So much for getting ahead of the story 🙂
To be clear, the VF article is not specifically about me and Curtis. The article is about the “New Right.” The reason Curtis is highlighted in this article is that he is a famous right-wing writer. If you have never heard of him, then I think this interview provides a much better portrait of the man I love than his Google results; if you’ve never heard of me, here’s a bio.
The impact on my life of meeting and getting engaged to Curtis is hard to overstate, and yet it hasn’t been anything like what most people assume. We love each other, we believe in each other, we support each other, and also we don’t always agree. I think he’s brilliant and I find a lot of his ideas fascinating and thought-provoking. What I don’t think is that he’s right about everything — and if I did, he’d probably find me far less interesting! Something Curtis has said over and over, despite his reputation for arch-right evil, is that what he wants with his wife is a relationship of equals. I could not marry him otherwise.
It is important to me to note that I have not “fully converted to the right wing,” or anything like that. What I have done — and this process started long before I met Curtis — is educate myself in how to respect and understand the right wing. I am an American with two signers of the Declaration of Independence among my ancestors, one on each parental side. I am also a lifelong liberal, raised by liberals, in New York and in the liberal Unitarian Universalist faith. I care very deeply about my country and our welfare. I care about depolarizing our politics so that we can work together better. And I care about both justice and peace.
Here is what my connection with Curtis is actually like: We argue all the time, and we also impress each other all the time. Our reality distortion fields are both significant, our wills extremely strong, our mutual respect and desire profound. One of the greatest and funniest compliments he ever paid me was: “You’re the thinking man’s trophy wife.” Another, which genuinely moved me: “Achilles would rather have had you than Troy.”
I’ve often wondered about what I’d compare him to in turn: A gravity well; a dark star? One of the spiritual frames I try to hold is seeing everyone as spirit. On that level, for me, he has often been a dark light.
Curtis writes a lot faster than me, and doesn’t edit very much, so he has a higher output than I do. He’s written a number of poems about me, or that indirectly reference me. One was “Asterisk,” published with my permission during a few weeks when he and I were broken up, a poem that showcased his mean streak and his worst judgments of me. He and I now agree that he probably shouldn’t have published that poem publicly, and I probably should never have given him consent to publish that poem — but I did.
One of my favorite short stories about karma, written by Tanith Lee, is titled “Tamastara or Dark Star.” An asterisk is also a dark star.
Curtis also wrote “Love Poem” about me and, of course, “Engagement.” Until I manage to whip one of these personal essays into shape, and tell all of you this entire story from the beginning, I will leave you with his words from “Engagement:”
Brass and ivory gears
Locking teeth for years,
A burning silver net,
A trap without regret,
A battle joined, a needle
Bobbing on the dusty vinyl,
A pedal flooring clutch,
A ring that cost too much,
A knee and nothing less—
“I’ll take that as a yes.”