Allison Green is the author of a novel, Half-Moon Scar (St. Martin's Press). Her essays have appeared in journals such as Bellingham Review, Calyx, and The Commons. This essay is part of a manuscript, Trout Frying in America, about growing up smitten by the 1960s—and especially by the writer Richard Brautigan. She was not missing the defunct Defense of Marriage Act when she married her long-time partner, Arline García, on September 1.