Rainbow Wedding

by Addie Tsai

“Largely the book is not a book of rage, but one that attempts to address how white supremacy reveals itself in the nooks and crannies of a marriage, particularly between a cishet white man and an AFAB person of color, how unwillingly wedding oneself to a liar can erode at one’s sense of trust in not others, but themselves.”

In February of 2020, I stood in front of a judge and asked for a divorce. We knew that COVID existed, but it was just before the world would largely come to terms with how devastating and dangerous it truly was, before people began wearing masks, before the United States would issue the closest thing we ever had to a quarantine. I said the words, I no longer want to be married to you, to a person I believed I knew, after I came to understand he was a pathological liar, most pointedly that he had invented at least two therapists over five years. As I deeply grieved the marriage in a period of intense isolation during the most intense beginnings of COVID, I would come to terms with the fact that most of what he had told me, that is to say, anything I had not witnessed with my own eyes, was most likely a lie.

The most recent therapist had a name, a likeness, a son, a husband. My former spouse shared detailed recaps of biweekly sessions with me for over two years. Many anecdotes. When my former spouse would share matters of conflict with her, sometimes she agreed with me, sometimes she backed him. Once she called to cancel a session because her son and husband were in the hospital, recovering from a life-endangering car accident. For days after my former spouse was wrecked with guilt at hearing her weep on the telephone. There are a million stories I could offer as examples from those two years, but this gives you a sense of the depth, and commitment, of the fabrication.

The man I believed I was married to was queer, genderfluid, complicated, sensitive, but most of all, possessed a goodness I believed in. I began to understand that the therapist had never been real after a series of events occurred, building from the moment he wrote me in July of 2019 that he experienced a seizure in the middle of a session. At once a layered, beautiful tapestry of the life we had built, of the love that I had invested in for seven years, turned to shreds before me. His behavior in the aftermath of the divorce would only further reinforce how little I had known him, but no single action made that realization as clear as when, in February 2021, I received an email addressed Dear Chinavirus (yes you are COVID as a person), which demanded I stop calling myself queer and nonbinary. That was the moment I understood how deeply his own delusions had become mine. That I, too, had been non-consensually complicit in believing in a fiction of a life.

That fall, desperate to move out of the energy of my grief, I would go on a virtual date with someone I met on Bumble. We would not end up dating further than an initial weekend, but we would quickly become friends. On that date, as we shared some of the stories of our pasts, I messily vented my way through a story of my divorce. Without thinking much of it, she suggested I write letters to his fake therapist. I would begin Dear My Ex-Husband’s Fake Therapist the next day, a series of epistolary prose pieces addressed to the therapist he invented. In early drafts of this project, I also wrote poems inspired by or made of lines from songs that he loved, or that he threaded throughout our relationship as metaphors for our connection. Dear My Ex-Husband’s Fake Therapist opens with this poem, which uses Bon Iver’s Holocene as a template to explore the dissolution of our marriage. It’s a revenge poem, in a sense, in that I chose Bon Iver intentionally as one of my former spouse’s favorite musical artists. Largely the book is not a book of rage, but one that attempts to address how white supremacy reveals itself in the nooks and crannies of a marriage, particularly between a cishet white man and an AFAB person of color, how unwillingly wedding oneself to a liar can erode at one’s sense of trust in not others, but themselves. This might be the only piece in the entire book that comes the closest to the anger I felt at his intricate deceptions.

After writing this poem, I initially attempted to sing it myself, but as I’m not a trained singer, I found myself unable to do the vocalization justice. I asked Brooke Ashley Eden, a nonbinary musician and former graduate student of mine, to record themselves singing the Bon Iver on guitar, but replacing their lyrics with my words. I profoundly connected with Brooke when we first began to work together, who I often refer to as my surrogate nonbinary child. It felt important to me to collaborate with an artist on this piece that would bring a sense of love and generosity and safety, a kind of counter to the energies that inspired it.

When Addie asked me if I would record this lyric swapped version of Holocene, I was incredibly honored. Addie & I connected when they were my advisor during my last year of graduate school & I genuinely mean it when I say I would not have been able to finish without their guidance, graciousness, & understanding of me as a person, an artist, & scholar. This collaboration was so special & important to me. Not only did I get to sing lyrics that were written by someone whose work I admire set to the music of an artist I enjoy, I knew what weight this project held for Addie personally so it meant the world to be trusted with this. —Brooke Ashley Eden

Rainbow Wedding
(after Holocene, Bon Iver)

someway baby, you’re part of me, apart from me
you’re laying waste to all we’d been
you fucked it, friend, it’s gone and dead, you sucked the meat
you’re in a penthouse, off your feet

and at once, I knew
you were not magnificent

strayed beyond the wedding aisle
ragged poison, slick with lies
I couldn’t see for miles, miles, miles

Smith and Lou, you burned away, you fell sway
was where I learned that I was bait
your fantasy bought the years you’d play for me
one night we danced to Wolf parade
not the romance, nor the dog, divorce decree
meant a thing, that’s all new to me.

and at once, I knew
you were not magnificent

flew far from the wedding aisle
ragged poison, slick with lies
I couldn’t see for miles, miles, miles

Christmas night, you clutched the white, your mother tight
let go our love, I, and dangled signs
you blurred the screen to make it what you need to be
now, you blow it in my memory

and at once, I knew
you were not magnificent

light above the wedding aisle
ragged poison, slick with lies
I could see for miles, miles, miles

Addie Tsai (any/all) is a many-gendered multidisciplinary artist who calls on everyone to commit to fighting for the liberation of Palestine and all oppressed people around the globe. They are the author of Dear Twin and Unwieldy Creatures. Addie is the founding co-captain of just femme & dandy. Their current works in progress include the forthcoming monograph Straight White Men Can't Dance: American Masculinity in Film and Popular Culture (Bloomsbury 2025), an epistolary nonfiction recounting of the aftermath of a divorce titled Dear My Ex-Husband's Fake Therapist, and an historical-contemporary hybrid novel centering Anne Lister and Mary Shelley and queer asylum networks. You can find them dancing, venting, or squealing on Twitter @addiebrook and Instagram @addieisunwieldy.

Brooke Ashley Eden is a thing maker, feeling haver, making things about having feelings & has feelings about making things. They are definitely not just 4 possums in a human suit. IG: @BrookeEden96 brookeashleyeden.com

SLOW ORBIT
SYZYGY