A few pages into Chasten Buttigieg’s just-published memoir, I Have Something to Tell You, he conjures an image that justifies his husband Pete’s campaign to become the president of the United States, and, by extension, this book that spends a lot of time focusing on said campaign. It occurs when Chasten and Pete, are strolling down Washington D.C.’s 14th Street during a date night a couple of weeks before Buttigieg announced his bid for president. A woman approaches them from behind and tells them that as a mother of gay children, “What you’re doing for this country and for them… I am just so proud of you and so happy you’re getting out there.” Her “embarrassed, but excited” gay children then introduce themselves. Reflecting on this moment, Chasten writes:
, he conjures an image that justifies his husband Pete’s campaign to become the president of the United States, and, by extension, this book that spends a lot of time focusing on said campaign. It occurs when Chasten and Pete, are strolling down Washington D.C.’s 14th Street during a date night a couple of weeks before Buttigieg announced his bid for president.
The problem with adopting a feel-good tone is that when apparently unresolved issues surface, they key-clash in cacophony. I had to question if Chasten is actually even ready to be telling his own story. Perhaps self-knowledge is all it took to come to peace with the conformity that would be foisted on him as the husband of a presidential candidate, but that Chasten has merely changed cells in the effective prison of public acceptance is woefully under-examined.Without ever really being told, I understood that I represented Peter and his administration, so I had to be on my best behavior every time I stepped outside my front door.
It is true that you can’t please everyone and public figures can’t do much without receiving some disparaging comments. But the amount of time that Chasten apparently spends thinking about how he’s perceived suggests, at minimum, unresolved childhood issues that he either isn’t able or simply refuses to wrestle with in his fluffy book.
Less impressive is his take on the feedback he and Pete received on their perceived heteronormativity. Compressing complicated analysis into what Chasten sees as attacks on whether he and his husband are “gay enough” is a simple way of showing readers how absurd and hateful internet writers can be, but it skirts around the substance of the arguments. “Attempting to police anyone’s gayness sets a dangerous precedent.
On the campaign trail, Chasten resolved that to support his husband, “I had to talk about Pete Buttigieg in ways others couldn’t.” He’s still doing that here and it’s impossible for us to distinguish the love-lettering from the politicking. Perhaps at a certain point for a couple in politics, they become one and the same.
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