Vitaly Kirkpatrick

Book Three · Manuscript finished, publication date not set

Green Card, Gold Ring

Two governments had to sign off before I could call this a marriage.

Immigration and marriage, as the one story they always were

Tell me when it is ready
Cover of Green Card, Gold Ring by Vitaly Kirkpatrick

About this book

This is the decade between.

I landed at JFK on the fifth of August, 2005, with three dollars, a bandura, and a folder of documents. Eleven years later a stranger across a desk decided whether the man I had married counted as my husband. This is the decade between.

Love arrived in May 2006 with two careful messages and a dollar movie ticket, the cheapest line item in the whole file. We married in San Diego on the fifteenth of August, 2008, two years to the day, with a certificate that was proof we did not wait for permission. It then took the fall of DOMA in 2013 before the rest of the country agreed.

Three questions drive the book. What does it cost to be believed, not by a lover but by a government? Who wrote the script: marry young, raise children, retire? Does love live after the storms, or through them?

I could not find the book about coming out and immigrating at once, where the two processes make each other harder, so I wrote it. The manuscript is finished: 51 chapters and 122,703 words. Six complete chapters are free to read in the page. No publication date is set.

A folder, two rings

What it is really about

Three questions, not three themes.

  1. Believed

    Admit one · Book Three

    What does it cost to be believed?

    Not by a lover — by a government. The book is built around rooms where someone with a folder decides whether your life is real.

  2. The script

    Admit one · Book Three

    Who wrote the script?

    Marry young, raise children, retire. Almost nobody I knew could follow that pattern, and I spent years trying to reconcile the contradiction.

  3. The storms

    Admit one · Book Three

    Does love live after the storms, or through them?

    I ended my first book as though the hard part was over. Life does not care where you place your endings.

Where it happens

Five rooms, and the weather in each.

  1. Chernivtsi

    Admit one · Book Three

    Behind iron gates

    An orphanage where the winters were harsh enough to wear a hat and scarf indoors.

  2. Aug 2005

    Admit one · Book Three

    Arrivals, JFK

    Three dollars, a bandura, and a folder of documents nobody back home believed in.

  3. 15 May 2006

    Admit one · Book Three

    A dark Provo theatre

    Two careful messages, a dollar movie ticket, and a seat chosen so I could watch the door.

  4. 2008

    Admit one · Book Three

    Married twice in one year

    California ruled on the fifteenth of May — two years to the day since we became a couple.

  5. 2013 → 2016

    Admit one · Book Three

    The interview room

    DOMA falls and the paperwork begins. Belonging somewhere is mostly an administrative act performed by people who are very tired.

Immigration and love as the one story they always were.

Who it is for

Readers looking for the book about coming out and immigrating at once. Readers who want to see what a government interview room looks like from the chair. Anyone who has stood in a line holding a folder and hoped it was the right folder.

Look inside

“The soft hum of my laptop is the only sound in the room as midnight settles across the windows.”

Yes, if…

  • You have ever had to prove your life to someone with a folder.
  • You want the waiting, not the arrival montage.
  • You like a narrator who asks you questions instead of answering them.
  • You are immigrant, queer, or both — or you love someone who is.

Probably not, if…

  • You want a triumphant immigrant success story with a tidy ending.
  • You would rather the religion parts were simpler than they were.
  • You are looking for a romance. This is a marriage, which is different.

Content notes

This book contains an orphanage and institutional neglect, a DUI arrest and a night in a cell, financial loss, and religious shame around sexuality. None of it is written for shock, and none of it is skipped.

Not in the book

Written for one person, years before there was a manuscript, these go to the launch list, not to a shop: a song I wrote for Kimball, words and music (A Lifetime of Love); the poem it came from, read aloud (It was Love); and the anniversary story, narrated.

Your story world

Three vocabularies run through this book. None of them are explained away.

banduraUkrainian
A 60-string folk instrument. One of three things I carried to America.
DOMAImmigration
The Defense of Marriage Act. Until it fell in 2013, my husband was not my husband to the federal government.
adjustment of statusImmigration
The process by which a person already here becomes a person allowed to stay.
Federal PlazaImmigration
The room where the interview happens. The scene that decides whether the marriage counts.

The first chapter

One email. Chapter one, then silence until the book is out. No newsletter, no drip sequence. The first chapter now, and one message the day the book exists.

Send me chapter one

Read or buy

Read the first chapterTell me when it is ready

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