Does This Baby Make Me Look Straight?: Confessions of a Gay Dad (23 page)

“The only problem is,” Roxy continued, “now that the boys are away at school, Lola misses the male attention they used to give her. She needs it. And it’s good for her.” She looked at me. I nodded. She was still looking at me. Was I supposed to do something?

“If you wouldn’t mind, would you say something nice to Lola? Tell her you like her dress?” she asked me, point-blank. I was caught completely off guard. Roxy’s eyes were twinkling. I noticed how beautiful she was and wondered how important it was that I notice. Perhaps this was why she wanted her daughter to feel the same way. But the request was so, I don’t know . . . curious?

“What? Oh. Yes. It is a nice dress. I’d be happy to,” I replied, a little thrown.

“I’m her mother. It doesn’t mean the same coming from me. She wants to hear it from a guy.”

“Absolutely!” I answered, without thinking twice. Then I thought twice.
What?
Lola is six! Does Lola really need “male attention” at this age? Eliza and Jonah have two dads. Does this mean they need more female attention? My kids have a wonderful female nanny who’s been in their lives since they were born. They also have a godmother, Aunt Cuckoo, and three or four other aunts who have been consistent parts of their lives as well. It seemed like Roxy was worried about something and projecting it onto her daughter. Imagine that! And then the obvious dawned on me: that even the
seemingly most perfect of parents, who paints and has sex in the kitchen and plants Monet-worthy gardens, is just as crazy as I, and every other parent is. Different crazy. But crazy nonetheless.

The girls came bounding out of the crafts room. Lola hopped into her mother’s arms and Eliza into mine. Such happy little girls. May it last forever. Eliza then did what she always does and wrapped my arms around herself super tight. I don’t know who loves it more.

“You girls are in a smiley mood. Did you have fun?” I asked. They nodded. Eliza showed me her bento box still wet from the glued-on feathers and glitter.

“It’s beautiful,” I said, “just like the girls who made them!” I managed to slip in that small drop of “male attention” as promised, but that’s about all I felt comfortable with. Plus, it was time for us to go. I kissed Roxy goodbye and thanked her for the wine and the playdate, and the girls hugged.

When we got home, I felt like a new man. Something about being with Roxy made me realize I’ve been deluding myself into thinking everyone knows something I don’t. Maybe I don’t need a role model! I
am
a role model. I’ve got this parenting thing down pat. Don noticed I was particularly chipper.

“What’s wrong with you?” he asks, suspiciously.

“Absolutely nothing!” I say, pointedly. Drunk with cockiness about the kind of parent I am, I think maybe I should work on the whole sex-on-the-kitchen-table thing. Right? Why not? No reason why I too, maybe soon, could have Rice Krispies stuck to
my
ass!

E
liza and Jonah were quietly watching the final moments of Disney’s
Tangled
on my iPad, each with their own set of headphones. Don was visiting his folks in Pittsburgh, so I was flying solo at home in L.A. About an hour earlier, one of the kids had dropped a glass pitcher filled with these horrifically annoying, multicolored, jelly-like pearls the kids
love
called Orbeez. I had a meltdown and put the kids in Disney’s hands while I tried to clean the glass and scoop up what seemed like two million beads from every corner of the kitchen floor. When the movie, and my meltdown, were over, I asked the kids how they liked
Tangled
. “What was your favorite part?”

Jonah loved Pascal, the hilarious chameleon sidekick to Rapunzel. Eliza took a bit longer to answer.

“The whole thing,” she finally replied. It’s her stock answer—her way of telling me to fuck off and stop interviewing her. But then she added, “I liked the part when Rapunzel found the king and queen after she was lost her whole life with the mean lady who wasn’t really her mom.” And then, after a beat, she added, “I wish I had a mom and a dad.” She was still looking down at the iPad.

Straight to the heart, that one. Never thinks maybe pull back a little. Nope. Just straight in and deep. But I knew exactly what she meant. She wants the picture of what she sees in the movies: to be a princess enveloped by her parents, the king and the queen . . . to
feel
like Rapunzel. Or just like most every other girl.

I know she’s not sad about the cards she was dealt. But she wouldn’t mind having a king and a queen. I suddenly feel sad. For her. For her not being able to have everything she wants, or at least this one specific thing.

Kids need devoted parents who love them and make a home for them. I know that. In my head. But in my heart, I fear that our situation is just a tiny bit not
as
good as if the kids had a “conventional” family. Even though I, like millions of other kids, came from a conventional family and sometimes wished I had it differently. Nonetheless, my heart breaks for my children, who will undoubtedly wish they had a mother from time to time. They’ll crave that specific feeling of being embraced by a mommy. But what is that “mommyness” exactly? Can a man bring mommyness to a child’s life? I feel that I do. But is it still mommyness if it comes from a man?

A few days after the mommy incident I’m at the playground with a friend, Scott, who is also a gay dad. I ask him if his daughters have ever told him they wanted a mommy.

“Are you kidding? All the time. They’re always saying how unfair it is that they can’t have a mommy.” Scott laughs it off.

“Doesn’t that bum you out?” I ask him.

“What are you going to do? Maya also wants a unicorn. I can’t pull one of those out of my ass either.” Now we both start laughing. Suddenly, a mom from Maya’s school inches over to us.

“Hi, Scott.” He gives her a hug and he introduces us. “Sorry, I overheard your conversation,” she continues, “but I have to tell you, Chloe was just asking me about you and Andrew—and why Maya doesn’t have a mother.” We both look at her, a little stunned.

“You know what I told Chloe? I told her that some kids don’t have any parents at all. So, isn’t it better that little Maya has two loving daddies than no parents at all?” She looks at us, so proud of her message. “I think it’s great,” she adds.

“Thanks!” I think one of us said. I smile at the effort, hiding my inner scowl. She kisses us both goodbye. “So nice to meet you.” And then she flies off. But her comment lies there, like a silent but deadly fart. You’re not sure you actually heard it but the smell lingers in the air, wet and greasy.

Scott’s the first one to speak. “She’s not wrong, really. Is she? In a backwards logic kind of way.” He’s so nice—trying to give her the benefit of the doubt.

“She doesn’t know any better,” I say. “But she should. Come on, really? Is having two dads only just the next worst thing to having
no
parents at all?”

“I guess if you put it that way,” Scott says.

“It’s not a ‘better than nothing’ situation, is it?”

Hello! “No kidding! It’s better to have only a couple of fingers blown off your hand than lose your whole hand. Isn’t it?” I’m on a tear. “She thinks having two dads is like having only a couple of fingers blown off!”

“That’s crazy,” Scott says. “Hey. She’s your friend.” We laugh. “But the silver lining? At least you still have eight perfectly good fingers! And for her you only need your middle one.” It’s ridiculous. We both
know it. And for a split second, I feel sorry for Chloe. ’Cause her mom is kind of lame.

Maybe the thing that makes a kid
want
a mommy is the fact that they see other people who have them and it looks so nice. It’s really no different from seeing someone with, say, a new iPad, and coming home to it and being able to play with it and use it and get a bunch of fabulous apps. It’s
great
to have an iPad. But must
everyone
have one? Is a life incomplete without an iPad if you have another device that does the same things but only looks different, maybe smells a little different, has a penis, and prefers to sleep with men? Do we need to feel sorry for kids without iPads?

Every kid wants the parents they see on TV . . . or across the street . . . or in the next car over driving their best friend, who always seems to have it better. I’m already jealous of the parents my kids haven’t even met yet whom they will wish they could have. I’m jealous of the storybook parents and Disney parents and friends’ parents whom they imagine coming home to. And have you
seen
the end of
Tangled
? Those parents rock.

How do I make up for having robbed my kids of the experience of having a mother? I can’t. But at the same time, if they’d had a mom, they would’ve been robbed of the experience of having two dads who love them more than life itself. It is what it is. We do our best and hope that when they grow up, they know they were unconditionally loved. And liked. And respected. And as a result, grow into compassionate, loving, responsible adults who feel lucky with the pair of queens they were dealt.

I
was stepping out of my office the other day when I felt something drop and swoop toward me. I ducked, realizing it was a bird barely missing my head! Afterward, it sat on a branch staring at me, cawing loudly. It wasn’t a huge bird, more midsized—bigger than a sparrow and smaller than a crow. About the size of a blue jay. In fact, it looked exactly like a blue jay—only not blue. I laughed to myself at my own jumpiness. It was just a bird, after all.

A few moments later I was returning to my office and the bird squawked loudly, swooped down again, and came right in for the kill. I screamed like a pigtailed schoolgirl, almost squirting myself shitless as I raced into my office. Never shying away from my penchant for the dramatic, I crouched breathlessly by the window to see if I could get a look at my attacker.

“What the hell?” I asked my colleagues. “That bird just tried to kill me!” I was relieved to hear that a few others had experienced the same low-flying bird wrath on their way into the office. So at least it wasn’t personal. Then I remembered seeing a dead baby bird in its nest on the ground only two days before. Had this same mean bird attacked an innocent birdlet?

And then it hit me. Not the bird, but the realization: this was probably the mama bird that had lost its baby on the walkway! Clearly working through Dr. Kübler-Ross’s five stages of grief, she was currently acting out her Anger Stage at those she held responsible for the death of her young. She might also have been protecting any surviving baby birds still in the nest.

I Googled pictures of birds indigenous to Los Angeles and was fairly certain our attacker was either a mockingbird or a long-tailed bush tit. I could hardly blame our poor tit for her anxiety and rage after what had happened to her child. Nature, cruel as she may be, also provides the parents of each species an ardent protective instinct. My own mother was an “angry bird” of sorts: fiercely protective of her family, vigilant against injustice, and keenly intuitive about whom to trust or not. She’s always had a deep-rooted anxiety provoked by worst-case scenarios and an overdeveloped imagination with which to play out said scenarios. I too, sadly, have perfected this mechanism for indulging my negative fantasies.

I was at the farmers’ market about a month ago with the kids. I gave them each one ticket with which to do whatever they pleased. Eliza was torn between the petting zoo and the face painting. She really wanted to pet a bunny, but there were a lot of birds in there too—roosters, chickens, ducks, and a pissed-off swan in a tiny inflatable pool of murky water. Fortunately, my kids are scared of birds. Who knows why? They’ve always thought birds were mean, and that was way before the recent arrival of our psycho mama tit.

The kids stared at the farm animals from outside the
pen. I could tell that even they had stopped thinking it was cute. What the hell is a baby cow supposed to do with a box of bunnies, a rooster, a potbellied pig, and a giant tortoise? How punishing for the animals to be so cramped in such a small Astroturfed pen with so many creatures with whom they have nothing in common! And all of them peeing and pooping on one another as hordes of toddlers tug at their ears.

Finally, Eliza picked face painting and settled in to have her cheeks transformed into an underwater seascape. Jonah chose to use his ticket on the giant tiger slide. For a split second, I turned to tell Eliza to wait for me to return. When I turned back around, Jonah was gone. I raced over to the tiger slide and he wasn’t there. I looked around, scanning
every
single stall and ride, and I didn’t see him. In real time less than a minute had passed. But to my pounding chest it felt like a lifetime.

My eyes darted as fast as my heart was racing. The blood drained from my face. My mind sped through the story as I would tell it to a sympathetic Ann Curry on a very special
Dateline: Gone in an Instant
about the tragedy I was convinced had just occurred. I’ll spare you the details of the candlelight vigil my mind had conjured, and the spontaneous obesity, the messy divorce, and the one-eyed doll they found in the middle of the road (even though Jonah never had a doll, they always find a creepy doll in the middle of the road when a child goes missing). All these images are flooding back to me right now as though the incident had actually happened. But thankfully, it did not.

“Daddy! Daddy! Here I am!” Jonah tugged at my shorts.
I looked down and saw his beautiful face, adorable, spiky blond hair, and that hideously stained
Toy Story
sweatshirt he insisted on wearing. He was real. He was back! I scooped him up in my arms, a little choked up. Even though it had been only thirty seconds since I had lost sight of him.

I plastered a smile on my panicked face. “Always tell me where you are when we’re at the market, okay, Jo?” Everything was fine. Everything was going to be fine.