Does This Baby Make Me Look Straight?: Confessions of a Gay Dad (19 page)

Eliza got her first bikini at her last birthday party. It was more of a tankini. But
wow
, did she love it. I had mixed feelings about a six-year-old wearing a two-piece. It’s panties and a bra, no matter how many seahorses they paint on it. What’s next? Little baby thongs and Carter’s brand garters? I don’t like it. But Eliza wore her tankini to bed, she loved it so much. And she has a fantastically adorable, beautifully perfect tummy and, thank God, has no issue with people seeing it. Her daddy could learn a thing or two about that.

I come down to breakfast a few days after Tilley-gate in a new pair of jeans I’m breaking in. They’re a little tight, I admit, but nothing a few deep knee bends won’t fix. Eliza bolts down the stairs and looks at me. She doesn’t say anything for a few seconds.

“What is it, sweetie?” I ask her.

“Those pants, Daddy.”

“Yeah. They’re new. You like them?”

She is very deliberate when she says, “You look like you’re a little . . .
heavy
.”

Now I’m still a gay man and the words hit me like a bullet. It’s the kind of bullet that explodes inside and sprays shame and self-hate throughout my body. Eliza smiles at me, proud that she didn’t use the
F
word. But I’m afraid that’s not good enough.

“You know what, coconut? When you’re talking about Daddy, you shouldn’t use the word ‘heavy’ either.”

“What word can I use?” she genuinely wants to know. I take a few seconds and then it comes to me: “Thin!”

J
onah has this new habit. Almost every night, about thirty minutes after we turn out the lights, he’ll find some arbitrary object in the house and bring it to us as though we had been looking everywhere for it.

“Here, Daddy, I found it!” he says one night, handing me a container of dental floss and a sock. The next night it’s a tape measure. Then it’s a battery. One time he brought Don the wallet he’d thought he’d lost, so his little ploy to get out of bed isn’t without its benefits.

On one particular night, however, Jonah tiptoed down the stairs holding a small cardboard box. He kept staring at it as though willing it to be filled with Legos or Skittles.

“Daddy. Guess what I found?” he whispered, handing it to me sleepily. I didn’t recognize it but I showed my boy the appropriate gratitude and walked him back to bed. Eliza sleeps in the same room with him and she, of course, was awake.

“What’s in the box, Daddy?” she asked. It was already 9:30 and I was starting to get annoyed that both my kids were wide-awake.

“I don’t know, sweetie. I haven’t really figured it out yet.”

I didn’t want to switch on the light, so I used a flashlight
to examine every side. Finally, I noticed on the bottom a small stamp that read “TLC Pet Hospital.” Oh. This was the box that held our dog’s ashes. I sighed deeply as I searched for an appropriate explanation at this late hour.

“It’s Basia, guys. Remember I told you that after she died, we got to keep her ashes? These are her ashes.” Silence.

Eliza was the one to explain it all to her brother. She loves being an expert. On anything. Especially on matters I spend a lot of time explaining to her first. She gets very intense and specific and preachy. I love it.

“Jonah. Basia was very, very old and so she couldn’t live anymore. So she died. And after she died, they turned her body into fairy dust and we have it in the box. It’s a special box. And we can keep it forever. It’s a box only for things that are dead.”

“I’m going to die one day,” Jonah announced proudly.

“Not for a long, long, long time,” I added immediately.

“That’s right,” Eliza assisted me, “first Papi will die. Then Daddy, then me, and then you. Because you’re the youngest. I’m older. So I will die first. And then you can decide where to bury me.” That was all I really wanted to hear on that topic. I mean, who wants to consider their own kids’ mortality? Not me. Not when I was just getting excited about the two episodes of
Top Chef
I had backed up on my TiVo downstairs.

“Nobody is dying for a long, long time. Tomorrow I’m making pancakes. It’s going to be a great day. Now everyone go to sleep!” I kissed them both and slipped out. They were asleep before I hit the door.

I started to head downstairs holding that box in my hands. But I was suddenly reminded of another box I had
stuck in the back of my closet over three years ago. I turned back and went into my bedroom closet and pulled everything out onto the floor. There it was: The Box.

It was still sealed from when I sent it from my mother’s apartment the summer after my dad died. My mom and sister and I were going through all his things and that box was earmarked for me. It arrived at my house about a week later and I stuffed it in the back of the closet—out of sight both literally and metaphorically. Until some hypothetical day in the future when I would hypothetically feel ready to deal with it—hypothetically. And this wasn’t it. Pulling The Box from the closet was just about as much as I could handle for that day.

•   •   •

It’s August and the kids are running naked through the sprinklers. They have only one more week before Eliza starts first grade and Jonah starts his second year of preschool. I can’t believe how quickly time has flown. My dad died in March of 2007. Eliza was only two and Jonah wouldn’t be born for another six months.

Both kids are a little sunburned from the week we just spent in Cape Cod. My parents used to take us to the Cape during our summers. My dad loved being on the beach. When my kids were picking oysters along the shore of the bay, I remembered doing the exact same thing with him. He’d open them right in front of us, squeeze a few drops of lemon, and suck those gnarly slugs right down. It was gross but we’d laugh.

Lately, I’ve been seeing his face every time I look at myself in the mirror. So the caulking on my memories of him is beginning
to peel away. (Why am I using a home improvement metaphor? I only watch those shows on HGTV because of the before-and-afters they do at the end. And that’s only because I love a good makeover show.)

My dad had a playful, passionate quality and the desire to extract the best out of life, like squeezing the most succulent of oranges or brewing an exquisite, robust cup of espresso. I see this quality in myself and hope it catches on to my kids. It’s painful to think he’ll never get the chance to see them grow into whatever it is they’re becoming—their own “makeovers.” He won’t get to see those subtle but unmistakable ways they’ll remind him of me—or of himself. It’s too sad to think about. It’s no wonder I’ve felt the need to keep him away—in a box. Maybe it’s because I lost a parent so soon after becoming one. The role of “Dad” used to be only his. Then, briefly, it was his
and
mine. Now, just mine.

When I told him I was gay, I don’t think my dad ever imagined I’d have kids. That’s the one thing that always brought my parents to tears. “It’s such a hard life being gay,” my mother would say. Well, yeah. Sure, it was hard. But growing up
is
hard. Everyone has their challenges. And fortunately, with the help of trailblazers like Ellen and
Will and Grace
and Dan Savage and
Modern Family
, my dad was around long enough to see me create a “modern family” of my own. He witnessed my relationship with Don for over a decade and watched us develop into a couple that supported each other, shared our lives, building a foundation that tricked us into believing we were prepared to become parents. He had years to develop a healthy relationship with his son-in-law—eventually comfortable enough to argue
with him one instant and laugh with him another. Don also laughed
at
him but that never went over so well. My dad was always a little oversensitive. Not in small part because he was a small man. He was maybe five three. And that was on a high hair day. So he wasn’t so much into the teasing. But it’s hard to take seriously a short little guy whose pants are hiked up in a perpetual “mamel toe,” squishing up his junk like a frog trapped in a jar.

Lately, thought, I’ve been feeling an oddly comforting connection to my dad. I find myself chasing the kids around the house, the way he did with me. Singing to them in the car in weird voices or made-up dialects. Or trying to tickle them under their chin—what my dad used to call “skifu la canaruzi.” It doesn’t actually mean anything, but I run around saying it. A lot. I am reminded mostly of myself at their age, however, when my kids put on a show. Or try to.

The shows are quite pathetic, really. No structure. No real text. Musically lacking and surprisingly unrehearsed, these shows demonstrate an immaturity in narrative. That’s theater-critic-speak for “They suck.” But I can’t get enough of them. Every time I hear Eliza shout “Ladies and gentlemen,” I drop what I’m doing and run for a good seat. Never mind that she hasn’t realized there are only gentlemen in this theater. It’s not for me to say. I’m on their turf now. Eliza barks orders at her brother to dance and jump and sing “Do Re Mi,” which he dutifully attempts with as much flourish as the tough little macho tyke can muster. Poor kid, not remotely blessed with a gay gene.

I think back to the countless shows I used to force my parents to watch. A blanket hung almost perpetually over
the chin-up bar crammed into my door jamb (sadly, the only purpose it served). “Ladies and gentlemen,” I’d sing out, as I’d hit the play button on the opening number of
A Chorus Line
: “Step, kick, kick, leap, kick, touch!” And I would. All around my room. But not before extorting a buck from Mom and Dad, warning them there would be “no refunds or exchanges.” Ah yes, even then my gay gene was working overtime along with the one that kept a keen eye on box office receipts.

I sit and wait while Eliza and Jonah have a quick conference in the middle of their show, which is about a kitty and a friendly rattlesnake that likes popcorn. I wonder if this is how my dad felt as he waited for my extravaganzas to begin. In this moment we’re connected: I’m him and my kids are me.

I feel the emotion catch in my throat as Eliza and Jonah begin to sing, and I stuff it back down. I clap and holler for them, delighted by their own pride and enthusiasm. No, I think, this is about the purity of their creative joy. It’s no time to sink into sadness. I haven’t wanted to explore my feelings about his death since that night in March 2007. Why? I don’t know. It’s not like there was much between us that went unsaid. I knew he loved me. I knew he was proud. He’d written me plenty of letters over the years where he’d said it outright. In one letter in particular, after I’d already moved to California and was living with Don, he closed by saying, “I love you, Danny. And when I grow up, I want to be just like you.” Why, then, I ask myself, am I so reluctant to explore the memories—or open the box?

I think The Box has taken on a kind of epic power. As though I’m hoping it represents everything about him and the love he felt for me. Or perhaps I fear it won’t have any
resonance at all. I know I’m worried it’s going to remind me of the last months of his life. Those were the months when I struggled to be strong for my then two-year-old daughter as she recovered from the heart surgery, while I watched my father’s illness destroy every recognizable quality he ever had.

My father got sick in September of 2005. Eliza was only six months old and my parents had just come out to spend a week with us. We celebrated my dad’s seventy-first birthday at a restaurant near Santa Barbara ironically named Lucky. Eliza sat in his lap and ate her first bites of solid food. It was nice to see my dad hold her, nuzzle her, or as our birth mom, Monica, might say, “love on her.”

Three days before my fortieth birthday, I was coming out of the gym and had four messages on my cell phone. I quickly learned that my dad was going in for emergency surgery after being diagnosed with a brain tumor. It was called a glioblastoma or, if you didn’t want to use the clinical or medical term, you could call it what doctors did: “the Terminator.” Cute, huh? Why cancer needs a nickname, I don’t know. They gave him eighteen months.

The first year went by quickly. He had his surgery. Did radiation. And a successful nine-month treatment with a chemo pill, which allowed him to enjoy almost the same quality of life he had before: he traveled, he ate, he exercised. And most of all, he vowed to beat the odds. He refused to accept the possibility he could be dying. My dad’s strength and will were remarkable. I kept hoping it was something he’d passed along to me.

It was during that year we tried to visit my parents with Eliza as much as we could. They came out to L.A. a few times
to see us as well. But then, a year later, on his seventy-second birthday, the tumor came back and they had to operate again. This was the beginning of what became the longest and most painful chapter: waiting for the end. It felt like it was happening in slow motion. First came the loss of memory; then his hearing and eyesight failed; and then he lost his ability to walk. But in reality, in relation to the rest of his life, it all happened at lightning speed. From November to February, parts of him just disappeared, like puzzle pieces that go missing until you can no longer make out an image. We kept trying to remind him of things. Show him pictures. Make him laugh. But brain cancer has this ruthless way of erasing the functioning of a person—one bit at a time. Like a python, the brain tumor takes hold of its victim and sadistically squeezes the life out of him: his agility, dexterity, speech, memory, humor, continence . . . eventually all identifiable signs of his personality, until there’s virtually nothing left. There was no contest, really, given the magnitude of our opponent’s arsenal, but my dad never surrendered. He never gave in. He continued to tell us he was “fighting it” even in a wheelchair, with barely a voice left and a faraway look in his eyes. Looking back, I felt both punished and proud of his resolve. Punished, I admit, for selfish reasons. I desperately wanted to have one more conversation with him before his mind evaporated. I wanted to hear him tell me he knew what was happening, and he was okay. I wanted him to offer me words of encouragement and advice, words to take with me forward, in his absence. Words spoken man to man, father to son, and from one dad to another.