Mommy Man (4 page)

Jerry let me know he was leaving town that night for a wedding, so it would be a few days before we could hang out again. Already, he was better at the waiting game than Poohger.

The next day, he called from out of town. “I just saw another black Nissan Altima, and I thought of you. Maybe next time we go out, we can carpool!”

I never called Jerry back either.

This was my gay adolescence, a series of uncomfortable dates, each of them tragic in its own way. There was the lap band guy, the massive head injury guy, the guy with eight pet rats, the voice-over actor with the lazy eye, the professional paid audience member on infomercials. (He described his job to me as follows: “Sometimes, they want you to clap. But you can’t just clap. You have to get really excited, like this . . . WOOOOOHOOOOO!!!!!”) No matter how adequate they seemed at first, there was a painful vulnerability lying just below the surface, waiting to be discovered. All of them were incredibly nice guys, but none of them was right for me.

The gay world wasn’t at all like I’d imagined when I’d grown up so in fear of it. The men I met weren’t the scantily clad party boys from gay pride floats, nor were they handsome and self-confident like the characters I saw on TV shows. They weren’t even like the creepy closeted Republicans who’d occasionally be featured on the news after getting caught in a sex sting. They weren’t media-friendly. They didn’t dress in the latest fashions or have five-hundred-dollar haircuts. They worked in banks, P.F. Chang’s, and H&R Blocks, where they ate microwaved Hot Pockets for lunch and tried to remember if tonight was the night for
CSI: New York
or
CSI: Miami
. Many of them were brand new to the dating scene. They were regular guys—timid, awkward, and frequently terrified—just like me.

There was nothing unique about my angst after all. With that realization, my postponed puberty began to wind down, and I started to relax.

I’d come across Drew’s profile many times, but he scared me more than anyone. Handsome, successful, smart—he was too perfect. Either he was a big phony, or his fatal flaw would turn out to be particularly lurid, like he’d done jail time or he liked to be barfed on during sex. He described himself as a “TV executive,” whatever that meant. He probably installed cable boxes for Comcast. There was another possibility, of course—that he really was as good as he seemed. That would be even worse. If that were true, there’s no way he’d have any interest in me. I didn’t bother writing.

Then, one day, the unthinkable happened. Drew wrote to me.

His email was funny, sweet, and confident. Everything was spelled and punctuated correctly. He showed genuine interest in the things I’d written about myself, and to learn more, he asked questions that were thought provoking but not intrusive. I promised myself to be cautious. This was too good to be true.

I wrote back more than I knew I should. I labored over every word. I spell-checked and re-spell-checked. I read my email aloud to hear how it sounded, then I read it again in a British accent to make sure it didn’t come across as pretentious. I carefully measured how much interest to show at this stage. I didn’t want to scare him off. When I hit “Send,” I stayed within a five-foot radius of my computer for hours, until I heard the new email ping and saw it was from him. He was still interested. Success!

We set up a lunch date at the Grove, LA’s magical outdoor mall, the most romantic place in town if you’re into blatant commercialism and upscale kitsch, which clearly, we both were. I got there ten minutes early so I could see him before he saw me. But like Poohger, Drew beat me at that game. As I strolled up, he was already sitting outside the restaurant, staking me out.

He smiled in a way that let me know he was relieved by my appearance. He looked just like his picture, as I’d hoped.

Any fear I had of us having nothing to talk about was gone before the bread arrived. If Drew was nervous, it didn’t show. He was the Batman of conversation, slick, unstoppable, with an endless supply of cool tricks at his disposal. The way he lobbed probing, thoughtful questions made me feel like one of Barbara Walters’s most fascinating people. It wasn’t that we were talking about anything extraordinary. He just had this warmth that made me want to open up, and it made me want to know him better, too. He was a talk show host—and not a mere Maury or Montel. Drew was pure Oprah.

He’d been at MTV for eight years, rising from an administrative assistant to someone who
had
an administrative assistant. He was a legitimate big shot, who spent his days hearing pitches from Mark Burnett and Puff Daddy and his nights on location, calling suggestions into a headset. Randy Jackson was a fan of
his
, and the rapper Chamillionaire once let him try on his jewelry. From anyone else, it might have seemed far-fetched, but it was easy to see why famous people would open up to Drew. He wasn’t the typical ass-kissing Hollywood douchebag. He was humble, considerate, and genuinely interested in people other than himself.

Drew had a gift for elevating conversations, even with our waitress. When she asked if she could take our plates away, he responded with, “If I were you, Amanda, I would’ve dumped that penne alla vodka in that old bat’s shitty blue wig.”

The waitress groaned. “I mean . . . right?”

I had no idea how Drew remembered our server’s name. I vaguely recalled her introducing herself when we first sat down, but that was an hour ago. Besides, what the hell were they talking about?

“What old bat?”

“That Botoxed grandma two tables over.” Drew motioned with his fork. “Did you not hear her complaining about her expired coupon?”

Somehow, while fully engrossed in our own conversation, Drew had also picked up on a spat between Amanda and this other customer. As I was still trying to piece together what had happened, Amanda opened up to Drew about her lousy day. She wasn’t supposed to be working, but she agreed to cover for a friend who had an audition for a commercial. That meant dropping her six-year-old son off with his dad for the afternoon—and her two-year-old with
his
dad.

“Slut!” Drew shouted, wagging his finger at her. My jaw hit the floor, but Amanda cackled and high-fived him. It was then that I realized how truly special this guy was. He could not only get complete strangers to share their life stories with him, but he could make fun of them, and they’d only like him more.

It all put me so at ease, I would’ve given Drew my PIN
if he’d asked. It was a great feeling to have on a first date, the notion that nothing was off limits, any topic, no matter how potentially awkward, was on the table. I suddenly felt the freedom to pose the one query I’d been holding back throughout lunch.

“So you work at MTV. What can you tell me about
The Real World
?”

I had promised myself I wouldn’t raise the subject, for fear of coming across as the fawning
Real World
fanatic I really was. I didn’t want to give this guy the impression I was only interested in his cool job or make him worry that I was some crazed blogger looking for a scoop on the next
Battle of the Seasons
.

I had nothing to worry about. Drew was flattered, proud of his work—and full of gossip Poohger would have killed to hear.

The MTV talk gradually led to something deeper, the discovery of a mutual obsession with all things television. Unlike anyone I’d ever met who worked in TV, Drew actually liked TV. If he were ever to win public office, he would be sworn in not on a Bible but on the
TV Guide
Fall Preview issue. There was no reference I could drop that went over Drew’s head. We knew the same Saturday morning cartoons, the same forgotten flops of the 1980s, the same lame reality stars. It was so refreshing to share a bit of news like, “Did you hear Glen Scarpelli came out of the closet?” and not have to explain who Glen Scarpelli was. We played our own TV geek version of
Jeopardy
. I’d throw out an obscure title like
I Married Dora
, and he’d reply, “What was the greatest show
ever
?” Correct answer.

Neither of us considered any of this trivia. It was part of who we were, vital to our discovery process.

The longer we sat, the more we bonded. We got dessert—and about fifteen refills on our Cokes. I worried about dragging the date out too long and sapping all the excitement. Still, there was one question I had to ask before we left. It had been nagging me all through lunch, but I chickened out at every opening in the conversation. It was really big for a first date, the kind of topic that could ruin an otherwise perfect encounter. But I just had to know. As the check came, I finally summoned the nerve and blurted it out.

“So what do you think of Coral?”

Drew stopped cold. He looked up and me and took a deep breath. “I fucking love Coral!” he exclaimed.

It was at that moment that I knew I fucking loved Drew, too.

3

Our Daughter, Fu-Ling

I
’ve been on two TV game shows,
but neither of them showered me with as many fabulous prizes as Drew. On our first date, I offhandedly mentioned a type of British candy I’d liked when I visited London. The next time we met, he showed up with a box of it, along with the new Pet Shop Boys CD, which, for gays, is just kind of a given. When I told him I’d never seen the original
Nightmare on Elm Street
, he immediately went out and bought me the DVD. He once saw me playing Mario Kart, and even though he couldn’t stand video games, he messengered a copy of the newest installment to my apartment the day it came out to make sure it reached me before I bought it for myself. Every date with my new boyfriend was like a Showcase Showdown. It left me wondering whether he would one day pick me up on a catamaran or in a brand new car!

I wasn’t the only one who benefited from Drew’s generosity. He drove across town to Best Buy every Tuesday, when new releases arrived, and bought absolutely anything he could give away to anyone he even remotely knew. He thought nothing of dropping $90 on an
X-Files
box set for the nerdy receptionist at his office or $40 on the limited premium edition of the direct-to-video title
Aladdin 3
for his goddaughter, who kind of liked the first one.

For a while, I thought Drew must be a millionaire, but then I saw his apartment. His dump was just a few blocks from my dump on the dumpier side of West Hollywood, not far from where Eddie Murphy and Hugh Grant were busted for picking up prostitutes. In many ways, Drew’s building was indistinguishable from a prison, right down to the bars on the windows. There were no curtains, no decorations on the walls, and where a dining room table should have been, Drew had a large cardboard box with the leftovers of last night’s pizza on it. Anyone who equates being gay with fastidiousness and design skills has clearly never been his houseguest.

It’s not that Drew is a slob. He just prefers to spend money on other people rather than himself. If the guy who cut his hair had lacked a dining room table, Drew would’ve had one express delivered to the salon, with assembly thrown in. Asked why he didn’t just buy himself one, though, Drew shrugged and asked, “What’s wrong with the box?”

People were always trying to repay his kindness, but as beneficent as Drew was with others, he was miserly about accepting gifts in return. He still took a clunky first-generation iPod with him to the gym. As his birthday approached, I figured I’d get him the latest model, until I saw that he had a closet full of iPods, unopened in their original packaging. It turned out most of his close friends and business associates had the same gift idea at one point or another, but Drew felt uncomfortable accepting something so expensive. Instead, he held onto all the iPods until Christmas, then regifted them to his family. “Does Matt have an iPod?” he’d ask.

“You gave him one for his birthday.”

“But does he have a Nano?”

It wasn’t just Apple products Drew tossed aside. After I moved in with him, I started finding unused gift cards everywhere in his apartment. They were buried in drawers or amid piles of receipts on top of his bureau. $25 to Bed, Bath & Beyond, $50 to AMC movie theaters, a $100 spa voucher.

“Why don’t you spend these?” I demanded.

“I don’t like to. I feel weird.”

He had enough Cheesecake Factory gift cards to eat Crispy Caramel Chicken for a month, enough Gap cards to buy the same bland sweatshirt in nine different colors. He had $300 in Best Buy cards. Best Buy! He was there every week! My new boyfriend was probably the first hoarder in history who stashed items of actual value.

One day, in frustration, I scoured the apartment, with the goal of finding every last unused gift card. Over the course of one afternoon, I turned up untold stashes of store credit and amassed them in a massive plastic Matterhorn on top of his dining room box.

The grand total was $2,255.

“We have to start spending these,” I told him.

Drew rolled his eyes. “But I have money.”

As his birthday approached, his friends started calling and emailing me. “He’s so hard to shop for. Any idea what he wants?”

“Geez, if I knew, I’d get it for him myself.”

Then they’d sigh. “Fine, I guess I’ll just get him a boring gift card.”

I wanted to tell people not to waste their money, but then I realized something.
I
had no problem spending gift cards. “Great idea,” I’d say. “I think he really likes Restoration Hardware.”

I told everyone the same thing. “Get Drew a gift card to Restoration Hardware. He’d love that.” Did I feel a tiny bit guilty? Sure, but I had a plan.

On his birthday, he arrived home from work, arms laden with iPods from people who hadn’t bothered to contact me. “Ugh, I hate these things!” he groaned as he walked in. He went to dump his bags on his dining room box, when suddenly he stopped short.

The box was gone. I was sitting instead at a brand new, gleaming oak table. “Where did you get that?” he asked.

“Restoration Hardware. Happy birthday.”

He gave me a giant hug, then backed up and looked around, just a tinge upset. “What did you do with my box?”

It wasn’t long before Drew and I started hearing the question all young, committed couples are hounded with: “So . . . are you guys planning on having kids?” Given that we were gay, the topic was usually broached delicately or with a wink, like they knew it was a long shot. “That’d be so awesome!” people said. Often, the query was followed up with, “Because you
can
, you know?” or with a reference to Rosie O’Donnell’s family. “She has, like, ten kids,” people would remind us.

I imagine we got the question more than most gay couples, simply because Drew connected better with kids than anyone I had ever met. If we found ourselves in line behind a father and son at the movies, it was a given that Drew would start talking to the kid about what he was going to be for Halloween or complimenting his cool Power Rangers T-shirt. Personally, I feared strangers’ children because talking to them in public can quickly get you earmarked as a perv. Drew never made anyone uncomfortable, though. His interest in kids was so pure and sweet.

If we were having dinner with our friends Marcel and Deborah, we would arrive an hour early so Drew could squeeze in some play time with their daughter, Charlotte. When it was time to go, it was his leg Charlotte would cling to. “Don’t leave!” she’d wail. “Read me a story, Drew!”

Older kids loved him because he worked at MTV, and he was happy to share the behind-the-scenes scoop on
Jackass
and
Pimp My Ride
. Younger kids loved him because he was silly and imaginative, unafraid to play princesses with them or wrap a diaper around his head for a cheap laugh.

In another generation, Drew would’ve been the host of a kiddie TV show, an asexual clown with a puppet on his lap and a mid-afternoon time slot. When people asked him why he never had a family, he’d put down his ukulele and motion to the hordes of screaming toddlers at his feet. “Aw, these are my kids,” he’d grin.

This was the twenty-first century, though, and all those well-meaning friends were right. We
could
have kids of our own. We
should
have kids of our own. If anyone deserved to be a dad, it was this garrulous man I’d fallen in love with.

As much as we liked the idea, it did seem like a long shot—at least until we found an adoption agency that accepted gift cards. That didn’t stop us from having fun with the idea.

I would suspect that overall, I’m a pretty kick-ass guy to be in love with. I’m not controlling or aloof. Not commitment phobic or necrophilic. Not an alcoholic, chocoholic, or rage-oholic. My loyalty is strong; my body odors, weak. I’m too small to abuse you physically, too conflict averse to beat you up emotionally. I don’t have a lot of bad habits like smoking crack or stabbing Federales. I’m equally comfortable making conversation with your parents, your grandparents, and your special needs cousin. I’ll never tell you you look fat, old, or confused, but I will tell you when you have a full broccoli floret stuck in your teeth. You can even leave the toilet seat up with me. When I need to sit, I’ll know what to do. But if you do plan to date me, there is one tremendous catch you should be aware of.

I play pranks.

Not often and not haphazardly but when you least expect and with cunning precision. I prank the way some people bite their fingernails or speak French. I can’t help it. April Fool’s Day is my Kwanzaa.

Drew and I met on February 1, so our bi-month-iversary seemed like the perfect time to introduce him to my dark side. Cue evil laugh.

He’d been developing an MTV series with Paula Abdul, who brought the requisite dose of crazy to my favorite TV show,
American Idol
. She once left Drew a rambling, tearful voice mail message, which we played about a hundred times, laughing and laughing. Paula had been trying to get Drew to attend a taping of
Idol
, and now that he had a boyfriend who was slavishly devoted to the show, Drew finally took her up on the offer.

On the very morning we had tickets, April 1, 2003, a scandal rocked the entertainment headlines. A finalist named Corey Clark had been booted unexpectedly off the show by producers. For weeks, Clark had been making waves by serenading Paula at the judges’ stand. Now he would become better known as the dude who’d been arrested for allegedly beating up his sister.

It was a juicy story, but it deserved to be even juicier. The stars had aligned, and conditions were ripe for a perfect storm of pranksterism. I typed up a phony news story, slapped a
Daily Variety
logo on it, and emailed it to my trusting boyfriend.

Ousted “Idol” Fights Back—Alleges Affair with Host

Tues Apr 1, 1:06 PM ET

LOS ANGELES (Reuters)—Disgraced “American Idol” contestant Corey Clark has lashed out against the show, claiming producers are hiding the real reason for his expulsion. Clark alleges that two months ago, during the show’s semifinal round, host Paula Abdul “made advances of a sexual nature, after which we had sex.”

Clark claims the former pop princess isn’t kidding around when she declares her crushes on the competitors. “She’s a predator,” he says. “She’s pushing 40, she’s lonely and she hasn’t had a hit in years. She’s doing the show for two reasons. To revive her career and to meet men. Period.”

Throughout their fling, Clark says Abdul lavished him with expensive gifts and gave him tips on his image, encouraging him to wear a sheer mesh shirt during last week’s show. “I didn’t want to wear that,” he says. “It was skanky.” He claims he was often absent from the Hollywood Hills mansion that houses the other contestants because he was at Abdul’s home with her and what he describes as “her ugly dogs.”

I worried that I’d gone too far. It was so absurd, and the quotes were particularly nonsensical. Drew was smarter than to fall for this.

Within seconds, he responded. “HOLY SHIT!” he emailed. “HOLY SHIT! HOLY SHIT!” As any prankster knows, this was a rave review. Three “Holy Shits”! Kudos to me!

There was just one thing I hadn’t expected: Drew had a dark side, too. My good-natured boyfriend, it turned out, was a super-gossip. Before he replied to me, he forwarded my email to half his address book. His coworkers, his boss, the MTV press department.

Then, suddenly, he called me in a panic. “Tell me you didn’t just burn me with an April Fool’s joke.”

I snorted with glee. “To a crisp!” I cheered.

But Drew wasn’t laughing. He let me know that my email was currently circulating throughout Hollywood—among his agent friends, his producer friends, page 6 of the
New York Post
. Any second, Kurt Loder might break into TRL with an MTV News special report.

“I could lose my job!” Drew said. “Thanks a lot.”
Click.

Of course, he didn’t get fired. He just had to send an embarrassing retraction and make a couple of crow-eating phone calls to reign in the hoax before anyone took it seriously. It turned out that no one other than Drew believed the story anyway. As I suspected, it was too ridiculous.

We went to the taping that night as planned. I got to meet Paula Abdul. She was extremely nice. She called me “Jimmy.” It was a great time.

Did I learn my lesson? Yes. April Fool’s Day is fun!

The following year, I cast my net wider. My target: everyone.

I spent months planning my ruse. It had to be elaborate. It had to be believable. It had to be perfect.

Then, first thing on the morning of April 1, the following email hit the in-boxes of just about everybody I know.

From: Jerry Mahoney

To: [recipients]

Subject: Big News!

Date: Thu, 1 Apr 2004 05:59:12 -0800

Dear friends and family:

Drew and I have a very big announcement to make, and I hope you’ll forgive us for doing this via email, but it really was the best way to reach all of you at once. A few months ago, we began the process of adopting. We have lots of love to give, and if we can piss off a few right-wingers in the process, so much the better!

After exploring several options, we decided on an agency that specializes in Chinese adoptions. It seems fitting for us to take in an Asian kid. I mean, Drew and I both love Chinese food and Jackie Chan movies. (Ha, ha. Geez, if that’s my level of cultural sensitivity, I feel sorry for this kid already.) Maxine, our agent in America, knew of a particularly distressed orphanage in the Siyue Hunong region. We submitted our application, had it professionally translated, wrote about a thousand checks, and submitted to a very long, awkward, static-filled phone interview. Then, finally, just last night, we signed the papers. In three weeks, we’ll be flying to Shanghai (and then taking a nine-hour train ride) to pick up our daughter!

Out of respect for her heritage, we’ve decided to keep her given name, Fu-Ling. We deliberated whose last name to give her, weighing all the implications of each, how our families would feel, and, of course, whose name sounded better with Fu-Ling. And in the end we flipped a coin. Welcome Fu-Ling Tappon. (Dammit. Should’ve picked heads... Well, at least the next one will have my name.)