The Kid: What Happened After My Boyfriend and I Decided to Go Get Pregnant (10 page)

Someone once told me that when I was having trouble writing, I should get a clear mental image of one very specific person. Then I should write as if I were speaking to that person, and the words would come. Now when I'm stuck, I picture a person and . . . the words come.

But I couldn't picture a birth mother, and the words didn't come. I sat down in front of my computer determined not to get up and not to surf porn sites, until I finished. Trying to picture the girl I was writing for was impossible. My mind's eye had a hard time conjuring up the girl who'd turn a page in her “Dear Birthparent . . .” book, find a picture of me and Terry, and shout, “Yes, of course! Fags! I want to give my baby to fags!”

The girl who picked us would have to be politically progressive, not acutely Christian, and she'd have to be inconveniently pregnant. I could picture all that; I've known plenty of nice knocked-up hipster girls. The problem was, whenever I pictured a politically progressive, not acutely Christian girl who found herself inconveniently pregnant, it was hard not to picture her at an abortion clinic with her feet up in stirrups. Unable to conjure
up a mental image of a birth mom who would choose life
and
fags, I started surfing through porn sites.

Nothing was coming. So to kill time, I wrote the definitive anti–“Dear Birthparent . . .” letter. Putting this letter in the “Dear Birthparent . . .” book would ensure that Terry and I would never get a kid. Of course, we'd already been told very few birth moms actually read the letters, so what would it matter if we turned in a fake?

Dear Birthparent,

We are Terry and Dan. Yes, we are both men, and we would like to adopt your baby! If you have a problem with homosexuality, please know that we have a problem with teenagers who go out, get themselves knocked up, and then think they can sit in judgment over others. We have been with each other for three months. We hope to adopt a baby soon, as gay relationships don't usually last longer than six or seven months.

We are both atheists.

Dan is an overworked, undersexed sex-advice columnist. He is writing a book about adopting a baby, but we promise we're not doing this just for the fourteen-figure advance. Dan is fifty-nine years old, has heart trouble, smokes three packs a day, and will be the sole means of support for our little family.

Terry is seventeen years old and emulates Martha Stewart in every possible way, including Martha's emotional distance and passive-aggressiveness. After the baby comes, he plans on working a few hours a week in a bookstore that sells a great deal of homosexual pornography.

We live in a cramped apartment filled with dangerous and sharp-edged tchotchkes perched high atop unstable shelving units purchased at an Ikea seconds sale. We have a funky Brady basement, and a killer sound system that will blow our baby's head off if we're not careful! In our kitchen, Terry bakes pies and cookies in effort to make Dan so fat no other gay man will want him.

Our home is near a large park frequented by homosexuals in search of anonymous sexual encounters. There our child will enjoy many hours of unsupervised play. Most of our friends are in the music industry and addicted to hard drugs. They are all very excited about baby-sitting! As most of them use only
heroin and not dangerous hallucinogenics, the odds that one of them will pop the baby into the microwave are pretty low.

Dan will be too busy to say hello to the baby until he is old enough to fetch his morning
New York Times
. Terry will be the primary caregiver, and not letting the baby die will be Terry's top priority! Allowing the baby to die would reflect badly on gay men everywhere, including those gay men in the park having anonymous sex, and would harm the sales of Dan's book. Especially if the baby died during the book tour.

We are looking forward to becoming parents, though we don't like the idea of changing diapers. We welcome frequent visits, so maybe you could come over and change the baby's diapers. We hope to provide a home full of love where a child can grow and thrive in an atmosphere of wonder, stability, and respect, but we know this probably won't happen.

Dan & Terry

While I was working on our anti–“Dear Birthparent . . .” letter, a picture of a girl who might give her baby to fags popped into my head.

Susan is sixteen years old; her parents are fundamentalist Christians. Susan gets pregnant, and her parents refuse to allow her to have an abortion. They insist that Susan choose life. Susan can't raise the baby herself and has no interest in marrying the baby's father. She was sleeping with him only because her parents hated him, not because she found him at all attractive. Giving her baby to her parents to raise was not an option. They were willing, but Susan wouldn't condemn the kid to a childhood like the one she'd suffered: home-schooling, Christian summer camps, prayer meetings, youth retreats. Susan decides to put her kid up for adoption instead. Short of the increasingly popular infanticide, what choice does she have? Her parents give their blessing.

By some miracle, this politically progressive, inconveniently pregnant sixteen-year-old girl contacts our agency. A counselor assembles a “Dear Birthparent . . .” book for her. Flipping through it, she finds our picture. Three months later, Susan gives birth, and we adopt her baby. “Mom, Dad,” Susan says when she gets home from the hospital, “I GAVE IT TO FAGS! I HOPE YOU'RE HAPPY! YOU WOULDN'T LET ME HAVE AN
ABORTION, SO I GAVE YOUR GRANDCHILD TO FAGS! FAGS!”

For Susan's parents, giving the baby to fags is the only thing she could have done that is worse than having an abortion. They would have preferred to see Susan give their grandchild to a couple of wolves to raise. This being my fantasy scenario, Susan's fundamentalist Christian parents get so worked up, they both have strokes and die, and Susan comes to live with Terry, little D.J., and me.

The Susan Scenario, as I came to call our best hope, was deeply satisfying. Once we went into the pool, whenever we were asked who we thought might pick us, we laid out the Susan Scenario. We knew it would be better not to adopt a child given to us out of spite or in an act of adolescent rebellion, but if that was the only way we were going to get a baby—and it did seem likely that it would be the only way we would—we were ready and willing. We talked about Susan constantly, in hopes that repetition would transform our fantasy birth mom into a living, breathing, knocked-up sixteen-year-old with fundamentalist Christian parents, sitting alone on the sofa at the agency's office flipping through birthparent letters, about to turn the page and find our picture.

This was a girl I could write to. I sat laughing and saying, “I gave it to FAGS!” over and over, and a
real
birthparent letter finally flowed out of my pin head, through my fingers, and onto my computer screen. The letter is almost too sentimental and embarrassing to publish. Though my mental image was of a bad girl, our birthparent letter wound up being about as bland and inoffensive as any of those in our book. If you added a line about Jesus Christ and Photoshopped a girl into our picture, you wouldn't be able to tell it from any of the others:

Dear Birthparent(s),

We're Dan and Terry. We are very excited about adopting a child, and we look forward to building a healthy, respectful relationship with you, the child's birthparent(s). We are committed to the concept of open adoption, and welcome a high level of contact. We understand that the decision to place your child for adoption is difficult. We admire you for considering
adoption, and would be grateful if you would consider us as possible parents for your child.

Dan is thirty-three years old and a writer. Terry is twenty-seven years old and works in a bookstore. Very early in our relationship we began discussing the possibility of starting a family. Before we met, Dan explored having a baby with some female friends, but decided against it, as he wanted to play a more active role than this would have allowed. When it became clear that Terry was also eager to have children, we began exploring our other options. When we learned about open adoption, we decided this was the route we wanted to take.

We live in a two-bedroom town house on a quiet street, close to parks, schools, movie theaters, museums, and play-grounds. We are city people, and any child we're lucky enough to raise will be brought up in a diverse and interesting urban environment. While we're comfortable in the home we're in now, we have started looking for a larger house, and hope to move at the beginning of next year.

We both come from large families. Our families are excited about us becoming parents. Dan's mother lives in another part of the country, but visits regularly, and Terry's mother lives nearby and visits often. Dan has three siblings, and Terry has one older brother, so there will be lots of aunts and uncles and cousins. We also have a large circle of close friends who want to help us in our new roles, and want to be involved in the life of our child.

We are voracious readers and are very excited about sharing our love of learning with a child. Terry has already started a collection of children's books. We spend most of our free time going to movies, concerts, and plays, or reading. We have traveled widely, and hope to travel with our child once he or she is old enough.

Dan's work keeps him very busy. Terry will be the primary parent, and will be staying at home to take care of the baby. While Dan's work keeps him busy, he sets his own schedule, and is able to work from home. We're excited about the challenges that raising a child will present, as well as the great joy that can come from parenting. We would love to hear from you.

Dan & Terry

Eesh.

* * *

A friend scanned in our photo, laid out the text, and printed our five hundred copies. Terry took the stack of letters to the bookstore where he works, packed them in a box, and shipped them to the agency. We forgot to keep a copy for ourselves as a souvenir. We sent another check to the agency, this time for the pool entry fee, and a week later a letter came in the mail. We were officially in the pool.

Now we had to wait.

It was two days after Christmas. We walked around a Baby Gap in downtown Seattle later the same day, admiring cute and inexpensive kiddie duds probably made by cheap child labor in far-off sweatshops. We tried to keep from buying anything, and wondered if we'd be in the pool longer than the nine months we'd been told was typical. Some couples waited as long as two years. I predicted we'd set a new record. Terry was more optimistic, predicting we'd wait about a year, maybe a little less. Either way, the itty-bitty flannel shirt we bought at Baby Gap wouldn't swaddle anything for a good long time.

When you'd been picked, the agency would call. If your birth mom was six months pregnant, you got two calls: that first “You've been picked!” call, and another one when your birth mom went into labor. The first call was to adoptive parents what “ Congratulations, you're pregnant,” is to bio-parents. The second was the equivalent of your water breaking; it sent adoptive parents rushing to the hospital.

On the other hand, you might get a call from the hospital, with no warning, and have to make an immediate decision about a baby that had already been born.

“Since being picked can happen at any time, day or night, this minute or a year from now,” Ruth had said at the seminar, “every time the phone rings couples in the pool tend to jump.” Waiting couples, we were warned, go a little nuts.

We wouldn't be like that, we told ourselves. Since we didn't expect to be picked for a long time, we didn't think we'd start getting jumpy until at least a year had passed. It would take a while for a Susan to come along, and we were sure we wouldn't turn into basket cases when we got in the pool. But from the day
the letter came announcing that we were officially in, we were both a mess. Every time the phone rang our hearts stopped.

To help couples stay sane while they wait in the pool, the agency runs support groups. Unfortunately, we don't own a car and the Seattle group meets too far away for us to take the bus. Even if the support group had met nearby, or if we'd owned a car, we wouldn't have gone to many meetings. We're not the support-group type. Also, we'd misplaced the handout the agency gave us on things-to-do-to-keep-from-going-nuts-while-you're-in-the-pool. So we were really on our own.

Every time the phone rang, we glanced at each other.
Maybe this is it, maybe Susan picked us.
We could barely sleep at night, we were so excited. We would sit up and talk about where the crib would go, what we would do with D.J.'s room, what school he'd go to, how Terry's mother would get better about this. Taking the agency's advice, we didn't start putting a nursery together, buying baby furniture, or stocking up on diapers. We would have plenty of time to do that after the call came—hopefully, we would have the three full months to max out our credit cards.

Thursday night, the phone rang.

It wasn't the Call, but Jack of Carol and Jack, the straight couple from our seminar who'd predicted we would be the first from our group to be picked. They wanted to meet for dinner. They lived out in the burbs, but would be in town a week from Tuesday for the pool parents' support-group meeting. Did we maybe want to come to the meeting and then go get some dinner? “We'll show you our birthparent letter if you show us yours.”

When I got off the phone with Jack, I told Terry we should think about joining the support group. It might help to be around other couples going through the same things we were.