The Kid: What Happened After My Boyfriend and I Decided to Go Get Pregnant (25 page)

Finally, my mother tracked down a priest, an old family friend, willing to baptize D.J. This man, one of the priests at my parish when I was growing up and the last to hear my confession, believed an expression of cultural Catholicism was better than no expression of Catholicism at all. And Mom found us another church, not one my family helped build but one where my great-aunt Katie volunteered, whose pastor was happy to let us come.

When we tried to board our flight to Chicago, the woman behind the ticket counter wanted to know why the baby didn't have the same last name as either of the adults he was traveling with. Who were we? Where was his mother? What was our relationship to each other? She was about to call security—she was worried we were kidnapping this baby!—when I started telling her the long story of how little adopted D.J. came to have a different
last name than either of his dads. As I spoke, she put the phone down, looking at Terry and then back at me. Apparently, we looked enough like fags. She bought the story and gave us our boarding passes. (Now we carry as copy of D.J.'s birth certificate in our wallets, along with the adoption decree.)

On the plane, more problems presented themselves. The passengers in our row, the stewardesses, even the captain walked up and asked D.J. questions:

“Where's Mommy today?”

“Are you on your way to Mommy's house?”

“Are your baby-sitters taking good care of you for Mommy?”

“Did these two boys steal you from your Mommy?”

“Whose baby are you?”

These were questions, we realized on that flight to Chicago, that we'd be answering for the rest of our lives. Where's Mommy? Since we know where Melissa is, we can answer questions about Mommy truthfully. But answering “Whose baby are you?” will mean coming out over and over again, forever. Whose baby is he? He's our baby.

I hadn't been to a baptism in eighteen years, not since my cousin Amie was baptized and I stood as her godfather, and I'd forgotten about the Q&A. Most of the Catholic baptism rite consists of questions, with the priest grilling the parents and godparents about their beliefs. Whatever the priest asks, you're supposed to respond, “I do.” Do you believe in the Virgin Birth? I do. Do you believe in the miracle of transubstantiation? I do. Do you believe the pope poops lilac water? I do.

Terry wasn't thrilled about having to profess his faith. He threatened to stand at the baptismal font with his mouth clamped shut, refusing to play along with my cultural Catholicism. But once we got to the church, where my mother dressed D.J. in the baptismal gown, Terry was swept away by the moment. With Amie standing as D.J.'s godmother, with Jerry standing as godfather, with my mother, my siblings, my nephew Mars, and forty of my other relatives standing around him, Terry felt compelled to say “I do” after each of the priest's questions, loud enough for all to hear. Under his breath, however, and only loud enough for me to hear, Terry whispered “not” after each “I do.”

After the sprinkle and the “I dos” and before the picture taking,
the priest welcomed D.J. into the Catholic community, and turned to me and Terry. He raised his hand and, in front of my great-aunts, my brothers and sister, my mom, and Christ on the cross, he blessed our relationship. I was stunned. This was above and beyond the call of duty, and more than we asked for or expected. The same church that blesses restaurants and race horses won't bless gay relationships, and our priest was taking some risk in blessing ours. He could be defrocked, I thought, as he blessed us. It was a wonderfully brave thing for him to do. And we did feel blessed. Then we left the church and headed to my sister's apartment, where D.J's baptism cake was set up on the dining room table. Mom had ordered it from the same bakery where she'd ordered all her kids' baptism and birthday and first communion and confirmation and graduation cakes. D.J.'s baptism cake was chocolate, with white icing, blue roses, and a yellow icing cross on top.

The next day, we baptized D.J. a second time. My brother Billy bought us all tickets to a Cubs game. In the bleachers at Wrigley Field, with my mother holding D.J., and my brother Eddie, sister Laura, nephew Mars, and cousins Tracey and Kevin serving as witnesses, Billy asked us if we believed in family, in the Cubs, and in beer.

“In that order?” Eddie asked.

“No,” said Billy. “Normally, beer would come first, but Mom's here.”

“You guys are awful!” Mom said, laughing. “My arms are getting tired, baptize this baby already!”

“Do you believe in beer, the Cubs, and family?” Billy asked again.

“I do,” we all said, and Billy poured beer over D.J.'s forehead. On the flight back home, newly baptized D.J. threw up all over Terry. We grabbed the baby bag and headed for the bathroom. The people waiting in line let us go ahead—parenthood has its perks—and we stepped into the tiny bathroom. At first, we left the door open while we struggled to get the baby out of his puke-soaked clothing. But the open door was in the way of one of the stewardesses, so she asked us to close it. Once the door was shut, I took over wiping up the baby so Terry could take his pukey shirt off. I was wearing a T-shirt and a button-down shirt; I
started taking off my button-down so I could give it to Terry, and Terry took over wiping up the baby.

At this moment—Terry shirtless, me taking my shirt off—the bathroom door opened. A stewardess, a different one, looked in and saw Terry half naked and me fumbling to get my shirt off.

“Oh, my God!” she screamed. “You're disgusting! This is not what the bathrooms are for. Lock the door at least!”

We looked at each other, stunned. Then Terry threw open the door and—still shirtless—followed the stewardess into the aisle.

“We've got a sick fucking baby in here! I don't have a shirt on because I'm covered with vomit! We are
not
having sex in your fucking toilet!”

My hero.

A few weeks after D.J.'s baptism in Chicago, we were in Spokane for a wedding. Terry's older brother, Tom, was marrying a woman he'd met at a fundamentalist Christian church he'd recently started attending—very recently. Tom had known Pam only a few months when they decided to get married. Pam was a nice person, and they seemed like a good match, but why the rush to tie the knot? Why not have premarital sex first, shack up for a couple of years, and
then
get married, like all the other straight people? We disapproved.

Spokane, where Terry grew up, is crawling with serial killers and bomb-throwing white supremacists. All you need to know about this place is that you can stand in downtown Spokane and spit on Idaho. Before we left, I warned Terry that I was not above making a scene if there was any gay-bashing—overt or covert— at his brother's fundamentalist Christian wedding. A prayer for the preservation of marriage as a heterosexual institution, a reading from Leviticus or Romans, a dirty look from the pastor, and I would be noisily up, out of the pew, and out the door.

Terry's mom watched D.J. our first day in Spokane so we could attend Tom's fundamentalist Christian bachelor party. Tom's church frowns on alcohol and naked ladies, so there was no booze or strippers. Instead, we went mountain biking. Tom introduced me to his fundamentalist Christian friends as his brother's “friend.” They'd arranged to borrow a couple of bikes for us, but only after driving to the top of Mount Spokane did they realize
they'd forgotten bike helmets for Terry and his “friend.” They were trying to kill us.

A lot of time at weddings, fundie or otherwise, is burned up with group introductions. The introductions at Tom and Pam's rehearsal dinner went something like this: “This is Jason, he's your Aunt Martha's oldest boy, and came all the way from California. Dennis is Claudia's husband, and Terry and Tom's stepdad. Walt, there, is Dennis's oldest boy. This is Susan, she's the best man's youngest sister, and she's a nurse. This is Chuck, he's Tom's best friend from high school. This is Chan, he's an exchange student staying with Aunt Millie's family, they came in from Vancouver this morning—Vancouver in Washington, not Canada. They had some car trouble, but they made it. And this is . . . this is Dan.”

On Mount Spokane, I was my boyfriend's friend; at the rehearsal dinner, I was no one's friend. I'd dropped from the sky. And so had the baby: “And this is . . . this is the baby.”

There may be a framed photograph of Terry and me in his mother's living room, but it was pretty clear that the sensibilities of Tom and Pam's fundamentalist Christian guests were being deferred to today. I was just Dan, not my boyfriends's boyfriend, and the baby was just Baby, and not
our
baby.

The service the next day was short and sweet, D.J. was good and quiet, and the photo-taking was long and hellish. There was no mention of homosexuality in the service, pro or con, and so no need for me to make a scene. There
was
some Operation Rescue literature on a table by the door, and a letter from the American Family Association tacked to a bulletin board. Another small-town high school cafeteria had been shot up by another teenage boy using his daddy's gun, and the American Family Association wanted Christians everywhere to stand up to those responsible: feminists and homosexuals.

I'd come to Tom and Pam's wedding prepared to go nuclear, but I couldn't get excited about the low-grade stuff we encountered. After being introduced as “This is . . . Dan” for the thousandth time, I started telling people I was the caterer. I let my guard down, and as I sat with my boyfriend's young cousins, D.J. was passed around the room. Everybody loves babies, and no one loves 'em quite so desperately as those fundamentalist Christians.
Everyone at the wedding wanted to hold D.J., just as everyone did at the shower Terry's coworkers held for us after we brought him home, and at the baptism we'd just been to in Chicago. Babies at parties get passed around, no big deal.

But when I looked around and couldn't see D.J. anywhere, I got a little panicky. Terry was at another table, talking with his uncle, but no baby. I remembered where we were: fundamentalist Christians, American Family Association, Operation Rescue literature . . . Oh, my God—what if someone had left with our baby? What if one of the other guests, some wacko fundy, couldn't stand the thought of this cute baby being raised by homos and decided to . . . rescue him? I stormed over to Terry, grabbed his arm, and whispered, “Where's the fucking baby?” loud enough for fundies praying two counties away to hear.

We found D.J. on the other side of the room, sitting on some fundy's lap, smiling. We retrieved him and didn't let him out of our sight or our arms again. Everyone at the wedding was nice, but this was the kind of church clinic bombers, doctor killers, and Buchanan voters are drawn from. After the scare we'd just had, however short it was, we weren't letting the pasta salad and bad dress sense lull us into lowering our defenses. D.J. stayed on my lap for the rest of the day.

Carol and Jack came over to check out our new place and see D.J. Jack had met him the day after we brought him home, but Carol's job had taken her out of town for months. When we all sat down, a smiling D.J. on Carol's lap, they told us they had news.

“You don't have to feel guilty anymore—” Jack said.

“You guys were picked!” Terry shouted.

Carol nodded, Jack laughed, and I could feel the guilt lift from my shoulders.

“We're going to Portland to meet our birth mom tomorrow.” Carol said, “and I only hope we get a baby half as cute as yours.”

In late July, a month after she turned twenty-one, Melissa came up to Seattle. We'd spoken with her a couple of times since Terry brought the baby down to Portland. When I asked when she was coming up, so we could make plans for a visit, she sighed and explained that it didn't work that way. She would get to Seattle
when she could—she wanted to get up here for Folklife, the music festival her father attended every year—but she didn't have much luck hitchhiking with her animals. She would have to find a ride or jump a train, which meant she didn't have much control over when she got to town. Then one day a few weeks later, as I rode my bicycle down Broadway, I saw Melissa sitting on the ground outside a Jack in the Box, with her dog and her cat, spare-changin' with another gutter punk. I kept riding.

When I got home and told Terry I'd seen Melissa, he asked why I didn't stop and talk to her. I didn't know. It was good to see her, but somehow I'd felt that stopping and talking with her in front of her friends might be an invasion of her privacy. Did they know she'd given birth? Did they know she'd given the baby to fags? If not, what would she tell them about the big fag on the bike who rode up to say hello and asked her to come over for a visit?

Later that night, she called to say she was in town.

“Do you want to come see D.J.?” Terry asked.

“Yeah, I guess. Is that all right?”

“Of course. You want to come for dinner?”

“I don't know, whatever.”

Terry went to pick Melissa up in a car Carol and Jack lent us, and I went to the store and bought some steaks.

As soon as Melissa was in the house, we stopped calling the baby D.J.; he was “the kid” again. Melissa didn't call him anything, either, and I felt like we were back at OHSU. We gave Melissa a tour, showing her the baby's room and, finally, the baby, asleep in his crib. It was time for a feeding, so we got him up, changed him, and warmed a bottle. While Terry cooked dinner, Melissa and I sat in the living room with the baby.

She'd arrived in Seattle five days earlier, after hopping a train with a friend, a kid she met in Portland after the baby was born. She spoke of this boy in the same tone we'd heard her use when she talked about David. He wasn't too bright, and hadn't been on the streets for very long. Without Melissa to look out for him, he wouldn't make it. She'd seen her father at the festival, but he didn't see her, and she didn't go up to say hello. She was planning on staying in Seattle for a few weeks; then she wanted to head east, out to New York, for the rest of the summer.