The Kid: What Happened After My Boyfriend and I Decided to Go Get Pregnant by Dan Savage
Authors: Dan Savage
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about you. And if you have more than one kid who wants your end tables, you can have fun drafting and redrafting your will.
Sometimes, late at night, I'd sit up and worry that we might be adopting to prove a point. Were we doing this because we could? On some level, I think, we were. It wasn't the sole reason, but even if we were only doing this to prove something to the world or to ourselves, there are worse reasons to have kids. Straight people all over the world have kids for those much worse reasons every day. They fall down drunk and get up pregnant.
The same impulse that drives grown gay men to walk around holding hands could be pushing us toward this. For same-sex couples, taking a lover's hand is almost never an unself-conscious choice. You have to think about where you are, whether you're safe, and you have to look. By the time you determine you're safe, you're not even sure you want to hold hands anymore. The genuine moment has passed, but you've invested so much energy and angst that now you can't not take your lover's hand. You wind up holding and the only reason you take your lover's hand is to prove that you can.
Wondering whether we were doing this “just to prove we can,” made us wonder about our motives. In that hesitation, the decision to adopt became more than “Let's have kids.” Public displays of affection for gays and lesbians are political acts, and what could be a larger public display of affection than the two of us adopting a kid together.
I had a secret reason for wanting kids, one I haven't shared with my boyfriend. It's not an easy thing to write, and I hope you'll understand why I'd rather you didn't tell Terry. I'm not sure how he would take it. I wanted to have kids because I wanted to get fat. Actually, I should say, I wanted to have kids because I'm going to get fat.
Good Gay Men are not supposed to be heavy (though some gay men are allowed to be “bears” these days, if they're furry enough). We're expected to do our sit-ups, watch what we eat, and show up at family and high school reunions looking fabulousso that the girls can say, “What a waste!” and the boys can say, “What a fag!”
Staying fit is a crushing regimen, however, one that doesn't leave much time for anything else. In my twenties, I ran just far enough on treadmills and peddled just fast enough on stationary bicycles to stay fuckable. My fitness goal was to look good enough in clothes that I could get other people out of theirs. While my stomach looked flat enough with a shirt on, there was no six-pack under my slave-labor Gap-fag T-shirt. A two-liter bottle, yes, and one day soon, a keg. But a six-pack? Never. I was never enough of a gym queen to get comfortable getting naked in public. I never danced shirtless in a club or strolled around a bathhouse in a towel. I never even posed for porno Polaroids.
(Except on one occasion, when Polaroids were taken without my consent by a one-night stand. Since I didn't want them taken, I wasn't really posing for them. Sadly, I wasn't in a position to prevent them from being taken, if you follow my drift, and I didn't have the nerve to demand them back from from the scary freak who took 'em once I was, um, able to do so. These photos will probably surface after this book comes out, and my fitness to be a parent will be challenged by those who think kinky = crazy.)
Until I turned thirty, I made it to the gym at least three times a week. I fought getting fat long and hard, and when I went home for weddings and funerals the girls said, “What a waste,” and the boys said, “What a fag!” But since turning thirty, I hadn't managed to get my rear end into a gym very often. This was not good. My gene pool is filled with fat, and an extreme kind of fatness it is. My people do not get pleasantly plump. We Savages do not “fill out,” or “wear it well.” We balloon. My family is inclined toward obesity, to thighs so large we're forced to walk like mincing
Sometimes, late at night, I'd sit up and worry that we might be adopting to prove a point. Were we doing this because we could? On some level, I think, we were. It wasn't the sole reason, but even if we were only doing this to prove something to the world or to ourselves, there are worse reasons to have kids. Straight people all over the world have kids for those much worse reasons every day. They fall down drunk and get up pregnant.
The same impulse that drives grown gay men to walk around holding hands could be pushing us toward this. For same-sex couples, taking a lover's hand is almost never an unself-conscious choice. You have to think about where you are, whether you're safe, and you have to look. By the time you determine you're safe, you're not even sure you want to hold hands anymore. The genuine moment has passed, but you've invested so much energy and angst that now you can't not take your lover's hand. You wind up holding and the only reason you take your lover's hand is to prove that you can.
Wondering whether we were doing this “just to prove we can,” made us wonder about our motives. In that hesitation, the decision to adopt became more than “Let's have kids.” Public displays of affection for gays and lesbians are political acts, and what could be a larger public display of affection than the two of us adopting a kid together.
I had a secret reason for wanting kids, one I haven't shared with my boyfriend. It's not an easy thing to write, and I hope you'll understand why I'd rather you didn't tell Terry. I'm not sure how he would take it. I wanted to have kids because I wanted to get fat. Actually, I should say, I wanted to have kids because I'm going to get fat.
Good Gay Men are not supposed to be heavy (though some gay men are allowed to be “bears” these days, if they're furry enough). We're expected to do our sit-ups, watch what we eat, and show up at family and high school reunions looking fabulousso that the girls can say, “What a waste!” and the boys can say, “What a fag!”
Staying fit is a crushing regimen, however, one that doesn't leave much time for anything else. In my twenties, I ran just far enough on treadmills and peddled just fast enough on stationary bicycles to stay fuckable. My fitness goal was to look good enough in clothes that I could get other people out of theirs. While my stomach looked flat enough with a shirt on, there was no six-pack under my slave-labor Gap-fag T-shirt. A two-liter bottle, yes, and one day soon, a keg. But a six-pack? Never. I was never enough of a gym queen to get comfortable getting naked in public. I never danced shirtless in a club or strolled around a bathhouse in a towel. I never even posed for porno Polaroids.
(Except on one occasion, when Polaroids were taken without my consent by a one-night stand. Since I didn't want them taken, I wasn't really posing for them. Sadly, I wasn't in a position to prevent them from being taken, if you follow my drift, and I didn't have the nerve to demand them back from from the scary freak who took 'em once I was, um, able to do so. These photos will probably surface after this book comes out, and my fitness to be a parent will be challenged by those who think kinky = crazy.)
Until I turned thirty, I made it to the gym at least three times a week. I fought getting fat long and hard, and when I went home for weddings and funerals the girls said, “What a waste,” and the boys said, “What a fag!” But since turning thirty, I hadn't managed to get my rear end into a gym very often. This was not good. My gene pool is filled with fat, and an extreme kind of fatness it is. My people do not get pleasantly plump. We Savages do not “fill out,” or “wear it well.” We balloon. My family is inclined toward obesity, to thighs so large we're forced to walk like mincing
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