Read an Excerpt

The Kid

Plume Books

Chapter One

Younger Brother Dynamics

My boyfriend likes to listen to dance music when he drives. He likes to listen to dance music when he cooks, cleans, wakes, sleeps, reads, picks his nose, and screws. There isn't much he doesn't enjoy doing listening to dance music. I'll listen to dance music when I'm under recreational general anesthesia (that is, if I'm really high), or if I'm in a dance club somewhere, dancing. Since I don't get high or go to clubs often, I don't listen to dance music much. As for listening to dance music out of context--no drugs, no dance club, no dancing--well, frankly, I don't see the point.

But Terry was techno before techno was cool, and his attachment to dance music has been a rich source of conflict in our relationship. We've both made sacrifices on the bloody altar of coupledom: I no longer listen to the radio while I go to sleep, to give one piddling example, as he can't sleep with the radio on; he no longer goes clubbing all night long (if I couldn't have a radio in the bedroom, then, by God, his ass had better be in my bed to justify the sacrifice). But he's been having a hard time completely letting goof dance music because much of his pre-me social life revolved around it. After monogamy, dance music has been our single biggest "issue." Monogamy was a quickie fight, over and done with: he didn't want me sleeping around, and I didn't want to fight. Should a day come when I do put someone else's dick in my mouth, he won't dump me because: (a) I'd do all I could to make certain he never found out; and (b) if he did find out, well, he's promised to work through it.

We'd been together two years, so our fights had become highly ritualized ceremonies, and the dance-music-in-the-car fight was one we had down pat. We were in a car, driving to Portland, Oregon, and he was subjecting me to Iceland's pixie lunatic, Bjork. I didn't think this was fair, as I don't like dance music, and when we were doing ninety on I-5, I couldn't escape.

The fight didn't begin at the start of the trip. They never do. I'm a conflict-avoidance champ (see monogamy, p. 3), and if we fought at the beginning of every road trip I would, like a dog that associates a ride in the car with a trip to the vet, refuse to get in the car. Had I anticipated this fight, I would have insisted that we fly, or take the train, or ship ourselves UPS, or get to Portland on some form of transport that puts nice, reasonable people in charge of the music. But Terry was tricky, taking advantage of my memory problems. Before we got in the car, and for about the first forty-five minutes of any trip, Terry was on his best behavior. He lulled me into the car with false promises of books on tape, or conversation. Then, when we were too far from home to turn back, and going too fast for me to jump, he put on a CD he knew I'd object to--chunk-ka tcha, chunk-ka tcha, chunk-ka tcha-- and with fleeing not an option, I had no choice but to turn and fight.

"You know I can't stand dance music, especially in a car, so why do you do this?" I said, typically. "While I'll happily put up with Bjork at home, because I can leave, or blow my brains out, or beat you to death with a hammer, I think it is unfair of you to subject me to Bjork when I'm trapped in a car."

And we were off! I didn't have a driver's license, Terry pointed out, which forced him to do all the driving. Therefore, he should get to pick the music. Yes, but while he might have a license, he didn't own a car, and I happened to be paying for this rental. Therefore, as the automobile's temporary legal guardian, I should have some say in the music I was subjected to. I was being unreasonable, he said. He was being selfish, I responded. Yi, yi, grrr, icha-yiy, Bjork sings.

Thinking it was a compromise, the boyfriend turned the music down. All we could hear now was the beat: boom-boom-boom. Which, as it happens, was the thing about dance music that drove me out of my mind. I was not satisfied. I sulked. He drove. He said something bitchy. I said something bitchy. We fought on for about twenty-five more miles, and finally, unable to enjoy Bjork for my bitching and sulking, the boyfriend snapped off the CD player, and we sat in silence.

An hour and fifteen minutes of silence later, we were in Portland.

We'd driven down to Portland from Seattle on a wet spring day because, in our wisdom and maturity, my boyfriend and I had decided to become parents. We were in Portland to get pregnant.

This was my first visit to Portland. During the seven years I'd lived in Seattle, just three hours away, it had never before occurred to me to visit Portland. Seattle's a hilly, damp place with a lot of water and trees. Portland's a hilly, damp place with a lot of water and trees. Portland and Seattle both have Pioneer Squares, Hamburger Marys, homeless street punks, and huge bookstores. Why would anyone who lives in Seattle vacation in Portland?

My boyfriend Terry, however, was very familiar with Portland. His father spent a couple of years dying here in the mid-nineties. Daryl, Terry's father, had non-alcohol-related cirrhosis of the liver. Daryl went to Portland's Oregon Health State University hospital for a liver transplant, but when they opened him up, they found cancer. They cut out the cancer, put in the new liver, and sewed Daryl up. But the cancer returned, and promptly attacked Daryl's new liver. When they opened him up a second time, the doctors decided he was too far gone to "waste" another liver on, his own bad luck for not being Mickey Mantle. It was in Portland that Terry, his mother, and his brother were informed that their husband and father had less than a year to live.

Three months later Daryl Miller was dead.

For Terry, Portland was the city of bad news. The hospital where Terry's father got his liver and a little while later the bad news squatted on a hill overlooking the Willamette River. It looked like a cross between L.A.'s Getty Center and a clump of East German apartment blocks, and there was no escaping the sight of OHSU as you drove into Portland. As we crossed the Steel Bridge over the Willamette on our way to the Mallory Hotel, the hospital where Daryl died came into view. Looking grim, Terry pointed it out to me.

"I hate this place," Terry said. "I hate fucking Portland." The bridge dipped down and we drove into Portland's old downtown as OHSU slipped out of sight.

The adoption agency we were pinning our hopes on was based in Portland. It had offices in Seattle, and with the exception of a required two-day seminar in Portland, all the preparation--the paperwork, the intake interviews, the jumping through hoops--could be accomplished in Seattle. Once the two-day seminar was over, Terry insisted, we were never coming back to Portland. Ever.

Our agency did "open" as opposed to "closed" adoptions. In an open adoption, the pregnant woman, called the birth mother in agency-speak, selects a family for her child, and has a mutually agreeable amount of ongoing contact with her child, usually two or three visits a year, with photos and letters exchanged at set times. In an open adoption, there are no secrets: the kid grows up knowing he was adopted, and knowing who his bio-parents are. Our agency was the first and still is one of the few in the country to do truly open adoptions. Since a lot of people were unfamiliar with the concept, and since some were spooked by it, the agency's managers felt they needed at least two days to explain how it all worked.

It also gave the agency a chance to weed out couples who didn't get it. Since the agency placed more children than any other in the Pacific Northwest, couples who weren't into openness sometimes attempted to adopt a kid through the agency. These couples might come to resent or fear the birth mom after they got their baby, and attempt to interfere with her right to visit, or make her feel unwelcome when she did. The agency felt it was in the best interest of all concerned that the children they placed wound up with couples truly committed to the concept.

So here we were in Portland, checked into the Mallory, this fussy ol' lady of a hotel, ready to demonstrate our commitment. But if we didn't get out of our hotel room in the next fifteen minutes, we weren't going to make it to the seminar on time, which would make a bad impression, which would call into question our commitment. And if we didn't get a kid out of this, the drive and the fight would all have been for nothing.

But we couldn't leave, because my boyfriend had locked himself in the bathroom and wouldn't come out.

Which was my fault. While I'd been right to stand my ground about blasting dance music in the car, I should have dropped it after I'd gotten my way. But I kept right on picking, making snide remarks about Bjork when we were getting out of the car and walking into the hotel. Had Terry won, he would've done the same to me. After monogamy and dance music, picking was our biggest issue. We both had older brothers; I was the third of four kids, and he was the second of two. Younger brothers are less powerful than older brothers, so persistence and stamina are our survival/revenge strategies. Older siblings may hit harder, but younger brothers move faster, and we are relentless. And like all younger brothers everywhere, neither of us knew when to stop. We took jokes, wrestling matches, and "playful" fights past the point where they were fun or sexy, right up to the point where someone, usually me, got hurt.

In straight relationships the younger-brother dynamic is sometimes present, but only when a younger brother is present, and most women date only one younger brother at a time. Only in gay relationships can two younger brothers come together. The younger-brother dynamic was why, when the hotel receptionist asked us how our drive down was, I opened my fool mouth and said, "Fine, except for the Icelandic lunatic in the car with us." I'd gone too far and someone--Terry this time--got hurt. But I was not responsible for my actions; my birth order made me do it.

From inside the bathroom, the boyfriend wanted to know why I couldn't let it go. He'd turned Bjork off an hour and half ago. We weren't even in the car anymore. Why couldn't I leave it alone?

"It's stressful enough being in Portland at all," Terry said from behind the green bathroom door. He wasn't locked in the bathroom because he was crying, but because we were fighting, and when we fight we prefer to have a door between us. A closed door. "We have to be the presentable, nonthreatening, happy, happy, happy gay couple in a room full of straight people for two days. Why do you have to pick now to be such a prick?"

"'Cause I'm a brat," I said to the door. "I'm a brat just like you. And what is this locked-in-the-bathroom stuff but your final dig?"

He didn't answer.

"We gotta go be presentable now, Terry."

Silence.

"I'm sorry I called Bjork a lunatic. She's a genius."

Nothing.

"Honey, let's go get pregnant. You can name the baby after Bjork, teach him Icelandic folk songs, I don't care."

Still nothing. Finally, in desperation, I lied.

"You can listen to whatever music you want in the car all the way back to Seattle."

The door opened. All was forgiven.

We met right after I turned thirty. Terry was twenty-three, but told me he was twenty-four, thinking the extra year made him sound more mature. I was in a gay bar for the first time in three months. The end of a particularly rocky relationship had kept me in my apartment for weeks, wondering why I'd ever wanted to suck cock in the first place. This relationship ended months before our lease expired, so my ex and I continued to live together. He worked through his grief by stuffing as many cocks in his mouth as he could get his hands on, and then coming home and telling me about it. We all grieve in our own ways. I stayed home and moped; he went out and screwed. The totally unfair part was that I dumped him. Why was he out there having a grand old time while I stayed at home eating bags of cheap cookies and reading The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich for the fourth time? Not fair.

I hadn't had sex in four months the night I met Terry. So, in all honesty, I couldn't have cared less how mature he sounded, and there was no need for him to lie about his age. I was primarily concerned with how he looked, and he looked good. We were in a bar, so I knew he had to be at least twenty-one, but he looked like a kid. He had shoulder-length hair, a huge mouth, and beautiful lips. He was wearing a tight T-shirt and dancing with friends. Terry awakened the dormant pederast that lurks in my soul. Like a lot of people, male and female, I have no interest in messing around with actual teenagers, but grown men who could pass for teenagers? Matt Damon? Johnny Depp? Brad Pitt? The male beauty ideal at the end of the twentieth century is distinctly adolescent, and on this issue I march in lockstep with the larger culture. Cute? Boyish? Hairless? Bring 'im in and strap 'im down.

We were at Re-bar, a funky bar on the edge of downtown Seattle, on a Wednesday night. It was Re-bar's fifth anniversary party, and the place was packed. I was gossiping with Ginger, one of Re-bar's drag queens, while she worked coat check.

"Look at that cute boy with the hair and lips," I said to Ginger, nodding at the cute boy with the long hair and pretty mouth on the dance floor.

When the cute boy with the long hair and pretty mouth came over to coat check to get something out of his coat pocket, Ginger seized the opportunity to embarrass and humiliate me.

"Isn't this the boy you were talking about?" Ginger brayed. "Say something to him." I glared at her. "Talk," she commanded.

"You have a pretty mouth."

Oh. My. God. I sounded like the rapists in Deliverance.

"The better to eat you with," said the boy with the long hair and pretty mouth as he turned and walked back over to his friends.

A little later, and a whole lot drunker, he was back. It seemed he was serious about that better-to-eat-you-with comment. We chatted for a few minutes, just long enough to establish that we were both single, both of us dug the music (he meant it, I was being polite), and neither of us smoked. Then we made our way to Re-bar's only bathroom with a lock on the door.

Terry and I didn't consummate our relationship in the toilet, although Ginger did shove a handful of condoms under the door. Instead, we headed back to my place for some hi-how-are-ya-wanna-fuck-gay-boy-bar-slut sex. Making out in the bathroom broke the ice and allowed us to verify that neither was lying about being a nonsmoker. And before I take anyone home, I always make sure I like the taste of his spit. Terry's spit tasted a lot like beer, and I like beer, so I invited him back to my place. My ex had just moved out, taking the furniture with him, and I don't remember much of what we did in an empty apartment, but I do remember thinking, Wow, this guy is a great kisser.

The next morning, I couldn't remember the name of the cute boy with the long hair and the amazing lips, so I had to peek at his driver's license while he was in the bathroom. That's when I learned his real age and full name. Terry looked like the perfect transitional boyfriend. I had the trajectory of the entire relationship mapped out: I'd enjoy the pleasures of pederasty without any of the legal trouble; Terry would learn how to tie some interesting knots; we'd have a falling out over something stupid, not speak for a couple of months, and then be friends.

But it didn't work out quite that way. Despite my best efforts to find fault with Terry early enough to smother my growing infatuation--he hadn't been to college, he didn't know what he wanted to be when he grew up, I was seven years older, he worked in a video store--we kept on seeing each other.

It helped that, right after we spent the night together, he came down with a bad cold, awakening my warm and nurturing side. I saw him every night that first week, bringing him Thai food and renting him videos. Slowly, gradually, over two days, I fell in love.

On paper, you couldn't design a worse match. He was a club kid. Not the murderous drug-pushing New York City variety, but the kinda club kid who follows DJs, reads British music magazines, and works a seventies look. I don't like music, don't dance, and wouldn't follow a DJ to water in a desert. A mutual friend, a DJ as it happens, who knew both of us before we met, said that when he heard the news, he laughed out loud.

"Never in a million years would I have put you two together," Riz said. "Never you two, never, never."

If I'd met Terry a year or two earlier, I wouldn't have put us together, either. I wouldn't have seen him again after that first night. But here's what sealed it for me, here's what made it love: early in our two-day courtship, when he was sick, I bought him a book he'd mentioned. When I gave it to him, he was so excited he got out of his sickbed and jumped up and down. The book? Gore Vidal's United States, a twenty-five-pound collection of forty years' worth of Vidal's essays. Most twenty-three-year-old fags don't have a clue who Gore Vidal is, and Terry not only knew who he was but cared enough to jump up and down.

We'd been together ever since, and things had taken on an air of permanence: joint checking accounts, mutual decisionmaking about major purchases, vacation destinations, dinner plans, and so on. Though he spent practically every night at my place after the night we met at Re-bar, Terry kept his own apartment for nearly two years. My last boyfriend and I had moved in together pretty quickly, and I didn't want to jinx things with my new boyfriend.

Two years into this relationship, I still called Terry my boyfriend, much to my mother's dismay.

"He's not your boyfriend!" my mother instructed me. "You're thirty-two years old! He's twenty-six! You're not boys! You live together! You're talking about having children! He's your partner, Danny, not your 'boyfriend'!" The older she got, the more my mother spoke in exclamation points.

Terry might not have been my boyfriend, but I felt silly calling him anything else. "Partner" made me feel as if we were cowboys or lawyers or the Clintons. It's just so ... genderless. Straight people find it comforting, I guess, for its very genderlessness. Not coincidentally, the place you most often see "partner" used in the shacked-up-deviants sense is The New York Times obits of high-profile homos. Straight people and press organs that want to acknowledge gay relationships while at the same time pushing the two-penises stuff as far out of their minds as possible love "partner." I hate it.

Other alternatives to "boyfriend" had their own problems. Calling Terry my lover made me feel like Pepe Le Pew, some skunk with a French accent, and I wouldn't call him my spouse because he wasn't. Until same-sex marriage was legal, something I expected to happen around the time my children's children's children were long dead, I could only call Terry my husband or spouse if I was willing to say those words with little quotation marks stuck on each end. This I was unwilling to do. Not that we hadn't thought of throwing ourselves a faux wedding, inviting friends and family, and extracting our fair share of gifts, but we couldn't bring ourselves to do it.

Terry didn't want to get "married" or have a "wedding" or say "I do" because, he said, he didn't want to act like straight people, which is an odd thing for a gay man about to adopt a child to say. Can you act much straighter than having babies? Before we could think seriously about getting a kid, Terry and I had to make a serious commitment to each other. We wouldn't have a pretend "wedding" or exchange "rings," and we wouldn't be changing partners quite so casually as we once did. After the kid came, if I ever left Terry, or if he ever left me, it'd have to be for some very good reason. But there'd be no wedding, and I'd never have a "husband." For me, my discomfort with gay weddings was articulated by a close friend, who observed that gay people getting married is like retarded people getting together to give each other PhDs. It doesn't make them smarter, and it doesn't make us married.

As we drove from our hotel to the adoption seminar, the "boyfriend" issue came up. We hadn't been together all that long, by gay or straight standards, and Terry didn't want us to emphasize our relationship's relative youth for fear of harming our chances. But when the inevitable go-round-the-table-and-introduce-yourselves moment came, we'd have to say something. We had already agreed to lie about how long we'd been together, tacking on at least one extra year. But stuck in traffic on one of Portland's bridges, we couldn't come to an agreement on an acceptable alternative to "boyfriend." We resolved to avoid the issue by avoiding any relationship-defining terms. We wouldn't say boyfriend or partner or lover or anything, we'd just introduce ourselves as Dan and Terry. If any of the straight people at the seminar weren't savvy enough to figure out that we were homos, well, someone else would have to clue them in.

While we searched for parking, we tried to remind ourselves why we wanted a kid, another question we were sure to be asked during the seminar. There were a lot of reasons, and we'd discussed them at great length with each other, with friends, and with family. But as Terry pulled into a parking space, we were both so nervous that we couldn't recall a single one.

Continues...

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Excerpted from The Kid by Dan Savage Copyright © 2000 by Dan Savage. Excerpted by permission.
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