There was a time when women had two paths to follow in life and no, you couldn’t choose both. You could go to the university, eye the male goods carefully, become engaged and then get married. You were then a wife and mother until the day you died, barring unforeseen events in life— divorce or death. The other choice was to become a “professional woman”—a name I still find funny—and that meant that, well, dear… you were doing the best you could. You couldn’t find a man. You might not even like men, and therefore…well, let’s just say no more, right?
“It was perfectly fine,” said Franny, when I asked her about it all. “Really, if you didn’t know there was an alternative, you just went along and never gave it a thought. It was only in the sixties, when women started protesting, that it got hard…”
Eric remembers a different story, when Franny was out chasing ambulances, remembering her days as a crime reporter. What was she going to do all day, since the kids were all in school?
I tell you this because I am, in part, in the same boat. There was a time when coming out as a gay man was sufficiently big, sufficiently challenging and risky that that was all you thought about. You hoped your friends and family would be OK. You also hoped that your career wouldn’t suffer and that thugs wouldn’t bash you as you left the bar going to your car.
What you didn’t think about was kids—they didn’t enter the equation. But yesterday I passed Hola magazine in CVS, and who’s on the cover? Elton John, his husband, and their two kids.
The world has changed, for some of us at least. Women can now have careers and babies; gay men can have kids. Which may be why I, after several scotches, left the party late that December night to steal away and cry. I had been watching Quique, Raf’s and my nephew, holding his four-year old daughter. It was a natural thing for him, parenthood, but a strange and wonderful world for me. One that I’ll never know.
And one that I wish I knew, and had lived in.
“I just feel additional,” I’m telling Jeanne. She had been hurt that I seemed distant, remote, more the Marc Newhouse Show than Marc. And it’s true—look, is any uncle important? Mine weren’t—one of them (sorry, Brian, if you’re reading this) was a religious fanatic, the other innocuous and married to a seriously stupid woman, and the third was a pederast. Right, the avuncular experience may not have been an F, but it was definitely below average.
When Franny was there, I was something. I was a son, which was a connection that was primal and primary. When she wasn’t there, I was just a brother or an uncle—which felt like, well, not much. I was the spear-carrier in Aida—decorative, but nobody’s gonna ask me to sing.
“I totally get that,” says Jeanne soothingly. It’s ten AM, I’ve left the house to go sit under the microwave towers for better reception, people are passing me on the street, and I am…
…bawling my eyes out for the children I never had.
She’s gone from being hurt and angry to understanding the situation. As do I. Somehow, the love that John and Jeanne can give me—and my nephew and nieces as well—wasn’t the love I wanted. It wasn’t enough. It wasn’t a little girl who automatically grabs daddy’s hand to be pulled into a lap. It’s automatic, now, for Quique. He barely notices the child on his lap; I can’t take my eyes off her.
So we’re better, Jeanne and I, and I come home exhausted. What I should have done was go and cry—it’s better out than in. Instead I busied myself with a post, and then checked on Facebook. Where there was a message from a guy—Meek Mill. “I want a gay daddy,” he writes.
I think of Sonia: “the Puerto Rico gods are never subtle….”
OK, check out Meek Mill by going to Google. And yup, he’s there and he’s a…
Hip-hop singer!
Well, it’s true, that old cliché, about not getting to pick your family. So I steeled myself, I who had been listening to Thomas Tallis (1505-1585) that morning, to listen to Meek Mill. I devoted ten minutes to the task.
Sorry, Meek, but it was a YouTube clip that was best listened to with the mute button on. Every line ended either with “niggah” or “bitch.” It was music to accompany a riot.
Right—and why would a guy who apparently is well known in the hip-hop world want an aging, classical musician for an uncle?
Well, I didn’t know. Do I take it seriously? The clip had over a million hits, and the Facebook page had thousands of followers. Hey, I reasoned, maybe it’s legit! Maybe he’ll tweet about Iguanas—or even read it!—and then I’ll have a zillion sales and can retire to Cuba! Or we can do a cross-over album! Fame, fortune, stalkers and paparazzi! Wow!
One terrible thing about me is that I always assume that things are what they appear. A hip-hop performer in Philadelphia wants a gay daddy? No problem—I’m on my way to the airport.
It’s for this reason that I have doña Taí. She’s much more realistic, and has checked out Meek. And no, it’s not a hip-hop artist but a kid in Ghana who idolizes the real Meek and whose Facebook page has three prominent characteristics:
1. Atrocious spelling
2. Copious mention of weed
3. Pictures of the guy with staggering amounts of cash
A kid who “worked” at Western Union but now, apparently, doesn’t and who is now my Facebook friend and gonna be my son!
Hmmmmmmm…….
Taí!!!!
Help!
