by Dan Savage
A friend printed up some incredibly tasteful birth announcements for us, and my mother sent a list of addresses. When I got to my grandmother Savage's name and address, I hesitated. I hadn't spoken to my father's mother, my only living grandparent, since my grandfather's funeral ten years ago. She was not a pleasant person. When my parents divorced, my grandmother announced to her family that my siblings and I were no longer her grandchildren. We stopped getting cards from her at Christmas and on our birthdays, which was actually something of a relief. Being disowned by Grandma Savage was like losing a job you hated.
When I saw her name on the list, though, I thought, Why not? On the back of the card, I wrote, “Hi, Grandma. Just wanted to let you know that you've got another great-grandchild. Hope you're in good health. Love, Dan.”
A week later, an envelope arrived for me with some vaguely familiar handwriting on it, but no return address. I looked at the postmark—Palatine, Illinois—and realized it was my grandmother's handwriting, handwriting I hadn't seen since my father left my mother eighteen years ago.
Inside the envelope was D.J.'s birth announcement. Grandma Savage had opened it, read it, gone to her desk, gotten a new envelope, written my address on it, put D.J.'s birth announcement back in its original envelope, placed it in the envelope she'd addressed to me, sealed it, put a stamp on it, and mailed it back. There was no note.
I called my mother, who loves to hear about what a cunt her former mother-in-law is. Then I called my brother Billy, who begged me not to blame this on Dad. Then I called my dad. My dad didn't want me to call up my ex-grandmother and scream at her, and I promised him I wouldn't.
“She's a sick old lady,” my dad said. “What can I say?”
When I got off the phone, Terry and I sat with the card, wondering what could possess an old woman to be so . . . mean. D.J.'s other great-grandmother, Terry's grandma Audrey, was so excited to hold her great-grandchild that she looked as if she might explode. But my grandma? I found myself wishing we had given D.J. my middle name, Keenan, as his last name. Keenan is not only my middle name, it was my Grandma Savage's maiden name. That would've given her a stroke.
We saved the birth announcement my grandmother had mailed back, and we keep it in a safe place. Grandma Savage is an old lady, crazy and mean. When she dies, Terry, D.J., and I will attend her open-casket wake. And when no one is looking, I will slip D.J's birth announcement into her casket. She'll spend eternity with that birth announcement.
In the first few months of D.J.'s life, Terry and I deadlocked on just two issues: circumcision and baptism. I got my way on both.
Like most American males, Terry and I were circumcised as infants. And like most American homos, we prefer circumcised men as sex partners. I lived in Europe for a while, and came to appreciate uncut men. But given my druthers, I'd rather put a cut dick in my mouth than an uncut one. Cut cock just tastes better, and in a culture that's embraced oral sex as enthusiastically as ours has, gay and straight, taste counts for something. Discuss circumcision with new parents—hip ones, living in urban areas—and along with the standard pro-circumcision arguments (“We want him to look like his father”; “We don't want him made fun of in the locker room”; “It's easier to keep clean”) you'll hear implicit and occasionally explicit concerns about how he's going to taste. Straight folks won't usually come right out and say, “We worry about his dick tasting awful”; instead, they communicate their concern with cryptic comments about what his sex partners will think, the smegma issue, and whether being uncut might limit his options sexually . . . and they trail off.
Unfortunately for oral sex, logic is on the side of the anticircumcision activists. Family resemblance? Not something we usually judge on the appearance of genitals. Teasing in the locker room? Half of all boys born in America today are not circumcised; if your son gets teased, he and the other uncut kids can form a gang and beat the shit out of the snip-dicks. Ease of cleaning? We don't cut off other body parts that are hard to keep clean. With that kind of logic, the anticircumcision activists point out, we should have our teeth yanked out to save us the bother of flossing. But even with these arguments refuted, there's still the taste issue to worry about, and anyway, what does logic have to do with kids? Is there anyone less rational than a new parent?
Terry felt very strongly about circumcision: he was for it. I felt strongly about it too: I was opposed. Terry wanted his son's dick to look like his own, while I didn't foresee D.J. and me spending any of our quality time comparing dicks. As for taste, well, the slight possibility that D.J. would get a little less head than his cut friends bothered me less than the idea of taking a knife and lopping off the end of his dick.
At the hospital, Terry had asked Melissa how she felt, and Melissa shrugged. Interpreting this as a yes, Terry claimed it was two against one in favor of cutting D.J. I gave in. Terry could have D.J. circumcised, but I wasn't going to lift a finger to help. Terry made an appointment with a urologist, and then, having lifted a finger—literally, pushing the buttons on the phone all by himself—he decided it was my job to find us a ride to the hospital. I told him no, I meant it when I said I wasn't going to help. If he wanted D.J.'s foreskin cut off, he would have to do it all by himself.
Terry called my friend Dave and asked if he would drive him and the baby to a doctor's appointment. Dave and his boyfriend, Eric, are huge foreskin fans, so when Terry told me Dave would be taking D.J. in to the urologist, I couldn't believe it.
“Did you tell Dave what kind of appointment this is?”
“No. It's none of his business,” said Terry, knowing full well that if he told Dave, Dave wouldn't be driving him to the doctor.
I lifted a finger and called Dave, filling him in on the nature and purpose of this doctor's appointment. Dave called Terry and told him he wouldn't be giving him a lift after all. Terry, furious, called the doctor and canceled D.J.'s appointment, then harrumphed around the house about how disrespectful I was being of Melissa's wishes.
“If D.J. grows up with a complex about not looking like us, or gets beat up in locker rooms, or can't find anyone who'll give him a blowjob,” Terry warned me, “I'm going to tell him it's all your fault.”
I assumed these risks, and D.J. remained intact. Barring infections, complications, or a conversion to Judaism, he'll remain uncut for life.
On the other contentious issue, baptism, I was pro and Terry was con.
My grandfather was baptized, wearing a white linen gown. My mother was baptized wearing the same gown. My brothers and sisters and I were all baptized wearing my grandfather's gown, as were all of my aunts, uncles, and cousins. Hundreds of members of my family have been baptized wearing my grandfather's gown, and I wanted to see D.J. baptized in that white linen gown too. I didn't want to raise D.J. Catholic, as I'm not a practicing Catholic myself. I waver between a cop-out agnosticism and principled atheism, and nothing about becoming a parent made me want to return to the Church, or any other church. But still, when anyone asks about my heritage, I describe myself as Irish Catholic. It's a cultural thing.
From the look on Terry's face when I told him about wanting to have D.J. baptized, you would have thought I wanted to take D.J. home and throw him in a wood chipper.
“You don't go to church,” Terry said when I asked him to go to Chicago with me and have D.J. baptized. “You don't believe in anything.”
But do you have to believe? Almost all of my Jewish friends are bright, atheistic pork eaters, and none would find anything objectionable about bacon bagels besides aesthetics. They don't believe in anything either, but they get together and celebrate Jewish holidays because doing so matters to them culturally. They're not wasting time waiting for the Messiah to come, but they do get together every once in a while and act like great big Jews. Why can't I do the same? Why can't I get together with my family and act like a great big Catholic?
“And it would be a nice thing to do for my mother and my great-aunts,” I told Terry. “They go out of their wa
y to be nice to us; why can't we go out of our way and do this small thing for them?” My family was great on the gay issue all year long; couldn't we be great on the Catholic issue just once? And if we wanted them to take our relationship seriously, and recognize D.J. as a member of the family, would it be too much for us to take him to Chicago, put him in the white linen gown, and let a priest sprinkle some water on his head?
“I'll get on a plane and go to Chicago,” Terry said, “but I'm not going to lift a finger to help with the baptism.”
My mother stepped in and saved me from having to lift any of my own fingers. She found us a church and a priest, ordered a cake, and had the linen gown cleaned and restored. Despite her numerous Catholic connections, though—the woman knows more priests than a Roman male prostitute—the arrangements were more difficult to make than we'd expected. In its tireless efforts to drive American Catholics into the arms of the Lutherans and Unitarians, the Catholic Church has become stingy with the sacraments over the last ten years. They don't want cultural Catholics showing up for the occasional baptisms, weddings, and funerals. The pastor at the church where I was baptized, my mother was baptized, my parents were married, and my grandparents were married, and which my great-grandparents helped build (there are stained-glass windows with our family names on them) refused to baptize D.J. He also refused to let another priest baptize D.J. in “his” church. My mother was told it had nothing to do with her grandson's parents being homos, and my mother almost believed that.
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 w
as 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.