The Kid: What Happened After My Boyfriend and I Decided to Go Get Pregnant

by Dan Savage

  “How did he sound about all of that?”

  “He seemed pretty agreeable,” Laurie said. “He was looking for direction more than anything. He's glad Melissa did an adoption, and he wanted to know how to work within this situation. I would encourage you guys to go ahead and meet with him.”

  I always swore I wouldn't be the kind of parent who drags yowling kids onto crowded flights. Flying is hard on kids, and it's harder still on adults seated near kids. But on our flight to Chicago for his baptism, D.J. didn't cry, he didn't squirm. Flying didn't seem to faze him at all. Oh, he puked on the flight back, but he does that at home, too.

  After that first flight, work took me out of town often, and Terry and the baby came along for the ride. By the time we got on a plane to New Orleans to visit his birth mommy and birth daddy, D.J. was a frequent flyer, with trips to Chicago, Spokane, New York, L.A., Aspen, and Toronto under his belt. D.J. had been more places in his first nine months than I'd been in my first nineteen years.

  The plane ride to New Orleans was tense, with the usual round of “Where's mommy?” questions directed at D.J., and both Terry and I too nervous about meeting Bacchus to lie convincingly. “She's in New Orleans,” we told the stewardesses, the other passengers, and the pilots, “and we're going for a visit.”

  “Which one of you is the daddy?”

  “We both are,” Terry said, “we adopted him. We're his dads.”

  We'd sent Bacchus a letter telling him where we'd be staying, and told him to give us a call when we got there. We had a number for him where he lived, but it was a pay phone in the hallway and the line was always busy. Shortly after we got to our hotel— a real dump right off Bourbon Street—Bacchus called. He could come over on Saturday or Sunday morning for a few hours, whichever we preferred. Tomorrow, I told him, would be great, in the lobby at ten.

  A few minutes later, Melissa called from around the corner. While Terry unpacked and fed the baby, I went down to the lobby and waited for her. Street kids aren't welcome in the lobbies of New Orleans tourist hotels, not even dumps like the one we were staying in, and I didn't want Melissa hassled by the management.

  She looked the same, and was wearing the same clothes she was wearing when we saw her last in Seattle, not to mention the day she put D.J. in our arms, and the day we met her at Outside In: black boots, shorts cut off at the knee, Guinness T-shirt, black sweatshirt. Her black hair was a little longer, and she'd lost some weight, but all in all she looked good; traveling around the country agreed with her, apparently. As soon as she was in our room, D.J. crawled up to her and pulled himself to a standing position between her legs. Pulling himself up was D.J.'s newest trick.

  “We did a pretty poor job of babyproofing our house,” Terry said, “so D.J.'s finishing the job for us. Anything he can reach gets yanked down, knocked over, and broken—and he's reaching more things every day.”

  “D.J. has spent many happy hours doing what I've only allowed myself to dream about,” I said, “throwing Terry's records and CDs on the floor and stomping all over them.”

  “D.J. looks a lot like Bacchus,” Melissa said. “He doesn't look anything like me.”

  D.J. had Melissa's nose, and his eyes were shaped like hers. Melissa had been born with blue eyes and lightish hair, and at the hospital she'd predicted that D.J.'s eyes and hair would darken in a few months, just the way hers had. But his eyes had stayed blue, and his hair was still blond.

  We went out to dinner at a place a few blocks from our hotel and, after dinner, walked around the French Quarter, D.J. riding on my back. Melissa explained the particular hardships of life on the streets in New Orleans. “The police here bust us for nothing,” she said. “They're always nailing us for public drunkenness, but, like, that's such bullshit because everybody is drunk in New Orleans, all the time. They don't arrest tourists for being drunk, just us.”

  We woke up pretty early the next morning and moved to a different room. In chasing D.J. around the night before, we'd discovered that none of the electrical outlets in the room had covers. The little plastic prong units Terry had brought to seal the outlets couldn't stop D.J. from sticking his entire hand into the wall, grabbing ancient exposed wires, and electrocuting himself. When we explained this problem to the clerk, she moved us to a much nicer room at the other end of the hotel. Here the outlets had covers, but the ancient floor-to-ceiling windows couldn't be closed. We had to move furniture in front of them to prevent D.J. from crawling out onto the balcony and into other people's rooms.

  At a quarter to ten, I went downstairs, leaving Terry in bed with D.J. On a large leather couch in the lobby, I sat under a gilt mirror and read the paper while I waited for Bacchus. At ten after, a well-dressed young guy in slacks, a button-down shirt, and a black overcoat walked into the lobby. He had D.J.'s hair, the same color blond, but this couldn't be Bacchus, not the way he was dressed. Melissa had told us back in Portland that Bacchus had a mohawk and dressed the way she did. The man stood in the doorway for a second before he saw me looking at him.

  “Are you Dan or Terry?”

  I got up and introduced myself, and we shook hands, looking each other up and down. He smiled and laughed nervously, and I asked him if he wanted to go upstairs and meet D.J. I had planned on sitting him down in the lobby for a few minutes, so we could talk face to face first, but that suddenly seemed cruel.

  D.J. was standing at a dresser, pulling open drawers and laughing. Bacchus sat down on the edge of the bed; Terry scooped D.J. up, walked him over, and set him on Bacchus's lap. Melissa was right: the resemblance was remarkable.

  “This is too much,” Bacchus said, smiling at D.J. as Terry took their picture together.

  Just as we had at the hospital with Melissa, Terry and I hung back. We sat in chairs by the window at the other end of our room, and let D.J. crawl all over his birth father.

  Bacchus told us he stopped dressing like a punk after a run-in with New Orleans's famously corrupt police department, as we walked down Bourbon Street with the baby. Bacchus ran into a few friends he hadn't seen since being arrested. He introduced D.J. to everyone, and us, too, and the fears we had about meeting him melted away. He was nice in that affable, unflappable way only straight guys ever are. It helped that he was just as blown away by D.J. as we were. Bacchus's broad smile, open face, and easy laugh made him seem like the temperamental opposite of sullen and introverted Melissa. Bacchus was also clean, his mohawk grown out so that you couldn't tell he'd ever had one, and dressed like a student, not a punk. A little bit of street showed around his edges, though.

  “PUNK” was tattooed on the knuckles of his right hand, and “ROCK” on his left. Sitting in a park on the grass, watching D.J. crawl around, Terry noticed that the “K” in “PUNK” was backward. Was that intentional?

  Bacchus looked down at his tattooed hand and laughed.

  “It was an accident. I did it myself and, like, I messed it up. It's kinda punk rock though, don't you think?”

  Back in Portland

  On D.J.'s first birthday, we packed the car and drove to Portland. The day before, we'd had a party and D.J. tore into his first birthday cake like a pro. Both of his grandmothers snapped pictures, and our friends brought him books and clothes and toys. D.J. performed his latest trick for his guests—pulling himself to a standing position and taking a couple of unassisted steps before plopping down on his big diapered butt. We had his party the day before his birthday because we wanted to be back in Portland, at the Mallory, as on the day we brought him home from the hospital.

  We didn't have to argue about the music on the drive down. We hardly ever argue about music anymore, because now we listen to stuff we both hate. Terry saw something on TV about Mozart and Bach making babies smarter. With D.J. strapped into his new, larger front-facing car seat, we listened to Bach for three hours down I-5 to Portland. It wasn't a rental car this time, but our car; Terry finally convinced me to buy one by coming up with a car-related Worst Case Scenario: How would I f
eel if D.J. died while we waited for an ambulance to take him to the emergency room because we didn't have a car of our own? Two weeks later, we owned a Honda.

  On D.J.'s first birthday, Melissa was still traveling with Ten Spot, though they had lost the van. They were stopped by cops in California, and since the van wasn't registered to them, and since Ten Spot didn't have a license, and since they didn't have any insurance, the police impounded the van they both had worked so hard to get running. Most of their stuff was impounded along with the van, though Melissa was able to get her dog and cat out before the police towed the van away. But Melissa didn't seem upset. They'd find another way to get around, she told me, and were planning on being in Seattle by June. Bacchus was still living in New Orleans. We sent him pictures; he called us once in a while to check on D.J.

  My mother and Terry's mother continued to overwhelm us. Terry's mom came to town to see her grandchild, always with gifts, and loved to get down on all fours and chase D.J. around the house. My mother, who didn't live as close, didn't see D.J. as much as she'd like—she'd like to see him hourly—but that will change this summer when she retires. We spent D.J.'s first Christmas at my father's house, and my dad couldn't get enough of his new grandson. We had something in common now, me and my father, something we could talk about. We were both dads.

  Carol and Jack adopted a beautiful baby girl three months after we brought D.J. home. They wanted another child right away, a little sister or brother for their daughter, so they went right back into the pool. Bob and Kate were always there for us, offering advice, and baby-sitting—so Terry and I still manage to play a little pinball in leather bars every once in a while. Bob and Kate's kids—Lucy, Gus, and Isobel—love to play with D.J., and one day Lucy and Gus and D.J. will all share stories about their birth moms with each other.

  So many very bad things could happen that I fear ending this with any happily-ever-after uplift. My Irish Catholic God, as pointed out earlier, is a murderous and psychotic God, the O. J. Simpson of Higher Powers. I don't want to tempt Him by predicting that any of the five of us—Terry, D.J., Melissa, Bacchus, me—is going to live happily ever after.

  No, there's too much to worry about. We worry about D.J. falling in with the wrong crowd and becoming a fundamentalist Christian in an act of adolescent rebellion. We worry about anti–gay adoption laws, George W. Bush, E. coli in hamburger, and the clumps of dirt D.J. stuffs in his mouth when we're not looking. We worry about earthquakes, fires, floods, and storms. We worry about D.J.'s birth-parents, especially Melissa. Without a van, she and Ten Spot will be jumping trains together. We worry that we're making mistakes, that we're not feeding D.J. enough, that we're feeding him too much, that he'll fall in the tub, that he'll choke on something.

  We want D.J. to have a little brother or sister, but we worry that D.J. has spoiled us. He's just so mellow. He's curious about everything, and as long as he has something in front of him to examine, bang, break, or play with, he's happy. However much Melissa drank while she was pregnant, however much acid she took, it was precisely the right amount. D.J. is smart, good-natured and friendly. He cries only when we come at him with the big blue snot sucker.

  When we arrived at the Mallory for D.J.'s first birthday, the same clerks who had been working last year when we brought him home from OHSU were at the front desk. They recognized us, and they remembered D.J. We took his picture with the clerks, and they took our picture sitting with D.J. on one of the lobby's overstuffed green sofas. We'd requested the same room we had last year, and when we opened the door, nothing had changed. D.J. crawled over to the desk to pull the phone off by its cord, I plopped down on the bed, and Terry walked over to the window and looked up at OHSU.

  D.J. crawled around and smashed up the room for a couple of hours. After watching a little cable, we slipped him into his baby backpack and headed out. We walked past Melissa's apartment, Outside In, the steakhouse, and the Eagle. On impulse, we jumped in a cab and headed over to Lloyd Center. We walked through the toy store where we had bought his car seat with Melissa, then past the ice rink and the jewelry store where we bought Melissa's bracelet. We walked over the sky ramp to Lloyd Center's conference rooms. The door to the room where we grieved our infertility with seven straight couples almost two years ago was unlocked, and the conference room was empty. The tables and chairs were arranged as they were at our seminar. We went in, took D.J. out of his backpack, and set him on the table.

  He sat there, looking around, smiling. Terry pulled off one of D.J.'s shoes and gnawed on the bottom of his foot, which he loves even more than peekaboo. I did the same with his other foot, and D.J. laughed harder, a great crackling baby laugh. D.J. leaned forward and grabbed us both by our heads. He pulled us toward his face, laughing and laughing and laughing. Terry and I adopted D.J. through Open Adoption and Family Services, an agency based in Portland, Oregon. If you're thinking about adoption, whether adopting a child or placing a child for adoption, you can learn more about open adoption and OA&FS at their web site, www.openadopt.com, or by calling OA&FS at 1-(800) 772-1115. You do not have to live in Oregon or Washington to adopt or place a child for adoption through OA&FS.

  OA&FS facilitates between 50–60 domestic adoptions per year. The average wait for adoptive parents is seven months, and 85% of the placements are newborns or infants. OA&FS fees are low, and while the majority of the adoptive parents they work with are heterosexual couples, OA&FS does not impose restrictions on adoptive parents based on marital status, age, race, religion, or sexual orientation. OA&FS is a terrific agency, staffed by concerned, dedicated people. It would be impossible to recommend OA&FS enough or to praise their dedicated staff too highly.

  Open Adoption and Family Services Inc.

  information@openadopt.com

  www.openadopt.com

  1-800-772-1115

  5200 SW Macadam Ave., Suite 250

  Portland, Oregon 97201

  The names and identifying characteristics of some of the individuals depicted in this book have been changed to protect their privacy.

  PLUM

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Putnam Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

  Penguin Books Ltd, 27 Wrights Lane, London W8 5TZ, England

  Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood, Victoria, Australia

  Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2

  Penguin Books (N.Z.) Ltd, 182-190 Wairau Road, Auckland 10, New Zealand

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England

  Published by Plume, a member of Penguin Putnam Inc.

  Previously published in a Dutton edition.

  Copyright © Dan Savage, 1999

  All rights reserved

  Savage, Dan.

  The kid: what happened after my boyfriend and I decided to go get pregnant / Dan Savage.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 978-1-1012-1948-5

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book. Making or distributing electronic copies of this book constitutes copyright infringement and could subject the infringer to criminal and civil liability.

  First edition (electronic): June 2001

 

 

 
sharethis-inline-share-buttons">share