Read Online The Kid: What Happened After My Boyfriend and I Decided to Go Get Pregnant by Dan Savage - Free Book Online
Authors: Dan Savage
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this: the book deal that destroyed my carefree sex-columnist lifestyle (open the mail, read the letters, cash the checks) was not why were adopting. For the record, Terry and I began the “lifelong adoption process” before it even occurred to me that I could make it the subject of the book I was contracturally obligated to write. I need to write this to avoid offending the kid Terry and I will wind up adopting. Even when children are brought into this world as a result of practical, less-than-magical reasoning, or when children are brought into the world by accident, their parents usually don't share that info with them. Our kid would, we hoped, be able to read eventually, and if this book was one day required reading in all American high schools—as it should be—he would run across it, and one day be exposed to information that most kids are spared.
“My father never loved me,” he'd tell his therapist one day. “He just adopted me because he spent his advance.”
So you'll forgive me if I do something I swore I wouldn't when I decided to write about becoming a dad. I'm going to address my as yet unborn child, assuming that he can read.
Sweetheart, if you're reading this, rest assured that I was kidding when I wrote that last chapter. Kidding and drunk. Don't believe me? Ask your other father. We wanted a kid before I got a book deal, though once I decided to write about how we got you, kiddo, we moved your adoption to the front burner. Deadlines are deadlines, after all.
My advice for you would be not to read this book. It can be hard to put down a book that's all about you. God, for example, likes to have the Bible read to him every Sunday in church, as you would know if we had ever taken you into a church, and he never seems to tire of it. If you insist on reading this book, I'll understand. But take everything in it with a grain of salt, just as I assume God takes everything in the Bible with a grain of salt.
This advice I'm giving you—to put the book down and slowly back away from it—comes from experience. You see, my mother, your Grandma Judy, kept a journal all through 1964, the year she was knocked up with me. Her journals were never published, but I did manage to find them while digging around in her dresser. I stole them and read them, and it was a mistake. I learned things that I didn't need to know and things I would have been happier not knowing, risks you're running by reading this book.
For instance, my parents had sex, with each other, and quite a lot of it. For years before I found my mother's journals, I'd suspected my parents were sexually active, but I had no proof. Having my suspicions confirmed, in my mother's handwriting no less, was too much for my fifteen-year-old head! Suspecting something is different than reading all about it, especially in the same handwriting that signed “Mom & Dad” to all my birthday cards. Even more disturbing than the news that my parents had sex was reading about my parents having sex while my mother was pregnant with me.
But most disturbing of all was reading that my mother and my couldn't-keep-his-filthy-paws-off-a-pregnant-lady father were hoping and praying that the baby she was carrying—me—would be a girl. My parents already had two boys (your uncles, Billy and Eddie), and Mom and Dad wanted a girl this time. Mom lit candles, said Hail Marys, and buried saint statues upside down in the backyard. I guess my father had read somewhere— Esquire ? Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid toAsk) ? Field & Stream ?—that if he screwed Mom while she was pregnant—over and over again—this would turn me into a girl.
Now, back when I found my mother's diary, I was just beginning to understand that I might be gay; I was a little too excited whenever the Hardy Boys got tied up on TV. Not knowing what made boys gay, I wasted a lot of time wondering if I was gay because Mary, Mother of God, was only half-listening to Judy,
“My father never loved me,” he'd tell his therapist one day. “He just adopted me because he spent his advance.”
So you'll forgive me if I do something I swore I wouldn't when I decided to write about becoming a dad. I'm going to address my as yet unborn child, assuming that he can read.
Sweetheart, if you're reading this, rest assured that I was kidding when I wrote that last chapter. Kidding and drunk. Don't believe me? Ask your other father. We wanted a kid before I got a book deal, though once I decided to write about how we got you, kiddo, we moved your adoption to the front burner. Deadlines are deadlines, after all.
My advice for you would be not to read this book. It can be hard to put down a book that's all about you. God, for example, likes to have the Bible read to him every Sunday in church, as you would know if we had ever taken you into a church, and he never seems to tire of it. If you insist on reading this book, I'll understand. But take everything in it with a grain of salt, just as I assume God takes everything in the Bible with a grain of salt.
This advice I'm giving you—to put the book down and slowly back away from it—comes from experience. You see, my mother, your Grandma Judy, kept a journal all through 1964, the year she was knocked up with me. Her journals were never published, but I did manage to find them while digging around in her dresser. I stole them and read them, and it was a mistake. I learned things that I didn't need to know and things I would have been happier not knowing, risks you're running by reading this book.
For instance, my parents had sex, with each other, and quite a lot of it. For years before I found my mother's journals, I'd suspected my parents were sexually active, but I had no proof. Having my suspicions confirmed, in my mother's handwriting no less, was too much for my fifteen-year-old head! Suspecting something is different than reading all about it, especially in the same handwriting that signed “Mom & Dad” to all my birthday cards. Even more disturbing than the news that my parents had sex was reading about my parents having sex while my mother was pregnant with me.
But most disturbing of all was reading that my mother and my couldn't-keep-his-filthy-paws-off-a-pregnant-lady father were hoping and praying that the baby she was carrying—me—would be a girl. My parents already had two boys (your uncles, Billy and Eddie), and Mom and Dad wanted a girl this time. Mom lit candles, said Hail Marys, and buried saint statues upside down in the backyard. I guess my father had read somewhere— Esquire ? Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid toAsk) ? Field & Stream ?—that if he screwed Mom while she was pregnant—over and over again—this would turn me into a girl.
Now, back when I found my mother's diary, I was just beginning to understand that I might be gay; I was a little too excited whenever the Hardy Boys got tied up on TV. Not knowing what made boys gay, I wasted a lot of time wondering if I was gay because Mary, Mother of God, was only half-listening to Judy,
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