I Became a Gay Dad Overnight — No Warning!
What it’s like to be an instant parent
I never planned to be a parent. Me, the outspoken gay and HIV activist. Me, the party hound. Me, the edgy, convention-challenging queer man. Then, without warning, I was a dad.
Wanna hear about it?
Brent (not his real name) was not quite 14 when he met my partner and me through a sports program we all participated in. He idolized my boyfriend, the way young boys sometimes do. He hung around us. Chattered away nonstop. Turned himself into a little shadow.
He shared with us that his family life was stressful, hesitantly hinting that it might be worse than merely stressful.
Then one day, my partner and I took the Metro home. Climbed up to street level, walked around the corner and found the boy sitting on our doorstep, eyes red and swollen.
He’d run away.
Naturally, we phoned his parents and arranged to take him home after a little cool-down period.
We got to know the family a little after that incident.
Several weeks later, while brushing my teeth and thinking about which sexy boxer briefs to wear to bed, the phone jangled, summoning me out of the bathroom.
A strong Jamaican accent echoed into my ear. A woman introduced herself as the boy’s social worker. Through cheerful Caribbean cadences, I detected notes of distinct distress. She was in the home with the family and had determined that he couldn’t stay there.
All she could tell me was that he was in danger.
Voices shouted in the background, one of them familiar, high-pitched and pleading. Brent.
She had no place for him, she told me, other than a detention facility. He had a history. Nobody would take him.
Would we be willing to let him stay with us for a couple days while she looked for other solutions?
I agreed reflexively, having no idea when she showed up with him 30 minutes later, both of them bundled up against a winter storm, that those couple days would turn into years.
I didn’t know yet that when Brent walked in the door and hugged us that he had come home.
We got him calmed down and settled into a guest room pretty quickly. I cooked breakfast for the three of us the next morning, the boy morose or joyful, from moment to moment.
We learned a lot about him after that. He had been pathologically neglected as an infant and toddler, and was diagnosed with a couple of serious mental health disorders.
We did our best.
Love filled our instant family. So did stress, sometimes very serious stress. Neither my partner nor I had any experience with children or with the sort of emotional disorders this early adolescent suffered from.
We were fish not just out of water, but often not even within shouting distance of a puddle of water.
We were often happy, though.
Our life changed incredibly. My partner and I had been pretty typical young gay men. We partied a lot. We went out more nights of the week than not. We had a fairly active, spontaneous sex life.
That all changed.
No more boffing like bunnies on the living room sofa mid-afternoon just because we felt like it. No more mid-week clubbing. Going out on a school night no longer seemed wise. The boy was too old to suffer a babysitter, but we couldn’t trust him to be responsible on his own.
So we stayed home more. Romantic dinners for two became sensible meals without exotic ingredients that he couldn’t tolerate.
On the other hand, the satisfaction and happiness of helping him learn and grow were enormous. It’s hard to overemphasize the rewards.
I also found it funny sometimes. It amused me to take phone calls from the school counselor. “What did he do this time?” became my typical, sardonic greeting.
Reading the Harry Potter novels —
That’s a good memory. I probably never would have if not for him. He loved them. He wasn’t a reader, at all. Those books captivated him, though. I loved sharing his enthusiasm.
I remember once when he was skateboarding and got clipped by a car. A huge, scary bruise bloomed over his eye. Blood everywhere. I flew outside the moment I realized something was wrong.
He threw himself on me and clung, trembling, until we got him to the hospital. That kind of responsibility for a child, and that level of trust, add a dimension to life that for me at least, is rich beyond words.
No, we weren’t always happy.
But we were happy that we did what we did.
What was daily life like?
First, it was very ordinary. We got up in the mornings, had breakfast, which I usually cooked, being a hot-breakfast man, and then we went our different ways to work and school.
Brent would sometimes have kids over after school. I’d come home and make dinner, usually something quite plain because he didn’t care for anything spicy or exotic.
He and my partner would usually join me in the kitchen for a chat as I cooked. If Brent had a friend over, they might well stay to eat with us.
My partner was pretty cool, as people go — athletic, edgy, and interesting. I think Brent was proud to show him off.
Frankly, so was I sometimes, but for different reasons!
They’d watch TV and play video games after dinner. I might join them or I might work in my office. Brent had a very nurturing relationship with my partner. He was very emotionally dependent on him when he was younger, and even clingy.
With me, he was a little more reserved, though we had long, candid, close conversations all the time.
We all developed roles.
I set the limits and made the rules that kept the household functioning practically.
My partner was more creative than I was, better at dreaming up good ideas about what we could do to not just have fun, but encourage Brent to develop and grow. He helped with homework a little more than I did, my skills only being called on for math, in the main.
I dealt with the school.
Quite a lot of dealing, as Brent was something of a problem student for a while. He was not a teacher’s pet, that’s for sure.
I was his biggest advocate, always negotiating for more understanding and tolerance on the part of teachers and administrators, while working to convince Brent that he needed to focus on getting along and doing his work.
His guidance counselor thanked me for being so much on Brent’s side and for caring enough to be such an active partner in his education.
Once in a while, Brent would get really mad at me. He sometimes didn’t like the limits I enforced. He even sulked, yelled, and had temper tantrums. All in all, however, we functioned very well as a family.
We were the last resort, by the way. If we hadn’t worked out, the only other alternative was to institutionalize the boy. That almost happened. We had to work hard to have the system “certify” us so that Brent could stay with us permanently.
He never seemed to think it strange or embarrassing that we were a gay couple. I think that was really the least of his concerns. He seemed very happy to have people who loved him and were willing to advocate for him and go out of their way to take care of him.
He wasn’t all sunshine. He pouted, withdrew, and got mad like any teenager.
It all worked out perfectly fine, though. He’s now a fulfilled, happy man with successful relationships that all sorts of professionals told us would never be possible for him.
When I think of the debates about same-sex marriage and about gay couples adopting, I think of Brent. I think about how he needed loving, committed parents so very badly.
I know what his position is. I bet you you can guess —
