Does This Baby Make Me Look Straight?: Confessions of a Gay Dad Read Online Free PDF Page A

I picked up the phone with my best, cheery airline representative voice:
    “Hi, Samantha! I’m so glad to hear from you.” Don threw me a look from the kitchen. I could hear his voice in my head: There’s gay and there’s over gay. Tone it down a notch!
    We asked a lot of questions about her life that were unrelated to her pregnancy, following the guidelines we’d been taught about talking to prospective birth moms. We knew she was talking to more than one couple and that the decision was in her hands. We wanted to make a good impression but didn’t want to come off as desperate. We took notes about the name of her three-year-old son, Tye, her ex-boyfriend, and even her love of Wheat Thins. We’d been prepped by the adoption agency and our lawyer to followup the call with a FedEx containing our birth mother letter, photos, and a short note that made reference to as many things as we could remember from our phone call. We wanted her to know we were interested in her and not just her baby. Sure, we weren’t as interested in her as we were in adopting her baby, but we didn’t think we were being dishonest. We are good listeners, after all, and polite. A few days later, Samantha called to say she wanted us to be the parents of her child. I couldn’t believe it. Choking back tears, I asked Don, “Is this really happening?” My mind flashed to what felt like a hundred images: holding a baby, walking with a toddler, teaching a kid to ride a bike, reading bedtime stories, going to school plays, cheering at soccer games, helping with homework, teaching our kid to drive, dropping the kid off at college, standing side by side at the wedding . . . It was too much. I needed a bowl of cereal. Or six.
    We spoke with Samantha a few more times to arrange a visit. She was coming from Las Vegas, so it was fairly easy to get her to Los Angeles. We agreed to put her up for three days so we could meet with the adoption lawyer, a social worker, and an obstetrician, and still have time for some sightseeing. She was to arrive on a Wednesday and would stay till Friday afternoon. We booked her a plane ticket and a hotel room that wound up being more expensive than we’d planned. Especially after discovering the soft, white, terry-cloth bathrobes had gone with her when she checked out. Small price to pay , we thought. We scheduled the appointments, got tickets to the Universal Studios theme park, and made plans to take her to dinner and a movie.
    On that Wednesday morning we drove to the airport in silence. We parked, walked to the baggage area, and leaned against the wall to wait for her. Neither of us spoke for the longest time. We had been emailed one picture of her so we’d know what she looked like. But it still felt like any one of the people coming through those glass doors could have been her. I made eye contact with every single one of them as if to ask, Are you Samantha? There was an Indian man and a black woman and two businessmen . . . not Samantha. I had to distract myself to calm my nerves. I started imagining myself in each of the people coming down that escalator. One guy just getting back to L.A. after flying home to put down the family pet; another may have missed his original flight because he broke onto a set to work as an extra on a Meryl Streep movie before being caught and sent away; and a third seemed kind of nervous, like he was being picked up at the airport by a guy he’d only just met ten days before—a guy with whom he’d eventually settle down, make a home, and try to start a family. Why I was attributing my own life experiences to these complete strangers, I have no idea. But it did help mitigate the panic.
    Don elbowed me; outside the glass doors, leaning against a pillar, wearing a backpack and smoking a cigarette, was Samantha. How had we missed her?
    “Samantha?” I smiled at her. She looked up, cracked a smile, took one last drag, and stomped out her butt.
    “They wouldn’t let me smoke on the