The Kid: What Happened After My Boyfriend and I Decided to Go Get Pregnant Read Online Free PDF

tone communicated that she wouldn't be getting involved in our private dramas. She had too much work to do. Her overt message was compassion, but her covert message was “You're here, you're adopting, get used to it.”
    Apparently it took some getting over for the straight couples, who in agency-speak had “come to” or “arrived at” adoption, as if it were a physical destination. I was unprepared for the funerealtone of the seminar's first day. And as Ruth's opening comments picked up steam, Terry and I began to feel more out of place, and even more conspicuous than we had when we first walked through the door.
    I opened my ten-pound notebook and peeked at the agenda: “Grieving Your Infertility.” “Coping with Infertility.” “Infertility and Its Impact on Adoption.” “Losses Inherent in Adoption.” I nudged Terry and slid the notebook over. His eyebrows shot up. Infertility was never an issue for us, just a fact, so we hadn't spent much time thinking about it, let alone learning to cope with it. And there were no “losses inherent in adoption” for us, but only victory. When I came out in 1980, it didn't occur to me that one day I would be able to adopt a child. I assumed, incorrectly, that it was illegal for gay men to adopt children. After all, gay men didn't have families—we were a threat to families.
    My boyfriend passed me a note: “Maybe they should have let us skip the first day.”
    Ruth walked the group through our infertility issues. “Infertilitycan sabotage the adoption process,” Ruth explained. “You felt you had no control over your fertility, so you may attempt to impose control over this process. Or you may come to resent the child you adopt because it isn't your dream biological child. You're successful people, with successful lives and successful relationships—having a child is probably the first thing you have not succeeded at, your first failure as individuals.”
    At this point, we were positive we should have skipped the first day. The boyfriend and I had accepted our infertility a long time ago, and sitting with the straight couples, we felt our very presence was mocking their “loss.”
    “If you need to feel sad or angry about not having your ‘own’ biological children—that's fine,” Ruth continued. “But do not let those feelings dominate your life. Enter parenting from a place of abundance, not a place of need. . . .”

    In high school and college, my straight friends would point out the many disadvantages of being gay; it was supposed to be a joke, but they sounded serious. Their understanding of sexuality was pretty limited, and so was mine at the time, and they were trying to talk me out of being gay. They didn't want to lose my friendship,and they assumed they would if I “turned” gay. In 1980, being gay still meant going off and joining a secret society, moving away and becoming someone else. They would spot me on a street corner years later, wearing leather pants and a teal T-shirt, waiting for a bus. To prevent this fate, my friends would warn me that gays couldn't get married, or hold certain jobs, or live where we wanted to. And we couldn't have kids.
    I would respond by pointing out the many advantages of being gay, as I saw them at the time. Before he got the boot, Jimmy Carter showed Iran he meant business by making high school–age boys register for the draft. When Ronald Reagan became president, it looked like he'd be declaring war on the Sandinistas any day and calling us up. Advantage, gay: they didn't take my kind in the army, so I wouldn't get shot up in Central America. But the ultimate advantage of being gay in 1980 was that it freed me from having to worry about birth control. For my straight friends, birth control was a major headache; first they had to worry about getting it, then they had to worry about hiding it from their parents. Advantage, gay: I didn't have to worry about the pill, or condoms, or missed periods, or babies, or