Does This Baby Make Me Look Straight?: Confessions of a Gay Dad by Dan Bucatinsky Page B

again. How about those guys on Wall Street who fucked with our money? Bernie Madoff? Straight. Or the ones who start wars. Donald Rumsfeld? Straight. Osama bin Laden? He doesn’t promise virgins for nothing. What about those guys with big fat pinky rings, or those heavily inked motorcycle guys with iguanas as pets? Or those sweaty pear-shaped drunk guys who can’t dance, and the ones who wear braided leather belts with pleated shorts, or guys who say shit like “That’s what I’m talking about!” Man, I hate that. Guys who call each other “bro” and “boss” and “big guy.” Gay guys don’t like being called “big guy.” Unless, you know, we are. Big.
    The year I put tap shoes on the top of my birthday list, I got a basketball hoop. Which wasn’t even on the list. I know it never crossed my dad’s macho Argentinean mind when I was born that the little baby smiling up at him would one day turn out to be gay. So why was it occurring to me now that our son may very well turn out to be—straight? And why does it even matter? Well, because whether I cared to admit it or not, the whole thing just got a tiny bit scarier. Maybe because it made me question if I could do it. Not hold him and rock him and change his diapers and feed him. Of course I could. But would I be able to truly love him? Unconditionally. Having grown up as a boy tortured by other little boys, straight boys, how would I rise to the occasion of being a man who had to raise one and love him nomatter what? How would it feel for, say, a Jew to love a Nazi baby? . . . Too far?
    What is “unconditional love” anyway? Does it mean you don’t question the love? Because our little devils have a way of trying the limits of our love every single day. The whining alone, which has clearly survived the evolutionary test of time, is a superior test of us parents to see if we’re really up to the task. For me? Whining’s almost enough to shut down the whole operation. And then there’s the intimate relationship we’re forced to have with every possible bodily function. We’re expected to love despite the vomit. The pee. The middle-of-the-night bed stripping after Jonah had blown mud through his diaper like spin art onto every one of the forty-seven stuffed animals on his bed. And you know what? I’d look at that tiny, stunned face clearly wondering How the fuck did all that come out of me? staring up at me, as if to make sure nothing had changed on my end.
    I’d smile back at him. “We’re good, you and me. We’re solid. You didn’t shit me away.” He’d nuzzle his head on my shoulder. Heaven. It wasn’t me versus them anymore. It was just us .
    Our four-year-old, hazel-eyed, towheaded baby is now a happy, curious, loving, mischievous, and really big boy. And like I said before, he already walks with a swagger. As if to say, “Don’t fuck with me, faggot, I’ll take you out.” And there’s no question he’ll be able to with just a look. But he won’t, I don’t think. Because even at four he’s already the sweetest, most thoughtful and affectionate of giants. That said, I try to stay on his good side. Win him over. But it’s not easy. Shit. No matter how hard I try to get him to think I’mcool, he can smell the needy. Jonah is going to see me for who I am. And I him. He’s tough. He’s fearless. He’s a tank. And the worst street fight I had when I was a kid was when I hit Eddie Wade with my clarinet case. May as well have been a knitting bag. Or a tackle box filled with stage makeup (I had one in tenth grade, a prized possession, especially the compartments for medium olive, sallow, and clown white).
    I look in his eyes and he in mine. “You’re my favorite little boy,” I tell him.
    “And you’re my favorite grown-up,” he started saying recently. What could be better? But I can’t help but wonder, or is it fear: what if one day he looks at me the way they looked at me? I worry that he’ll see me, aware of the difference