Does This Baby Make Me Look Straight?: Confessions of a Gay Dad by Dan Bucatinsky Read Free Book Online

basket into her purse. “Anyone mind?” We shook our heads. Don asked for another basket, and this time, Samantha pocketed the loot. She then slid out of the booth and headed outside for a cigarette. Don told Loryn to hang back and wait with him to order some appetizers as he signaled for me to go after Samantha and keep her company. Which I did.
    I got outside and bummed one of Samantha’s cigarettes. It had been a while since I’d smoked. The Newport 100’sMenthol burned my lungs—and possibly every other one of my internal organs. But I rallied. The smoking ritual really helped cut the tension, which was already thick.
    “I’ve never been to Olive Garden before,” I said. Samantha looked at me. She was quiet. She took another drag off her cigarette and exhaled. “You know, secondhand meth smoke can sometimes show in the blood.”
    “What?” I asked. But I’d heard her. Crystal clear, so to speak. This was her way of admitting she’d been using drugs. Whatever attachment I still had to Samantha, my belief that she was our ticket to becoming parents was now hopelessly broken.
    “I tried to tell Billy not to be tweakin’ around me and Tye, but he doesn’t always listen.”
    I nodded. What does one say to that? “Oh, men,” I said weakly. We went back inside. We ate. I tried to tell Don It’s over with my eyes. But it wasn’t until we were alone in the car, after we’d stopped at Target for supplies and gone back to the “suite” to help tidy up, that we finally said goodbye to Samantha.
    Don and I had missed the last flight back to Los Angeles. I pulled into the Stratosphere, where I was able to get us a sixty-nine-dollar room for the night. It was depressing. We lay in bed, wide awake, the prospect of becoming fathers so much farther away than when we’d arrived. I wanted to cry. Sad from the loss, yes, but also sad that we felt such relief.
    Two days later, we heard from the doctor that her blood tested positive for methamphetamine. Duh. Two days after that we called Samantha. We got her voicemail. Don left her a message:
    “Samantha, it’s Don. Look, we heard about the blood test results. And we want you to know that we really care about you and want only good things for you and Tye. But with all of the deception and miscommunications and now the blood test—this isn’t the way Danny and I want to start our family. We hope you understand. We will always wish only the best for you and Tye.”
    I sighed deeply. Now it really was over. I was overcome with emotion, wondering if we had just walked away from our last opportunity at fatherhood. While we felt enormous relief on the one hand, it was tinged with the fear that we just weren’t tough enough to handle how difficult it really is to start a family.
    Two months later we got the call from Monica, the woman who would become the birth mother of our two kids. Four months after that, Don got an email from Samantha, who wanted him to know that she was doing well and that her baby boy wound up with a couple of nice guys from San Diego. We were so glad. Some of these girls are really committed to the gays. I guess good grooming habits and a taste for Broadway musicals aren’t the only advantage.
    I’m not that spiritual a person. But I do believe the universe has a curiously powerful way of working in concert with fate or destiny or whatever to put people where they’re supposed to be. Or if it’s not predestined, then let’s just say life has a way of forcing us to push past our fear—and the burning of a menthol cigarette and the smell of some homeless handmaiden’s poop—to give us the strength and clarity to allow a new opportunity to become the right one. And you know, Nurse Vicki’s son’s sci-fi script? It wasn’t half-bad.

 

chapter four

Who Knew?
    W e’re in the waiting room of our ob-gyn in November of 2004. Don and I are so eager to find out the sex of our first child we can hardly sit. But we do, sandwiched with our birth