Baby Muff

How the Other Nine-Tenths Lives

2012-01-22T12:14:00.000-08:00

Put on your red shoes.

Our pending house purchase here in the suburbs has made us reconsider our daily routine, which is still predominantly focused around Manhattan. We both work in the city (together), go to the gym in the city (together), eat dinner there at least once a week and generally arrange our lives to make our access to the city easier. Our apartment is one block from the train and at times I imagine I'm taking a horizontal elevator from my apartment back down to ground level in Chelsea, passing through the Meadowlands somewhere around the 300th floor.

In a week we're moving to a house that will put a little more demand on our car and necessarily shift the center of our lives to our town in New Jersey. Of course we'll have the typical homeowner duties of renovations, maintenance, and potlucks; but to maintain our grip on Manhattan to satisfy basic needs seems at this point a little desperate and pretentious. So we joined a straight gym.

This is no ordinary New York Sports Club in a strip mall. This is the Xanadu of gyms for suburban New York metropolitans. An enormous water park for the summer, two indoor pools, restaurants, free childcare (!!!!!), a spa - the list goes on longer than football field weight floor. And after attending what is probably the most gay-fabulous gym in NYC for ten years, we were in for a shock.

The first surprise was that not all straight guys are overweight and ungroomed. The second was that not everyone was straight. Like countless of our compatriots that have moved out of the Manhattan bubble back to the suburbs, we found that our new home was more diverse and maybe more interesting than the self-selected society we idealized before. Now, I could have been imagining it, but I'm pretty sure that I was more cautious about offending the other suburban families with my gay self and gay family and gay gay gay iPod playlists than they were even cognizant of me. And these are people, many of them, who will likely be supporting my right to get married in their state. How did I dare to have such misconceptions?

That is a common problem with staying the ghetto, whether one lives there physically or only in the mind. It is easy, almost required to assume that everyone else is somehow against you or at least doesn't share your values. In fact, the ghetto's hothouse flowers are some of the most beautiful and strange in our society; the challenge is to get them to take root in the larger world.

Our own little flower took to the gym in about 10 minutes. The second he saw the well equipped "Child Center" with computers, trains, and Barney, we were long forgotten. We wandered the cavernous space gaping at each other maybe a little ashamed that we had such low expectations. We wasted little time and started lifting.

Hot Heir

2012-01-14T20:45:00.000-08:00

A funny thing happened on the way to Cafayate: Benji decided he'd had enough. Enough of the driving, the hotels, the altitude changes and the temperature swings. An angel on the relatively easy - if rustic- highway between Tafi and Cafayate, Benji let it be known that the place we just left would be our last adult-oriented vacation destination until 2017.

Cafayate could not be more charming. Imagine Sonoma in 1962. Winemakers and vacationers have discovered it but given it's relatively remote location you are spared the worst of Los Angeles and continental Europe. Our last visit three years ago had us drooling for empty buildings surrounding the verdant main square being practically given away; this year things were bustling and renovating. Malbec is a hit.

Especially with us, as Benji careened from one tantrum to the next. Between salving my icy-needle sunburn nerve damage and taking - dragging - him away screaming through the square while Juan tried to quickly finish his dinner, we had plenty of opportunities to taste at least our first bottle of what Cafayate has become rightly famous for. Subsequent tastes had perhaps a more medicinal intent.

I guess that since we're both a little anxiety-prone and generally sensitive people, Benji's sudden personality shift hit us pretty hard. We got angry at his aggression. Everything we tried to help him through it, including giving him exactly what he asked for, was met with even stronger resistance. "Time out" is not effective when you're in a public park with horsey rides and home is a hotel you checked into mere hours ago. In the middle of his terror, there is no fixing him.

If I am honest with myself I'll admit the problem was not his to fix. We had brought our 2 year old 7,000 miles from home on a trip with at least 8 changes of venue. From numerous airplanes to Buenos Aires to Tucuman, Tafi, Cafayate - it was way too much for him to process. We needed to stop and smell the hotel pool for a day. Which is exactly how the rest of our trip played out.

Passed by were the subsequent plans for the museums, the dinners out, the sailing trip around Buenos Aires and the horseback ride to the rural school for traditional BBQ. Instead, we spent our last week in Argentina planning how little we could do given our flight and hotel reservations.

Our last day in Cafayate was spent entirely by the hotel pool, baking in the heat and staring along with the other guests at the freakish rainbow that ran in a straight line from horizon to horizon. Buenos Aires, two days later, was an exercise in loafishness that few have attempted: 97 degrees and we dedicated the entire day to being outside in parks playing ball and sleeping under palm trees.

In the end I think it was a wonderful trip, both an adventure and a bunch of days doing nothing. There are worse things in life than a siesta in a park in Palermo, Buenos Aires with lazy dogs curled nearby and a quiet boy watching, absorbing, and giving us the vacation we all needed.

Thinning Air

2012-01-13T20:40:00.000-08:00

The trip from Tucuman to Tafi del Valle is less than two hours, but one travels from a humid, central plain not unlike California's to a glacial valley some 7,000 feet above sea level. The climate changes from hot and stagnant through tropical rain forest to high altitude grassland. The road that brings you on this whiplash journey is itself a destination: at times two-lane highway where passing the creeping sugarcane tractors is an exercise in blind faith, and at others a one-lane paved donkey trail clinging to hillsides with only plastic "cuidado" tape where some unlucky soul decided to test the wire guardrail.

Some random horse Juan put Benji on in Tafi

Popping ears and a vague breathlessness signal that you have neared the summit...the first summit. Our five day stop in Tafi del Valle was not the apex of our trip through these Andes foothills. Various daytrips brought us to indifferent cow herds across gravel roads some 9,000 feet up, and our three day journey to Cafayate took us to over 10,000 feet in our Volkswagen Gol (the "f" cost more).

At a giddy 10,000 feet up. The llama could care less.

At our highest, El Infernillo, I tried to put aside my vague sense of panic and what felt like a drug flashback and just enjoyed the company of a friendly llama and a family selling mementos at the summit. Juan guided me back to the car as I tried to purchase hundreds of dollars worth of quince jam and cured goat sausage. We coasted our way down the other side of the pass, thankful that there was little oncoming traffic and that our first destination, the lovely, undiscovered, and what I hope would be the last vision to ever have in my life, Amaicha del Valle would be only 30 minutes down the mountain.

A measly 7,000 feet up in a random pasture, with frankly
scary bulls and sheep who didnt seem too thrilled to have us there.
Unbeknownst to me, receiving stage four skin cancer. Benji didn't
even get tan.. Damn his latino blood.

On our trip from Tafi through Amaicha to Cafayate, we left early to avoid the fog that can collect at the summit and to arrive in Cafayate in time for wine tasting: scheduled to be at an hour neither too early to feel like alcoholics nor too late to take in enough of the appellations before dinner. Amaicha greeted us at around 9:30 am. We were amazed at all the camping tourists - all Argentinians drawn to this remote spot for some authentic Quilmes Indian culture. And us, two gay men with a baby and a rented Gol. Every single person we met understood instantly and made an effort to wish us Buen Viaje. We graciously accepted the newspaper from the old man leaving the restaurant and waved the flies off of our still-warm flat bread. I was ready to buy a house.

Our stay in Amaicha was short as Juan grabbed me by the ear as soon as I started talking about buying the abandoned resort with the huge pool - girls, this town has 360 days of dry sunshine per year and everyone is tan and skinny. And nothing costs anything. I drove us reluctantly through the desert to the wine destinations in Salta. And what a trip that would be.

You are a Real Boy!

2012-01-13T19:49:00.000-08:00

La panza del gordito

Like something from Pinocchio, Benji woke up midway along the pathway of our journey through Argentina. For our first, lovely two years, two months, and twenty two days, our tussled haired moppet adapted easily to daycare and nightlife, Barney and Barney's.We learned to read his moods and always knew when it wastime to go. Suddenly, on one specific day in Cafayate, Salta, he decided that it was time to assert his control. Things have changed.

We have a hundred stories from our long trip to Argentina, from sweltering Buenos Aires to the thin air of Tafi del Valle, Tucuman. Our baby became a little boy on this trip, and daddies grew up a little too. We can't wait to tell you about it, but I need one more night of recovery first.

Oh, the places we'll go....

Happy New Year!

The Secrets of Redding Glen

2011-12-17T12:32:00.000-08:00

Dad and Me, Lake Wenatchee

In 1974 my Aunt Jill, Mom's youngest sister who was probably not even out of her teens, had her own apartment. She lived with her new husband on the ground floor with a wire spool coffee table and a radio that seemed locked to Carol King. It's too late, baby, now it's too late. To me at five years old, she was a redhead star, distant and warm and unknowable.

At one end of the year or the other, either for a birthday or Christmas, she and Doug bought me a beautifully illustrated children's book, The Secrets of Redding Glen. Mossy prose fills one half of the landscape spread with the other a naturalist illustration of a bird, a racoon, a mushroom mound, all painstakingly drawn by Jo Polseno. Marsh marigolds and dogtooth violets bloom on the banks of the streams and the first handful of watercress is ready to be gathered. It wasn't my favorite.

Inside the front cover, in a loopy, uneven high-school script, it is dedicated to me by the young couple. They were about to head out on their own journey to places they never expected, giving a thoughtful gift to a boy about to have his first baby brother. I wanted to spend every day driving around our rural Washington apple town with my Mom, with Aretha and Carly Simon, no seatbelt and the windows open to the sky, not thinking much about Connecticut or kingfishers in the twilight.

We never know where our gifts will end up - perhaps ungratefully neglected in a closet for decades, perhaps buried under a lifetime of "I was too busy". Many people throw their gifts away, deciding that this vase just doesn't go with their aesthetic, or maybe this crazy idea of being an artist or a chef just doesn't go with their ten year plan. Once they go down the chute, it's almost impossible to get them back.

Unless Grandma brings that strange, wordy book back in a box on a visit from the West. It was my chance to try that gift out on Benji, to see if it is a better fit for my introspective, observant little boy. Benji turned the pages slowly and caught every detail of those drawings. The fish in the mouth of the heron. The mouse in the next of oak leaves. The dragonfly about to be caught by the barn swallows. He saw things I didn't in this gift and by some unlikely luck I get a second chance to appreciate it.

Knowing both of our tendancies to cry at everything, I'm not sure I could get through a phone call to my Aunt Jill thanking her for giving me another precious minute sharing wonder with my son, a gift completely unintended when given. All these decades later, the ripples from that kind act washed into Benji's darkened room and reminded me of the lasting power of love. From across the cove comes a new sound, a good sound. It is the hushed voices of two young boys who have just discovered Redding Glen.

Two Hands

2011-12-14T18:29:00.000-08:00

I'm walking down our suburban street on an overcast, late fall evening. Clouds under clouds under clouds of stress - work stress, moving stress, financial stress, stress about stress - weigh me down until I feel my shoulders scraping the sidewalk. When suddenly I'm interrupted by a warm tiny hand pushing into mine, bringing me back to now. Here I was, walking with my two year old son the four blocks from our apartment into the village. He had wanted to run on his own, "no help", but now had tired of that and wanted a more leisurely pace. He ran up next to me and grabbed my hand.

"Hand?"

With his simple request I was reminded what all of this is about. None of these things that are causing some serious daily strife mean much on their own. We hope that we are building a life that will be better for our family and especially for Benji . His job, his effortlessly executed role, is to remind us that we are a family first. Our plans and dreams for him are important but they do not override today.

Benji's little hands are extra busy these days. Banging drums, hammering, poking the dog, showing off his bellybutton and drawing on the chalk board. It's amazing to see that in only a few months he has learned to flip pages of a magazine (Papi has taught him well!) and feed himself quite neatly with a fork. He's learning how to satisfy his basic, immediate, and important needs on his own. Which I am glad to say include walking hand-in-hand with his chastised and much happier Dad, down our quiet village street, in the half light of an autumn night.

New Eyes

2011-12-12T11:03:00.000-08:00

To the Christmas windows, and dash away all!

While Juan and I scurry from place to place during the shortest four weeks of the year, the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas, more often than not Benji is by our side or at the very least in the back seat watching the sprawl and panic of Route 22 as it scours past the car windows. Not long ago any time not engaged in active play was a candidate for naptime, and we could bring him anywhere, kid-friendly or not, knowing that our sleeping baby wouldn't be traumatized by the messy single's scene in yet another fabulous Manhattan restaurant..Two year old boys, shall we say, are different.

Our little sponge takes it all in. His calm personality means that we can still take him to noisy, crowded places with a pretty good chance of success...but all one has to do is watch his eyes. He sees everything, hears everything, reads my mind like a psychic and divines emotions like a shaman. These days his reactions are ever more to our reactions - looking to us to see how he should respond to that man asking for money (polite and brief), or that waiter trying to pick him up (reluctant acceptance), or the drunk girl who broke yet another glass at next table (his eye roll could read Raja's for filth, oh kay?!) What's great is that we're actually starting to share emotions with our son.

Of course not all of our emotions are positive, especially for a toddler. We don't need to dump a day full of stress on him. The slow-motion bulldozer of our recent house sale and purchase is something we try to pass off as "fun", just like my parents did for me all of those - er, not-so-many - years ago. House hunting is exciting for him, running through vacant houses, driving around with Daddies, hopefully unaware that we've picked our cuticles until they bled and haven't slept well since June. His beautiful big brown eyes see, for now, what we want him to see: a huge world, full of new and wonderful things, and his two dads by his side showing it off.

An Old-Fashioned Christmas

2011-12-02T15:58:00.001-08:00

That's the stuff - muddle my cherry.

During the holiday season, I want to be alone. Me and the music, the lights, the pile of bags and packages at my feet, a sandwich on my plate, and a beautiful, perfect drink. An old-fashioned. The fourteen of us, crowded around, under, and on the table.

My beloved family is out of sight but not out of mind. They give me plenty of days to myself; that is not the issue. Sometime in the next few weeks, I'll be there in NoHo, SoHo, Chelsea or Hellsea in some fabulous restaurant with a $15 drink and a sandwich on the way. Because that is my Christmas tradition.

Papi Muff and Baby Muff will probably join me. It's our annual Christmas shopping day, and the feigned secrecy and even faker surprise dictates that we'll split up while we shop for each other. Trinkets, usually, stocking stuffers (think deodorant and nuts) and socks; and at some point we'll meet up at some cozy spot. Juan will be late. My old fashioned won't.

Practically nothing in my life tops this moment. The eager anticipation of Christmas, the egg-sausage thing we make the night before for brunch, the look on Benji's face when he realizes this year, for the first time, that the wrapping paper isn't the point. Here I am at a table, a caramel-cherry-orange glass reflecting a candle and a crowded restaurant of lovelies and swells.

Christmas is coming - raise your glass!

Taking it for Granite

2011-11-26T17:52:00.001-08:00

Don't overlook the built-in hi-fi in the backsplash.

What we hope will be our new house needs some work. It's a masterpiece of setting, of site, of palimpsest, but the kitchen frankly sucks. Intellectually we can peel off the layers of the misguided and you had to be there renovations, but there is nothing except the built-in-counter blender and food processor that is worth saving. Being chastised by the past few years of economic austerity and on a mission to give Benji as full a life as possible, we started to wonder, "does our worth as men, as parents rest on our countertops?"

I can remember far back, maybe even ten years ago, when I was living in my first apartment newly single from my rich boyfriend. He and I had gorgeous green granite counters which we hand picked from the stone supplier in Southampton. It had to be sealed before use, and we were told not to cut directly on it (or our $100 knives would be dulled) or spill anything acidic without promptly cleaning it up. I was terrified to use it and bought a $500 rolling island for chopping. Suddenly, post-breakup in my new apartment, I had beige formica and a $5 plastic cutting board. Some of my best meals were made in that kitchen.

Slow-forward to our beloved weekend cabin upstate. Seduced by brochures and HGTV, we bought stunning and useless quartz countertops. Now I love to bake a pie and my lard crust is perfection when rolled out on stone. But my entire kitchen doesn't need to be made from it, much as I don't need fingerprinty stainless appliances, or hand-hewn wood floors, or refrigerator water filters. I've had 'em, they're beautiful, but I can tell you it doesn't make a better meal. This Keeping Up Appearances is all a way to separate us from our money, and by inference, our family.

Have you been to Italy and seen how instinctual cooks cook? You need a counter or two, some racks, a good consistent stove, and a table to eat. Excellent cooks can make a three course meal on a campstove with a hike-in cooler and a bucket. My idea of a kitchen falls somewhere between that and mid-level Lowe's, and I doubt we'll be visiting the quarry for our counters.

Perhaps the point of this post is that so much of our family life is now dictated by what other people say we need to be happy. Will a fabulous designer kitchen make me happy? For a while, and occasionally, yes. But ultimately no. It's the meals we have and most importantly the times we share together that we remember, not what we passed the sponge over afterwards. The past two years have been the happiest in my life, and we're living in a two bedroom apartment with -gasp - laminate counters and white appliances. Coincidence or causal relationship?

We'll save our $75,000 for Benji's asado year abroad in Argentina. And many, many, many happy nights together in our perfectly fine kitchen, however it ends up.

For the Love of Cheeses

2011-11-16T16:59:00.001-08:00

Reggianito, Argentina.

It is no secret to our friends that we are slightly cheese-obsessed. In fact, Benji's mom gave Juan a gift of artesinal cheeses (cataloged on a spreadsheet) at our last meeting. It is something few urban gay men would admit, given cheese's bad reputation for the waistline. We say it is worth an extra 30 minutes on the treadmill for a pot of fondue, purposefully losing the bread to search with our spoons.

Of course, being a sponge Benji is attuned to this. One of his first food words was "cheese". We started with mozzarella, with some treats of cheddar and sprinkles of Parmesan. And I have always been careful to avoid giving Benji the raw cheeses, the extra-moldy, the super-sharp and the unidentifiable. Until this weekend.

It was at the Summit, NJ farmer's market that I broke my own rules and let my cheese freak flag fly. Out came the goat cheese, the blue cheese, the raw-milk and the spreadable cave-aged. Out came my wallet. Benji was right there, like a baby bird with his mouth open, pointing and begging: Cheese? Cheese? Cheese?

Are Americans alone in our fear of germs? Do other countries sanitize shopping cart handles with disposable wipes? Can we please just enjoy some milk that has been curdled with sheep's stomach acid and left to mold in a cave for months without being pasturized - without feeling guilty? Is that too much to ask?

I fear it may be, as the looks I received from the Jersey moms as Benji gorged on fetid feta and piquant percorino were anything by creamy. Let me tell you this: he was fine. No, he was in heaven with some of the best cheese we've ever had. Just like letting your kid on the subway by himself or walk to school - to paraphrase Mame Dennis- life is a cheese tasting and most poor suckers are eating Velveeta. If eating some real goat cheese is now the new bungee jumping, strap us in. And put some cheese on it.

Batching It

2011-11-09T18:09:00.000-08:00

At Ikea. He stayed in the corner for 15 minutes. We don't know why.

My greatgrandma - and idol - Frankie used to call it "batching it"...when the man of the house was without his mate, feminine gender assumed, for any length of time. It was meant to be a description of both a desperate, anarchic, yet temporary period, where dishes sat hardening in the sink while the man wondered helplessly through his third martini just what was he supposed to do? As a boy I always felt strangely oppressed by that term, because even then I knew I didn't need a wife to run my life.

Later on as I shed some of those defensive layers of gay pride and as I understood what it meant to be in a long term, committed relationship (not with a woman, but still...) "batching it" made sense in a whole new way. Frankie was talking about a sympathy people have for men who are missing their other piece. It's an assumption not of helplessness or uncontrollable urges, but of a husband's sensitivity to his mate and his need to be needed. For the men I know, it's almost always true.

My friends who have gotten in the most trouble in their relationships have been with people who didn't need them, or at least pretended they didn't. I've been there myself. Men seem to be hard wired to be needed; we want to be strong, to provide, to shovel and chop things - or at least to know the best pumpkin ravioli in Short Hills. Otherwise we're not just helpless, we're hopeless, and nothing is less attractive than a helpless hopeless - and "confirmed" - bachelor.

Benji and I are batching it for a few days this week. Papi is on a business trip to somewhere not-fun, and my my parents are due to arrive tomorrow. Batching it means something real to me now missing my other half, realizing how much better life is with him, feeling a little adrift. I can understand it as a man, this strange phrase my great grandmother made a point of teaching me as a kid. Maybe, and it wouldn't be surprising given how easily she welcomed my first boyfriend, she was telling me that I needed to be loved, and that nothing beat being needed, however and by whomever.

Is there any wonder why I became a dad?

Swingers

2011-11-06T18:05:00.000-08:00

Too literal?

For once, the weekend was a relaxing masterpiece. Two glorious days of New Jersey autumn, without snowstorms or earthquakes, without moving or closings, and with only five rooms to clean. The more I tried to make plans, the more the leaves crunched underfoot and the sun beat me into submission. At the Bleeker Street playground today, I gave in.

Work hard, play hard is New York City's unofficial motto, but what is rarely communicated is that this phrase is currently running half-off. Guess which half gets short shrift in a recession. The lifestyle of a professional, gay couple in New York (suburbs) does probably not represent an idea of Zen existance to the 95% of the country that does not live here, and they would be correct. Adding a child into the mix brings our Holmes and Rahe score above 300. In theory.

What happens in real life, for these Real Husbands of New Jersey, is that we swing. Not the type that readily comes to mind, though there is plenty of that in the suburbs, let-me-tell-ya. Juan and I move from whackadoodle eyelash-pulling stress to blissfully euphoric in minutes. That phone call on Tuesday, saying our upstate house had closed - well, no sooner had I put down the receiver than I was loosening my tie and planning the barbecue. Honey, you take what you can get, and when you got it, you use it up, Hunty.

So back to this weekend. Walking hand in hand through the Village. Benji on my shoulders. Sun, fall colors, demi-celebs in ridiculous sunglasses and jeggins at 11am. Had this been any other day in recent memory, I would have been picking my cuticles and frantically checking my phone for messages from brokers, lawyers- anything but being present in that moment. Today was not that day. I spent hours today with Benji in the playground, actually playing, undistracted by all the power parents screaming at their own brokers while their little Dylans and Sophies ate cat poop unobserved in the sand box. Juan and I enjoyed margaritas at lunch and talked to each other about each other. Benji charmed. Stress evaporated. The pendulum swung.

Of course, tomorrow is Monday and with that comes a list of new obligations. Finally, probably for the first time in years, we'll be able to get to the end of it by the end of the day. Hallelu!

Tough Love

2011-10-31T17:58:00.000-07:00

It's makeup, not black eyes.

We have been selfish.When one meets the love of his later-in-life, one tends to want to make every minute count. Everything we wanted to do, and could afford to do, we did. And do. Then along comes Benji. The selfishness expands to cover our little family. What will be best for the three of us? Every precious minute is a chance to make life better for him.

This kind of commitment isn't easy. It takes courage to come to decisions that are uncomfortable - and sometime not easily explainable. Our cabin in the Catskills - our beloved Muffalda - was our stability through three moves in the city. Wherever we were and whatever the stress-du-jour, Muffalda had a hundred chores that felt so much more important to complete. She put the lie to the Manhattan grind.

Leaving Muffalda was tough.. We said our goodbyes and cried separately, Juan leaving with Benji while I stayed behind to clean. I needed the time alone. In the end it's just a house, but our memories will inhabit it and vice-versa, through bedtime tales and fading photographs shared with Benji until new ones crowd them out. We built our foundations on foresight and will furnish rooms with our stories. And little man, we're doing it for you.

Dodged

2011-10-27T19:34:00.000-07:00

Handyman's Special!

I'm not one of those people who believe that everything happens for a reason, but I am keenly aware of what has been recently defined as "teachable moments" - situations for which one might pause and, say, remind baby Becca that just because Mucilage sounds like it should come from one's nose it does not, in fact, wish to be placed there. There are countless situations in daily life where I have been reminded to lift my feet slightly higher when navigating uneven sidewalks - thanks, twisted ankle! - or to truly trust my sense of smell when choosing which subway car to enter.

For too many of us, when we make the right decision we call it smarts, but when life hands us lemons we shrug it off to fate - absolving us of guilt and taking the credit as necessary.

In the course of the last 24 hours, we were given by the seller an ultimatum to buy a house, and due to the fact that our existing home hadn't closed yet, decided to pass on the deal we had been so hot for the past two weeks. Then, in a quick twist, we were given a closing date on our house. Should we reconsider? What would Suze do?

We passed. I seriously think we dodged a bullet on that house that was at the top of our range and better suited for a middle manager at Goldman Sachs than two gay architects with Kylie on the brain. Not because we felt it was a sign, but because we knew that house was a stretch for us accompanied by a lot of pressure to buy it quickly. Having the brakes put on us made us reconsider - the very definition of a teachable moment.

And when it rains - or snows as it may tonight ...we found a new, much better house. More affordable, more us, and with a strange and interesting connection to the seller. Benji, and maybe his future sibling, has a lifetime to adjust to whatever we choose. We'll make the right choice for us - and twist our own fate.

House Hunty

2011-10-22T10:09:00.000-07:00

Just listed! This charming colonial style tudor split-level gem simply oozes charm. A GRACIOUS ROCKING CHAIR PORCH ushers you inside the handcrafted wood doors across the threshold and directly into a FLABBERGASTING FOYER with PURLOINED POLISHED OAKWOOD FLOORS. Evidence of olde worlde charmme abounds through the BEAMED CEILINGED AND WAINSCOTTED FORMAL LIVING ROOM as you are shepherded into the SUN SPLATTERED STUDY. Appreciate the ARCHITECTURAL CROWN MOLDINGS as you marvel at the COOK'S KITCHEN WITH ONYX COUNTERS, GOURMET WALK-IN OVEN AND JETTED STAINLESS STEEL FRIDGE. Great for entertaining! Upstairs the SPRAWLING MASTER SPA RETREAT MASTER SUITE brags of it's SEVEN WALK-IN CLOSETS, STEWING TUB, AND DUELING VANITIES. As you are whisked through the COMMODIOUS REAR ENTRY to the SUSTAINABLY HARVESTED BRAZILIAN BLOODWOOD DECK PERFECT FOR ALL FRESCO DINING, you'll choke on the convenience of the FOUR CAR GARAGE which tattles of a 500-AMP WOODWORKING SHOP! Gape in awe at the MATURE LANDSCAPING that presses turgidly against the FRESHLY SHINGLED EXTERIOR and RECENTLY ROOFED ROOF. UPGRADED SYSTEMS ponder the FLOORED AND WALLED BASEMENT WITH BONUS SEASONAL INDOOR WATER FEATURE! All within WALKING DISTANCE TO ALL SHOPPING AND TRANSPORTATION DOWNHILL BOTH WAYS! A true jem like this won't last long, CALL TODAY.

No broker's, please.

The House Always Wins

2011-10-19T19:41:00.000-07:00

Did I mention he turned two last week?

For Javier: sorry I have been so lax.

Papi, Benji and I have spent the last three months completely preoccupied with real estate. I haven't blogged much about it because 1.) it's not that interesting and 2.) talking about it jinxes the deal. Even today, when we made an acceptable offer on a house we love, and our own house is scheduled to be sold in 10 days, we feel like we're building a house of cards.

I've moved. A lot. My parents were very young when I was born and I accompanied them on a journey through college, careers and relocation. I got a sense that moving was fun and exciting and that change was a good thing. But having a child of my own and being so intrinsically itinerant I feel a need to change yet again, to try something different. I want to settle. Down. In our town.

I've had damp fantasies about moving back west, closer to family and a different pace that is in my blood. Despite serious efforts, it hasn't happened yet. My plan has been slightly fatalistic: either I get a job offer in San Francisco or we find a house here that we love and meets our criteria.

It seems the house has won.

I'm not sure if you can trust fate, but you can definitely trust your instincts. Mine was to finally make a commitment to that last crabgrass frontier: I've already committed to my husband and my son, it is time to commit to my home. We need to put down roots somewhere, anywhere, and it seems that here is as good or better than any of our other options.

Juan forbids me from revealing details - but changes are coming. I can't wait to stop waiting and make the commitment.

Hello

2011-10-08T17:44:00.000-07:00

At the Edge of Two

As casually as you might find the bathroom light switch in the dark, the infant that was placed in our nervous arms opened his eyes to find himself a little boy. A real, flesh and bone boy, no longer a marionette to be moved from place to place by his dads with little to say except no no no or sleeping complacency. His limbs move on command, and so do his dads. Perhaps not master, but definitely a resident of his own domain.

Two years is a long time if you're a carton of milk, a banana, a friends-with-benefits relationship, or a cold sore. Even for one's self, two years can be plenty of time to sabotage a marriage, move to the Caribbean, and begin a lifetime of regret. But for a new parent, the first two years of your child's life is about the time it takes the coffee pot to finish brewing. Those sleepless nights blur together, the milestones you try so hard to chisel into notoriously soft cerebral cortex...nothing stays, nothing stops, nothing but birthdays.

Two weeks ago Benji became a little boy. Some internal clock told him it was time to start running, talking, jumping - all things those hateful baby websites made us sure our son was never going to do, he did at once. That diapered genie is now out of the bottle and the only wishes we're going to get are that our backs and patience can survive our Brave New Boy.

Happy 2nd Birthday, our handsome little man. We would love to give you the world, but something tells me it's yours already.

Growing Down

2011-10-05T03:25:00.000-07:00

Our new Fun After Dark

A funny thing happened on the way to fatherhood.

Being a new father at 41 was not especially difficult; I've kept myself in shape and treasure my goofy, immature side. Like a lot of urban gay men, both Juan and I work hard and "relax" hard - as I told my mom once, trying to explain the White Party, it's tough to spend a week at 90 miles an hour and come to a screeching stop on the weekend. We loved our cocktail hour, our Hell's Kitchen, the tipsy magazine browsing and the Penn Station Pizza.

But none of that is easy with Benji. When Daddies stay up late he - well, he doesn't care. He still wakes up at 6 and wants to play, cry, eat, and poop. Often at once. Our cherished evenings out became less frequent - and given babysitter rates, more expensive. And surprisingly, less necessary.

Given the backbreaking stress that parents supposedly add to their agenda, we're not responding in our usual pattern of finding ever more ways to distract and escape. A child is a different kind of stress. Of course we need time away, and we still hire a sitter a couple of times a month to see a movie or feel like adults again. But the power of children is the irresistible pull that they have to make your lives conform to theirs. Their needs, their priorities, and their short little point of view is suddenly the one that matters.

And just when you're feeling old, you realize you've been singing the ABC song to yourself on the way to work.

Countdown is Progressing

2011-10-02T18:42:00.000-07:00

In a week, Benji turns two. The months - and now years - are starting to blur together, either as a result of my approaching senility or his ability to speed up time. Every cliche that other parents have said to me, "It's over before you know it," or "Appreciate it while it lasts," or "You're going to want to finish that martini" has been absolutely true. Today I was thinking about how he used to jump in his little swing a few months ago - and realized that no, it was a year and a few months ago.

We've spent the past two weekends here in New Jersey instead of going to our cabin upstate. (Thankfully, the peaches froze and canned well to keep us connected). What a privilege to spend two weekends with Benji, not running around with chores and driving but walking around our town or just loafing in the apartment, hearing him name things I didn't even know he'd seen before. And having him sneak up on me and jump on my back as I'm reading a magazine on the carpet, and demand that I take him "that way!" on a horsey ride into the bedroom. Feeling his warm little cheek as he lays his head on my shoulders on the bedtime trip from car to crib. They are all little flecks of him that I'm desperate to add to my scrapbook of memories but are gone as soon as I realize how precious they are.

Two is going to come and go, too. Given the tumult of the past year, we're going to have a wonderful, just-us -boyz birthday dinner with hopefully enough space on the memory card for the camera. And then it's on to three, and a whole new set of mementos that I will struggle to keep safe.

Payoff

2011-09-23T18:54:00.000-07:00

Did I mention the 25 pounds of peaches? What I may have neglected was the fact that a good number of them went into a vat of vodka for infusion. A sprinkle of sugar, some quality time in a dark, dry place and...hello, faux Stoli Persik. I may bottle it, if it lasts that long.

Our trip into fatherhood has been so strange. First, it has been one nearly unbearable stress after the other: sleep deprivation; a sense of helplessness and strangely, boredom; and poop. On top of that it has been as natural as the rain. I never once have had the sense that I couldn't do this. It seems easier than mowing the lawn or, maybe, picking the peaches. Raising a baby is hardwired into us. Most of our upbringing prepares us for it.

We are taught to be responsible, to share, to be selfless, generous, kind - this is not just for the benefit of that sweaty guy in the next cubicle. We have these standards of behavior to prepare us for raising the next generation. Do unto your children as you would have them do to the rest of the world - because believe me, like a little sugar in the infused peaches, the sweetness you give now will pay off a thousand-fold down the road.

Our little peach is sleeping, hugging his bunny tight in his bed. For all of the worries and anxieties I have in my adult life, with Benji I know that I'm doing something right. That's what it's all about.

Canned

2011-09-19T19:32:00.000-07:00

Benji is only a few weeks away from two. Whenever we mention this some Einstein always quips "oh, terrible twos!" like she's warning us away from some rocky shoal. OK, should we just get rid of him now before it gets bad? It's not helpful, thanks.

It seems that this is the first time a parent has to deal with capricious, unreasonable requests. Crying for milk at 2 a.m. (and 4 a.m., and 6 a.m.) has a sense of logic and a legitimacy about it. Throwing a tantrum because he can't put the drain stopper in the sink - well, it doesn't seem as pressing a need. We say no, they melt down, we leave the room and rearrange our underwear drawer. Often with earplugs.

But we aren't immune from our own whims. Who knows what posessed me to can 12 quarts of peaches tonight before Juan got home? Sure, they were ripening to the point of fruit flies but I suppose a few hours more would have been acceptable. Something got under my skin - something that said this would be a nice way to show affection and a commitment to my family. Even if it killed them.

The stress of four boiling caldrons, twelve Mason jars and - I swear - two French hens really didn't set well with either Benji or Juan, who arrived late after 10 hours glued to his desk. The last thing either of them wanted was a Peach Surprise. Well, Surprise!!

Juan gets it. He knows that this is my way to feel connected and needed, and he bites his lip when I ask him "what's wrong?!" It is our finely sanded talisman of need and generosity, one that we regularly trade as needed. When you're both pushed to your limit, you need to do something that helps you feel in control. For me, it's a strange Martha Stewart sort of domesticity combined with gimlets and a good book. For Juan, he needs his naps, his music, his sun and his magazines. Oh, and paying all the bills and generally managing our lives.

Tomorrow the peaches will be nicely sealed and ready for a winter of cobblers. Juan will have hopefully forgiven me for an evening of neglect. And I'll be recharged enough to forgive him for whatever he needs to do to get back at me.

Peach Surprise

2011-09-17T12:48:00.000-07:00

Seven and a half years ago, I absentmindedly pushed a peach pit into the ground in my backyard in the Catskills. Half to not run over it with the mower and half hoping it would sprout. I forgot about it less than a minute later.

Somehow though, today we harvested about 25 pounds of sweet, blushing peaches, the second year of the shocking bounty. Peaches need heat, sun, and dry conditions. Our vigorous tree grows in the shade, at the bottom of a cold mountain, with her feet in a spring and her leaves sweating in the sultry New York humidity. She is not a likely success.

But...still...the pie is baking and the Mason jars are sterilizing. Juan looked at me this morning and asked "are you going to pick ALL of them?" as he remembered last year's 12 jars of jam that we still are spreading on, well, everything. What elese can I do? Here is a classic inspirational gift from the universe (please see the last post). You don't let those rot on the ground.

Our own little unlikely sprout Benji helped me pick and put the peaches in his little shopping cart. I wonder what the odds are of this boy, perfectly suited for Juan's and my unique ecosystem, finding his way to us? Did he get planted here because we are fertile ground or is this all a test of our abilities to adapt? Either way, the pink-cheeked sweetness can't be resisted.

Now, who wants pie?

Boardwalk Epiphanies

2011-09-13T19:03:00.000-07:00

The most profound insights can come from the most common places. Actually this has been a central tenet in my life and I'm sticking by it. If one is open to looking for inspiration, if one is optimistic and believes that life gives one clues for how to live, a bucket of fries and late night in Rehoboth Beach might hold the key to happiness.

We took last weekend's trip in the middle of a particularly stressful time in our lives. It has been a gnawing, dull stress brought on by the sale of our beloved Catskills cabin (and a delayed closing), a horrific hurricane that destroyed our town, and a still-unstable economy that makes everyone unsure of their future. We desperately need to move on, but our smarter selves tell us make no sudden moves. We are waiting and stewing.

Suddenly, Juan proposes a weekend at the beach. Not just any beach, but tacky-fabulous Rehoboth Beach. A town with its heart in the Jersey Shore but its feet in the Carolinas. Where the rednecks meet the blue states: a great mix of salt water taffy, Poodle Beach, tea dance and tea party. It ain't P-Town and you won't be seeing Cher on a scooter, but you won't get beat up and the guy in a 9/11 eagle-landing t-shirt probably will say "how ya doin'" when he passes you and your husband pushing your baby in a stroller.

We took to the beach like a Victorian lady to her bed; days of humid languishing getting the vapors on the fainting chair. But wow, we needed that. Benji lost his fear of the surf and unfortunately, the the riptides. We kept a careful eye as he darted back and forth between the rolling breakers and burying Dad in a sand pile. Then I got it.

All of the stress of this summer is - I hope - lost on a giggling boy digging a sand dam against the rising tide. It will be gone in minutes, but by then he's on to another project, maybe to build another dam at the ebb. Squint your eyes and the futility blurs from the picture: what you see is a boy living, really living, a summer afternoon at the beach.

It's a bit new-agey for me, but here is my bloggy takeaway: Be Here Now. Eat that bucket of fries on the boardwalk, knowing that you have an entire winter to work it off at the gym, and you will. But don't lose these unrecoverable moments to worry and sabotage. Hold hands. Kiss your baby and share - or force - a smile with the tea party patriots. Don't forfeit what is for what might be.

And that, my dears, is today's Lady Lesson.

You Say Papa, I Say Potato

2011-09-06T19:00:00.000-07:00

Raising a bilingual child has obvious rewards, but one is never quite sure that the deliberate language bifurcation is paying off or if one's child is, in fact, mute. Benji has a wonderful trick of biting his tongue - I believe literally - when strangers approach. And by strangers I mean intimate friends and grandparents.

My own Michigan Frog responds equally well to commands in Spanish and English. Both "Como hace la vaca" and "What does the cow say" elicit a closed-lipped "Mmmmm!" with a big, lippy smile. Water is both "gua gua" and "wa wa". Today he asked me for the "pan" (bread) and poked the dog's "ojitos" (little eyes).

But ask this boy to speak on command? Forget it. One minute he's singing "La Reina Batata" (sidebar: please, please listen to this album. It gives me the chills) and the next he's pointing and grunting. I'll never make a living off of his performances.

We know we're doing something right though: he's the only one at his daycare that understands his teacher, and that includes me. His brain is making connections that I struggled to make decades later: and he'll take it in stride. Como hace el nino? Like this, of course!

Labor Days

2011-09-05T18:00:00.000-07:00

Slightly less than two years ago, had I two or three hours of spare time I could have cleared some brush, canned peaches, mowed the lawn, fried up some bacon, and served it up in a pan. In fact, that was one day's to-do list from September, 2009. Today I still have these chores - to-do lists don't go away because a child has entered your life - but the energy to complete them has taken my much-needed vacation to Puerto Vallarta without me.

Eagle-eyed Baby Muff readers may ask why, just two weeks from returning from a demi-week in Provincetown, would I need yet another respite from fatherly duties. Please allow me to explain in further detail; in fact, please allow me to explain in a bulleted list.

Babies wake up every three hours. Depending on sleep schedules, moon tides, and urinary tract function, one can rightly expect to awake at either 5 a.m. or 8 a.m. The latter is obviously better for me, and the former is better for earplugs.
Toddlers, on the other hand, wake up with the sun. The sun always rises at 6:17 a.m. The roosters may crow at 4, and daddies may wish to enjoy a moment together at 6:40, but neither of those occasions mean squat when your child has somehow thrown his diaper through the window into the apartment below and is now loudly singing an ode to his poopoo. This behavior does not prepare one for a day full of duties.
Speaking of doodies, for a toddler, a new-found appreciation of strawberries, while perhaps encouraging to the health-minded parent, does not equate to a regular or - forgive me - "firm" schedule.
Playgrounds are, for a child, the universe's black hole. Though they might not look like much, one is irresistibly drawn to them. Leaving is physically impossible.
A dinner out with one's child can be both a Joy and a Challenge. A Joyful meal with your toddler is one during which the ketchup has been squirted on less than two adjacent tables and where one's table is far enough away from the crying, childless couple fighting over why he doesn't love her enough to have children. A temptation, yes, but an inappropriate time. A Challenge is when one's beautiful boy reaches for his chicken fingers and spills the icy-cold Grey Goose martini that was just delivered and for which you have been waiting at least a week.

Far from an exhaustive, if not exhausting list, these are a few reasons why, for instance, I have been unable to dust since December, 2009. Sure, I keep myself in shape and our family keeps clean linens and clothing stocked for the week. The kisses I get from Benji, now purposeful and named, are more than rewards for this mess of a labor of love.

In Late August

2011-09-01T19:00:00.000-07:00

Winter never seems to end and summer never seems to stick around. We blinked, and Irene came through to steal the last golden drops of happiness. Benji will grow up and won't remember these few months of heat waves, hurricanes, and earthquakes - but we'll have some great campfire stories for him as he gets older.

Our beloved Margaretville was kicked in the gut last week: but she'll be back. That town was built on and from rocks, and behind the waterlogged gingerbread there's a stony resolve. We're going back tomorrow, putting on the boots, and doing what neighbors do: shoveling out. There are so many left homeless and who lost their livelihoods: if you can donate, please contact MARK Project, 845-586-3500.

Much better yet, come and spend an autumn weekend in our beloved Catskills. You will be welcomed and appreciated like never before, and every dollar you spend will give our neighbors a reason to keep trying.

Love,

Andrew

More, and Soon

2011-08-23T18:29:00.000-07:00

We just returned from a vacation to Cape Cod, where Benji decided to debut sentences, running away, and swimming. Pictures are at PhotoMax - ha, I joke - and we'll post the deliciousness tomorrow. Hang on, little tomatoes!

Wonderful Life

2011-08-13T17:56:00.000-07:00

Everyone's eyes were on the naked boy near the surf, sitting in the wet sand at the upper laps of the waves. I kept having to remind myself that he was my son, that this beautiful, perfect object wasn't some glass float washed ashore across the limitless mercury folds that gave the ships on the horizon a distorted scale, like closeup photographs of tiny boats viewed from across the room.

When the wave hit him he was knocked back into the sand, and I'm sure that the first thing he felt was the cool foamy water on his bottom and stomach. He gasped and I grabbed his back, all sandy and sunscreen slick. He grabbed onto my neck and held tight, the water sucking us back, slowly releasing us to try again another time. He laughed and kissed me on the cheek.

Many people have told me that being a parent changes you, and of course I expected as much. The routine itself is consuming, and our priorities shifted dramatically, even if only to balance the budget with diapers and daycare. Many of the changes though have been much more subtle than altering a sleep schedule or becoming an expert in bedtime stories. Today, something broke through between Benji and me. Today Benji made me feel like a dad.

Juan was away at a different beach with some friends for the day so Benji and I spent the first half of the day with the divine John Heath Olguin at Sandy Hook in New Jersey. The weather could not have been better, and Benji could not have been cuter if he'd been a naked Cabbage Patch doll. Happy all day, eating sandy sandwiches and grapes, throwing rocks and flirting with everyone around (who all returned the favor). Hugging me, kissing, rolling on the sand and laying on top of me half asleep.

The love fest continued after we got home. We went for a walk then dinner, just the two of us, where he ate everything on his plate including the rice. Off to the park where he rolled in the grass and played in the fountain. I have never seen a happier child outside of a pharmaceutical ad.

Can I take a moment in all of the stress of our current economic and political climate to say that I needed and deserved this today? My son gave me that sense of purpose and hope that I've been trying for a couple of months to recover after too much bad news and too many brainless bigoted pandering politicians.

Thanks, kid. You saved the summer.

What's It To Ya?

2011-08-10T18:57:00.000-07:00

In the last few months we've gone through the stress of getting our weekend place ready for sale and realizing that means we actually have to move out of it. It sold quickly, thankfully, but we're faced with a strange, early-21st century dilemma: stay in our apartment and save for a while, or take advantage of historically low interest rates and depressed house prices and buy now - a choice not without substantial risk.

What-it's-to-me is that it's all about Benji's future. Like any family, we're trying to make choices that will be better for all of us, namely him, in the long run. He is happy where he is now even if we feel a bit cramped (and just wait until we don't have a weekend yard to escape to.) So prudence says to hold tight, endure 9 months more here in the apartment and emerge next spring ready for the future.

But, but: interest rates are so low. And sellers are just so eager. Must...resist...enormous...Tudor...

Ham and Cheese

2011-08-10T18:23:00.000-07:00

Juan loves photography, and Benji obliges. He oughta be in pictures, and he usually is.

Swamp Rose

2011-08-05T19:56:00.000-07:00

Our commute to work takes us through the blighted, potential beauty of East Orange and Newark and then on a landfill tour of the Meadowlands, New Jersey's mythic swamp/landfill that is one of the New York City metropolitan area's largest wetland. Quite literally, this place is a dump.

But anyone who takes this trip on a regular basis cannot help but notice the resilience of nature in the face of our cruel disregard. An area once covered by ancient forests and salt hay is now colonized nearly exclusively by giant reed, some invasive staghorn sumac and paulownia empress, thanks to centuries of purposeful exploitation and contamination. And one other returning native plant: the swamp rose.

There are only ten days a year you will notice her. Her foliage isn't showy, and growing at the borders of the mucky ooze, one tends to fantasize about genetically deformed sea life rather than search out charming cultivars. But at the end of July, the swamp rose puts on the wig and heels and takes a walk around the block. She is stunning.

Her flowers vary from white to candy cane and are the size of generous saucers. She lines the border of the filthiest canals and most stagnant pools, like those Laramie Project angels holding wings up high to protect you from God Hates Fags. It's not that she doesn't care where grows, she embraces it. She saves up the toxic abuse we've given her, all of the car tires, the Amtrak grease, the Whopper wrappers and the WWII scrap and explodes it back in our face as we speed by on July's muggy morning.

Then just as you begin to think that all might be o.k. with the Meadowlands, and the world, she folds her flowers up and disappears in her marginal habitat. She's a muse, nothing more, and if anything is to be done it is up to you.

Good Life

2011-08-02T19:13:00.001-07:00

You call it maize...

Baby Muff shares most of the secrets - if not all - of two gay men raising a child. I feel honored that you care. In that spirit, here is my list of thankfuls this summer.

Juan
Benji
RuPaul's Drag U
Benji's Spanglish
Trenchant buyers of our beloved Muffalda
A no-muss, no-fuss apartment with absolutely zero stress
A gaggle of new New Jersey friends
Our pool
A paid-off car
Our upcoming P-town vacation full of wigs, music, and our son
Our blind pug with more insight than 90% of our elected leaders
Choo-choo right next door
Almost two decades of making it in New York
Tim Gunn, even with the cankles comment
Pristine, abandoned South Mountain Reservation
Camping. We have ALL the supplies.

Selling our weekend house, which has been one of the most stable things in our lives, has shaken me to the core.I wonder if we can remake our lives to adjust to (only) an apartment in the suburbs. Are our identities as people strong enough to sustain this, if only temporarily?

Many people have a set identity that they can always go back to: the Yale alum, the kid with the big family with the house by the lake, the married wife with the baby on the way. Neither Juan nor I have that. We're both immigrants to our life and we are making our own way. Every day we have to accept or discard pieces of it. What could be more alive than that?

The best day of my life, which happens at regular intervals, is the day I remember that my life has been on purpose, brave, and real. Enjoy.

Watch it.

In the Good Life

2011-08-02T18:57:00.000-07:00

Baby Muff shares most of the secrets - if not all - of two gay men raising a child. I feel honored that you care. In that spirit, here is my list of thankfuls this summer.

Juan
Benji
RuPaul's Drag U
Benji's Spanglish
Trenchant buyers of our beloved Muffalda
A no-muss, no-fuss apartment with absolutely zero stress
A gaggle of new New Jersey friends
Our pool
A paid-off car
Our upcoming P-town vacation full of wigs, music, and our son
Our blind pug with more insight than 90% of our elected leaders
Choo-choo right next door
Almost two decades of making it in New York
Tim Gunn, even with the cankles comment
Pristine, abandoned South Mountain Reservation
Camping. We have ALL the supplies.

The best day of my life, which happens at regular intervals, is the day I remember that my life has been on purpose, brave, and real. Enjoy.

Watch it.

Barefoot Commando

2011-07-29T19:24:00.000-07:00

After an especially lively session in the pool this afternoon, I hastily dressed Benji to go back to the apartment. It's a short walk and assuming he'd already peed in the pool, pulled up his shorts sans diapers. No shirt. No shoes. Into the stroller he went, down the brick path toward the door of our building.

No child can resist a hot summer lawn after a rainstorm, and mine was no exception. Seizing the opportunity to escape the slightly plastic-bag existence our apartment building packages as "luxury", he threw himself out of the stroller, face first to the damp, muddy grass. He pulled himself up quickly and with a shriek, made right for the hosta. He was off.

The chase led from turf to mulch to pavers and finally asphalt. He stopped at the road, only because he couldn't negotiate the high curb. I'll bet quite a few parents would have scolded their kid at this point, but I was thrilled for him. What is my fondest memory of summer, if not being barefoot and mostly naked running through the lawn? I let him go.

I followed him down the sidewalk, blocking his access to the road and urging him to run further, faster toward the park. He stopped a couple of times to pick up sticks and pick leaves. He may have peed again. On he stumble-ran until we got to the playground, a full block away on short legs.

Every spring as a kid I would purposefully take off my shoes as soon as it was warm enough just to toughen my feet. How great, I thought, to be able to walk all the way to town barefoot, over gravel and rocks and probably broken glass. Bicycling, skateboarding, everything barefoot; those calluses must have been a sight. I did it on purpose and I remember boasting about it at the end of the summer.

Benji's little feet are as tender as his cheeks, but they won't be that way for long. He's pushing himself, feeling his way around his environment with all of his senses, with all the mud and rocks, slipping on the jungle gym and falling on his knees. Now I'm there to pick him up, soon he will do it himself.

Let's go clean you up, little man.

Retrogays

2011-07-25T19:56:00.001-07:00

Please God, let it come with the house

My earliest memories of design nostalgia were the 70's obsession with Victoriana. Who didn't want to live in a renovated 1900's house full of ferns, lamp scarves and brass firescreens? Donna Summer in a floppy hat and a shawl was just the right mix of aujourd'hui and hier. Quelle surprise.

But today, today is essentially yesterday. We don't seem able to form a new thought in our artistic mind, if it hasn't yet been cannibalized by reality series and infomercials. Where are the Damien Hursts of 2011? I know he is still alive but who captures our jaded, referential outlook today?

The death of irony has been greatly exaggerated, but if the gays have anything to say about it - and given our trend track record (hello, ripped-side t-shirts), we have plenty to say - real is the new fake. You want to buy that center hall colonial on the cul-de-sac? HA HA! I'm peeing! But you know what? The schools are great and your kids can learn to ride their bikes away from traffic! Oh, the irony!

Somehow we've become so ironic that we've looped back into Perry Como. Mine are not the suburbs of our parents, they're the suburbs of our grandparents (who, most likely, understand you more than mom and dad). These places we're moving to are close to the city, tied to mass transit, centered around walking and, let's face it, full of young, fun, and yes, gay families. What's not to love?

So with this in mind, we've begun our house hunt in earnest. In our beautiful little urban village with the demographic mix, the good schools, and the freakishly high taxes that we all complain about but somehow willingly pay to get something even more valuable in return. It's no gated community: we have ersatz neighborhood patrols and "block watch" signs.It's a retro aesthetic that is shamelessly altruistic and optimistic. It's also something that someday Benji won't consider ironic or retro, just a great way to grow up.

Walk on over, we're having Manhattans on the deck.

By Definition

2011-07-19T03:34:00.000-07:00

Our friends and family know that Juan and I are not afraid of change. We have a high tolerance for some serious life-bending course corrections, from moving (six times in 10 years) to starting our own business to, oh, what was it, yes, adopting Benji. It's definitately part of my personality, and Juan is usually tolerant if not enthusiastic toward another crazy idea.

Raising a child has made me much more conscious of capricious decisions. Sure, I could quit my job and move the family to Puerto Vallarta to open a piano bar, but is a childhood full of drag karaoke his best option? The examined life has it's charms, and they're difficult to ascertain unless you can stop, and sit, and think. Even at 43, I'm still asking myself who I want to be. Who does my husband or my son want to be?

We answered that question differently over the years. For seven years, we were the Manhattan gay couple, fun at a party, who had the cabin in the Catskills and an improbable array of frightening power tools. The contradiction fit us to a T (preferably a tight one) even if most of our friends shared none of our enthusiasm for the wood chipper. But people defy definitions, and sticking to one view of our life after the huge changes Benji brought would be wrong and unfair to all of us. Things - and people - change.

When we decided to sell our cabin we realized that we had to let go of some of those dreams. When it sold so quickly, before we had a chance to redefine ourselves as "the couple with the kid in the suburbs" or maybe "the couple who go on vacation a lot because they miss the mountains", we have had to do some soul searching about who we are now. And truthfully much of that definition, for the blessed moment, is asleep in the next room with a stuffed bunny.

Born Again

2011-07-13T20:21:00.000-07:00

An adopted child has many birthdays: a literal one, a practical one, and an emotional one. The first is obvious and has the most significance in his life. The other two, unlike non-adoptive kids, are also important and often celebrated, usually privately.

The literal birthday is, frankly, the day your child was born to his mother, and to most people this is what is important. But to adoptive parents, there are other days of astounding significance. The day your child is given to you is one; for those of us in open adoptions, this is when your baby's mother literally passes the child to you as everyone is sobbing and wondering what will happen next. Then there is the day the baby is officially adopted, usually with a judge legally passing the child to you as everyone sobs and wonders how quickly they can get out of the courthouse in Newark.

The adoption finalization was a big deal for us, but the real end of the story was this week. On Monday, we received Benji's new birth certificate. Now we are both his parents. Legally, forever and ever. There is no turning back, as Juan casually mentioned today. Really there was never a turning back, he was ours from the day his mom picked us out of a book.

The blessings we have been given since that day in late November are immeasurable. Who could have planned such a strange soap opera of people, relationships, love, and commitment as the one that brought our family toagether? A strong woman who was determined to do the right thing for her baby, two men who would fight an indifferent legal system and skeptical society to do something good, and a tough-ass little boy so eager to make his mark on the world with the help of a family to love him.

But the mundane blunts the metaphor, and our visit to the Social Security office today was no exception. No one cared abour our drama, our history or our struggle to be a family. All they wanted was two pieces of identification - for an infant - for which we had to drive back home and return to deliver the medical record to the pleasant yet faceless beaurocrat (shout out to cutie Luis, who gave us an eyebrow raise and a wink when confirming me as the "mother".) We were no better, and no worse, than any of the other annoyed and restless families in the room.

Minorities often think of themselves as special; this is how we cope with being considered less-than. What we are fighting for, however, is to be considered normal. We want to be special for the acheivements we've made, for the fights we've won, for the perserverance we've shown toward all those lies that say we are unworthy. And maybe it all culminates at a bland government office in East Orange, New Jersey. Here we are, gay dad and son, submitting forms for a social security card just like everyone else in the room . No one cares. For us, that means today our family finally won.

Maplewoodstock

2011-07-10T19:36:00.000-07:00

Not as much of a stretch as you might imagine. Here is a town, a picturesque New Jersey commuter suburb, all Tudor and center-hall colonials, full of Park Slope refugees. Yes, one catches a whiff of Exchange Place and Stepford, but most people who move here from New York City choose it over deeper, whiter suburbs for a reason, and that reason doesn't attend Maplewoodstock.

It is our third summer here. No more than three months into our experiment in integayted suburban living we became friends with at least a dozen couples, about eleven more than I have invested time with in the city. Many of them with kids, which really saved our budget on Todd Parr books. So today on a packed hillside surrounded by smoky food stands selling foot-longs, organic gelato, and Suzie Q's BBQ, we spread our sheet with the hundreds and hundreds of families of mixed, gay, WASPy, African, African-American, Latino, transgender (but I'm not exactly sure of that one...)composition and had a couple of hours of peace and music. And BBQ. And deep, real, soul.

I think the noble goal of the "celebration" of diversity is that we see our differences as, at a minimum, interesting. In the wrong context it can hint of society splintering instead of uniting around things we have in common. In the best sense, the sense of Maplewoodstock and it's namesake, we think that being different is cool. You might be a Street trader but you're in a sweaty t-shirt, holding hands with your same-sex husband, feeding two kids eating barbecue on a now-greasy sheet in a park. The (straight) strangers next to you send their kids over to jump on you and introduce themselves, in that order. We don't make assumptions that because you work for the man, or love one, that you have an evil agenda.

Moving here has also opened my eyes to a lifestyle that I didn't even know could exist: suburban liberals. You know what has turned off so many of my generation to the pleasures of leafy streets and gracious lawns? Boredom, blandness, and bigotry. I think the same adventuresome spirit that gay people brought to the West Village, SoHo, Chelsea and Hell's Kitchen is taking hold in suburbs all around big cities - and not just by gays. Urban areas are full of young people again, learning how to live in close quarters in cities with people with different backgrounds and sexily foreign looks. And when they meet and have their beautiful kids, a lot of them are deciding that they can be who they want to be anywhere, even in a mid-century split-level with wall ovens and a carport..

Thank you, little town, for what you were able to give us. It gives me courage to think that someday we can take steps to make all of our suburbs, and cities like our suffering neighbors in Newark, places for everyone to be safe and enjoy the things that set us apart and bring us together.

Procrastinate Later

2011-07-06T18:33:00.000-07:00

March 2011, I meant to upload this a while ago...

Papi Muff and I are disturbingly similar. Of course we have our idiosyncrasies, I think much of it cultural, but how many couples do you know that can adopt and raise a child while working in the same office? Most people couldn't do it, but it works for us.

We have common tastes, in all happy senses of the phrase. Anxiety that leads to finger-picking, love of excellent music, practical disdain of pretension and a commitment to balancing our life as gay men with our lives as dads. And a fatalistic procrastination streak that we've come to if not embrace, at least plan for.

I can avoid making that overdue phone call to my dearest friend or ailing grandmother until both of them have forgotten my name. All of the things that stack up on my desk to do just scare me from starting on the other stack on my counter. Finally when I just can't stand it I'll do it all in a frenzy of white-hot accomplishment, mostly so I can casually remark to Juan that at least I got my chores done. I'm no hoarder, no depressive souse sinking in the tar pits of denial. I'm just busy and need, really need to be the one in control over when I get around to it.

Until The Kid.

There is no procrastination with a child. Oh sure, you can "grow his hair out" for a couple of weeks, you can take him to the swimming pool instead of his night...week...periodic bathtime. You can say those high-waters are fashionable capris and keep adding mayonnaise to those leftovers for lunch, but somewhere, somehow you are going to pay. There's no escaping the responsibilities, confrontation, and humiliations of being a parent, that is unless you plan to host an also-humiliating visit from the Department for Family and Youth Services.

Benji's needs are so immediate that there is no time to finish up that list of things that you didn't do last night. You can't leave a sink full of dirty dishes for the morning, because you know that the hour between 7 and 8 is both the most demanding of the day and actually only 23 minutes long. So you plod through the crap and just savor that glass of wine in front of Jon Stewart, little boy down and dishwasher swishing.

It ain't easy with two working parents, no nanny, no maid, and no family within 3,500 miles (not to mention Juan's slightly more distant clan). But we do it, we make a decent living, we do our jobs, we stay in sync, and we keep our commitments. But if I owe you a phone call, I truly apologize. You're on my list.

Dependent's Day

2011-07-04T11:21:00.000-07:00

Juan, at Benji's age.

The little boy asleep in the darkened room is having his own dreams, someday soon he will be able to describe the horrors and joys they bring to him in these midday hours. His Papi is dozing on the lounge after spraying his mahogany skin with something frighteningly similar to Pam. The easy techno-lounge musics comes and goes from the outdoor speakers with the breeze as the traffic on the distant highway starts the long journey home to the city.

And I'm wondering how I got here.

Life is what happens to us while we are making other plans, to quote Reader's Digest of all places. By some comparisons to my friends I might be ripe for a midlife crisis. Half (I hope, at least) a life of hard work, getting to where I am without family money or connections, no Ivy League friends in my mom's sorority or a rich aunt who left me a nest egg. In fact, I moved to New York with my then-boyfriend, both of us knowing no one and scratching a life together in Brooklyn. We had a plan: I would finish grad school, we'd get better jobs, finally an apartment we could invite people to, and then we'd start our building our family with kids.We worked 9 years and 11 months on that dream, until it ended.

We all make so many plans. Some people are clear from the age of majority what their life plan will be: they set their sights to what is achievable. I'd say they're the ones that are ripe for a midlife crisis: when one day you realize that not only is half your life over, but that now any course correction is difficult at best, and in the case of a tanning bed and Ferrari, ridiculous at worst.

Benji changed so much for us. It didn't happen in the first year, I have to admit. Re-reading some of my earlier Baby Muff posts I am struck at the joy I had in taking on this new project, at raising an infant and adjusting my routine to center around his. But this year, especially the last couple of months, I've come to see what being the Daddy is really all about. It's about making life decisions that won't necessarily result in the most fun or exciting outcomes: they may well mean giving up some of those favorite daydreams.

Juan is certainly not my dependent, but we rely on each other to keep our family viable. Maybe 25+ years of living my dream has prepared me to make a commitment to both him and Benji without fear of some sudden change of course. It is wonderful to be needed, and even better to feel capable. Independence, it seems today, is a small part of the story.

The Truth

2011-07-03T14:08:00.000-07:00

The lies state that gay men (and it is always men, women are never discussed) are promiscuous and don't really want marriage. The liars expand to say that gay relationships are only slightly longer lived than gay men, who die painful, lonely deaths, of course alone, of some fake disease explicitly invented to demean gay people and justify hate and bigotry. (Don't believe people could be this cruel?)

The truth? I once got into an email "discussion" (although an argument with a piece of toilet paper would have been more fruitful) with one of the bigots-of-the-moment to whom I tried to explain that although the type of gay man she was constantly flogging in her columns as a threat to the family undoubtedly existed, he was 1.) unlike almost anyone I have ever met in my lifelong journey as a gay man and 2.) most assuredly not a threat to anyone, except the unattractively attired. I tried to explain to her that almost all of my wide circle of friends consisted of stable couples who were together for five years or more, most over ten years. She accused me of lying and said that even if true it was a fluke. When I responded to her with concrete examples, she disappeared.

The truth. Yesterday, Juan, Benji and I went to a party held by a retired gay couple who built a house in the Catskills a few years ago. They were throwing a 4th of July party on what turned out to be the most beautiful day of the year so far. The house was lovely but not extravagant. The guests were a great mix of gay men, lesbians, straight couples, locals and weekenders. After lunch one of the hosts rises to address the crowd, thanks them for coming, and then asks who, in light of the marriage equality act recently passed in New York, was planning to get married?

Over half the crowd raised their hands. The majority of those remaining were already married, due to straightness or a willingness to travel. One eager fiancee yelled out "it's been ten years, we think the engagement has gone on long enough." The couple to their left yelled out "eighteen years for us.". And from the far corner of lawn two men of a certain age raised their hands and said "we've been waiting for forty-seven years."

We have been married, married-married, for a number of years already. Many of our friends did what we did, which was to go to a state that permitted civil marriage by same-sex couples and returned to our home state, New York, which recognized them. But many, probably most, of our friends had been together over ten years and to them, running away to another state to get married probably felt unnecessary in terms of their personal commitment to each other and somehow let their home state off the hook.

Later as I mingled I asked everyone what their plans were now that they could get married. To hear each of our long-committed friends, who are comfortable with each other like old slippers and about as activist as a flannel shirt each say "we are getting married" was a shock of the obvious. These are the gays-next-door, who are out to everyone and at-ease with their sexuality, who probably leave town rather than go to Pride events not because they don't approve but more because they have to mow the lawn. It's a matter of fact: now they can get married, and of course they will.

For those of us who may be a little more activist and vocal on the subject, perhaps a little more willing to ruffle some feathers in the face of both indifference and outright bigotry and naked hatred, their casual affirmation was liberating. All of the myths, lies, and willful ignorance of the truly bigoted anti-gay activists can be exposed by any one of us. The truth, which threatens not only their worldview but their paycheck is easy to ascertain and certainly much more life-affirming than the dark, bitter falsehoods they purport to believe. The truth is that most people, even most conservatives, are not hateful or bigoted. It is a natural thing to be suspicious, even afraid, of things you don't understand, and those who make a living from fostering anti-gay prejudice are more than happy to sign up another follower (and won't you please support our "ministry" with a generous donation?)

There are some who sneer all the way to the bank by fostering inequality and discrimination against my gay and lesbian brothers and sisters. They are in a prison of their own ignorance and lies. Come out, savor the sun, and get to know the truth that is right in front of you. Truly, it will set you free.

Fourth Estate

2011-06-29T18:30:00.000-07:00

Summer shuffles into the Catskills on a walker, but once he finally arrives he hits you over the head with it and wants his freaking iced tea, goddamn it. You prudently waited until the last frost...June 4th...and put in the already-producing tomato plants and here is Summer asking you where the hell is the insalata caprese and none of that goddamned store bought basil, neither! You can't win with Summer, but you can play along.

I like to pretend that from the first snow, usually two weeks before Halloween, until the first thaw (reliably April, though you will have 14" of slush tomorrow) that this is going to be the year that global warming really kicks in and finally we'll have the spring we really deserve. But no such luck, and here we are in July, on the eave of the fourth, staring at Summer from the front door like Grandpa just popping in from Yuma.

We may have missed it but we're not ready for it. We'll take the cues and unroll the hammock just in time to catch the first 80 degree day. We'll try to be there for those eight or nine weekends when everything is perfect - the yard is in shape, the fish in the pond dodge Benji's rocks and the dragonflies divebomb the two of us on the dock. Walking barefoot through the woods just so we can feel that spongy moss in our toes, the grey and gold kind that only grows underneath the blueberries by the powerlines. Realizing that this is still not the year we're going to finally redo the front flowerbeds and secretly happy to give the sweet milkthistle another victory.

This summer we put our cabin up for sale to give Benji a deeper connection to his home - given his already busy life with daycare and working parents. I doubt he'll have many memories of it but Daddies are always going to remember that charmed spot as the place where spring finally came to a couple of guys damned tired of winter.

Always the Son

2011-06-27T18:21:00.000-07:00

Papi and Baby Muff

Nothing was going to stop us from attending this year's Pride events. At not-insignificant expense we hired an all-day sitter and treated ourselves to an adult day in the sun with several thousand of our closest friends. This year was the year to splurge, and we did.

Even our early-morning Monday appointment in the Catskills wouldn't stop us from tasting every bit of this apple. The Pier Dance started two hours early this year (in a prescient move) so we had a solid six hours of dancing. If you've never been; five thousand people dancing through sunset on an enormous pier over the Hudson River to the world's best DJs, playing happy, recognizable music. There is no lack of energy. If you can imagine a mosh-pit where everyone says "excuse me, I'm so sorry" for stepping on your foot you are in the ballpark. Crowded to the extreme, but free from violence and fights and major druggy messiness that plague many other enormous city celebrations.

Apres party, a couple of hours at our favorite bar, G Lounge dancing to Kylie Minogue and being recognized by dozens of our closest acquaintances. When it was time to go, we hopped into our town car and snoozed our way back to New Jersey.

But the best part of this weekend? Today. Getting up this morning to take him to daycare, half awake and not a little hungover, we walked the half-mile through town in the warm morning sun. Being parents has become such a integral part of our lives that even a daddies' night out is only good because we get to come home to Benji.

Nothing says Pride more than two men proud of their lives and their child. Though most of our problems with adoption were self-doubt and anxiety, we were plenty aware of the novelty of our situation. Even though estimates place 8-10 million children as being raised by gay or lesbian parents, when you specify gay couples that number drops to 270,000 and for gay couples adopting children, that number falls to 65,000. For a gay couple, making a conscious decision to adopt a child is still a relatively rare and some (though not us) might say brave decision.

For all the daddies and mommies out there who went through the trials, paperwork, interviews, and heartache of missed connections associated with adoption: we have so much to be proud of. We have made our own families, we have done something good for the world, and we are committed, in the eloquence of RuPaul, to not fu**ing it up. Maybe because we had to work so hard to get where we are we appreciate the balance required between being parents and being adults. And no matter what we do to express our personal needs, our children are there to remind us of a much larger and more important goal.

Thank you Benji for being our anchor. We couldn't be more proud.

The Gift

2011-06-26T04:11:00.000-07:00

Happy Pride!

Equal marriage rights for gay and lesbian people in New York state. "Enormous" and "overwhelming" have been thrown around blogs for days now yet there is an something missing at the center of these descriptions. What happened on Friday is both a product and a reflection of ourselves. It's as if we were given a fabulously expensive portrait and unwrapped it to find a mirror.

Toddlers with temper tantrums are often said to be expressing their rage at their lack of control over their world. Exasperated parents realize (after some practice) that just giving the kid everything he wants doesn't solve the problem. When Benji gets in one of those moods, he randomly points to things and cries for them - if you give it to him he'll throw it back at you. Life doesn't change that much for grown ups; we all just want to be in control of our own world.

To have the state recognize that marriage rights apply to all couples regardless of gender is to most people, if recent polls are to be trusted, both just and overdue. Gay men and lesbians should not have to beg to be treated equally and with respect. We should not have to throw glitter at politicians, march up and down capitol corridors in the middle of the night, spend our hard-earned money on politician's PR machines, or waste one second of our precious time with our children worrying if they can be taken from us. What we want, and what we got, was control over our own lives.

Yet...what a startling thing to open the gift and find one's family inside. Whatever benefits and responsibilities the state marriage license confers are just wrapping around the commitments we have already made, through all those years of officially-sanctioned discrimination and blatant hostility. I'm full of so much joy and happiness that two days later it is just starting to register. Thank you, New York. It's just what I always wanted.

Sonday

2011-06-20T19:50:00.000-07:00

When the noise machine turns off and the TV goes dark everything is snoring pug and sighing toddler. The weekend was long, hot, sandy and bad for my back. The boy is asleep in the crib and Papi was sucking flies before he hit the pillow. We spent the weekend at Fire Island, a two-plus hour drive and ferry-trip and sandy schlepping with dogs and packs and generous friends. A recipe for disaster.

All of the worry and concern that accompany every change in the routine - it was all wasted on a boy who was enraptured by sand and sun and bucks on the beach. For every trip we assume the worst: tantrums and sleeplessness accompanied, perhaps, by explosive diarrhea. But as usual we were schooled in the wonders of raising a human being who we guide but don't ultimately control. He was the true sand angel who made Fathers' Day into Sonday as a blessing and a gift to two men looking for a little heaven.

We know we are lucky. The random topless woman who spent a good 20 minutes telling us as much was convincing enough, though as our friend noted "not right now, you're not!" This weekend when Benji showed us what the other side of the terrible two's will be was a glimpse into some sort of future that I only dreamed to exist - a sentient boy that actually enjoys being around his Dads and has fun with them.

Of course our time is limited. Terrible twos may come and go - but adolescence is for-evuh. We have a good eight or nine years before that and I will take it. Thank you, son, for making this our first real Fathers' Day. We love you more than anything.

This is what Marriage Equality Looks Like

2011-06-14T17:33:00.000-07:00

Overwhelmed with legally recognized equality

6:15 pm. In the subterranean, dark, carpeted, deep-fried dining room of Cryan's Irish Pub, two men and their son begin the twitchy, catch-as-catch-can-can; a dinner out with a toddler. Sitting still is not an option: distraction is our god and fried cheese sticks our manna. Cryan's is always a good option: the service is quick and the pour is lugubrious. Or something.

Seated next to our little family is a woman - we'll call her Fawne - of an instantly identifiable type. Straightened yet voluminuous hair, frosted lipstick and eyeshadow, big hoop earrings, and a loud voice that eminates entirely from her nose. She is not happy to see her ex, who has just lumbered to the booth.

As Juan is increasingly, frantically trying to keep Benji from throwing the condiment dippers across the room, the conversation next to us starts to increase in volume - and, I must add, interest.

"You always do this. You always act like this after you drink."
"You made me like this! You tried to kill me! I was never like this before you!"
"I don't have to listen to this. I'm gonna walk right outta here."
"You're not leaving, I'm leaving!"
"This is why no one wants to be around you."
"EVERYONE wants to be around me!"

It is the sanctity of marriage in it's purest form. Is it my business, beyond the slight annoyance but enormous entertainment value? No. I don't get to vote on the marriage rights of these two alcoholic guineas more than they (should) get to vote on mine. I might have a recommendation or two for them, but given the size of Joey's hands, I'll keep them to myself.

Today New York is one tiny adopted babystep closer to affirming the right of all it's citizens - straight, gay, loving, disfunctional, Swedish or inmate - to marry the person of their choice. Tests of religion, of love, of virginity, of fidelity or fecundity are not required. It seems likely that very, very soon we homophiles will be competing in the suddenly free market of marriage. We have a lot to teach and a lot to learn.

Today is the day to contact all of your family and friends in New York and tell your story. Ask them to call their senator and stand up for marriage equality for all New Yorkers.

Exploratorium

2011-06-12T19:17:00.000-07:00

The fish was carnivorous and enormous,with a rubbery barbel goatee and fat flat lips that gaped two feet above our heads. Benji grabbed on to me and screamed but quickly turned around and made "wa-wa-wa" noises with exaggerated mouth movements like the fish. Another animal, another connection between a kid and his planet. I really felt like a dad - taking our son to the science museum and learning as much about him as the ecosystem of the Hudson River.

At the Liberty Science Center, we were just one family out of hundreds today. He ran around and bumped into the kids of Hasidic Jews, Islamic women in hijaab, red-haired fat moms with USA t-shirts and fanny-packs, hipster parents, a black family all in sunglasses, some Asian parents and a few groups of developmentally disabled adults. Truly, this was the science of liberty.

At the ball blower - a powerful jet of air holds a beach ball five feet of the ground - all of our kids were fighting over who would get to be in control of the air stream. And the parents: we were all standing back in awe of something held aloft, held steady, by a force that surrounds and sustains it in the most unlikely way. I was just one of the multi-colored crowd, perhaps the only one in a flattering pair of jeans.

Gay pride, science, the stupor of three hours of scientific exhibits: whatever it was, I smiled my way back to the car. And our toddler hit his carseat with less than 3 minutes between giggling and sound asleep. We're doing something right.

Bam!

2011-06-08T17:47:00.000-07:00

Driving Mister Benji

The terrible twos hit us like a ton of bricks and have given us new appreciation for vodka and naptime (not necessarily in that order, and not necessarily our naptime). We were warned, yes, all you smarty-pants moms and dads that raised an eyebrow when we blithely noted that our one-year-old was "so easy!" and that "we take him everywhere!"well now you can lounge comfortably in the knowledge that You Told Us So. If one can lounge or do anything comfortably in the company of a 20-month-old.

What started as a little cold and occasional over-tired crankiness has blossomed like a corpse flower into a 8-foot spike of dewy self-assertion. Sure, Benji will "let" us to plan events out, about, around town - but we are not to expect that they will come to fruition. Behold, the power of Boy.

The crying in the morning has been the hardest to handle. Somehow the tantrums at the restaurant are more understandable: it is tough sitting still for an hour, even when confronted by pizza. I might have trouble too if I didn't understand much of the conversation around me conducted by people 30 times my age, which is why I stay away from the Hamptons. But the morning crying seems pointless, well maybe pointful: he's pointing to random things which we give him then he throws. It is full-on rage of feeling powerless - that's my guess - and all the toys Daddy can give you won't make it better. Which is why I stay away from the Hamptons.

Reading through the internet, as one does, for medical advice on "persistent, annoying, non-stop crying" gave me several potential causes for this symptom:

Headache
Temporal epilepsy
Glucose/Lactose/Gluten Intolerance
Charliehorse
Night Terrors
Artificial Dyes
Insufficient corporal punishment
Lupus

Now I suppose any of the above could be possible. God knows we don't beat him or feed him too little uncolored food. Our late-night tuck-ins wearing the Israeli mud facial mask could possibly make a sleeping boy wake up with a fright. And the other physical symptons pretty much describe a Saturday morning for these urban men. But nothing resonated with me until a small discovery tonight.

In the middle of a screaming, flailing fit, pointing to everything and rejecting it, Benji finally settled on a sippy cup which he immediately pushed away. Once we gave it to him with the lid off, and gave him the option of having it his way, he was happy. Lid off, he puts it on. Then he takes it off and drinks. Puts it on. Takes it off.

It's all about control. Honestly, when is it not?

I like to think that I'm a bit more subtle than a 20-month old. I use my masculine wiles (no comment, Juan) and persuasive arguments to get my way around the apartment and the office. We use the tools that we have, and right now pointing, a few words, and a really loud scream is the best Benji's got. I get it. Just please, learn to ask for it in my language.

Free to Be

2011-06-05T16:59:00.000-07:00

How many children have had their natural talents squashed by their parents' ignorance or willful reprogramming? The festive little boy who produces plays in the basement only to cast himself as the lead role of the witch in Hansel and Gretel? Well thankfully my - his - parents only raised an eyebrow and didn't immediately enroll him in rugby little league. Our dreams for our kids are ours alone. If they overlap with our kids' dreams, I think we're doing something wrong. We should be challenged. Our kids can make the world better in ways we didn't and frankly, can't.

This throwing arm of Benji is starting to be something. Before he could walk or barely even sit up he was throwing things. Everything. Especially at our faces, with very good aim. Lately it has been progressing to larger items: stuffed animals, adult softballs, Tonka trucks, step stools. Not in a fit of rage, mind you, but in a very boyish "me strong!" kind of way. He can throw a softball at my head, multiple times with perfect aim, from 20 feet. He is 1 and 8 months.

Would I have chosen an aptitude that didn't involve ironic design or biting bon mots if I was genetically engineering him? Probably not, but in that statement I have just made my case. Parents are probably the worst choice for their children's future skills, as not only are they biased by their own failures but they are blind to the future in a way their kids aren't. You want to find out what your boy is good at? Ask the neighbor or the day care. He's not a mathematician or a fabulous window dresser but prefers throwing things? Frankly, none of your business. Except to encourage him, and duck.

I suppose 20 months is a bit too soon to farming out our little B-Rod. If this is your thing Benji, Daddies are right behind you. Or behind the backstop, cowering from that fastball coming toward our heads.

Peepers

2011-05-27T18:28:00.000-07:00

Peepers sing in the season at Muffalda. Someone must know what they are, they own at least four hours of the late evening; I think they are tree frogs. They peep like a step on a loose floorboard, or a squeak in a tight shoe. Coming so close together and from all around, it's an immersive stereo effect that feels choreographed to the fading night sky. Memorial Day means nothing to the peepers: they arrive on their own schedule and sing themselves - if not you - to sleep.

Tonight is the first of Memorial Day weekend. Peepers have been here for several weeks, building in intensity and number over the past month and now at their summer-long peak. This week they have been joined by their friends the growlers, the other tree frogs (?) that sound like the noise you make when your throat itches and you're trying to scratch it. It is syncopated, natural rhythm.

Peep Peep

Peep GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRK Peep Peep

GRRRRRRRRRK Peep Peep Peep Peep GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRK

GRRRRRRRRRPeeeRRRRRRK Peep Peep

Peep

Peep Peep

GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRPeeepRRPeepPeepRRRRRRRRRK Peep

Are they talking to each other? To the moon? To me? Probably they are warning of danger or advertising sex, but I'm imagining that they are singing the universe and my sleepy boy to bed.

An hour after putting him to bed Juan walked into Benji's Catskills bedroom to make sure he was asleep and in the half-light of an hour past sunset, Benji was awake in his crib, sitting up looking out the window with nothing to contemplate beyond the peepers. And his future, which maybe they are singing and giving to him all the secrets of the universe.

I'm not sure what they are saying, but I know they're right.

Peep.

Acts

2011-05-26T19:55:00.000-07:00

For ten years, our lives have been a lunch cart of sampling, rejecting, calling the waitress back with the cart, living and dying for the next dumpling and walking back home with a full belly and a dazed look. What just happened? Did we really hike twelve miles across cliffs in Kauai to camp on the beach? Buy a house together? Open a bar? Adopt a baby? Each time we decided to do something, we did it without fear and with the anticipation that can only come from knowing, to mix some metaphors, that life is a dim sum, and most poor suckers are passing on the chicken feet.

One of our most enduring acts is coming to a close. For seven years we have taken refuge from our hectic city lives to our house in the Catskills. Muffalda has been our home base even as we moved three times in the city. We remodeled every inch of that former grandma's cabin, cleared the forest with chainsaws and a woodchipper, dug a huge pond, hand-built a cedar hot tub, expanded, decked, trimmed, painted, and nested. It was our future when everything else seemed unsure.

So this weekend our vacation house, the place we once thought we'd move or at least retire to, goes on the market so we can build a new future centered around Benji. We want him to feel stable in his life, and if that is here in our urban village then that is where we're going to stay. The time has come to pick a future, and I'm hanging my hat on his.

Scene.

Skankles

2011-05-22T18:41:00.000-07:00

Juan loves...or is horrified by...our portmanteau. I had to look it up, so I'll give you all a break. This is when English speakers combine parts of two words into a new one, typically kitschy and cheeky semantics making fun of some trending celebrity. How quickly we tired of Bennifer and Brangelina but still find comfort in our smog and spanglish.

My husband's favorite is skankles. It is itself a portmanteau of a portmanteau: the pungent skank and the depressing cankles - having calves that are so fat they merge into your ankles. Neither of us is sure that skankles could really exist, as either pretty much precludes the possibility of the other, but "The Big Gay Sketch Show" tried their best to imagine it. Needless to say: not pretty. Vivid, but not pretty.

Juan, Benji, and me - we are a living portmanteau. We are a family that has created itself out of bits of three individual lives, each of them interesting but much more so when combined. And being a family with two dads, any way we describe ourselves is something that critiques and intrigues the more typical families around us.

Gaydoption? Homoparentis? None of them seem either funny or especially biting commentary. That maybe because what we're doing as parents isn't that much of a stretch. We're adults raising a child. People have plenty of terms for two men having an intimate relationship, but somehow our family takes much of the funny out of those uncomfortable laughs.

We're a blend. A new word that is both common and unique, one that describes a love and commitment in a way that is both surprising and instantly familiar. Latino, Anglo, gay, agnostic, Christian, architect parents of a beautiful and brilliant baby brought to us by a woman with faith in the future. I think I'll just call us lucky.

Rhubarb Piety

2011-05-18T19:07:00.000-07:00

Rhubarb Pie. Not mine, which is prettier.

I cheated on my husband two days ago. And my son, my family, and all who have ever held me as a paragon of obsessive, perhaps misplaced pie ambition. I can't live with the lies, the walkouts, the raspberries...I baked a rhubarb pie. With a store brought crust.

Listen, times are tough. It was bad enough that last year I cut off the tip of my finger mincing the 10 pounds of rhubarb purchased at the height of the season, spurting blood literally all over the kitchen like some freakish Julia Childs episode, on surfaces that we are still discovering and frantically trying to paint over (note: blood bleeds.) This year, Benji is not just mobile, he is "helping" in the kitchen which means less actual time for baking and more flour time and measuring cup jamborees. A barely-handled lard crust with fluted edge - much less a lattice pastry - is a distant memory, or perhaps a sneaky affair I have when Benji is with his grandparents.

This week, I did it with the Pillsbury Dough Boy.

Oh sure, I knew he was cheap. The box itself screamed "small package", and after pulling it out I wasn't surprised to find it barely fit without serious stretching. It was no crust of mine, which explodes in your mouth with the slightest touch. But this little indiscretion - a really small one in the scheme of things - made Papi and I so happy that I dare to say it: it was worth every lardy bite.

This pie was undeniably mine: the sour, lemony, rhubarbiest treat that is only, perhaps, equaled in a Key Lime pie (from Key West, of course). Without a little help from our Pillsbury pal, we would have had nothing - and let me tell you, this was something. In three days we ate the whole thing.

So to those foodie purists out there, let me just say this: I would rather enjoy what I can do than regret what I can't. It is good enough that I drove three hours to get five pounds of organic rhubarb at the peak of freshness. Where I choose to put it is my own business; and let me tell you, no one is complaining.

The Boy of Cooking

2011-05-17T19:10:00.000-07:00

I learned to cook at Mom's apron, a mixing spoon in one hand and the other on the back of my high chair, as she taught me the difference between moistening and whipping, a skill that has carried me through to this day. Last weekend, we decided it was time for a graduation of sorts for Benji. We made a trip to Homo Depot and like countless parents before us, decided that the rewards of buying him a step-stool and allowing him to "help" with the cooking were worth the not-insignificant risks of sudden death by surprise knife grabbing or debilitating swan dives from the top step. Familiy-baked cookies are worth paralysis.

At this age, the idea of a recipe is as applicable as calculus. Everything is still a game, and we are as happy to pour 3 cups of flour into a bowl as we are to spill 2 cups out of it and rub it on our faces. This is the trick with kids: you hook them on the physical fun and then you really suck them in with the delicious results. Who knew that every homeschooler's favorite game "flour time" , when combined with "butter fun", "sugar break" and "egg-tasia" could result in such delcious cookies?

Seeing that not only was I teaching Benji a valuable life skill but also that I was reducing my chore list for the week, I jumped on the chance to learn my boy some skills. He seems to like it. The cheese got grated with no fingernails included, the lettuce was placed in the bowl as requested, and the tortillas were folded on the plates just like I wanted.

How unfortunate it was, then, that just as Benji finished his first cooking job that it was time for him to go to bed! And strangely, how fortunate that Daddy timed it just right that Benji was more than happy to turn in after an exhausting evening learning the sweet, sweet joy of cooking.

I'm Your Sponge

2011-05-13T16:56:00.000-07:00

Agnes Gooch. Auntie Mame's sponge and late-to-the-banquet libertine. (Any fan worth the salt on a Flaming Mame would know this photo is from "How Bleak was My Puberty" scene...but definitely spongeworthy.) She had no self, no personality; she came into Mame's world like an old baby ready to learn if someone would just teach her.

Just like my own sponge - no, not Benji - the sourdough starter sponge I've been caring for and feeding for about six weeks now. Sponge starters are a simple mixture of flour and water that collect and feed wild yeasts from the air. Because they are a product of your local environment and require regular maintenance, they're living things that absorb your world (and give it back to you in a tasty bread). We have a relationship, my sponge and I.

This growing, bubbling attachment I have with my sponge - words I never expected to type, ever - comes from a desire to make things that are permanent for my family. I want Benji to have long, deep memories of his childhood where he can trace his relationship with friends (or my bread) over decades. We are building our lives around him - not denying ourselves, mind you, but bending toward the needs of our son - and getting some long-term stability ouselves.

Oh Spongey, you live, live, live. It's true, I made bread before you, leaden loaves of love that were good but not great. Then you came, floating on air through the breeze and the window screen into your glutenous castle. How you taunted me with your flaccid performance those first few weeks. But now - now you rise like a champion, foamy and tangy with an insatiable hunger. You force me to use you. I knead you so.

My Kid is a Trip

2011-05-09T18:36:00.000-07:00

Back in the day we used to spend our free time and cash expanding our minds through travel. Our vacations of choice tended toward the ethnically and architecturally significant with maximum opportunity for surprising fabulosity; i.e., good drag shows.

And our friends, our Algonquin tribe, always ready with a bon mot or fierce read of the Kansas tourists, would direct us to the absolute best coq au vin in le Marais, from which we would immediately run and head to the most busted male go-go in the fourth sub-basement of an 80's- fabulous hustler bar. We smelled it, we did it, we lived it.

But these days, as our friends make their summer plans and weekend retreats, we find ourselves...well, not. Our place in the Catskills gives us a weekend spot away, and the realities of air travel with Benji put a damper on transit requiring removing your shoes and valium-prerequisite turbulence. The reality has set in - Benji is our vacation. In a year or so it will be all about travelling with him, but for now just being with him (for a whole weekend, not at work) is like exploring a hidden wing in your house behind a door you never noticed.

We cannot wait to take him on trips with our friends and family. I relish the look on his face when he has his first tripe quesadilla in Puerto Vallarta, rides the London Eye, or (hopefully this year) meets his relatives in Argentina. Between those times though, just being with him is an adventure that is both as exhausting and as rewarding as any trip requiring a passport. We'll rely on our posse to keep us informed of the places to be seen - and be happy to duck around the corner, boy in tow, to the little taco stand on the curb.

Daddy's Little Helper

2011-05-06T18:14:00.000-07:00

A pre-mobile Benji. We got nothing done.

The upside of a highly-mobile 19-month-old is that he loves to do chores. Nothing is boring to him as long as it involves movement, carrying things, and a high potential for dirt and/or bugs. The downside - and I will focus on the one specific to this issue - is that nearly anything will distract him in his task. Carrying rocks from one flowerbed to the other, two feet away, can be a Raiders of the Lost Ark of intervening perils and booby traps. Look, a blade of grass. There is a bird in the distance. I feel a breeze and now I just peed.

Rock is dropped mid-step and we are off to chase a petal in the wind.

However, Papi and I have found a way to harness this boundless if not directional energy by letting the chores actually babysit. It doesn't really matter that anything gets done, only that it gets started. This is a philosophy in which I am somewhat an expert. If picking up wood and stacking it is enjoyable, is it really necessary that one finishes the woodpile, or is it sufficient that one found some small pleasure in a task and can now retire to margarita in the hot tub? (This may not be applicable to babies.)

Some parents come up with interesting, intellectual tasks for their children to do on weekends. We collect scraps of lumber in a cardboard box and ask our son to move them to another one outside. Or perhaps it is ping pong balls in two baskets. Or - and this can be useful - moving empties from one pail to another before the neighbors are awake. This involves about a hundred individual trips in and out of the house, each one fraught with aforementioned distraction...and voila, time flies.

Of course I am exaggerating a little. But to him this is all play time, and we are happy to oblige. At this age he's not too into playing with other kids, and playgrounds are still a little daunting for him. It seems like his fake chores let us get our real chores done. At least until he wises up and we have to start paying allowance.

Let's Recap

2011-05-04T19:00:00.000-07:00

As defines our pattern, life in this household is stable stable stable until Daddies crack, can't take it a minute more, and make just one too many plans to reconnect with ourselves. So we are now recovering from three nights out in a row...at least Papi is, Daddy had but two.

Now lest you are one quick to judge others on their parenting skills or lack thereof, you might sympathize with us. It has been a long, LOOOONG winter. We've endured six months of ice and one of the snowiest (not in a cute way) seasons since the Pleistocene Era. A boy who has just learned to walk at the onset of the can't-go-outside season is not a pleasure to entertain, especially when his family inhabits only 2,000 sf - split pretty much evenly between an apartment in the city and a cabin in the woods.

So we overplanned, but please give us a break. The night out dancing was divine. Amazing music, "friends" from the city, and home in bed by 2am - early by dancing standards. Then Kylie concert(s) the next night, more dancing, screaming, and remembering what it feels like to just be happy and gay and all that means. Truly...for us this was church.

Of course we pay for it. The next few days will be tough. Juan went to bed at 9pm after his night waiting for standing room at Kylie ("you could see her pores...if she had pores") with the divine John Olguin and Gene Chollett. But strangely...even with us extra exhausted, being with Benji has been wonderful. Maybe we were right...this actually rejuvenates us in some strange way. He has been his recently-clingy self, but I am loving it. I got my me time, and now I'm ready to give him him time.

It ain't rocket science, but there's obviously a market for this type of pop psychology. At the liquor store tonight, which I was visiting only to leave some religious tracts, there was a prominent display of "Mommy's Time Out' wine - and I thought, "Why? Why does Mommy need to open a winery and design a label and market her hooch just so she can get a little alone time, when all she needs to do is get a sitter, see a concert, and come home late with a smile on her face?"

It works for Daddies. Maybe you too.

Blonder, Please.

2011-04-29T18:32:00.000-07:00

So it has been quite a hectic couple of weeks in our household. For two weekends we have been apart, torn asunder by conferences and the previously noted renovation project on the cabin. Benji didn't like it so much. On Monday his daycare asked if anything unusual was happening because he cried whenever anyone left the room. Of course I immediately decided to quit my job and homeschool him.

Being busy in this way isn't exactly fulfilling. These are things that we have to do, with varying degrees of enjoyment. And even though they keep us away from our family, Daddies still need their own, personal, alone time. Spending a weekend "alone" while doing construction is not at all a pamper session at Nickel Spa, not to mention taking care of a rambunctious toddler by yourself.

Here is one great thing about being gay, especially in a place like New York City. It is entirely acceptable, in fact admirable, for men to spend an afternoon shopping for ridiculously trendy clothes, have sake with sushi at lunch, get our hair did and go to the gym in the service of one's self. Being in New York means that the clothes and haircut are easy and fun, and being gay allows one to drink sake before the gym and call it "relaxing".

We each take our own days...days of beauty, days of shopping, or days of daddy's-at-the-bar. Sometimes we take them together. They rejuvenate us in ways that even a weekend away can't do. The thing that makes it so delicious is that it is so selfish. Not at the expense of anyone else, mind you, but an acknowledgment that - as much as I love The Runaway Bunny - I really wish I could spend some more time at the ocean so my hair would bleach out. Believe me, our son has his own needs and has absolutely no hesitation in declaring them; why should we demur?

With that in mind, Daddy and Papi are taking two nights off this week. Dancing on Sunday with the AMAZING Freemasons, and of course, Kylie. It's not that we need time away from Benji, though there are the rare instances. More important to us is that we remember what it feels like to be frivolous and care more about the next Freemasons remix than about anything else in the world. Then when we are on that last train back home, Benji floods back into my head with a force that always surprises me, reminding me that he's the one it's really all about, the one that makes me want to be as happy and as full a person as I can be. For at least the next seventeen years, he will be.

The Unforsaken Road

2011-04-23T19:45:00.000-07:00

This weekend Juan is staying downstate and I'm upstate, doing some renovations on the cabin. It's not often that one of us has Benji alone for the entire weekend, but this was the second Saturday in a row for Juan. I know it's not easy...rainy day, apartment, and I have the car here with me. He went to the Auto Show in NYC - either to find something to entertain Benji or buy a car for himself, I'm not sure which.

At the same time, I'm here in the cabin doing some long-delayed remodeling. Let me just say that it's not fun by yourself. The physical work I can handle, but it's lonely and messy and I like my regular life. I've filthed-up every square foot of our 1,000 sf manse, and am about to bed down in a sleeping bag on the couch. Not pretty.

When I look around me at the sawdust, the wood scraps, the baby toys and the vacuum in a horrible chaos, I realized how thin this veneer of our routine really is. At any moment we can turn the wheel and purposefully take another road...and at the same time at any moment life can happen to us and we can find ourselves in situations we barely recognize. The only thing that typically separates us from the chaos around me right now is that we usually clean up after ourselves and don't often repanel the ceilings.

Neither Juan nor I are afraid of new things, in fact we usually go looking for them. I think that maybe that is why we appreciate, every day, what we have. We know that there are a world of opportunities for us, a billion ways to be, but we are happy at this minute on the path we are on. We find our way, pick up our toys, and make our lives the best way we can at the time.

And when we choose another road, well that will involve a lot of sawdust, but you can be sure it's going to be gorgeous.

Do The Right Thing

2011-04-22T19:23:00.000-07:00

Most of parenthood so far has been easy. Not that getting up four, five, or more times per night in the first few weeks was a cakewalk, but it never felt like something I wasn't going to do. It was part of what I signed up for. Those decisions are easy.

Taking Benji to the doctor to get his last (for a while) round of vaccinations was another story. When your cranky, now naked baby has been waiting in the exam room and is starting to twist and fuss...and you see the nurse walk in with FOUR syringes, well this is not exactly what I signed up for. I knew it would be bad. It was.

It was also over quickly, which is about the best one can hope for. These little trials, where I have to be the Daddy, are coming more frequently now that my son has his own opinions and the choices are more weighty than "peas or carrots?" I'm finding that I can step up and be confidently firm with him in a way that hasn't always been as easy for me. And I can stay calm and be strong when he needs me to be even when I might collapse in an anxious puddle if I was on my own.

Who's raising who here?

Mystery House

2011-04-14T21:50:00.000-07:00

"Mysterious" San Jose

Since I live in New Jersey, few of the country's better-known "mystery" spots strike me as anything more than "meh". There is no Shades of Death Road in sprawling, modern San Jose, California - mainly because the only shade to be had is inside the shopping plaza which, as much as one might like to imagine, is nothing like death. Death has more BCBG stores.

I admit that I have become an East Coast snob to the degree that I understand that the only part of our country (and by "our", I am of course excluding Native Americans, Mexicans, and those inconvenient to my story) that has a history longer than Phyllis Diller's is the area just to the right of Poughkeepsie. Have you ever traveled to Thousand Oaks and seen the old Dutch church built in 1600 from local stone quarried from it's own basement? Of course not, because that building is in Sleepy Hollow, NY, which is about 40 miles south and 2 miles to the right of Poughkeepsie. You have not seen it because you don't live there. Neither do I, nor have I, but it is useful to illustrate a point.

The point is, that today I went to visit the famous Winchester Mystery House in so called "San Jose", California, a city which seems to be a quite charming collection of chain stores arranged carefully around parking lots and boulevards wider than the Hudson River. What is mysterious about the house is how utterly pointless and therefore absolutely prescient it was to our recent culture. This is a home with some 40 bedrooms and 47 fireplaces - how different from the mouldering mansions sitting in foreclosure in south Florida?

Built from wood and held together with crazy, this house tells the tale of domestic life that was neither domestic nor alive. It was a zombie existence, a futile attempt to keep building in order to fend off the inevitable. Spoiler alert: she died anyway.

What is actually mysterious is how we are able to navigate our own meager, and far more sane surroundings and make a life out of the scraps in front of us. My fondest memories are not of some grand mansion or leather upholstery, but my great-grandmothers ramshackle beach house with a sunroom full of nesting bees and discarded boots planted with sedums on the porch. I have a sneaking suspicion that much of what we try to do to make things "nice" or "safe" is only is a distraction from the real world where people get surprised, fall down, play with unsafe toys or even eat dirt...and live to tell.

The real mystery of life is not a result of our pathetic attempts to guide fate, but how we have absolutely and utterly no control over it. We put our best efforts out there, and combined with other people's actions, forces of nature, and random universal chaos, we are confronted with realities we can barely comprehend. And like a staircase leading only to the ceiling, you may never know why it's there, but you can surely decide whether or not you will take it.

Other People's Children

2011-04-13T22:54:00.000-07:00

What a well behaved child does on the plane

Parenthood has many unfortunate effects in common with coach class air travel, not the least of which is an increased likelihood that one will be around other people's children. Of course, if one is in a transcontinental jet on a business trip, he is even more likely to be around not only other people's but perfect strangers' imperfect children. Which makes one long for the imperfect children of mere acquaintances, which one tolerates out of a sense of community bonhomie or at least a chance that they will take one's own little angel away for the weekend to their beach house on the shore.

It is unlikely that couple in the row ahead of you will take your child anywhere, even as it seems probable that they take their children everywhere with little thought to preparation, inside voices, or restless leg syndrome. I have developed a theory about how such families secrete and raise their children to develop behaviors more frequently (and appropriately) exhibited in Lars von Trier movies than in confined spaces at thirty thousand feet.

Unnecessary fatness. By and large, obese people cannot run fast and are less able to catch and discipline an unruly child. I blame less the fat parent than the fatuous toddler who deliberately misbehaves before dinner causing the distressed parent to comfort eat several Marie Callendar pot pies in quick succession. Goal attained, the child is free to break dishes or torture the cat while the parent sleeps peacefully in the aluminum foil pan.

Homeschooling. No one knows better the heartbreak of a homeschooled child than than his neighbor. This neighbor catches glimpses of the pale children with moleskin notebooks and moleskin skin as he darts from bible study to "flour time". Passing an open window, the child's mother quickly draws the shade lest the outside world tweet some inconvenient knowledge about “sex”, “religious indoctrination”, or “gravity”. These children are never taught how to behave around strangers with conflicting ideas and frequently end up spraying unwilling shoppers with an astringent cologne. For a living.

The outer boroughs. My husband and I willingly moved to what could be described as the most outer borough, New Jersey. Willingly being the key descriptor, as we cruised and picked our neighborhood by the time-tested ratio of gay households, divided by evangelical churches, times for a drink. One around 40 is common, for a number under 20 one should ask to see a state-issued ID. Many in the outer boroughs, especially those who have prematurely accepted their stunted lot in life, have no such system. They live in the same neighborhood their parents lived in because they live in their basement. Or they came to The City to make it big but settled too early for an easy living as a administrative assistant to middle management. These people can make fine parents, but not the kind of parents you wish would have children.

Lack of rhythm. No one can properly entertain or discipline his child without an innate ability to work it out on the dance floor. If that dance floor happens to be on the wall-to-wall in front of a purple infant in full tantrum, it is even more important. Nothing can disarm, distract, and ultimately dismay a misbehaving child than his same-sex parents getting down to some Auto-Tuned hit, preferably when they are chaperons at his junior high Sadie Hawkins. Some may call it abuse, but nothing has proven to be more effective.

I Blame Gravity

2011-04-10T08:09:00.000-07:00

On Friday night we came to our cabin just for an overnight. The next day the weather was beautiful and Benji was brave enough this time to start exploring the yard on his own. It's amazing that in just a few months he's figured out how to walk, push open the door, pick up a stick...getting closer to the steps...try to grab onto the post for support, and fall face-first in a tumble of jeans and jacket onto the last tread.

Since kids fall all the time, and usually try to throw themselves onto the sharpest corner in the house, we usually take it in stride. But when the crying was especially piercing - and we see blood - our studied cool response system turns code red.

Not only were we due in a couple of hours (back downstate) to a friend's birthday party, but our only option for medical care here is a trip to the local (cozy!) ER. Sure, we assumed the disfigurement and brain damage would be permanent without top-notch medical care. Which one of us let him out that back door? Who didn't install the handrail (as if he could have reached it)? Why in god's name did we let him play with a stick?

Of course in the end it was nothing but a bruise and a bloody nose. I have a note to myself to barricade that little step off the deck. He will probably not make that particular misstep again, but there are innumerable things for us to worry about, thing that are just ready to cause harm to our son. Well bring it on, because after that I understand how parents will do absolutely anything to help a kid in trouble.

Gravity: I got my eye on you.

Edge of 17 Months

2011-04-07T18:50:00.000-07:00

I've never felt that Benji has been on the verge of so many things until this moment. Up until the past couple of weeks, our son was in quite defined, and dependent, developmental stages. It's easy to ask a parent of an infant "is Tiffanie Lynnette rolling over yet?" or "is Amsterdam sleeping through the night?" We know that we will bear witness as they progress from one stage to the next, and that things will happen at their own leisurely pace. Recently, though, we've found our bemused observations of Benji's progress turn into "Jane, stop this crazy thing!" as we see a toddler give way to a young boy, a kid, a teenager.

The "terrible two's" are a glimpse of teenage years, when your child demands independence and craves attention. In fact, they start pretty much where we are now and last until at least three years old. Right now for Benji, he want so bad to be a little boy and not a stupid baby. He wants to talk. He wants to climb. He wants to jump out of the car and run around the parking lot. Unlike a teenager with car keys and a fake I.D., unfortunately (for him) he can't quite yet figure out how to do all the things he wants to do. And he lets us know it. Loudly.

Last week we were driving home from daycare and Benji was saying all the consonant sounds he knows. "Fuh! Dih! Cah! Buh!" over and over in various combinations. Of course I encouraged him with some suggested lewd phrases, but I'm sure he'll save the first words, which indubitably will be "RuPaul Charles", for my parents. I really felt him struggling with something that he will eventually take and master and fly away with on his own wings. Inappropriate assistance or not.

There are countless ways that our son is about to surprise us. He is two days away from 18 months old and he is about to tell us how he feels about it. How he feels about his dinner, how he feels about his daycare, how he feels about us. The past few months have prepared us for his non-verbal likes and dislikes - are we prepared to have it shouted at The Mall at Short Hills?

Sing it out, Hunty. Daddies are ready.

Eatin' Pants

2011-03-31T18:58:00.000-07:00

Nothing screams "let it all hang out" than a sick kid on a winter's day (temperature-wise, if not calendar-). You've got a toddler who just doesn't care, who aches and aches and nothing feels right, who blessedly has not yet developed that restraint mechanism that prevents him from expressing his every emotion on the surface. You come home...picture it...you come home to husband and baby and some technicolor tsunami that is discarded toys, sippy cups, touch-me/feel-me books and snuggle-blankies. You are right off the early train from your extraordinarily corporate, management, stressful day and you immediately smell something unfresh. Do you call the nanny? Summon the butler? Release the hounds?

Well, if you're us, you make your way down the four-foot (long) corridor to the master suite and change your drag from corporate to louche and get ready to pay more attention to your kid than to your decor. It's time for the Eatin' Pants.

You know you have a pair. It's the elastic-waist shorts who's elastic called it quits and moved to Tahiti where it belonged five years ago. Stained, saggy, and frankly, embarassing. But you know, they don't show the baby drool and they can stand up to the Heavy Duty cycle. Lift 'em up, dads, and let's make us some mac and cheese.

I know I may be offending some of my fancier friends here. We live in an apartment, a "luxury rental", but really it's a basic apartment with a fireplace; and we have no airs that our living situation will impress anyone. Who the hell cares when you have a sick baby? Should I care that the floor is covered with half-eaten crayons and snot-covered Kleenex? Maybe, but I don't. I'm a dad, trying to put his sick, adorable baby to bed, and I am wearing Old Navy. OUTLET.

This was not an obvious path for either one of us, but I have to say it is a huge relief. Oh sure, we have our fond memories of Jeffrey and Barney's (and I've never been to the warehouse sale) but more for the knowledge of what we didn't want than what we had to have. It is a huge privilege to live in such a cosmopolitan city with well-traveled friends and be comfortable showing up for a burger night out in a coat only slightly soiled by mashed peas.

As Raja put it so succinctly last week: if you have to lip-synch for your life then just buggar down and get it over with. The people who care don't matter, and the people who matter don't care. Kisses, SoMo's.

An Unusual Man

2011-03-28T19:01:00.000-07:00

We all think we are gifted, at least at something. For years, the fact that I skipped first grade was my raison d'etre (sorry, no circonflexe on my keyboard). Later it was the plays I wrote and performed at grade school, then my avant-garde wire-hanger mobile suspended from my suburban bedroom track lighting. Scrub forward to a junior-high full of bangs and shaker knits and horny Frankie Say Relax handmade T's with sparkly neck brooches, and you can shout, shout until you spin it right round, like a record.

I bought that anti-establishment rebel Express look with my own Visa, baby. I got my first job at 15, bought my first car at 16, was outta the house at 17, and at 18 had a jock from the block on my...well, I had a boyfriend.

But something that Benji did today not only made me think about all the things that I thought made me special, but also realize that the only things that matter about our personal stories are what we choose to believe. Take this: Benji is now our best organizer. No matter what is a mess, he "puts it away", even if that means taking a stack of hangers out of the garbage and putting them in a neat pile on the toilet seat. It is his thing. He is proud of it. He will do it over and over again and probably someday will have his own cable channel devoted to hanger organization.

Who am I to judge? Maybe that's his gift, no less valid than my ability to find the least odiferous peacoat in the thrift store or the most effective rendering techniques for classical architecture in the Hamptons, to bring my "talents" to a more current reference.

I cannot wait to find out what Benji's special things are. I mean, we already love his charisma, uniqueness, nerve and talent, but I don't think he has a sense of his own gifts yet. What happens when he becomes self-aware? When he knows that he is really, really good at throwing a ball at a bat (I'm scared of that option but I have a feeling it is very possible). As a parent, you take a seat, you take a breath, and you realize that this human being that you are raising is a gift from god that you, at best, keep from dying. Everything else is a miracle of either genetic accident or divine design...and far be it for this aging new-waver to pass judgments on anyone's blessed gifts.

Cats

2011-03-24T18:57:00.000-07:00

Every gay parent tells him or herself (hirself? hemself?) that typical heterosexist roles will not apply to any rearing (teehee) in this household. Peter LaBarbera be damned, and he will, no one is more conscious of his own influence on his child than a gay parent. I don't obsess about my every exuberant gesture, but I at least watch my language and don't assume that Benji shares my interest in Kylie, guys, or musical theater.

But just when one thinks one is as neutral and as non-influential as one can be, suddenly one is kicked in the 2Xist with a sequined stiletto. Putting Benji to sleep tonight, I found the disemboweled heart of a music box my mother gave to Benji on his last visit. As I gave him his bottle, I wound it up and put it next to his head. The tiny metal keys played a surprisingly rich and melancholy melody. Touch me...it's so easy to leave me...all alone with the memory.... Benji pulled the little motor closer to his ear and smiled as he drifted off to sleep.

Have I been too eager to avoid actively teaching Benji about things that are important to me? I mean, we take him everywhere and he gets all of the usual learning-by-doing of being with our friends and being a de facto part of a gay family. The more I think about it though, I have something valuable to give to my son, something that only I can give him: my unique point of view. My parents gave me theirs, they didn't shy away from trying to indoctrinate me with their own interests (and let me tell you, I will never, never enjoy Neil Diamond). I love musicals. I love Kylie. Can't I take a stand for the beautiful, the botoxed, the big kick drum? Can't Benji to make up his own mind just like I made up mine?

We went to see Priscilla a couple of weeks ago (go!) and one thing really resonated with me. Our fear of damaging our kids by influencing them is just rotten internalized homophobia. You can rest assured that your kids will hate you regardless of whether you pathetically try to cover up your true self or you let your queer flag fly. Why not be the dad...out of all the buttoned-up, shutdown parents in the school...why not be the one that really lets his son in?

Look...a new day has begun.

The Crying Game

2011-03-21T10:57:00.000-07:00

I am not one to criticize my son's preferred method for summoning his parents. At minimum, the technique that he has chosen is effective. In fact one could say that it is so effective that it causes us to not only attend to his needs at the time, but to anticipate those needs all day long and indeed to write a blog post also informing you, dear readers, of what Benji needs and which method he uses to get it.

First, need. Put plainly, Benji does not want to be in bed by himself for 10 to 11 hours. He wants to be held, if not all night long then for undefined periods which he will choose at random. Now lucky for us he is immature and as can be assumed tired at the time these needs arise, so he he quickly forgets what he wants and often falls asleep mid-way through his notification process. It is because of the somewhat unreliable nature of his needs, or "needs", that Papi and I are learning to ignore them. Exceptions being given, of course, to those involving blood, jewelry in the toilet, or marriage.

Method. Being a tireless advocate for the well-crafted phrases and elegant bon mots of our social class, I will say it thusly: a typical cry, nasal at first injected with sobs and punctuated by heaving intakes of breath is followed in short order by what can only be described as the shrieks of a hyena being skinned alive by a pack of lions. One must imagine how jolting it is to awaken from my recurring dream of being attacked by an Argentine sopressata by this much less pleasant, though still terrifying cacophony. I have become traumatized by the thought of having my senses jolted awake in such a manner that I have to sleep with a white noise machine and a vibrator.

Thankfully for my marriage, we now understand that the satisfaction of Benji's needs has very little to do with the number of times we leap out of bed and rush to his side. Or the length of time we hold him and then attempt to put him back in bed where he instantly wakes up and cries again. One night we decided to turn down the baby monitor. Can you imagine our surprise when, not only did Benji fall back asleep within 2 minutes - by himself - but that even we did not wake up unless his cries were ceaseless and in the hyena range for more than a minute.

Neglect? Selfishness? Bad Parenting? I supposed that one who has never raised an actual child could easily accuse our willfully ignoring our son's cries as such. But the length and pitch of these nightly notifications are decreasing and Benji seems no worse for the wear. Certainly, daddies are more functional. After weeks of research, I am happy to tell you that the winner of the crying game is the one that gets both love and sleep. And plenty of recurring dreams.

Don't Look at Me

2011-03-18T17:43:00.000-07:00

When my brother was about 3 years old, he went through a little tantrum phase where he couldn't stand to be looked at. You'd ask him "how's it going?" and he'd start crying and, due to his developing command of english, he's say "Stop fathering me!" which we assume meant "bothering" but he may have been more succinct than we give him credit for. Now Benji is going through an early, pre-verbal version of this. Daddies are the key to comfort, and the source of all evil. Pick me up. Put me down. Hold me. Don't look at me.

I can see the beginnings of a multi-dimensional personality, something beyond a love of whoever brings the bottle. Who among us doesn't vacillate between wanting attention and wanting to be left alone? Sometimes within the same 2 minute subway ride? And every parent of adult children out there will tell you that yes, they love and miss their kids, but at a certain point they're just glad they are out of the house. It's natural. It's normal. It's human.

So I don't take offense at this little brush off. Parents of very young children have the luxury of knowing that this desire for independence is just a little test and that the overwhelming attitude of our kids is for affection and attention. But as we - and our kids - get older, soon the test is the lesson and we have to grant the independence that every child needs. I might be able to stop staring at my son if he someday soon demands it, but there is no way, as long as I'm alive, that I will stop fathering him.

Look at Me

2011-03-17T17:13:00.000-07:00

Hello, I exist. I am that person next to you on the train who has spent 30 minutes a day literally 10 feet away from you for the past two years. Yeah, right there, hi! That's me. Remember me? The one you have refused to acknowledge in any way, much less say "good morning" or "excuse me" when you bump into me. Here I am! Hi! Now that I have your attention, can I just ask,

What the hell is wrong with you?

Oh and you, the guy that goes to my gym! I have worked out alongside of you for almost ten years! You wear the stocking hat and jeans to your workout and take your underwear off under a towel when you get changed. You know how I know that? Because I glance the f#(K up when someone enters my personal space. You've got it down, man: stare at the floor, or the wall, or your ipod, and when you might have to interact with someone just push by quickly without saying anything! You are SO MASCULINE and I assume you are famous.

But what's this? When you see me with my son, or overhear me talking about him, suddenly I'm not some desperate groupie cruising you like everyone does, I get a glance. Yeah, you raised that eyebrow like "you're a liar." Then I saw you snicker something snide to your friend. Now I really want you!

Barring Asberger's syndrome, vision impairment or persistent zombieism, if you act this way you are a sociopath. It is a natural human behavior, at some point, to acknowledge other people who you are around for years, even if it's just a little eye smile. It's polite. It's normal. It's human.What does that make you?

Hi!

The Gate

2011-03-14T18:34:00.000-07:00

Once a month a smattering of the local gays meet up at The St. James Gate, an Irish pub with great burgers and a heavy pour. There are a lot of us with kids, and we come early to serve mac-n-cheese to the nubbins and pray they'll either fall asleep or behave just enough for us to overlap a little with those that can eat at 9 and stroll on home when they feel like it.

I remember those days.

Oh, weren't we smug with our perfect baby, who right up until 15 months never had any needs other than flirting and a cozy arm to sleep in. Benji would let us know when he was hungry and then happily content himself with being passed arm to arm by our cooing, slightly slurring friends. Well, it seems that gate has been closed and we're in a whole new pasture.

Now we are making the same plans as those who went before us - those who we so hastily judged: eat quickly and get out before the drama. One of us can stay...and these days, that one of us really, really needs that second drink...but the other senses when there's no denying that it's time to go. When Benji turns down a french fry in a hair-pulling fit of whining, it's time to go. You know that there's no way that distraction...ooh here is your favorite bunny rabbit!! - is going to get you 30 more seconds as he is twisting into a pretzel and turning purple with rage. It is time to go.

So you make your air kisses and remember all the things you want to ask your friends who you haven't seen for weeks. But instead you offer hopelessly optimistic "we'll see you soon"s as you realize that your son has fallen asleep in your arms even as you're maneuvering through the barstools and leftover barflies who didn't realize it was gay night or were too wasted to care.

When I got to the car tonight and buckled Benji in his car seat, I realized there is a logic and a rhythm to having a child that really works for me. I got a little bit of "me" time; but better yet, I got some time with Benji and Juan and a responsibility that gets me home early (not to mention sober).

Which is a wonderful sentiment until next month when I get to stay out late with the gang. Enjoy it while it lasts, Papi!

A Fine Day

2011-03-07T18:41:00.000-08:00

Blogging is often an exercise in navel-gazing. What important lesson can we take from this curious speck of lint? How will it affect our lives and shape a philosophy? Meh. I do plenty of that here on Baby Muff, hopefully in a way that is somehow entertaining, though today's post won't be one of those times. Permit me to be be straightforward, if you please, in a manner that channels how Benji may someday describe our day to his classmates.

On Saturday we went to the city. It was fun. We got on the train and it went under the river. It was fun. Daddy and I went together to lunch. I fell asleep while Daddy ate a hamburger. It was fun. Then Daddy got his haircut and Papi came to stay with me. We stayed outside in the sun. That was fun but then it was boring. Then Papi went to the gym. Daddy and I walked through the Village and Chelsea really slowly. That was boring for me but Daddy thought it was fun. Daddy knows lots of people.

Then Papi came back and we walked to the High Line.I stood on a bridge over the road and watched the cars go under my feet. It was crowded. Everyone was wearing weird clothes and their diapers looked full. It was windy. I was bored. I didn't like it. We left and I cried. I cried really loud and Daddy and Papi decided that we could not eat at Cafeteria and we had to eat at Vynl. It was fun. I ate mashed potatoes and Daddy and Papi talked to more people. Then it was time to go and we ran to a cab. We went to Penn Station and got to our train just in time. It was full of drunk people. They were all coming from a parade and were dressed in green and pinched my cheeks. I didn't like it. I cried. Then I stopped. I ran up and down the aisles and laughed at the funny people that were sleeping with the green hats and green faces. They were not having fun but I was.

It was a fun day.

Cling Free

2011-03-03T17:59:00.000-08:00

Benji has developed a certain type of cling that is, apparently, de rigeur in the 18-month-old set. Walk into the room? Pick him up. Set him down again? Pick him up. Step aside to avoid walking on his neck? You know you'd better pick him up. It's adorable.

Not really. It's actually annoying. His newfound independence (look! I can run all the way to the elevator by myself!) is one side of the clingy wrap. The other side is a child that needs more attention than ever.

Of course, after reading way too much for our own good about raising kids, we don't know if we should actually pick him up (creating a dependent, whiny sponge and ruining our child forever) or simply let him whine and cry (thus destroying his ability to trust and creating a treacherous sociopath). Now if we were raising our child to be a major party candidate for president, either option would be be electable. But given we are living in the reality based community, we try for a middle ground.

Our strategy is to give love and affection the first time. Then we put him down to go about our business. If he cries, we ignore him. It seems to work. This isn't to say that there aren't 5 minutes of either grating whinage or head-splitting shrieks, but they pass and he's happy and bubbly afterwards.

Oh we have our own things to whine about. But someone's got to be the daddies.

Forever 21

2011-02-26T19:07:00.000-08:00

I will never be 21 again - in fact I'll never be twice that age again. Is this a good thing? Not sure. Do I have a choice in the matter? No. So I would much rather look - or safer, glance - in the rear view mirror and see a lifetime of experiences than a empty bag of shoulda.

It's not as bad as Nora Ephron, who feels bad about remembering nothing...or something, but I can't hold on to even the tiniest bit of life as it happens in front of me. All of those firsts and moments I'm trying so hard to capture for posterity are instantly memories. Try as I might, I can't live forever in the moment...because so much of life is about remembering the past and anticipating the future.

Every day Benji surprises me with something new. The best I can do is to be there when it happens and help him build a foundation of good memories with us. He won't be 16 months old forever. I think my mechanic once said, "if you're watching the odometer you can't watch the road" - and life is really about the trip.

Tantrum Yoga

2011-02-25T20:16:00.000-08:00

What goes through Benji's mind in that split second before he goes into a grand mal tantrum? In that instant between laughing, happy boy and arching, coughing, screaming demon on the linoleum? Was it something I said? Is he hungry? Cold? Desperate for a banana? Frustrated because he can't speak yet? What? WHAT?!!!

These intense but thankfully brief episodes happen on a schedule. Once in the morning as we're getting ready for the day and once in the evening as we're getting ready for dinner. Probably it's something to do with transitions and daycare...but I like to think of it as a form of exercise. For him and us. Benji gets a sense of his ability to have his own separate demands, and we get to practice our patience. Because god knows we're going to need it in about 15 years.

It's not fun to be with him for these five minutes when he's screaming and kicking on the floor for "no reason". Somehow though there is a reason there and it's interesting as a parent to try to see the larger picture when the smaller, piercing pictures grab all the attention. It's a stretch...but I guess it limbers us up for what's to come.

Ink, Pray, Love.

2011-02-21T18:53:00.000-08:00

This will be my last post about tattoos. Stick with me through this one, I think it's good.

I've been reading Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat Pray Love, which threated to rub against both my skeptical nature and worship of free will. But she won me over, I think in the precise way she intended: her journey to enlightenment and happiness was specific and universal. There are infinite doors into that infinite room, and if you get there, you've had some freakish Being John Malkovich moment where you've entered into your own soul which is filled with the infinite. Sounds like heaven.

My route, completely transitory and insufficient, I admit, was this tattoo. The purpose of it was to mark the "birth" of Benji (plus I wanted another one). The pain of it brought me to another place, somewhere outside myself. I can't say I became one with the divine, but let's say that Divine was somewhere in the place I was. The traumatic stress of the last few weeks - the car breakdown, the finalization ceremony that almost wasn't, the money worries - all went away in the drag of the needle.

If you've never had a tattoo, let me break it down. It feels like being snagged by a nail. It hurts, but it's not like you're going to lose your mind. The issue is that it takes hours, and the pain is enough that you need to compartmentalize it. I wrapped mine in a present, in my mind, and gave it to Juan as a gift. Every new line and all of the tedious shading was just another fold in the paper, or a ribbon, or a bow, that I gave as a thank you to Juan and the universe for giving me a life of blessings.

I know it's not Italy, or an ashram, or a toothless magic painter/healer, but it's my own little encounter with the infinite, and it's just as valid. Would it be too gay for me to just say "I feel love"?

Doggie Style

2011-02-20T03:52:00.000-08:00

In the glamorous filth of Hell's Kitchen

We don't have enough time to be clean freaks. Frankly, I don't know how anyone has time for that continual shmutz relocation, much less people sharing their apartment with a newly mobile shmutz machine. I can live with Benji's room being a disaster, but when the mound of toys and discarded shoes landslides into our living room I spring into action.

My mother is the world's best house cleaner. In fact, for a few years after she stopped working she did it for a few of her working-mom relatives "for exercise", though I suspect it was more for the fun. She passed down that trait to me, and although mine is tempered with a more active sloth gene I can really get into whitening the grout. You know, that impossible corner where the bathtub meets the floor and the wall...ooh...that's right, get it nice and clean.

After a morning of indulging my fetish - call it my own little White Party - and a little wobbly from all the bending over, how wonderful it was to see Benji on the nice, clean linoleum lapping contentedly from the dog bowl. When he looked up at me with his wet face and hair and smiled, I think I finally understood what drives that urge to scrub. The world is really a dangerous and unpredictable place. If you can't do anything about global warming, anti-gay constitutional amendments, or a likely case of e coli poisoning, at least you can get that chrome so shiny it will burn out your freaking corneas.

Ink Complete

2011-02-19T18:29:00.000-08:00

Lost, somehow, in the stress of the adoption finalization hearing was the fact that this was - oh how to call it - the finalization of the adoption. What does the elated, but lately slightly squashed and newly-legal father think about first? Primarily, I admit, that I can now get that tattoo.

Have you ever sat through your daughter's recital and thought about nothing but having a beer and watching the game? Or had a romantic dinner with your mate and secretly couldn't wait to just go to bed - to sleep? There's nothing wrong with being exhausted, and when you have lived, lived, lived the adoption process for two years...well at a certain point you are just tired. Between us, I'm glad it's over and now Daddy Muff wants a little attention.

I wanted another tattoo and thought something related to Benji felt right. There was no way I was going to provide fate with the ultimate jinx by getting one before the adoption was final. So here we go, the day before my birthday, two weeks after the adoption was final, and I will be in that familiar chair on St. Mark's Place, gripping the armrest and trying to focus on the dissertation I'm being given by the artist on the early days of British punk. I'll be sweating, a little woozy, and will leave feeling big, alive, and this time even more Benji's dad.

Not everyone has the transgressive gene, but I do. I'll take Mame Dennis over Mr. Babcock, though he might have the better name. If you see this new dad in the East Village next week with watery eyes, a big smile, and a huge B on his chest, know that this lucky guy has received just enough from everyone else to allow him to give something to himself.

What's so funny?

2011-02-15T18:51:00.000-08:00

In a premonition for his teen years, Benji has been going through mood swings like Tarzan on ecstasy. Today I picked him up from daycare: distant. Walking into the apartment: giggly. After taking off his coat: petulant. Upon seeing the dog: hysterical crying. Five seconds later, laughing.

What's going on? Too much sugar? Not enough? Was it a mistake to light his checkerboard nursery with that strobelight? Should I stop wearing the clown mask to sing him to sleep?

We're lucky that the crying jags are far outnumbered by the irrepressible laughing and tickle fights we get into. Let me tell you, you haven't lived until your child grabs both your hands and wraps them around himself to kiss you. If there was something I could do to ease the crying...I'd do it. But there's not, because that's just a part of learning that you're independent from...yet completely dependent on...your daddies.

So we wrestle and laugh until we cry and fuss, then change position and repeat. Until, thankfully, we fall asleep.

Blink

2011-02-14T17:55:00.000-08:00

What a privilege to be not just present at, but an integral part of the development of a human being. We all deal with jaded, ossified adults all day long, who wouldn't change for you if you were offering 20 bucks for four quarters. But to be a dad, to have this responsibility to challenge and shape someone who will take your place and either erase your memory or perpetuate it - well forgive me, but it's damn terrifying.

Benji's not speaking English or Spanish yet, and it is a mystery as to which will be first, but he is communicating with every fiber of his being. There is no question what he wants when he wants a bottle, a hug, a paper cup full of Cheerios or that specific book with the pull-out dinosaurs - not the pop-up one, fool! - the foam ones that he can chew on. He'll be speaking before I know it, and these precious days will pass like the days he couldn't hold his head up, the day he first crawled, and the time he took his first step (for our neighbor Barb, who just demanded that he walk, and he did.)

It feels like every time I blink, there is another part of life that I can't hold on to. A birthday here, a valentine's there, another memory I'm destined to forget. Maybe the only thing that pushes us to continue against the inevitable dementia of history is the thought that someone might be affected by the way we chose to live our lives. OK, I know a few people who couldn't care less how their lives affect others', but let's set aside the sociopathic creeps and the random subway stabbers for a minute. I am proud of the person I am, and I want to reflect that in the way I raise my son.

I'm not the first person who has suspected that the desire to raise kids is an attempt at immortality. But when it slaps you in the face - when your own son imitates your gesture or facial expression - you think you might have a shot. And when you are lucky enough to raise a beautiful, this-side-of-perfect boy, your ego wants to take all the credit for everything great he will bring to the world. Just don't blink, because he'll just be on to the next thing and you'll be trying to remember where you left your keys.

Home Again, Home Again

2011-02-11T20:17:00.000-08:00

Eight weeks passed since our last visit to our Catskills cabin, Muffalda (what else?) Last winter I wrote one of my favorite posts about the trip upstate, across the mountains and the scary nighttime backroads we take on purpose because the highway isn't cozy. It's been our longest trip away from the cabin, and I somehow expected it, like an old lover, to be disappointing and to justify my indifferent absence. Not so.

Our car is still in the shop so we have a rental, a two-wheel - or is it one wheel - drive, which even with a running start made it only two yards up our sheet-of-ice road. We also have several bags, a pug, a baby, and no flashlight. Luckily for us the fingernail moon tonight was just enough light to shine on the glazed surface of the road to lead us to our snowbound nirvana.

Everything you ever dreamed about a mountain cabin greeted us when we trudged up that hill. Snow blown against the doors and windows, enormous icicles off of every eave and an untouched field of blue sparkles that rolled up the hill and disappeared into the spruce forest. As we approached, Benji recognized where we were and started grunting and pointing - the motion-activated light came on and suddenly it was our home again.

For the first hour Benji ran around pointing at toys abandoned eight weeks ago and which might as well have been purchased new today. It takes a several hours for the stove to heat up the house, and the hot tub is off and not likely to see action again until the spring thaw. But Juan snuggles Benji into his new, larger pajamas, gives him a bottle, and he goes right to sleep in his cozy little nursery we built the year before he made his own way to our cabin. Maybe it's a little like this house - I have a suspicion that he chose us more than we chose him.

Baby Got Back

2011-02-07T16:49:00.000-08:00

Picture it. David Barton Gym. The throbbing, veiny heart of Chelsea. 1 pm. Daddy Muff is trying to shed the extra pounds gifted to him from the foodcarts of Puerto Vallarta by working his legs. Why isn't he doing cardio, you might ask? Because no one looks sexy doing cardio and I look hot doing deadlifts. But I digress. Daddy Muff loads up the plates and puts the bar on the floor. In one quick movement, he lifts the bar to his...ankles, because the excruciating pain that shoots through his entire body prevents further movement and may have very well caused a loss of bodily control, ifyaknowwhatI'msayin'. Over walks an off-duty trainer who cheerily offers to demonstrate the correct form, as soon as someone can both get off the ground and perhaps "clean up" a little.

BabyMuff is nothing if not the Reader's Digest of life-lessons for the urban-gay-male-parenting-in-the-suburbs set, so here's the upside: after I very, very carefully picked Benji up from daycare, we got to lay on the floor for two hours! You would be amazed at what fun you can have in the toe-kick of a kitchen cabinet. Benji learned that Daddy sometimes can't get the ball after he throws it. Benji learned that Cheerios from the linoleum taste better than those from his high chair. And Daddy Muff learned that really, no one, except for an astute and very kind though slightly smug trainer, is watching me do my legs, but everyone is watching me crabwalk my way up the stairs like an old crone.

See you in the steam room.

Goodnight Moon, Goodnight Son

2011-02-04T18:56:00.000-08:00

Last night, I read "Goodnight Moon" to my son to the first time. It was already his favorite, I knew this because at the turn of every page he knew exactly where to point at the kittens and the mittens and the mouse and the house. Benji and I have read that story countless times, but until last night Benji was not my son.

Adoptive parents are pregnant twice: once while waiting, hoping they'll get the call rushing them to the hospital, the agency, a safe meeting point to enter a life's agreement with a mother making a decision that we couldn't imagine making. Then, again, while your file grows and grows, you wait for the day that this amazing child will not be your ward, but your child. We should be so lucky to have a pre-defined nine months and agonizing pain to look forward to.

When Benji's mom chose us to be his parents, nothing ever felt so natural. We liked her the minute we saw her. We were not allowed to see pictures or catch a glimpse of Benji until the moment they brought him for us to take home...but the moment he came into our lives it was love, love, love. And for the next 15 months, wait, wait, wait. But one look into his handsome, happy face...well, it didn't matter how long it took.

The train to Benji's adoption hearing - the literal one we had to take because our car broke down the night before - was packed and we barely found a seat with our stroller, bags, and nervous cuticle picking. The track to finalization was up one mountain, down into the ocean, and across the desert. But yesterday we just had to make it to the station, Newark Broad Street, where we waited in the 20 degree weather for our bus connection to the courthouse.

Famous and Fabulous

Arriving 45 minutes early in eerily deserted downtown Newark, we camped - in a gay way - in the amazing "Famous Restaurant", all formica, mirrors, and plexiglass chandeliers (note: go there before it's gone.) We barely spoke to each other, jittery nerves and a sense of exhaustion about the whole process sat kind of heavy on our egg sandwiches. Benji ran around and charmed the waitress.

Shortly before the hearing, we made our way through the metal detectors and bag checks, and to be briefed by our lawyer. A very routine hearing was expected, and she told us what she would ask, what the judge would do, and how quickly it would be over so we could pose for pictures. Ushered into the courtroom, we were the first case, and waiting about five minutes for the judge, were sworn in and told to be seated.

The first sign that things were not going according to script was the judge calling our lawyer to the bench. In a court hearing you have waited literally your whole adult life to experience, probably the last thing you hope to see is Your Honor shaking her head and your lawyer wide eyed, mouth agape, and stammering. This was not a soft landing, this was hard core. Five tense minutes of legalese between judge and council ended when the judge went to chambers to consult with the presiding judge and our lawyer returned to...what? explain how this had never happened, ever? or express shock at what was going on? maybe just try to work through what just happened by talking, talking, talking about all the horrible things that might occur? Whatever she was doing, it wasn't helping. And Benji was 17 seconds away from throwing his first tantrum.

About the time our lawyer was saying "in all my years of trying cases," Benji realized that not only was there no nap in his near future, there was no bottle, no crib, and no cuddly pug for him to curl up with. For the first time in his life he did the back-arching, feet kicking, universal interpretive dance of all overtired children everywhere. On the floor, just under the court clerk's station. At this moment, Your Honor returns.

We were in the right place, meta- and physically, but at the wrong time. We'd done it all right- crossed our eyes, dotted our tease...why was this all going south? We had already endured a six month delay due to some bureaucratic snafus, and every day without the finalization decree felt like yet another sunrise that our family was at risk. Practically, Benji couldn't travel to meet his grandmother and family in Argentina until even months after the finalization - we had to get a new birth certificate and wait for a passport to travel out of the country. But more importantly, Benji was only in our care until this was finalized - and the adoption was at risk, however small, of someone appearing, contesting it....the screeching crows of horrible outcomes were overwhelming everything in that room. I mean, all of the tests, fingerprints, invasive background checks, home visits, tens of thousands of dollars....and his mom picked us to raise her son....we were spent and in shock. What more did the state want from us?

Nothing, it turned out.

In two minutes, Our Honor read the adoption decree into the court record. Juan had lost his English right after we entered the courtroom, and his face in the final picture reflects an uncertainty if we were being finalized or imprisoned. A quick photograph with our judge, who said she'd see us "around the village" since she lives near us, and we're dismissed.

What just happened?

Not really sure what happened the next six hours. I vaguely remember our lawyer going on and on about what happened in there - but I didn't hear a thing. All I saw was Benji, relaxed again, and for the first time, our son. Our baby. Ours, forever and ever, to have and belong to. To teach, to learn from, to read to sleep and kiss awake in the morning. With huge hugs from tiny hands, all cheeks and feet and head of hair. Our baby, born, again, and again, landing right in the spot he somehow was meant to be through a circumstance no one would have prescribed or predicted. And his Papi and his Daddy, trudging back home on the train, not in the way we expected, but still getting to where we needed to be.

Bye, Bye Miss Mexican Pie

2011-02-01T15:58:00.000-08:00

Grandpa Bruce and Benji

Most of our friends, and now especially those that spent a week with us in Mexico, know we like a little street. We clean up well, can hold our own at a fine restaurant and I know the difference between a Laphroaig and a Glenfiddich. But I have always thought that my favorite culinary moment was a tripe quesadilla on the street of Puerto Vallarta. Which is why I replayed this experience over, over, and over again with Juan and a few willing hedonists (again, the divine John Olguin).

That is, until we washed ashore in Mismaloya. This town (?) is the literal backwater of a stunning, jungle river just before it spills into the ocean. A hi-de-ous hotel/resort has taken over 50% of the intimate cove beach, but what remains seems to be pulling out all the stops on the warm octopus cocktails, resin chair loungers, and toilets you have to flush with a bucket to give you a gut-punch, ass-kick Mexican day on the beach. It is a no-collar paradise. John Waters needs to move there immediately, and we love it.

Into our reverie, in the middle distance between our sandy toes and the snorkel boats, walks a woman selling pies from a plate on her head. Like so many of he beach vendors, she is persistent but disinterested, confident that there are enough people on the beach that someone will buy something, sometime. It's like beach spam.

Was it the sun, or the screwdrivers that broke our will? Or that it was our last day in Mexico and we were eager for one last little thing to remember? She walked by again a couple of hours later, "Pasteles....pasteles...." and we called her over. She unveiled a lemon meringue pie about a foot tall. The meringue itself was dense and spongy with a brulee crust but who knew bout the lemon hidden under the enormous mound. For sure this was no Costco pie resold as homemade, but it was a gamble.

She cut us about a sixth of the pie, a piece about the size of my head. The lemon revealed itself to look like a very yellow cheesecake, or maybe a creamy custard - dense but not dry. She served it to us from a plate she brought with her, and a knife and fork she had wrapped in a couple of napkins. It was the equivalent of two dollars. After the first bite, I would have paid twenty bucks for that piece. I am certainly not a food writer, but I can explain that it was one of the best things I have ever tasted. The lemon was so tart and so creamy and the meringue so ...um, toothsome?...that I would have happily eaten the entire pie.

To me, that was Mexico. A place that many people, including us, take advantage of, whether it is for the gold, the sun, the cheap labor, the real estate - it has a wealth of opportunities. The Mexican people, though, struggle to hold on to their tiny middle class. Theirs is an economy of extremes, like many nations, where the very, very poor live right next door to enormous gated condo complexes whose entire existence seems to be keeping their residents away from Mexicans. This woman selling pie to us on the beach gave me one of my most memorable food experiences of the entire trip, as did the quesadillas tripas from the street carts.To say that the four-star restaurant Hacienda San Angel where our group celebrated our vacation and John and Juan's birthdays was in this league is to pay both the highest compliment.

Our wonderful new friends made this trip possible, fabulous, and unforgettable. Thank you for giving Daddy Muffs a week, a dinner, and a pie of a lifetime. Welcome back, Baby Muff.

You're My Beach

2011-01-28T19:39:00.000-08:00

The sand in my shoes and practically every crevice of my tanned skin is not irritating, it reminds me of the week I've spent next to pounding waves, potent margaritas, and mahogany Mexicans. I'll bet that most people, when they try to go to their own mental quiet spot, they picture a beach - for good reason. Summer or winter, there is a timelessness to it, a rhythm that knows nothing of the horrific stresses waiting for you in some non-beach locale. If you are lucky enough to be near a swimmably-warm surf, the sometimes scary wave action reminds you of the real possibility that the world could go on without you if you mistimed that next breaker and were dragged out to Atlantis.

Strange, how the reminder of your own vulnerability can make you feel stronger. You didn't die when that huge wave dragged you across the sand, pulling down your 200-dollar trunks and throwing you ass first to the feet of some pasty family from Sheboygan. You, being you, adjusted yourself and made some fabulous comment about this not being 'the worst roll I've had today' and sprinted down the beach to show off your new strawberries to your hysterical crew.

When I close my eyes to escape whatever I need to, work, crying baby, bills, circumcision PTSD, my mind goes to Juan. Somehow this guy is my tropical cove, complete with palm trees, tiny blue fish, and a mini hibachi grilling cheese (go to Brasil for that). He has his own moments that are less than Zen, but the overall impression he's made on me is calming, soothing, like the waves on a still night or the whispering rustle of air through the palms. I know, it's tortilla-corny, but there's something similar to the utter release of a beach vacation and the (maybe idealized) soft, knowing and trusting love of your lover. Smell the coconut.

We have one more full day on our beach vacation. Our tans are going to fade at some point, no matter how much greasy Maui Girl we load up on. How lucky I am to realize the best souvenir is one I brought with me from home.

Juan

2011-01-26T07:19:00.000-08:00

People always look up when Juan walks in. He's tall, sure, and to many yankees it's a surprise to see a tall latino. His face reflects good breeding, passing genes from the best surnames or just the irresistibly gorgeous. In the summer or on a beach vacation, his skin turns the color of darkest amber, like looking into the base of a handblown vase, all shimmery and glowing around the edges. You'd notice him.

He's not especially comfortable being the center of attention, preferring to be standing next to the funniest person in the room. A drink will usually relax him at a party, and I'm often surprised to find he's wandered away from me entertaining a group. Our friend John Olguin has a laugh that can guide ships to harbor, and when the two of them get together you can forget about being the life of the party and just enjoy the camptastic universe they create around them.

He maintains an amazing ability to be anxious about everything and feel guilt for nothing. Sometimes the thought of paying a bill or checking his voice mail will set off spasms of procrastination that can only be cured by suddenly and violently finishing the task and walking out of the room and out of the building. At the same time he spends absolutely no time on regret. Bad fashion choices probably elicit more wistful memories in him than the path not taken. I am in awe of him.

He will not enjoy the attention of this posting, so I won't detail his intellect, his wit, or his other prodigious attributes. I can simply say he could do anything in life he wants, and to appreciate his choices is to feel humility in one's own.

Spending my life with him is both painless and good, and has become as natural to me as breathing. To walk down the street, or better down a boardwalk in some tropical village, with his hand pressed to mine is to feel safe, sexy, and happy. Sometimes when passing a store window reflection, I'll be jealous of that person next to him when suddenly I'm shocked to realize that improbably, and wonderfully, it's me.

Surf and Turf

2011-01-25T06:44:00.000-08:00

When choosing which section of the gay beach in which you will rotisserie the remainder of the afternoon, three criteria must be considered: 1.) Is your swimsuit au courant or just two-thousand late? 2.) Did you steal a beach towel from the accidentally unlocked owner's closet of your rented condo? 3.) Are you hungover? Incorrectly assessing the criteria can lead to surprisingly severe consequences, especially considering how difficult it is to get a grip on anything covered in Banana Boat.

Take the first question. Now purchasing an amazing swimsuit at 70% off at the Marc Jacobs store at the very tip end of the season in Provincetown (as in January 1, which honestly I don't think counts as late summer in anyone's book), assuming of course that you are vacationing in the actual winter months of January through June in the northern hemisphere, means that you are indeed a la mode. In fact, Marc Jacob's habit of "manity sizing", the opposite of "vanity sizing" where a designer makes a garment larger than the actual size so you think you are smaller than you are, makes all those squats seem to have paid off when you can barely squeeze your thigh through the leg openings which were obviously fit on Kate Moss on a coke binge. In this case, you may proceed directly to the Blue Chairs section of the beach, where further judgement (of flip-flops, suntan oil, or hair product) will commence. (Bonus for arriving late: the seventeen other, hotter guys wearing the same suit will immediately cover up.)

Bringing your own beach towel is a necessity of course, but just any old one you find lying around the place will not do. For instance, picking one up off the floor from your own bedroom, a place to which you cannot remember returning and to which you may or may not have brought people to "lift your luggage" at 3am, this towel may not be suitable for laying on top of in the hot sun. No amount of cocoa butter or carrot oil will mask the smell of unfresh linens in the humid heat. In this case, you should immediately but without shame head to the farthest end of the beach where you can lay your very personalized towel directly on the sand, preferably on top something decomposing.

Being hungover at the beach is obviously no problem; millions are as such every day, predominantly in Brazil. To be hungover at 2pm, however, means that one has actually sobered up and had time to feel the unfortunate effects of too many Slippery Nipples. Since it is unlikely that you're not still drunk from the flight in three days ago, the question is moot but just to be thorough: hung over guys go to the Green Chairs section, which have large, dark umbrellas and clear paths to the restroom (conveniently located near retch-masking exhaust fans). The location of the Green Chairs beach between the Blue Chairs and the musky and aptly named Playa de los Muertos Beach prevents inappropriate section mixing, as the constant running to the bathroom creates something of a barrier to cross, and this is doubly true during Canadian Bear Week. You do not want to be broadsided by and thereby delay a 300 pound bear who discovered too late that the best way to avoid re-experiencing last night's street-cart beef tongue stew is to continue marinating in tequila.

Why Not?

2011-01-24T20:31:00.000-08:00

thanks Monty D. Smith for the pic

I miss Benji. The first night I was away from him I dreamed about him all night, and when I woke up in the middle of the night I thought I had heard him crying and stumbled around trying to find his room ....here in the condo in Puerto Vallarta. He wasn't here. But I most certainly am.

This vacation has started out being everything I had ever hoped it would be. Sun, sand, friendly faces, and the best tripe quesadillas I have ever tasted. Thoughts of my son, happily pampered by my parents, intrude between trips into the surf and another order of ceviche in the beach chair. But this is what we are supposed to do: to recharge, to remember what it is like to be adults, to have our own interests, and to reconnect with each other.

We're doing it. Can I be frank? It is fun for us to be in a gay vacation spot. It's nice to see friendly, handsome gay men and to feel connected - and attractive. When most of your social life revolves around bibs and bedtimes, it's not such a bad thing to walk down the street holding your husband's hand and turn some heads. Not because you're pushing a stroller, but because you're rocking that hot squarecut you worked for two months at the gym to pull off.

In that spirit, my posts this week are for Daddy (and Papi) Muff. Our selfish little voyage is all about coming back to our lives relaxed and ready for one more year and steeling ourselves for those terrible (?) two's. Now if you'll please excuse me, the surf outside my window is lulling me to sleep.

I Step Aside

2011-01-20T06:33:00.000-08:00

I might have come to this party too late
Just minutes after somone cut the cake
My little present gets lost in stack
Of wrappings and boxes and taken out back
I only wanted to show you my face
And tomorrow, hungover, you might think of my name

I have a way of connecting the dots
On the sideline but calling the shots
X's and zeroes from second to first
One place to the other and no one gets hurt
I step aside and later it works

I step aside
But only after I've written the rules
I step aside
A little later when the firing cools
I step aside
You can play but just not in the dirt
I step aside and later it works

I watch my baby destroying the town
The blocks he built up only to tear down
He has a method to get what he wants
So first he'll have to prescribe the response
The game that I taught him while you were in church
I step aside and later it works

I step aside
You may not notice I even was there
I step aside
But I'm the one who positioned the chair
I step aside
I'm the guy that got rid of the jerks
I step aside and later it works
I stepped aside and baby it works.

All I Ever Wanted.

2011-01-18T18:06:00.000-08:00

Vacation, had to get away. Does it make me a bad dad to really, really need this vacation with only my husband and a tiny, tiny bag filled with spandex and No-Ad creams in tow? Minus diaper bags, strollers, bottles (excepting those containing tequila) and rigid feeding schedules? Who's going to judge me on this...the superparents, the co-dependents, the baby nerds (you know who you are, put down the Dr. Spock)? Judge away, I don't care. I'm going on vacation without my son. Watch me.

We've had 15 months of togetherness with visits from babysitters I can count on one hand. We've flown to Florida and to Washington State with our wonderful baby boy, camping with my parents, lugging him on airplanes, trailers, SUVs - basically being the picture of family togetherness and cool inclusiveness. And now we're going to be taking separate vacations together. Delicious.

Being a parent is so wonderful and Benji is about as good as a baby boy can be. I want to be there, the best Dad I can be every second we're together. If I have to spend 10 days to recharge, so I can be happy, calm, and not bite the head off the old lady counting her pennies in line in front of me at Eden Gourmet (sorry, Gladys!), and have to fly 6 hours to drop my son off with my parents, then so be it.

Juan looks so good with a tan. I look great in a square cut with a big terrycloth bathrobe, sipping a bucket of margaritas. So I will come back tanned and reeking of coconut to pick up my son and spend the next year remembering how much I hated to be away from him. And by the time I forget, I'll have enough frequent flyer miles to remind myself.

Don't Forget

2011-01-17T17:33:00.000-08:00

It's no secret from my friends that my memory is both fleeting and selective. Is this why I write Baby Muff? I forget. But in that spirit, here are some things that I haven't yet forgot.

Singing made up lyrics to Brahms Lullaby like "Go to sleep, go to sleep, why don't you go-oh to slee-eep? You're so tired, you're so tired, but you're sti-ill a-wake!"
Benji holding one of my fingers while I feed him and twisting his hair with his other hand
Bun-bun, his plush rabbit with sateen ears, being hugged tightly while he turns to the side and makes nuk-nuk noises with his tongue
Pulling Benji around on a toboggan on our frozen pond, sound asleep (him, not me)
Naked Benji escaping from the bath towel and running around the house chasing the dog
Realizing that he's been awake for a half an hour in his crib, quietly playing.
Toe jam the color of his socks
His first taste of seltzer (the face was priceless).

Ah memories. Light the corners of my mind. Wait, what was I saying?

Toddlerescence

2011-01-08T08:24:00.000-08:00

As much as I mock the self-described experts in early childhood development (sorry, "pediatricians"), it seems that like a stopped clock, they get something right occasionally. Like the time I learned - too late! - from that weird book from that Star Trek doctor that the long Greyhound bus trip after feeding your baby prune juice and chili would not be one of your best times together. And then the time that I read that one in baby book from the so-called American Academy of Pediatrics (excuse me, Einstein!!) that around Benji's age many kids enter a sort of first adolescence.

I have to admit this crazy idea is true. Just when we thought that he is on a straight trajectory from helpless infant to rugby star he suddenly has these periods of "hold me please". It's as if he first discovered that he's a self-contained human being, and now he needs to get reassurance that he's still our little baby. Puhleeeze! You wanted down from your high chair, now you want a hug? What do I look like, a Moonie?

LOL. This is also an age where Benji is not ready to give up on his naps, but really, really doesn't want to miss out on any action. Which means that daddies plan a lot of exhausting activities during the day. Today, for instance, it is all about sledding and long walks in the snow. Thankfully, in this first adolescence, he can't tell us that this old fashioned fun is boring, stupid, or bogus. He can't sneak out at night, steal the car, or hang out with the wrong crowd (unless he accidentally changes channels with the TiVo remote).

After skipping ahead a couple of chapters, I am positive that the smartypants childcare books might have gotten this one thing right, but have no idea about what I'm sure will be the Terrific Two's and the Respectfully Engaged Teenaged Times. You'll read it here first.

An Invisible Light

2011-01-06T16:31:00.000-08:00

Babylon. After that vengeful god changed everyone's language and ruined that fabulous tower that was almost finished (and over 80% of the units presold...hurry!) the histories are unclear: did everyone wail in frustration and run in fear of their omnipotent sky master? Or did the fact they couldn't gossip or pick fabrics with their decorators make them lose interest and just decide to expand their existing mud hut? One thing is for sure, when suddenly all the people around you speak a foreign language, their hotness levels go sky high. Maybe they all hooked up and just got tired.

So back to babies; how can you maintain interest, curiosity, and focus when you have no words to ask questions and understand almost nothing of what your daddies are saying to you? Is there some sort of internal drive that keeps you pushing through the frustration because you know that eventually, somehow, the light will flicker on?

As adults we spend most of our time just trying to make sense of things. Why is that man approaching me? How much will it cost? Where can we go? Do I need antibiotics? So many questions that people other than myself have to ask. And I...I mean they...can ask them in English, or Boricua Spanish, as appropriate. I can not imagine not having the words to make sense of my world.

That Benji and all other babies explore without language, without comprehension of anything and somehow make sense is of it some sort of miracle, an invisible light that shines them forward. That they take this knowledge, add to it, and eventually advance our species is something that I can't understand but is probably worthy of some kind of monument. Perhaps a tower.

Inconsolable

2011-01-05T18:17:00.000-08:00

It starts with fussy crying, accelerates to full-throated sobbing, and then at some point goes completely off the rails to gagging, flailing panic. You're new to this phase of your child's behavior. You try everything you can think of, and nothing works. Now what?

This is a test of your ability to be a parent. Mostly, it makes you afraid: afraid that you won't be able to fix whatever is wrong, afraid you will get angry, afraid you'll make mistakes. He's inconsolable, and you are too.

I found an amazing thing the last time that this happened. When I made it through this (thankfully rare) event, I realized that whatever I did, I didn't make it worse. I was there, I kept him from hurting himself and maybe provided some comfort, somehow. I guess he was consoled, by me or just by himself. But at least I was there.

Does that make me a good dad? I think it makes me not a bad dad. Something that you won't hear a lot of "perfect" parents admitting is that things get bad sometimes and sometimes you don't know what to do. Being a good parent, one that loves and respects his kid means that you understand the limits of your ability to make everything OK.

Funny thing, in the end everything was OK. Let's just say, between us, that I consoled my son.

The Ones

2011-01-01T07:19:00.000-08:00

We are, if you haven't yet noticed, a family of males. This gives us a different dynamic than a family with a mom and a dad, or two moms...or even a two men raising a daughter. We, at least two of us, are men and have our own manly prerogatives like excessive bench presses and muscle-T's; and now that our son has realized he's a chick magnet, we pretty much have the whole guy thing down (except, of course, the chicks).

It's way too early to be thinking of dating (too early for even friendship, honestly) but it's fascinating to watch Benji try out all his moves on people, especially strangers. The first look is a "are you a scary person?" stare, but once that is out of the way we ramp up from "Hey, I'm Cute" to "Watch This, Lady" and, if he's feeling especially randy, he whips out the "Holy Lord I'm Adorable AND Funny!" move with his palms on his cheeks and his squinty eyes rolled up to heaven. No one walks away from the HLIAAF look.

I often think about my role in Benji's life and how it will play out as he gets older. Benji has two dads, and each of us are definitely our own person. Do heterosexual parents think about themselves as individually as I think we do, or do they very easily fit into roles that define them as a family first, individuals second? I'll bet that healthy family units are a combination of individuals and not simply a sum of their parts.

Benji put on tennis shoes for the first time yesterday, and as we walked with him on the beach he started exploring the seaweed and shells on his own. Papi and I held his hand and led him over driftwood, around glistening jellyfish, and away from the tidal pools. A year ago he was a wonderful charge for us to attend to, but aside from cute coos and grins, our affection felt like a one-way street. Lately he's learning what he wants and is able to assert himself more and tell us when he loves us (and when he doesn't!) I have more of a sense of his individuality and our family grows an even stronger, more willful bond of love.

Happy 1-1-11, from us three.

Snow Bound and Son Blind

2010-12-27T10:32:00.000-08:00

Condo Captive in Provincetown

Flicker...flicker...our first hint that we would be in for the duration was not the lights winking off and on, but rather the fact that all of the shopping carts were in use at the supermarket here in Provincetown, MA. This being a vacation and bedroom community, there was plenty of bags of Doritos and Wonder bread, but supplies were dwindling to dangerous levels in the mixer aisle and there were only a dozen frightened-looking lemons left. Eight after I got to them.

Locals could tell that this storm would keep us...all of us, Juan, Benji and me included, in the house for at least two days. We stocked up on pasta, chicken, mixers and lemons, and prepared to lose power. We did.

An exciting adventure, eating by candelight (thankfully, we had just finished cooking when the lights went off). Even more exciting to get your baby diapered and dressed by lantern. And cozy to go to sleep by 9pm with the whistling gale outside the window knowing we're safe in our (borrowed) cozy Cape Cod condo.

Benji wakes up to howling winds and rain that's turning to sleet and snow. All he knows is that daddies are home all day with him and are paying him a lot of attention. He isn't worried yet about going to see his friends and is years away from rejoicing in a school snow day. Last year, our son's world extended to his fingertips. This year, he's pretty sure there is an interesting world out there, but we are still the ones that present it to him. Not blind to it, but not yet able to go exploring on his own.

A magical time, most parents tell us, when he gets to experience everything new and is not yet afraid of what might be lurking out there. Like dangerous winds, bone-chilling temperatures, and a hard-drinking town completely devoid of lemons.

Further Lane

2010-12-24T17:51:00.000-08:00

Juan and I always remark on how the "gay" part of any popular destination, be it a beach, a disco, or even an entire vacation destination is always at the farthest corner, past the bathrooms, down the steps, over the rocks, turn left at the last flashing light and go two more miles on the sand trail, across the moors and tidal pools until you reach the beach, turn left again and walk another mile to the last lighthouse.

Well we are here in Provincetown, MA. One year after our last Christmas Eve post, we're travelling farther, much farther, down that road to a place that is even more special to us than our precious cabin in the Catskills. But like those other gay parts, this one is extra special and is worth the trip. Enjoy last year's post. Incidentally, Benji was completely and utterly a joy for 5-1/2 hours in the car trip up here. God bless us, everyone.

Lovely, Dark and Deep

Our drive to our cabin is about 2-1/2 hours from the city. We dodge the automatic parking gate, wind our way through the strangely quiet residential streets to the parkway. Merging from the freeway Route 17 brings us through the chaotic shopping stip, also unusually calm today. Christmas eve is for the people who didn't get it together in time, I think with some smugness, as I make a mental note to pick up stocking stuffers before the stores close today.

Off of Route 17 we have a short stretch of the New York State Thruway with skiers, returning college students, and fellow second home owners on their way to holidays in the country. Benji snores in his carseat and Poqui wiggles his way out of his crate to lay in the sun coming through the back window of our station wagon.

The exit to the Quickway, a.k.a. Route 17 a.k.a. I-86 signals that we've left the city, left the suburbs, and are driving through the country. Where we pull off here is a matter of personal choice - anywhere here will be "upstate". Our goal is another hour and half away. Through the wood, across the mountain, and over the reservoir.

Getting across the mountain in winter can be touchy. The road is maintained but sporadically. The hills are very steep and the curves blind and sharp. We take this road only in the summer and when we're sure that the plows and sanders have been by several times. But coming this way makes arriving at our cabin feel like we really are in the middle of nowhere. There are no stores, no towns, and only a couple dozen mostly-empty houses on this road for an hour.

When Benjamin wakes up, he's in the cabin, in his bouncy chair in a sunbeam. The air smells like coffee, the Christmas tree, and woodsmoke from the stove. It is baby's first Christmas, and the cabin was waiting all year for this.

Merry Xmas from our Family to Yours!!!!

2010-12-23T19:15:00.000-08:00

OMG what a crazy year! Just when you think you’re getting the hang of the “new normal” WHAM it’s over and you have to start it all again.

Our first clue that this wouldn’t be a typical “year in the life” was Juan’s hysterical pregnancy following the discovery of his unborn Siamese twin’s fully formed uterus. What a shocker! He had always felt that he had a missing piece so what a blessing to find it was lodged in his lower abdomen.

So we had that and then things progressed on a pretty much wild course from one month to the next. Our darling boy Benji entered 2010 with two months under his diapers (note to self: time to change them! LOL!) and really enjoys his flash cards and Lil’ InkyBlot Rorschach Tests. He made a lot of progress during those all-nighters and we’re told his hair will grow back real soon.

And speaking of Benji, he had is first birthday on October 19, when he turned one years old! I can’t believe how time flies the cuckoo’s nest when you’re whistling Dixie. He started walking just before his birthday, and really loves running around the apartment chasing the dog and the vacuum. I had the bright idea of duct taping the three of them together so now they can have fun and help Daddy with the cleaning at the same time. You know me, always coming up with crazy ideas! ROFL!

My parents were here two times this year and what a pleasure that was. My mom came for four weeks last winter during which time the apartment strangely shrunk and I developed a horrible case of alcohol deprevation (couldn’t get enough!) Strange times, indeed. The second was just last week when they were both here and we just chillaxed and celebrated an early Christmas in front of the Yule log. They really love Benji and are really are making up for my strict and experimental upbringing in the kennel. And Mom will be legally allowed to be around children again in only six months!

And as for me, well all’s I’m saying is that I look forward to 2011 with baited breath. Work has been insanely busy which is good news in this economy. We have our health and our happiness, and that is what really matters. *

Love to you all,

Andy, Juan, and Benji

*other things that don’t matter: a raise, a drink on the beach in a lounge chair while being fanned by a sexy Mexican wrestler, the Ducati Diavel, and that sabbatical to Civita di Bagnoreggio in September.

Generation W

2010-12-22T03:28:00.000-08:00

When marketers finally got bored with the Baby Boom generation, they moved onto Generation X which supposedly was what the world (and consumer spending) would revolve around forever. That was only until Generation Y, which strangely appeared about 5 years later, proving the creedo that kids really are having kids these days. This was followed in a matter of weeks by Generation Next, which doesn't even make sense. The parents of this precocious alphabet were the Boomers, who apparently were the first people on earth and were born precisely at the same time with identical personalities.

I guess my folks fit in the Boomer demographic, but it might be better to think of my Gen X as following their Generation W. They were young parents living in a small town, and instead of joining either the hippie parade or the John Birch Society, they were raising kids and going to school. They watched and followed the upheaval in society, figuring out how much of it made a difference and how much of it simply sold advertising.

From that perspective they bundled up and came to their son's and his husband's house for a week of family gathering and breakfasts of cereal and toast. After their last extended visit, we learned that we all do better when our plans revolve around a lower-key visit rather than Broadway shows and Manhattan nights. We sat, ate, talked, blinked and fussed with the Christmas tree - the 60-somethings, the 40-somethings, and the 1-something. It was not your father's Christmas, but it wasn't TRON either.

If anything is a recurring theme on Baby Muff, it's that when you are talking about attitudes towards gay families, most people are basically good, some people are ignorant, and the few that are really hateful are seriously funded - and seriously whackadoodle. Listening to my parents talk about their lives and friends was interesting; I believed them when they said that most people they "come out" to about Juan, Benji and me are demonstrably positive or interested. My folks say that usually the other person will mention that he or she has a gay family member or close friend and they end up discussing how it "doesn't matter".

You know, I'll take it. People growing up at the same time as my parents saw huge changes in the world and endured their own crises and anxieties, but it is so much more effective to understand people based on their actions. Boomer John McCain has about as much in common with my parents as I do with Sarah Palin. Media and advertisers love to have a meaning assigned to every generation since selling to one age and type of person is far easier than trying to target the infinite variety of us. In reality, we're all born under our own stars.