Gay Conversion
I'm usually extremely practical and rarely attempt to change the impossible. However, pragmatism does not get in the way of my dreams, aspirations, and, especially as a teenager, my desire to fit in.
At fifteen, lying on my favorite giant pillow in front of the living room television, I stumbled upon a late-night talk show. The guests on the show were men who claimed to have changed themselves from homo-to-heterosexual. I scribbled down their phone number because I already planned, at eighteen, to move to New York City, the location of this miracle cure. Acceptability was just a few years away. I'd become a guy who marries, has children, and lives the dream. It seemed unimaginable, but hey, these men on television said it could happen.
When I moved to Manhattan, the phone number that for three years was crammed into the bottom of my wallet had disappeared. Within my first week living in a dorm filled with acting students, I realized I didn't need it. New York City was not the same as Podunk. My practicality kicked in, and my goal shifted: I wouldn't have a wife, but I could get a boyfriend.
There was no issue being gay in the safety zone of the East Village, or in Los Angeles, where I later moved with my boyfriend/partner/lover/companion/significant whatever. There was no just-right term that defined the seriousness and solidity of our twenty-year relationship. We remained somewhat illegitimate, on the fringe of society, no matter how much we conformed to other norms. Getting married or having a family with children never occurred to us; it wasn't an option.
In the late nineties, a couple of things happened that shifted the ground a bit. A couple we knew had a baby. We would babysit every once in a while, and then regularly. We'd had nephews and nieces in other cities and had, on rare occasions, taken care of them, but now we had regular contact with an infant, and we got sucked into the baby vortex.
At the same time, California changed the law to allow two unrelated people to adopt. Twenty years together and still "unrelated."
My "better/other half" canvassed for the census in 2000 and found himself at an orientation inside a Seventh Day Adventist Church where he grabbed a pamphlet from a foster-to-adopt agency, brought it home and set it in front of me. That was in June. By December, we had a newborn.
A few months later, we traveled back east for Easter. On a layover somewhere in between the coasts, strangers were suddenly approaching us, cooing over our cute baby. No one seemed to mind that we were two men. To all these corn-fed middle America types, we were just a couple with a child. We didn't sense scorn or judgment. We were a family and welcomed into the inner circle.
I had become the guy who marries, has children, and lives the dream. I had made myself acceptable.
By Michael Waite
Father of three.
Husband of one.
