Given the connection between copulation and conception,
it may seem natural for a sex columnist to end up a parent.
But for a gay man, things are a bit more complicated.
Dan Savage has chronicled the tortuous road to fatherhood
in his new book,
The Kid (E.P. Dutton, 240 pages,
$22.95). The story has a strong Portland connection: The
baby's birth mother, Melissa, was living on the streets
of Portland and delivered D.J. at OHSU. The writer, whose
sex column is published in
The Stranger (and was
briefly carried by
WW), stopped by our office last
week on his book tour. While waiting for the pizza to
arrive, he took our questions on politics, sex and life
as Dad.
Willamette Week: What's up with your son's
birth mother? Do you know if Melissa is still in Portland?
Dan Savage: She's in New York City right now. She travels
the country, riding the rails. It's kind of a dangerous
lifestyle and we worry about her a lot. Like a lot of
gutter punks, she travels a circuit. They go south in
the winter and north for the summer, so she was in Seattle
a good part of the summer and hung out at the house
and saw the baby. It's a good relationship.
So how's she doing?
She's very stoic and quiet and self contained and very
poised for a filthy gutter punk. It's a tough life.
It's a skill to live on the streets successfully, as
someone like Melissa does. She's good at it; she takes
pride in being good at it, at being self-sufficient.
Do we hug and kiss and cry now when she comes over?
No. We say, 'Hey,' and she says, 'Hey,' and we ask if
we can get her something to eat, and she says, 'No.'
And then we insist, and she eats, and she sits next
to the baby for a while--and then she goes.
So which will be the bigger stigma: having a dad
who's gay, or having a dad who writes about sex?
I think having a dad that has anything to do with sex
would be deeply humiliating. I would have been humiliated
about it so I think that is the bigger issue when it
comes down the pike. But everybody focuses on the gay
angle. I was on KOIN-TV, and they said, 'But people
are going to be mean to him, therefore you shouldn't
be allowed to adopt.' But everybody gets picked on for
something. That's what Melissa said when we brought
it up with her: 'Well, if it's not that it's something
else.' And we don't say to black people, 'Why don't
you have white kids? Protect them from that racism stuff.'
You've publicly mentioned the size of your son's
penis. That seems to have caused some controversy.
Here's what happened: I wrote a piece for This American
Life about how when I'm out with the baby alone,
straight guys think I'm straight. There have been moments
when I've been caught looking at a straight guy in his
cutoffs in the grocery store. Now, usually when you're
caught looking, they get mad, but when you have a baby
it's like, 'Do I know you?' It's much nicer. You sort
of have this 'Get out of Gay-Bashing Free' card if you
have a baby with you.
But back to the penis...
I mentioned that it was huge. The piece ran in Out!
magazine, and suddenly I was a pedophile. People were
upset that I would joke about my son's penis, which
just portrays the colossal ignorance on many people's
parts about what parenthood is.
Do you think people would be upset if Dave Barry
wrote about his son's penis?
I wrote a response article for Out! in which
I quoted Anne Lamott's Operating Instructions
where she described her son's erotic smile and porno
lips and Paul Reiser's book where he talks about his
son's enormous balls. Straight parents are comfortable
telling those kinds of jokes.
So why do some gay people think you're wrong to
make those jokes?
Because there is this accusation that we want to have
children to rape them. That is, of course, untrue and
unfair, and I shouldn't let a false accusation prevent
me from reacting to my child the same way that anyone
else would react to their child. I just reject this
idea in gay rights that we must be on our best behavior.
We should have the freedom to be just as scummy and
awful as everybody else.
Recently, the editor of Just Out wrote that
people should keep their clothes on during the Gay Pride
parade. What's your thought on that?
There is a generation of gay and lesbian leaders who
came of age in the late '60s and '70s who are sort of
running Gay Pride, and they are tremendously reactionary.
But there is also a new generation that isn't so small-minded
and attached to Stonewall models that will speak out
in the next 20 years.
We recently received a letter from a woman who was
angry about a critical review of a lesbian film and
said we should apply different standards to such work.
There isn't a Special Olympics for gay and lesbian
art. Critics who go easy on gay and lesbian art do more
harm by encouraging people to go see crap than critics
who are honest. If a critic sends me to 10 crap lesbian
films and says they're good, I get sick of it and stop
going. I won't see the next one even it is great.
Can we expect other topics from you? Are you getting
'gayed out'?
The next book I do isn't going to have one reference
at all. I'm going to write a book about the presidential
election. I just went to the Iowa caucuses and covered
the straw poll. I'm going to be following George Bush
around next year, and that will be fun.
So you're switching from sex to politics? Or is
that really a switch?
In a sense, sex is politics in America. Monica Lewinsky,
gay rights, abortion rights, women's rights, whether
or not Veterans Affairs is going to pay for Viagra for
veterans, Newt Gingrich's second divorce, Bob Barr...I
enjoy the intersection of sex and politics in American
culture. I don't think all politics is sex in America,
but I think about two-thirds of it is right now.
Rumor is you're considering moving here.
We're ready to leave Seattle, and we come down here
a lot. We came down here for the baby's first birthday
and went to the Mallory Hotel, and we have reservations
for the birthday next year--we're going to keep going
back for the baby's birthday. That's the place where
we spent the first night with the baby alone. The baby
went in a drawer. We had no crib.
Would this be sometime soon?
Maybe in the next year and a half. We're thinking about
here and Chicago and maybe Vancouver. I'm into living
in a city where my column isn't actually published.
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Willamette Week | originally
published September 29,
1999
