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

morning, Don showed up at the hospital. Jonah’s circumcision had been scheduled for seven thirty. I looked like shit. If shit had bad hair and bags under its eyes. Don gave me a hug and walked with me to the nursery to admire our new son. Don then pulled out a cloth bag containing my father’s yarmulke and a picture of both my parents.
    “I thought you might want them with you while the doctor performed the bris,” he said.
    He called it a bris. He then handed me the prayers he had Googled and printed out. He’d also invited two of my close friends, Michael and Sylvie, both Jewish, to hold my hand through the process. And as if the universe were conspiring with all of us, the doctor and nurses agreed to break their biggest rule and allowed us all into the back of the nursery, with my camera and the picture of my parents. We made a ceremony of it after all—a ceremony that took on meaning far greater than the tip of my son’s penis. Maybe the best parenting in the world, the most respected philosophies on sleep training, food schedules, TV watching, and discipline, can’t beat raising a child in a home where his two parents actually love each other. And show it. At least once in a while . . .

 

chapter seven

Pee on the Hand, Poop on the Coat
    W e are all at a beach house in Cape Cod with my sister and her family. But the kids are nowhere to be found. Jonah and Eliza went off to play with their cousin about half an hour ago.
    I’ve just loaded the car with the cooler and towels and chairs and sand shoes and floaties and goggles and pails for the day at the beach. Now I just need to add two kids to the recipe. “Guys? Where are you? Come on . . . time to go to the beach!” My calls go completely unanswered. I start looking for them in the house, upstairs, every bathroom . . . then downstairs . . . and finally I enter one of the bedrooms. There, on the bed, are my two kids, their legs over their heads, each one taking turns sniffing each other’s asses. Thank God they were all clothed. Among all the things I imagined they could be doing, I wasn’t expecting this one.
    “Um . . . what are you guys doing?” I am so afraid to hear the answer.
    “We’re playing kitties, Daddy!” Eliza flips back up and skips over to me. “Cats sniff each other’s tails as a way of saying hello.” She seems so chipper.
    Clearly this is a moment for some kind of parental intervention, right? But what? It’s not like I’ve ever heard any opinions on what to do when your kids are sniffing ass. I mean, I must have missed the chapter on that one.
    “All right, well . . . hurry up and get your flip-flops ‘cause we’re leaving for the beach.” I decided to pretend I thought it was cute. Or that it didn’t actually happen. That particular technique has served me well when I find myself in a parental quandary for which I’m completely unprepared.
    On the subject of parental things I never thought I’d have to think about and sure as hell aren’t in any parenting books, how about trying to collect a urine sample from a four-year-old girl? Eliza was complaining of pain when she pees, so the doctors asked for a urine sample. For my entire life, a urine sample has been among the easiest things for a guy to provide. But here I was, on my knees, holding a cup between my daughter’s legs as she sat on the toilet. Where the hell do I hold the cup? It’s a wild guess, really. I try to center my hand in the general vicinity but I have no real idea where the stream will come from. Ope! There it is, all over my hand . . . and not in the cup. Now what? She’s going to have to drink six cups of water and we’ll have to try this all again. Are you kidding me? Has nobody come up with a contraption to get a girl’s pee into that tiny cup with more precision and ease? Sure, when she’s a little older, she can do it herself. But she’s four. She doesn’t want to hold the cup.
    Oh. And how about the six weeks after a circumcision? Does