Oh gawwwd. The Observer notes today that everyone who writes for Salon, that online kaffeklatsch, wants a gay son. Well, OK, there are just two examples, but they're both infuriatingly dumb. One is the mostly crazy Ayelet Waldman's piece from March '05 about her son maybe being gay and how that makes her excited and how lesbians sorta scare her. The other example is the new piece by Sarah Bird, in which she curses the straightness of her 18-year-old son and wishes she had some swishy interior design guru who would just love and adore mama forever (and call her "girlfriend"). It reads like a drunk Norma Desmond channeling Dave Barry.
I guess I've suspected the worst for a long time. Certainly the signs were there from a fairly young age: He invariably chose "Power Rangers" over joining me in marathon viewings of the work of Stephen Sondheim. He preferred to thickly carpet his bedroom floor with castoff clothing rather than use the color-coded, padded hangers I put in his closet. Worst of all, he evinced a disturbing interest in Grace's bare, bony chest rather than concentrating on absorbing Will's snappy — yet ultimately supportive — patter. If he didn't pay attention, who would I have to call me "girlfriend" in my old age? How would I keep tabs on Britney, Carrie Underwood and that creepy kid from "High School Musical" without my very own Rex Reed 2.0?
She rambles on grossly like that for two internet pages, only meekly trying to defend her stereotyping by saying "submit a résumé [to be my gay son] only if you are an old-school homosexual with all the traditional old-school homosexual values and interests." Ay yi yi. The funny thing is, if Bird
did have a gay son, he'd probably be some skinny, pissy, meth head fag who moves to New York and pretends he's from a overseas.
A friend of mine once said that she wants gay kids because they're going to be born anyway and she feels that she'd be a good mother to them, which was absolutely true. And that I can understand. But saying you want a little play thing, even though it's for a "humor" piece? It's just so obtuse.
So how about it? Do any of you actively wish for gay kids? Do any of you have any? Are they 24-30 and single?
