Memories of a gay stepfather and mentor

There is a news story out about how Romney has been pretty rotten/tone-deaf to gay people. Yes, they do have children.

I don't want to focus on that. Instead, let me tell you a story.

By my second year of grad school, I was pretty depressed for a lot of reasons. It made it difficult to plan at any level, and I found myself desperately casting about for housing when my previous residence was sold. Fortunately, I had a friend who lived in a remarkably beautiful house near downtown Ithaca. My room was a 10x10 coffin, but that's all I really needed. Rent was very cheap.

The dining room gives an impression of the overall house. There was a table for eight, with wonderful wooden chairs that were comfortable and stylish. The tablecloth was white - always white - some sort of synthetic, with doilies beneath a candle centerpiece. Above, there was a small glass chandelier. The windows looked out to a yard with modern stone sculptures. An antique credenza housed the plates and cutlery. Most remarkably, the flooring had bits of a composition painted on the borders -- I can't remember which piece -- with phrasings in German.

He was a piano professor at Ithaca College -- a liberal arts school often overshadowed by Cornell, but one with an outstanding music program. I heard him play Rhapsody in Blue, which was, as expected, wonderful. Given his hand span, I think it would've been great to see him play a Rachmaninov piano concerto (2 or 3).

Despite my very comfortable living situation, I was pretty depressed out of my mind at this point in grad school. I was lonely. I was lost. My landlord noticed this, and we had a chat. We talked about fathers. He shared about how it was challenging dealing with a very macho Brazilian father, and empathized with my struggle to define my relationship with my dad.

 He, refreshingly, talked openly about therapy, and celebrated it -- "I think everyone should have it!" He isone of the most cheerful, optimistic, kind-hearted individuals I had ever met. He was one part father figure, one part older brother, at a time when I desperately needed it.

He is also gay.

Perhaps a mark of age, or maturity, or just his special type of patience: he wasn't easily angered or bothered by ignorance about homosexuality.

I remember we were discussing it, and I said something expressing confusion how homosexuality would fit in the larger biological picture, and whether it really was a human cultural phenomenon. Instead of getting angry, or expressing shock, he smiled, quietly went to a bookshelf, and handed me Biological Exuberance, documenting homosexuality and bisexuality among many different species. I paged through it, was surprised, and learned something. We talked a bit more. From his admittedly ever-present smile, I think we were both glad that he trusted me to be open-minded and to update my views in the face of new information.

My friend is also a stepfather.

I forget where he met his partner - it could've been in an airport (how Hollywood!), but it was definitely abroad somewhere. He visited Ithaca a couple times, and it was clear that they were serious.

The third or fourth time he visited, he brought his eight-year old son.

I still remember how nervous my friend was about making a good impression when his partner and his son came to visit. The ice was broken via finger-painting -- not the kindergarten variety. He used high-quality paints and a real canvas. I could tell the kid enjoyed it. It wasn't a breakthrough -- but it was the beginning.

Eventually, he left a tenured position at Ithaca College to move to Germany for love. Some probably thought he was crazy, either for leaving a highly prized position, or for moving to Germany, a nation which is culturally and climatically pretty different from Brazil. He probably was -- love makes people crazy. But I think he's still happy there.

So, I know one gay man who is doing a damn fine job of being a father. I know this, in part, because he was a fantastic mentor to me in my hours/months/years of need. Surprisingly, to my American self, he still keeps in touch at least once a year. I know this because I saw how much he worried about making a good impression on his partner's kid.

He's in Germany still, so he can't be an advocate and representative of the human decency of gay fathers. So I suppose it falls to me, and the others whose lives he touched, to be advocates for him. In the unlikely event that he could be seduced from Europe to bring his talent and great heart back to America, I'd like to see him welcomed as a scholar, a gay man, and a father.