Two Dads are Better than None

The adventures of two very adorable gay men trying to become fathers in a crazy ass world

Happy Birfaday Kimmy!!

Today is a very special person's birthday. Our sweet Kim's Birfaday is today so I though I would honor her with a pic of her beautiful mugs. Not only is she a fabulous stylist, a great cook and a wonderful person, she is also one of the sweetest most thoughtful loving people you will ever meet. Everyone who meets her loves her. She always looks great, speaks from the heart and is AVAILABLE...are there any hot menz out there that can tolerate her 5 over protective gay brothers??

HI KIM!!! WE LOVE YOU!!

Christmas Eve Bus Party

Greg and I went to see my extended family in Red Oak. That is always interesting. But the highlight this year was the Bus. We ditched our familial obligations and met Robert and Kim for a night of drink and seeing Christmas lights. Robert had rented a nice bus complete with booze and lots of friends and family. They had brought several quarts of mimosa and it was quite tragically funny when, just as we left, the entire bucket spilled across the floor... so a quick stop at the beer store and things were back in shape.

It was a lot of fun and we had some funny pit stops cause of all those tiny bladders. It was WAYYYYY funnier than any kind of midnight mass. My family went to one and I heard it was loooooooooooong and boooooooring. Thanks Robert for a memorable Christmas eve!!

I have also included some pics from our progressive dinner party. Greg and I did martinis and appetizers, Kim and Robert did a fabulous beef stroking off and then on to Mark and Nicks for some fabulous desserts, presents and karaoke. Gassy granny went home first and we were quite tired as well. All in all a fabulous time!!



Christmas 2002

Besides this being our first Christmas together, Greg and I have seen a lot this past year. Last year around Christmas after being freaked out by the whole 9/11 thing in New York, Greg lost someone very dear to him. After a long fight, Keva passed away. Greg moved in with me on 53rd and 8th and we spent Christmas with our families seperately. We went on a cruise that was really nice (especially after that year in New York) and also spent a few days in England. My project was winding down and we both decided to head to Dallas since I still had a house there.

While leaving NY was one of the hardest things I have ever done, having Greg by my side made it much easier. So we packed up the Lexi and drove to Texi. We found jobs and spent many summer nights having drinks with friends on our patio. While it is easy to get sad and nostalgic about New York, I was very lucky to have the experience and meet someone as sweet and loving as Greg.

No sooner had we moved back to Dallas then my mom moved to Canada for her job. To give you an idea of what kind of mom I have, all my friends love her and she and I are really good friends. While I will admit, I was a bit of a "shit" growing up, my mother has made me into what I am today through lots of love and understanding. Read some of my short stories and you will have a glimpse into the kind of impact she has had on me.

Luckily my sister was firmly planted in Dallas, so I had her and James. I am her "mean" older brother but I know that she loves me a lot. The older you get the more important siblings become. They stick by you.

So mom came back to Dallas to spend the holidays with her kids and the puppies. Here are some pictures.



Our Dog - Rudy

I know that everyone thinks they have the BEST DOG in the world but we REALLY DO. I told Greg that I wanted a dog and we agreed that when we moved to Dallas we would get one. Actually Greg is quite the cat lover and always tells EVERYONE that he got rid of his cat to be with me. You see, while I am actually a pretty healthy guy I am high allergic to cats. I hate them actually and Greg thinks they are the most wonderful creatures in the world. I beg to differ. Anyway, we knew we wanted a dog but I knew it had to be small (ie. little poop and can sit on my lap). It had to be well behaved and cuddly (ie. It had to match our decor...jk) and it had to allergy friendly. We initially looked at a Bichon Frise but the woman sold it right before we could pay her. That was fine though so we went to a gross nasty puppy mill and saved Rudy, a little beige Shih Tzu in a cage above his mommy.

We took him home and fell in love with him. Greg has grown up with pets but I have never had a house pet in my entire life (my mom was very mean...I hope she is reading this)

So for your edification, i will list the reasons why he is the BEST DOG.

1. Soooooo cute..He matches our carpet.
2. Loves to be in your lap. He NEVER gets tired of attention.
3. (Usually) poops and pees outside.
4. He is a fluffball - we use him to mop the floor.
5. He follows me around wherever I go.
6. He lets us dress him up (he had a Halloween and Christmas costume)
7. He is spoiled rotten (even his bed says so)




Our Homo Home

Like most gay couples we have a fabulous home ;-) Ha
Anyway...we try. Greg and I have done a few projects around the house and we figure since we enjoy hanging at home these days, why not make it like we want it. Since moving back from NYC we have spent a lot of time at home. Greg wanted his own separate bathroom since I was such a slob...what? so sue me! Anyway the other bathroom had this crappy old Holly Hobby wallpaper. Upon pulling it down we discovered there were two layers under it. So we had to redo the walls and add a glaze..what do you think?



I also developed a taste for Asian decor after my stint in Asia. We have what we call a ZEN room that is complete with shoji walls and a Buddhist shrine. I like lines and clean space but it is sometimes hard to do since we are kinda messy. Anyway, here are some shots.

PIMPS and HOs



Kim and Robert are two very amazing soulss. They cut hair, make people laugh and get along better than anyone I know, especially considering they are brother and sister. They are two of our very close friends and have such amazing outlooks that everyone around them smiles. Imagine our surprise when they said they were going to have a PIMP and HO party. For those who do not know, you must dress as either a pimp or a ho to go. I made up a flyer and we proceeded to buy some very "interesting" attire.




As you can see, we went all out and had a BLAST!! It was a really crazy night and a very fun party. We were very fabulous pimps and and hos as you can see.

Trip to Austin

Greg and I drove down to Austin in November to visit Greg's brother Nick and his girlfriend and roomate. Austin is by the THE best city in Texas although I do not miss being a poor slacker...those were the days!


Thanksgiving Photos

This year we went to the Bier's for Turkey. I also got to see meet my Godson Apollo for the first time. He is the cute baby I am holding. We also put up our tree with a lot of help from mom. This was the first Christmas together for me and Greg and Rudy! :-)


Instant Messaging

Instant messenging is for the lonely I think. I seem to be
doing fine without it. Perhaps it has run its course in our society or at
least for my age group. who knows. It is great for meeting people. Just
think,right now this second there are people all over the world getting to
know each other for the first time digitally.

Sociologists would have us belive that there is some merit is having people
learn about others while factors such as age, race and nationality are not a
barrier. There is a truth to that but it also seems that we use it more to
act our fantasies. Will this make us better adjusted? The verdict is still
out. Still, it seemd from my experiences that there are a lot of us with
secrets out there.

We are on the brink of a sociological evolution with an entire "digital
generation." A friend and I recently discussed at length the need to get his
infant son an email address. The thought behind this was to get his name
before someone else took it.

Will this giant experiment bring people together or just give us a safe
distance to hide from. I suppose it may very well emulate normal society .

Today I got to stay in bed while Greg went to work. I woke up and practiced my gardening skills. The biggest accomplishment today is that I actually went for a jog this morning. I have not done anything physical in months and while I will admit it was not easy, I am proud of myself for doing it. As of today I weigh 165 lbs. I want to lose at least 20 and get back in shape. Maybe seeing my progress in this forum will help. I cleaned house and went with mom and rhonda for indian food. It was really good. I am going to make a concerted effort to eat a breakfast and lay off the carbs. I have decided that bread is my enemy. Lots of energy today but I think I will take a nap. Holidays are a great way to refocus. Other ideas include beginning to paint or draw again. I have made some promises to myself that I want to keep largely because I have been feeling in the dumps a bit. I am sure it is a my lack of exercise. We shall see how this diary goes and evolves and how I evolve too. :-)

Big Hair - I wrote this one for my mom while in NYC.

Big Hair
The blades spun precariously above my body, wobbling and groaning as if they were about to drop down and cut me up. I watched the ominous ceiling fan go round and round as the velvet comforter rested gently beneath my back, imaging the carnage if it were to fall. The whole time a soft tassle shook as the ceiling fan spun around, a bit out of balance. My legs were twitching and bored as they hung off the end of the large bed that seemed to swallow me up.

"Don't put your feet on the bed."mother chimmed. "I paid good money for that and I don't want it all dirty."

"What? My feet aren't on the bed. Look." She didn't look but I could tell her eyes were shooting back at me in the mirror. I didn't even have to look up. I could feel them.

Monday mornings made me anxious. I was ready to go to school and get things started but my mother insisted on taking her time. She sat in front of the bathroom sink and applied her face. She was hunched over a small mirror, her face a few inches from it. "It takes women time to get ready.Now go watch TV."She said matter-of-factly.

"I don't want to. I am ready to go."I insisted.
"Just hold your horses." Her tone rose and I could tell I was pushing it. It is amazing how a six-year-old already knew which buttons to push.

"Besides, today is picture day for you at school. Sit up so I can see what you are wearing."I raised my body much the way a mummy would, with my arms straight out in front of me.

I looked down at what I was wearing; red corduroy pants and a brown and white stripped double-knit shirt. There was a Rolling Stones patch over my knee with big red lips and a pink tongue sticking out. I liked the way the lips and tongue looked. My mother looked at me in the mirror, inspecting me from head to toe.

"Go put something else on."My mother barked. "And comb that messy hair."

I looked at her as she applied a pencil to various parts of her face, moving quickly and with deft intent. She had done this many times before and I though her face had a soft pretty glow.

I stared observantly at the back of her head. The best part was watching her do her hair. Sometimes she had huge curlers and white hair seemed to be stacked on top of her head, piling higher and higher. I wondered if it ever fell. Other times it was filled with aluminum foil, jetting out in all directions. It made her look like some kind of alien. The worst was when she would fasten a plastic cap over her head and tufts of hair stuck out wildly. This look scared me.

It always seemed to me that my mother spent hours on her hair. If she was not washing it or curling it she was coloring it drying it. The sound of the hair dryer whining through the apartment and the pungent smell of peroxide filled the small apartment. She would never last a day at hide and seek.

It seems now that this setting was where I was given instructions on how to live life, while sitting on her bed, waiting patiently with my legs flailing about. She usually asked me about the confines of my simple six-year-old life and I in turn would answer in short phrases. Here I received instructions on how to live and what to do if one such horrible thing or another befell me.

Once she told me that if I was ever lost in the store, I was to find a nice lady or a policeman and tell them I could not find my mommy. One day while in the packed aisles of the supermarket, my mother wandered off from me. With no policeman in sight, I walked to the front of the store and found a short round lady with red hair and heavy blue eyeliner. She had a friendly face and asked me what my mother looked like. I told her she had big white hair and she laughed. I didn't know my mom's name. It was "mommy" of course. I told her my name and she grabbed a CB microphone off the wall. She smacked her gum and had a sing-song sound in her voice as she bellowed the words:
"Will the mother of Brent, please come to the service counter. Will the mother of Brent, please come to the Piggy Wiggly service counter." My name echoed across the store and I liked the sound of “Brent"and "Piggly Wiggly" like that.

No sooner had she stopped then my mother appeared coming up out of the horizon, big hair and all. I pointed. I could tell by her face that she was annoyed.

"Your boy is so cute. He said his momma had big white hair."The lady said smiling and clicking her gum. "Course it looks more blond to me."My mother smiled politely as she thanked the lady and pulled me quickly behind her. When we were out of earshot, she told me not to tell people that, besides, "It was blond not white. You stay right beside me, do you hear?" I nodded.

The funny thing about it was that her hair really did stick out. As the years wore on I developed a strategy for finding her in crowds or when I needed to find her for begging purposes. I even shared this strategy with my little sister." If you ever get lost, just looked for the big white hair."I held my little sister's hand and spoke confidently as we crossed the hot parking lot. The easiest way to do this was to get in a high place and look for the stack of hair. I got so good at it that it took seconds, and once I zoned in on my target I was off. As the years wore on, the stacks of hair got shorter. There was even a period of a few years when I mistakenly yelled "Mom" at the wrong ladies. I would walk away embarrassed and usually then I would hear my name. "Brreeunnnt, over here."

I fell back on the bed again, trying to keep my legs straight. I grunted loudly as if it had actually hurt myself somehow. I stared at the ceiling fan again.

"Go change NOW."She yelled. I ran out of her room and into the small bathroom in the hall. After applying the big brush to my hair I decided that my bangs seemed awfully long. All the little boys in my class seemed to have these mushroom-shaped haircuts and I was not sure why. As I stood in front of the mirror I remembered always being told to "get your hair out of your eyes."Some scissors seemed in order. Out of a kitchen drawer I pulled out a pair of long steel scissors with a shiny black handle. They seemed heavy and made a clean crisp snip as I tried to get my fingers around them.

Back in the bathroom, the scissors wobbled in my hands as I tried to make a clean cut. Snip. A wad of brown hair floated gently down and landed in the sink. It looked better now I thought.

I gathered my things out of my room as I heard my mother shouting "Ready?" She ran through the house as she flung her purse around, digging through it while shutting off lights at the same time. As I walked in front of her towards the door she shouted at me for not changing my clothes. I was waiting outside the front door as she made a last ditch effort to turn out the lights in the bathroom. After she saw the clumps of brown hair in the sink I heard a shrill voice. “Brent! Get in here." I walked obligingly back into the apartment. After one look at the horrified expression on her face, I knew I was in trouble.

"Did you cut your hair?"she demanded.
"Yeah, a little."

She bent down and looked at my hair. I had a 45-degree angle cut into my bangs. My mother only noticed how it slopped down as she stared in disbelief at the three-inch triangle cut out of the middle of my forehead.

"You are in big trouble!" She jerked me into the bathroom and picked up the clump of soft hair.
"Don't ever cut your hair. Do you hear me. Little boys are not supposed to cut their hair. Even I don't cut my hair. It's dangerous."

She picked up the scissors and started cutting at it, trying to make it look normal.

"Why did you have to do this on picture day?"
She whined. "Of all the days."She looked disappointed and angry. After a few more minutes of snipping and swaying her head from left to right, she sighed and said we had to go since we were late already.

"Oh well. That's the best we can do. If the other kids laugh at you, it is because of your funny hair."We headed out the door.

At school it was not that bad at all. No one really noticed my hair it seemed. Six-year-olds weren't preoccupied with such matters. The teachers had surprised looks on their faces. "Wow Brent. Did you get a new haircut for picture day?"
I smiled back and exposed the black spot in my mouth where a tooth had recently fallen out.
“Yeah." I said. They smiled back.

A few days later I was outside the school and waiting to get picked up. A white pinto with two doors and a brown vinyl roof pulled up. My mother reached across to open the door to let me in and I could hear Captain and Tenneil playing on the radio. I threw my bags and a brown envelope into the seat as I pulled the door closed. It took both hands to pull the door in and a bit of effort. Before I could even turn around, my mother had opened the envelope and was looking at something. The look on her face told me that it was not good. She held up a huge picture of a toothy smile but somehow the only thing you noticed was the patch of missing hair and how crooked my forehead looked.

"Oh Brent. These look horrible." Was all she said. "Now we don't have any pictures to give to Grandma."She was mad and stared at the road as we pulled away.

"I like them." I said, trying to make light of the situation.

"Well, then you can have them." She said as she threw the envelope at me. I stared out the window silently on the way home for fear of getting in more trouble.

That night in my room I tool markers and drew on the pictures. On one I drew a moustache and on another I drew a black eye. On the other, smaller ones I drew a beard or some stitches on my face. I wanted to cut them up but the scissors were no where to be found, hidden I was sure. I decided that the moustache looked nice and that I would have a long curly one when I grew up. When I asked my mother which one she preferred, she did not answer. She was not amused when I showed her the pictures.

She beamed at me through the mirror as I held up the picture.

"If you ever cut your hair again mister, you are going to get a spanking." I watched as she applied waves of colorful purple eyelshadow in the mirror and pushed up on the mound of white hair towering high above her.

"And if you think I am joking, just try it and see."
I jumped butt-first on the bed and fell back into the soft velvet comforter. I stared at the ceiling fan wobbling above me, its blades cutting silently through the air. I lied on the bed and smiled, happy that she could not see me in the mirror.

Chad's Ear - I wrote this story in the spring of 2001 when I lived in New York City. I was written for a creative writing class I took through Gotham Writers Workshop

Chad's Ear

By trade I am a teacher and probably, I feel, one of the simpler sort of characters that you would come into contact with. My life has certainly had its share of ups and downs, so when I arrived at my 42nd birthday and realized to myself that I wanted to continue being nothing more than a 5th grade teacher, I took a certain amount of comfort in that. People consider teachers to be heroes to a certain extent, but I feel less like a hero as the years wear on and more like a simple person who plays a small role in the lives of these young boys and girls. There was a time, during my first marriage, when I attacked teaching with such passion that I truly believed I somehow mattered in these children's lives. What I have come to discover over the years is that they actually matter more in mine.


I teach 5th grade at Ford Elementary School in a small town called Katy outside of Houston. Like any sprawling suburb today, Katy is very much a microcosm of the world. We have our good and bad elements, our rich and poor parts and mostly our typical human feelings of love, hate, life and death. We are, in a nutshell, "run of the mill".


After my second wife, Lisa, left two years ago and moved to California. I opted to stay. I kept the house, my job and the car while she took our daughter and a red Civic to California to begin her new life with Doug. While I will admit it was not the most amicable divorce, the thought of my daughter Aiya being thousands of miles away and starting elementary school in San Diego was one of those things that hurt me the most. I had become very close to my 5 year-old daughter and was beginning to feel, in no uncertain terms, that her life mattered more than mine, that it carried with it my hopes and the hopes of my ex-wife. Lisa was a good mother but she and I had changed after 11 years of marriage. To be quite honest, we had not really been in love for years and we both knew it.


One morning while Lisa was on her way to work, her mother called to tell her that her father had finally died of colon cancer. After that, a piece of her died and no matter how hard I tried, I could not get her back. And strangest of all, part of that lifelong bond that died between father and daughter was just beginning to blossom between Aiya and myself. Looking back, I am sure Lisa could sense it too. When he died three years ago, Lisa decided that she had been living her life in vain, always doing what others wanted and expected and felt there was a lot more out there than just the quiet cool summer nights that Texas offered us from our back porch, so she left.


While waiting for our food at a drive-thru one night she acknowledged that she was in love with someone named Doug. She started crying and all I remember was feeling slightly embarrassed as my sad suburban drama unfolded while a teenager handed us sacks of food through a small window. Doug was a co-worker who had taken a better paying position in San Diego a year earlier. Those business trips to San Diego for meetings and projects that were screwed up so bad they had to call in the pro were really just excuses to be with Doug. Now suddenly I realized just how screwed up things had become. I won't lie and say it came as a total surprise. We rarely made love and our lives had become more focused on Aiya, Lisa's career, my teaching and just being simple stand-up citizens in Katy. I thought we were just having a bad year, like a lot of couples do.


That was two years ago. Suffice it to say that the last two years of my life have consisted of basically teaching, seeing my daughter Aiya a few times a year and visiting my father in Shreveport. My older sister and her husband live about half an hour away and I get invited over for dinner frequently. They live outside of Galveston in a small house with their two boys. Often, after two bottles of wine and with my face glowing, I would sit next to their swimming pool after dinner and watch the sky change from orange to violet and feel a kind of utter loss and longing to connect that I could not describe. But I always had the "kids" as I called them and I simply transferred all that was missing from my life into my perception theirs. It was after everything had fallen apart that I realized I was truly meant to be here, sitting at my neat desk in the front of classroom 204 surrounded by holiday displays and keeping close tabs on the “Superstar Board" Perhaps I needed them more than they needed me.


Over the years my students seemed to become progressively more of a challenge too. I had been appointed guardian of their dysfunctional lives and all the things that happened at home were somehow not supposed to affect them. Parents just did not understand why I could not make their children behave and turn them into the brilliant protege for whom they hoped. Don't get me wrong. I did what I could. I taught them all the things that had been blessed by the school board, by the parents and by the state. My students' test scores were above average and I took a certain amount of pride in that. Unfortunately this was never enough. The Katy Independent School District was quickly becoming an up and coming place to raise a family and as I drove to school in the morning and stared along the highway, bricked developments with large houses and mothers talking on phones inside their BMWs would stare back at me. I knew that things were changing and I could see it in the faces of the children. Well-dressed kids starved for attention would look back at me. On lessons covering Greek mythology a few would tell me of their family trip to Mykonos. A student once taught the whole class how to read sailing navigation charts during a lesson on Spanish Conquistadors. He had picked it up after spending the summer on his father's yacht in Barbados. As I said, I am simple guy so I am not above forgetting, just for a few seconds, that I am also a student of life when I teach. And yet while the times had changed, children remained basically the same. The reason I am telling you this is because it all became strikingly apparent last September when Chad entered my classroom for the first time.


Before I even met Chad, I could tell he was in for a rough year. His school records told that he was thin and small and had just moved to Katy a few months before. His address told me that he lived in the older part of town, near me and countless others in our tract homes. Our houses were all basically the same, just rearranged and colored differently. Every house had three bedrooms and the style of the time in which they were constructed in dictated that only certain colors were applied. Twenty years ago, Forest Hills Residential Park was the assembly line of houses. A wave of men would come and lay pipes, then foundation and so on. I thought of the poor bastard who had to spray drywall on over 200 houses and all of the sudden my job didn't seem so bad. This was the kind of neighborhood we shared. Still, this did not prepare me for what awaited me that first day he walked in.


"You’re live close by me. I live in Forest Hills too"I told him, shaking his little hand and trying to sound hopeful during what was obviously one of the more stressful situations in a child's life. In the back of my mind I also hoped somewhere a teacher was doing the same for my Aiya in San Diego.


"Do you have a dog?" He asked
"Yes I do in fact. Do you ?"I replied.
"What color is it?"He asked.
"I have a black and white Chihuahua named Pepper." I said, thinking of Pepper at home no doubt sleeping on my bed or in my chair.
"I found a dead black and white dog near the highway yesterday. Some kids were shooting it with a BB gun." He said these words very flatly with an emotionless voice and the expression on my face must have changed because I instantly thought back to make sure I had seen Pepper this morning. After I was sure I had, I made an odd laugh told him to find a seat since other kids had started filling the room and the muffled tones of his soft voice were gone.


But the words were not what caught my attention. What stuck out the most about the strange boy was his left ear. I tried not to notice as he told me about the dead dog, but I found my eyes drifting and his eyes followed mine closely. Chad was thin and a bit short for a boy his age. He had a new backpack, brown eyes and his front teeth seemed disproportionate in size to the rest of his face. His hair was auburn and a bit wavy and you could tell someone had tried to get it to lay flat. He had eyes that squinted when he smiled and looked like a typical kid and not that different, except for the ear. His left ear looked abnormally large for such a thin small face and his hair tried to cover it. At first I was sure it was nothing more than just a bit larger, but as I watched him that day, I noticed his right ear actually looked much smaller and appeared to be the proper size for an 11 or 12 year old boy. This would cause me to look at Chad a bit longer than I had intended during class and after doing this a few times, he would instinctively reach up and try to cover his left ear with his hair. I am sure it was a nervous habit that he had developed over the years, no doubt in order to deal with the cruel nature of other 11 and 12 years old. So I tried in vain not to notice it in an effort to be the proper disciplinarian that was expected.


Just to set the record straight, I had very little tolerance of children teasing others in class, and until now my students always seemed to comply fairly well. But it was the times when children were amongst themselves that I could not control. It was their own world in which adults and teachers were not privy, in those instances after school or at the lunch table. Needless to say, a few weeks into the year I was relieved when a boy in the back named Charles befriended Chad. And although the girls seemed not to notice him in the least, the classroom relationships seemed fairly copasetic and that was all I could really hope for, so I was content.


A few weeks into the school year, we were studying mammals and I had asked them to choose a book on one that was extinct, another part of our curriculum that was force-fed. It had become quite the thing to teach science now with a very eco-friendly slant and the recycling bins around the school enforced this. Yet the cynic in me still felt that these kids deposited waste in large trash cans at home where The Help quickly put it next to the street to be removed. From there it was sorted at some place far away from the large green lawns with sprinklers systems and manicured hedges. In my mind I imagined most of these children came from houses that had full-grown adult size bushes planted around them, overflowing hibiscus that dwarfed the ones I had been raising in my backyard for years. That was what money allowed you to do, I thought, change things, speed them up and get them like you wanted them now.


One Tuesday afternoon, the children were working at different tables throughout the library filling out required information on their selected books. That was when I heard the yelling. I walked over to a table in a corner of the library and found a boy named Joshua on the floor with his nose bleeding and Chad standing above him with a red face and his fists clenched. Joshua was at least half a foot taller than Chad and had an astonished look on his face as the red blood dripped on the short-pile orange carpet.


"He hit me. "Joshua cried and the usual onslaught of voices trying to explain their side of the story started from all sides. I made Chad sit down alone at a different table as the librarian led Joshua to the nurse. Leo and Mark were not particularly friends with either boy in the fight, so I asked them to tell me what happened, hoping to get an unbiased explanation.


"He called Chad Elephant Ear that's why." Said Leo. His freckled face looked excited and serious.
"Yeah and Joshua tried to touch it. Only Chad had ignored him the whole time."Mark reported.
"So what started it?"I asked, my expression looking like that of a serious teacher I am sure.
"Joshua thumped it then."Leo said, imitating the gesture of a very sharp thump.
Mark now took over the explanation." Then all of the sudden Chad jumped up and turned around and hit Joshua right in the face really fast."He stressed the word really as I butted in.
"Now Leo, is that exactly what happened?" I asked, moving my glasses down to the end of my nose.
"I promise Mr. Matthews. You should have seen how scared Joshua looked, especially when he started bleeding."
"Yeah, he freaked." Mark added.


I went back and spoke to Chad. He was sitting alone at the table with his face looking red and stern. He looked sweaty and the ear looked a bit more irritated and swollen than I had remembered. His arms were folded and he had a very angry look on his face.


"Chad, do you want to tell me what happened? We don't allow hitting and I think you know that." I said, thinking how odd that phrase sounded and how it only sounded okay in this location and under these circumstances.
"He touched my ear." He said. He stared straight ahead and refused to look at me, his eyes instead looking out the window across the library. I was about to launch into a speech I had given a thousand times before when all of the sudden he did something that shocked me. In one slow gesture he pulled his right hand over the tender ear and looked me in the eyes.
"My ear is very special. I don't want anyone to touch it."He said looking up at me. I could see the tears swelling up and he made no effort to hide them, he simply cried but never made a sound. I looked around the room and instructed him to work alone at this table, patting him on the back and opting for the collected cool-headed teacher role instead of asking questions. As we were getting ready to leave the library, I thought how it would have been to witness this small wiry kid with a big ear punch someone so much bigger. In my head, the event seemed surreal and I could almost see his small clenched fist striking Joshua in the nose.
As I finished my lecture to Chad with "And will you be hitting anyone again?" He quickly responded with, "If they touch my ear I will."I thought back to how he'd had been doing so far. He was basically a good student and seemed to do fairly well, even though he was not particularly social. This had been the only incident so far and to be honest, I was surprised that his ear had not become a source of conflict earlier. Still, I was respectful of his situation. The peculiarity of the ear had taken a hold on me, so much so that I agreed to let this situation slide and not bring other adults into the circle, thereby focusing more unneeded attention on the large ear.


As the weeks wore on, my interest in the ear grew. It sometimes looked soft and had a certain warm glow and then other times it looked floppy and perhaps two inches bigger than its left counterpart. As fall changed to winter and the students would come in from playing outside the ear looked sharp and alert and very aware of its surroundings. Chad usually played alone or with two other boys who accepted him from time to time and they preferred playing away from the others in a smaller tighter tribe. The bigger kids had not picked on Chad since the incident in the library but it was a different story with the girls in class.


When I found a note next to his desk with the words "To Dumbo" scribbled in loopy cursive on the outside, the cruelty of children resurfaced yet again. Three girls I had separated early in the school year seemed to duck down as I asked everyone in a loud voice. "Who's been passing notes?" I said, then once more louder."I said who has been passing notes in my class?" Someone suggested I read it and when I saw the words "To Dumbo" it felt as though I had been kicked in the stomach and every one of the children knew what it said and they only wanted me to read it. I slipped it into my pocket and proclaimed that anyone passing notes would be sent to the principal. Then I realized in this day of non-corporal punishment just how empty that threat was. I tore it into shreds with a bit more theatrical flair than needed and threw it into the trash. A teacher never knows if these thing encourage or discourage the behavior, but my quick return to the TV placed in the corner of the room was at least some indication that the ear would not detract from the task at hand. Chad sunk in his chair as we focused back on the history lesson we were watching and I felt once again this poor boy's ear had taken center stage. It was like everyone in the class knew exactly what the note said and had seen the cruel drawing inside. Chad tried to look stoic and indifferent, only by looking so expressionless, he appeared as if he was looking past the TV, past the wall and into the distance. His eyes glossed over and even though the light was off I still felt sorry for him.


During the Spring Open House I would usually meet all the parents. It was also when the PTA drive kicked off and the school district would push to get as many parents as possible to write little $10 checks that somehow made them concerned individuals and official members of the Parent-Teacher Association. Why was it called an association? I did not want to associate with these people. They typically showed up 7 months into the school year and played this game, which was quite simple actually. They pretended to be concerned parents and I would let them act out their little charade. The parents were always very much what I expected and it amazed me how they were really a reflection of their kids, since from where I sat, I didn't really know the adults. It was with this mindset that I approached meeting Chad's parents. Part of me too was anxious to see the size of his mother's and father's ears. I think in simple terms so I was half expecting his father to have large ears and his mother have small ones. Was it genetically possible for one ear to take after the mother and one to take after the father? These were the kind of foolish thoughts I played with.


Unfortunately, Chad showed up with his father when three other sets of parents were in the room, talking and walking around. As I sat on my desk wearing the tweed jacket I pulled out once a year for Parent Night I was distracted seeing him walk around while I tried to stare at his ears. As I quickly closed up conversations and said nice things, I was hoping to at least introduce myself to his father and catch a closer glimpse of his ears. When I finally did, I was surprised at how small and average they were. He was dressed in jeans and a short sleeved golf shirt and stood with his hands in his pocket while chewing gum. He reminded me of a high school gym coach for some reason, but his eyes looked much warmer. I talked a bit of how Chad was doing and then his father shot his arm out and stared up at his watch. "We gotta go son."he said as he put his hand on Chad's neck. At the same time, another mom quickly popped in and was already greeting me. Later that night as I turned off the fluorescent lights and locked the door, I felt a little disappointed.


As the months passed, I thought about the ear again and again and even considered asking Chad about it one day. I decided against it because I sensed he was still getting teased about it. And while the children were not exactly afraid of Chad, they were never friendly to him either, perhaps since the ear was such a noticeable feature and he was such a quiet boy. As the year continued on however, he no longer wore his hair to cover it but rather had a haircut too short to hide it. And even when the other children stared at it, as I am sure they did, he would follow their eyes closely and not turn the bigger ear away. On a few occasions when I had called his name and the noise from everyone talking was too loud, he would turn the left ear towards me as if to say "What?"and I understood it perfectly. He sometimes even smiled when he did this. What was it that made the ear so special, I thought.


Towards the end of the year, I always gave students an assignment that allowed them a certain amount of freedom to do as they wished. The assignment was this:Give a report (with a visual aid) about something you would like to do one day.The intent was to allow students to talk about heroes, future careers, almost anything they wished. In this day of MTV and short attention spans, I would allow students to play up to two minutes of video on our classroom TV. Typically they would play perhaps two minutes of some video or perhaps clips of a famous athlete and then tell the class why they wanted to do this. It was one of my more favorite activities since it was so open-ended and really allowed students to do what they wanted in this day of regimented curriculum and strict guidelines. It was also significant since our school district considered 5th grade to be the last year of elementary school. After this year, the students would pack up all their dreams, change schools, get lockers and have a whole new set of fears. For all practical purposes, they would be "thrown to the lions" as I would joke, since the mascot for Katy Jr. High was indeed a lion.


Imagine my surprise when I asked them to submit a topic to me for approval and received Chad's. In scratchy letters on a 3 by 5 card were the two words "Ear Surgeon" At first I thought it was some sort of mean joke the other kids had played, but Chad’s distinct childish signature at the bottom proved to me that he did indeed select this topic. I was surprised at how bold it seemed for this little boy to choose a subject so revealing. When I expressed my concern to Deborah, our resident music teacher and one of the few teachers I actually got along with in the break room, she thought it was brave too.
"Perhaps he just wants to have plastic surgery on it someday. You know how a lot of these kids are. Half the girls at Katy High have had something done to them at one point." She shook her head, but in a teasing sort of way. Besides, I can't remember the last time I didn't see someone's mom wrapped in bandages the last time I went to the mall."We both laughed at this.


Perhaps she was right. Perhaps he was going to have it fixed before his grand entrance into Jr. High. Perhaps then things would become a bit more normal for him and the other kids would not give him funny looks. Maybe this was his way of preparing his classmates for the transformation he would undergo this summer.


Several times throughout the year I would overhear stories about the ear, sometimes from other teachers, sometimes from students. As the year progressed, a few had even asked him about the large left ear. His response was the same, even when the school nurse asked him. "That's just the way I was born." He would say with a shrug as he looked down. “Besides, nobody has identical ears." and most people would shake their head and try not to stare at the floppy piece of cartilage on the side of his head.


When the day approached for them to deliver their reports, I woke up with a sinking feeling in my stomach. Part of me was excited but part of me was afraid that if indeed Chad were trying to set his peers up for some sort of transformation he would undergo this summer, this would give them just one more small thing to hold over him, one more awkward conversation in front of new faces." What happened to your big ear?" they would ask and he would have to explain. Another part of me felt sad to see the ear go. It had become such an endearing fixture as the year went by and had honestly become so much a part of who he was, that I almost wanted him to keep it. He had become more confident with it and the ear had taught us a great lesson in acceptance the past few months.


After a girl named Jennifer had delivered a report on wanting to go to the moon, complete with video footage of the latest shuttle mission, it would be Chad's turn. Since Katy Texas was located not far from the NASA space center, I could always count on at least two reports from future space explorers. Other students reported on various careers and one clever kid had even brought in a life size cardboard cut-out of Michael Jordon, which he stood next to as he talked about basketball.


When Chad walked to the front and handed me the video to put in the machine, he announced to the class that his report was on ear surgery. Since the students had kept their topics a secret, there were always either moans or cheers once the topic was known. After Chad had said the words "Ear surger" there was complete silence and the students looked at each other not sure what to think.


I turned the lights off and pushed play. TV static filled the screen and Chad stood back and stared at the TV, looking up at it. The picture changed to a close up of a surgery procedure. A bright white light was focused directly on an ear and there was a bit of blood and the sound of surgeons talking in the background. Some students made sounds of disgust and pretended to throw-up as the clip played on. Chad was not the least bit distracted and his eyes stood fixed on the TV.
"This is what an ear surgery looks like." He said. My hands followed the every move of the surgeons and I could feel my stomach getting tighter. And then, slowly, without warning the most wonderful thing appeared before our eyes.


The video zoomed out to reveal the head to which the ear was attached and everyone knew instantly that the baby in the video was Chad. A red faced newborn infant filled the screen, crying and trying to put his fist in his mouth. It was one of the strangest sites I had ever seen and I sat there transfixed on the TV with my mouth half open. The same large ear was attached to a small infant head. The ear looked huge in comparison to the small hairless head of the baby. Everyone stared at the ear for what felt like an eternity and then the screen went black. Chad turned towards the class with his eyebrows raised and look around. All eyes were on him. He cleared his soft voice and looked down at the piece of paper he was to read from.


"The doctors gave me my mom's ear since she did not need it anymore. When I was born, the doctor said that I did not want to come out plus my mother was very sick. They had to use these things called forceps to get me out, and while they were getting me out, they pulled off my ear. My dad told me that I almost died too. They sewed her grown-up ear on to my baby head. That's why my mom's ear is bigger than mine."He stopped to look up and everyone's eyes were all focus on the soft glowing ear.
"As I get older my right ear will get bigger. One day it might even be bigger than my mom's ear. I would like to be an ear surgeon because I want to put people back together. This is my dream. Thank you."
He shuffled slowly to his desk and sat down and then rested his chin on his desk. Everyone stared at me. I took off my glasses and turned away as I wiped my eyes and no one said anything for a long time. As I stared out the window, I suddenly felt as if I wanted nothing more than to have piece of someone I loved sewn onto my body, where it would be forever; a physical piece of them attached to me that would never leave. And as I looked back at their little faces with tears in my eyes, I grazed my own ear with rough clumsy fingertips and I smiled. Chad stared back at me and a sense of joy swept over me that I have never felt before. For the rest of that day, I dare to say that I was not the only one in that room, that school or the entire city of Katy who would have given anything in the world to have Chad's ear. The ear radiated and its presence filled the room and that day we all felt like Chad stood on the shoulders of Gods and our lives seemed so very small.

About this blog

We are a committed gay couple of almost 10 years who are trying to start a family of our own. This is our story.

Those I Love

Followers

Blog Archive