As the Day is Long

My son was walking up the stairs to go clean his room when he suddenly stopped, turned, and looked me in the eye.

"I just love musicals, Mommy!"

He comes up with so many of these gayisms that it has almost become comical. My gay friends tease me about it all the time.

Just last night at soccer practice my friend was telling me how her three-year-old son picked out a pink ball. We started comparing stories about our sons' feminine sides.

There's the make up, and body glitter, and playing dress up, and always choosing pink, and playing with dolls, and loving to cook, and kick-ass organizational skills, and the always wanting his hair to be perfect, and his booty-shaking love of Cher and Madonna, and Judy Garland, and lipo suction, and house music.

Oh wait.

But still. You see where I'm going with this.

I've heard parents of gay boys (not girls though) say that they could tell their son would grow up to be a friend of Dorothy before he ever entered school. And I can see that. In fact, my daughter has a little friend who I am absolutely convinced will be coming out in a decade or so. I can't put my finger on why. There's just something about him. And it has nothing to do with stereotypes.

I honestly think that my son's behaviors and personality are a product of having an older sister to whom he is very close and feminist parents who aren't about to scold their son for playing with dolls.

If he's gay, he's gay. We'll deal with it as he needs to deal with it. I certainly wouldn't love him any less. In fact, I'd be incredibly proud of him, just as I always am. He'd certainly have some wonderful role models.

Just yesterday I was talking to one of those potential role models on the phone while my son was dressing up some Polly Pocket dolls. After I helped him get a bathing suit on an anorexic blonde whore--I MEAN--doll, he went and turned the water on in the bathroom sink to create a swimming pool.

I then had to ask my friend to hold while I argued with my son about taking his clothes off. He didn't want to mess up his outfit by getting it wet, so he wanted to strip. I wanted to get out of the house in about five minutes, so I told him no.

I got back on the phone with my friend.

"I just can't get this kid to keep his clothes on."

"That's the cincher, right there. Sweetie, your son is gay."

Maybe I should go to that PFLAG meeting tomorrow.