Hell is other people

I’ve never been any good at joining in. I’m not a team player. It’s no accident that I choose to spend my days in the corner of a library, head down, ears stuffed with ear-plugs. I don’t ever get lonely - solitude is something I thrive on. Without it I get twitchy and somewhat dysfunctional.

So I wasn’t worried about being on maternity leave. I had no office, no colleagues to leave behind. I liked the idea of me and the boy-child hanging out on our own, just the two of us, doing whatever we liked, without anyone knowing what that was.

Unfortunately, I hadn’t reckoned on the compulsory sociability that descends on first time mothers, the unchallenged assumption that you need new friends in the same position as you – comrades to share the burden and discuss sleeping patterns and bowel movements over cups of coffee and slices of baby-weight maintaining cake.

It started with our NCT class before the birth. I was already starting to get twitchy as Papà A and I dutifully trundled off to a church hall to learn how to be parents. It was all my fault, of course, for insisting that we join because it was the thing to do. All my friends had done it, and made lasting friends who got them through the first crazy months of motherhood. They swore by it.

I swore too on the way back home after the first meeting.

‘?!?!****! I won’t do it,’ I muttered to Papà A. ‘I won’t go to any more meetings. I can’t. And all those women are thinner than me! I hate them.’

‘You don’t have to go.’

‘I do! Everyone does! It’s the way it is. I hate it. I don’t want to have a baby if I have to do that.’

[Silence from Papà A]

I spent the first few weeks after the birth launching my new book, and using it as an excuse for not meeting up with the other mothers. Then, feeling guilty, I bit the bullet and joined an exercise group in the park, a post-pregnancy Pilates group, a baby massage class, and singing in the library. But afterwards, while the other mothers chatted nicely and then went off to lunch, I made my excuses and left, desperate to escape. It wasn’t as if we were actually doing anything – a trip to the supermarket at the most – but it was better, in my sleep-deprived mind, than talking to other people in the same boat.

I knew I was being weird.  The other mothers were perfectly nice. We had, at least, the babies in common. They might have been my friends. And everyone else could do it. I hadn’t felt so bad for not joining in since Martha Porter’s party in 1983 when I sat in the corner and refused to sing Happy Birthday.

Even worse, the Boy Child seemed to pick up my bad attitude. Whilst all the other babies lay nicely on their backs in Pilates he would begin a commando attack, inching forward until he could swipe their toys, screeching loudly if anyone stood in his way. I had to struggle not to feel a certain pride and relief when the instructors suggested that it ‘might be time for him to graduate.’ We’d been expelled, and so could leave the class with no guilt.

But the Boy Child must be socialised. He needs an education. And thus it was that I found myself recently in a baby group – not any old baby group, but one with a philosophy, one that leads to a nursery, and up to a school.

The group takes place in the crypt of a church. I approached it somewhat sulkily, intimidated by the mothers milling about outside, chatting while rosy-cheeked children clothed in hand-knitted jumpers ran around screaming.

Everything about the place was wholesome and organic and hand-made.  I managed to secrete the Boy Child’s plastic toy under the pram as the playgroup leader (although she declared that no-one was really the leader, and we must develop our own dynamic) welcomed us in a hushed voice. Babies lay on sheepskin rugs, gurgling. Suppressing my fears about the Boy Child’s ability to be quiet, I joined the other mothers, who were sitting cross-legged in a circle on the floor.

‘We’ll just observe them in free play,’ the leader said, ‘let them do as they wish.’

As the Boy Child lurched towards a cupboard, pulling everything out and putting it in his mouth, I calmed myself with a home-made piece of banana cake and a cup of fennel tea.

The other babies rolled and gurgled and cooed. The other mothers smiled.

‘It’s for his education,’ I told myself. ‘You have to do this.’

I held out quite well for the rest of the afternoon. I didn’t flinch when we had to join hands to make a magic circle. I sang songs to the tune of ‘what shall we do with the drunken sailor’, the words changed to cater to the sensibilities of small children and Islington mothers to ‘what shall we do with the lazy baby’. I even participated in ‘craft time’, where we sat and wound wool around cardboard disks to make pom-poms, something I was bad enough at when I was in the Brownies, and at which I clearly haven’t progressed since, looking at the ratty lump of wool.

When it was time for the Boy Child’s milk, I got his bottle out of my bag. As the leader looked slightly nonplussed, I realised that the other mothers had been breastfeeding on and off all the time we’d been there.

‘I need to warm this up,’ I said sheepishly. ‘Is that a microwave over there?’

‘Oh no!’ she said in horror. ‘We don’t use microwaves here.’

I snuck out soon after, raggedy pom-pom dangling forlornly from the Boy Child’s pram…

The female of the species is more deadly than the male

‘The thing about gay men, I believe, is that they are not that different from us’, I explained to three 40-something women, who were sharing a taxi ride with me during a recent work trip to Malta. As I was uttering this banality during a bigoted discussion the women had started about homosexuals, my heart was sinking. How had I come to this? How was I betraying my own people and pretending  - years after my coming out - that I was one of THEM? It’s all, of course, the Boychild’s fault.

In our world, most people understand the following equation:

MAN + WOMAN + BABY = STRAIGHT MUM AND DAD

and some have come to understand the following equations:

MAN + MAN + BABY = GAY DADS

and

WOMAN + WOMAN + BABY = LESBIAN MUMS

No one, however, is really ready to face the complexity of:

MAN + WOMAN + BABY = LESBIAN MUM AND GAY DAD

Everyone who knows me, of course, knows what ‘the Situation’ is. But when I come across complete strangers, and for some reason the topic of babies comes up - either because someone else mentions the fact that I am a new dad, or because they spot some compromising evidence (in the shape of the Boy Child’s picture) on my phone’s wallpaper or my laptop’s screensaver - it is impossible to stop them from assuming I am straight. The whole thing starts off quite innocently:

- Ohhhh he’s really cute! How old is he?

- 8 months old.

- You and your wife must be sooooo proud.
- Actually... we are not... er... married, we...
- Oh well... you know... I just used the word ‘married’, the way one uses this word... you know...
- Er... yes, of course... but what I meant was...
- Anyway, you must be soooo happy. First one, isn’t it? When my wife and I had our baby girl, we simply couldn’t stop looking at her, we just sat there for hours adoring this little human being, our hearts filled with joy. Make sure you make the most of these first few months, because, let me tell you...

And the train has gone. By the time - 15 minutes later - the long tirade on the joys of parenting takes a breathing pause, it’s too late for me to finish my opening statement and explain that I am gay, that Lady V is this ‘special’ friend with whom I decided to have a child, that we have our own partners, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Besides, these days the simple act of explaining ‘the Situation’ fills me with dread. Every time I talk about our special arrangement, a fragment of its magic dies. We are our own thing, our own feelings, our own relationships. It’s nothing to do with labels, sexuality, who is on the birth certificate, who isn’t, what the details of the arrangement are... Like every other human being, I have become quite protective of my family, I don’t like people snooping around it just because it’s a little different. To me, it feels natural and warm like a sunny spring day. For lack of words and for the growing reluctance to disclose to strangers my family ‘situation’, I have now taken to silently acknowledge whatever people assume. People believe I am straight when they hear I am a dad? So be it. What harm can it do? Is it really such a big deal?

Well, it wouldn’t be if it weren’t for the female of the species. Let me explain why.

I am one of those gay men known on the scene as ‘straight-acting’. That means I am not flamboyant, I do not look like an inflated rubber doll, and I do not talk in a high-pitched voice using the expression ‘OH MY GOD’ every 3 sentences. In fact, I don’t even look Italian (an appearance which people often mistake for gay). I don’t have to try hard to look straight. I simply look straight: I wear corduroys, I usually look unshaven, I like videogames and indie rock music. And for a long time, I even behaved like a straight man in the bedroom, sleeping with girls and leading a parallel secret gay life (like many ‘straight’ men do), until I accepted the fact that pussies weren’t really my thing and women were much better as friends than as dates.

Once I realised this, I had to develop a series of sophisticated but effective strategies to make sure women did not consider me potential prey, but understood despite my straight appearance that I was into men, not them. Tricks include: dropping into a conversation how much I hate football; offering spot-on fashion advice; dropping into a conversation what a complex relationship I have with my mother (*this only works outside Italy); revealing how much I love cooking (**this also only works outside Italy - now you understand why it’s so hard to tell Italian and gay men apart). In rare but desperate situations, I resort to uttering a couple of strategically-positioned ‘OH MY GODs’ and revving up my inner campness a little (every man has a little lurking underneath the surface, even the De Niros and the Brandos). These strategies have never failed to switch the ‘husband-hunting’ mode off a woman’s brain and to switch the ‘gay best friend’ mode on. They have worked seamlessly for years, and I have never found myself in awkward situations with women wanting to get more than just smiles and kind words from me.

But as soon as I started walking down the street with the Boy Child strapped to my chest, my entire sexual camouflage was shattered to bits. Suddenly, I became VERY visible to the female of the species, and started attracting the kind of looks a fat gazelle might get from a pride of very hungry lionesses in the savannah. The term ‘predatory’ is an understatement. Women spot me at a distance, notice I am with offspring, as they get closer their eyes lock me like an F14 Tomcat jet (remember Top Gun?). Since my reproductive organs are clearly functioning - the evidence is wriggling in my Baby Bjorn - I am immediately categorised as straight and potential prey. Sometimes they smile coyly as they walk past, but most of the times they don’t even bother. They just cruise me the way sailors cruise each other in the dark recesses of harbours: with a long, hard stare straight into the eyes. I never thought women could be so blunt about their sexual appetite. Sometimes I wonder whether other fathers - the straight ones - ever take advantage of this sudden reversal of roles. Then I remember that the sight of a dad with a baby and without the mother is pretty unique, and I realise why. Women know VERY WELL what lurks out there: thousands of other females ready to pounce on their husbands. As the predator-in-residence, they are not going to run any risks. One careless oversight, and they will be raising their child on their own.

Back to Malta and my work trip. The female of the species - I discovered on that occasion - has little consideration for the one who is left at home with the screaming bundle, as her ‘husband’ goes out in search for food and public contracts. In fact, this is the PERFECT opportunity for an easy hunt. After the taxi dropped us back at the hotel where we were all staying, one of the women who was with me - an attractive 40-something MILF whom I had barely met a few hours before at a workshop - declared that she needed a drink and wanted ‘a young attractive man’ to be her chaperon, as she was not in the habit of drinking in hotel bars on her own. I looked around in search for someone else she might have been talking to, but immediately realised that she had set her eyes on me.

I obliged with a half smile, hoping the other two women might join us too, but these quickly disappeared into the elevator, probably obeying some unspoken hormonal orders of the alpha female in the group. I found myself sitting on a sofa at a disturbingly close distance from the woman, sipping a G&T and using all the lines in my dissuasion repertoire. All of which failed in quick succession. A trickle of sweat suddenly appeared on my forehead. The MILF moved closer, a hand dropping nonchalantly on my knee, fingers wrapping firmly my kneecap like it were a doorknob. I started talking about my child and ‘my lovely life at home with Lady V’. She blanked me, drawing even closer and letting her hand slip up towards my crotch. I watched in horror as years of carefully-constructed protection had been destroyed by the mere existence of the Boy Child. Then, as she finally pounced and reached for my lips, I jumped away from her, yelling - a little too loud for a fairly crowded hotel bar in which we were - that I was gay!

She straightened herself with an incredulous look in her eyes:

- Gay?

- Yes. I’m sorry - I explained hastily - I should have told you from the start, but... well... it’s not easy... the situation... you see...

- I am a very desirable woman - she replied, ignoring my remarks.

- What...? Yes, of course you are... but...

- Shut up. You lead me on until here and then you come up with this preposterous excuse?  Are you not man enough to say you love your wife?

- But she’s NOT my wife! And I am gay!
- No you are not. I know a gay men when I see one. You are not. And that baby of yours is the living proof you aren’t. You are not gay, and you are certainly not a man.

And within seconds she was in the elevator, heading back to her room, and leaving me shaking in the lobby, under the bemused eyes of other hotel guests. That was my first real post-paternal encounter with the female of the species.

And it was scary.