Category: General & Random

The Gay Uncle remains on Cape Cod this week. Having finished with his pregnant pals in Brewster, he and his boyfriend have moved up the Cape to Provincetown to spend time with some folks whose kids are on the outside, his friend Danika and her two girls to be precise: Erica, 8 and Anna, 5. Gunc adores these two (and their parents) and looks forward to his annual visit with them each summer, particularly their stellar beach days, which always revolve around digging holes, building castles, eating ice cream sandwiches (emphasis on the sand), competing to tell the most boring story, and, of course, splashing in the ocean. Erica has recently emerged as a more confident swimmer, and braved the waves on her own, but Anna still required a grown-up to help her feel grounded in the choppy surf. G.U. was on the shore catching up with his friend during the first plunge, and his b.f. Tal took on this job, a role for which he was roundly praised. “What a nice Uncle,” Danika said to her daughters. When the next swim trip came up an hour or so later, Gunc volunteered to brave the cool water with the kids. Anna reached out for him. “Take me in too,” she begged. The Gay Uncle wanted a moment to accustom himself to the temperature first. “Just a sec,” he said. Anna stomped her foot and put a hand on her hip. “Come on,” she protested. “Don’t you want to be a nice Grandpa, like the other one?” Gunc flushed in the chilly surf. “Uncle,” he said quietly, rubbing his hand through his graying hair. “Not grandpa. Uncle.”

The Gay Uncle is out on Cape Cod this week, hanging out with a cadre of friends from high school. Because these folks all exist as part of the same demographic bubble–moving through life together, like a sheep through a snake–many of their milestones have occurred around the same time: completing grad school, getting married, buying a place, having a baby. Thus, it was no great surprise when, while coordinating the get-together, it was revealed that four of this group of ten are pregnant with their sophomore baby:one of them with twins! This thrilled G.U., as it meant that the competition around the bar at cocktail time would be at least 40% less fierce than it’s been at past reunions. But, given his love of conflict, he was also excited about discussing sibling rivalry. True to form, he’s managed to instigate (incite?) a number of conversations about the subject. His parent friends have a lot of worries about this topic, and rightfully so, fratricide being a common theme in some of our founding documents (The Bible, Hamlet, The Lion King). But while Gunc outlined a number of useful suggestions for helping his pals ease the transition (see Chapter 10, Put Turkey Baby Back) he also had one fresh and important piece of advice: the sibling relationship your kids set up in their youth does not necessarily confine it forever. So if your child tries to bite his new brother’s face once or twice, it does not mean he will eventually succeed in cannibalizing him, or that they are bound forever in a struggle to eat or be eaten. And you never know what kind of kid the new baby will be until it’s born–it could be so sweet and kind that sibling rivalry is a moot point, or such an evil hellion that the illegality of fratricide is questioned. So be sure to set up useful structures and protocols for your existing child, but don’t get lost in the belief that you can control it all.

Do you know what this is a picture of? That’s right, it is an American Airlines Premier Class in-flight magazine, available to those lucky souls who get to fly First or Business (as the Gay Uncle recently did, due to a fortuitous last-minute upgrade). It is full of boring articles about the fifty best golf courses in Asia, and the fastest convertibles under $300,000, as well as about seven hundred pictures of expensive watches. It is made of thick, glossy paper–much higher quality than the regular in-flight magazine– and is slightly over-sized in a way meant to convey insouciant luxury. Do you know why it exists? It is there solely to deliver advertising to those people stupid, or disinterested, or anti-intellectual enough to not bring something of their own to read during the twenty or thirty minutes when there is no televised in-flight entertainment. Do you know what it is not for? It is not for your nanny to use as a feeding trough for your noisy three year-old. But that’s just what the Gay Uncle witnessed at 38,000 feet. A 20’s-ish Croatian woman seated next to her young charge asked him if he wanted something to eat, and when the little bugger responded in the affirmative, she grabbed a handful of Toasty-Crisps from a zip-loc bag, plopped them on the cover of Celebrated Living (right over Sheryl Crow’s boobs, G.U. couldn’t help but notice), and then held the magazine aloft in a horizontal position parallel with the boy’s mouth. At which point Mr. Man proceeded to commence grazing: roving his face over the cover and sucking off flakes, like a catfish clearing algae from the side of a tank. The nanny beamed down at him with an eerily prideful gaze, as if this was a charming little ritual they’d developed together in private. Gunc rolled his eyes, and repeated the mantra he’s recently created for dealing with instances of poor public parenting: Divest, remove. Divest, remove.

Since July 4th weekend is all about fireworks, it seems like a perfect time for the Gay Uncle to relate the last–and most personally explosive–of his vacation anecdotes. It concerns a certain adult male family member losing his cool, and it is not Gunc’s Brother-in-Law Marty this time. He’s speaking of himself! Here’s the setting: G.U. is “enjoying” the last day of a week-long family trip, he’s seated in the back seat of a nauseatingly jauncy Jeep on twisty third-world roads en route to the far side of the island, hungover from the previous nights festivities (read: two games of go-fish with his cheating nieces), stomach-growlingly hungry. Since there is not enough room in the rental cars for all family members (?!?) he has a niece on his lap, as does his boyfriend Tal, and said girls have been bickering since before the engine started. During the ride, the Gay Uncles did their best to quell the conflict by engaging the beasties in a game Tal invented called “Recipe” in which someone mentions a food (a grapefruit, saltines, beef jerky) and then each player in turn gets to do something to the ingredient (put it in a blender, add pig blood, freeze it into a slushy, slice it razor thin and layer it on your face). The game went pretty well, save the fact that the nieces kept trying to kill one another with their recipes (“Then Violet eats it all and dies.”) and eventually had to be called on this account. By the time their car finally arrived at the beach, and G.U. and his lapmate piled out, the tension was thick, so when his partner started screaming for Tal’s partner to pass her her pink flip-flops from the floor well, G.U. decided to intervene. “Violet, can you please give me Brooke’s shoes.” Amped up, Violet grinned and grabbed the sandals, and before he knew what had happened, she flung one of them out of the car. This wasn’t at all what her tired and patient uncle had asked her to do, but worse than this, the shoe hit him right between the eyes, denting his (intentionally cheap) sunglasses. Last straw, meet camel’s back. Gunc’s nostrils flared, his pulse quickened, and he asked the question one should never ask a misbehaving child. “WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?” he hollered. “I asked you to hand me the shoes, not throw them at my face.” His niece shrugged, unconcerned. “Sorry…?” she said, with utter insincerity. “Fake apology not accepted,” Gunc replied, turning away. “Now pick up your cousin’s shoes and hand them to her like I asked you to.” The Gay Uncle felt bad for losing his cool–and particularly for the idiotic rhetorical question, something he abhors–but his niece remained calm through their picnic lunch, and played with her cousins independently and without incident for the remainder of the afternoon. He is planning on going into full Nazi mode at the very start of the next family trip.

Those of you who know the Gay Uncle personally know that while he loves children, he has a much lower tolerance for other forms of cute and cuddly life, namely: animals. Much of this is due to allergies (cats, dogs, rodents) but some of it is historically based: he never had a pet as a child and thus failed to learn the appeal. (He also hates cleaning up the poo of other living creatures.) Anyway, he tells you this so you’ll understand why he’s chosen to include as his second post-vacation post this week, another Caribbean creature feature. (This, and the fact that he never tires of the charismatic buffoonery of his brother-in-law, Marty.) This story involves a lizard. Like donkeys and mongeese, lizards patrol the lush terrain of the island of St. John as if they own the place, sunning themselves in drainage ditches, scampering underfoot, and sometimes stopping traffic by drawing a cluster of camera-wielding tourists. Don’t get the wrong impression here. When G.U. says lizard, he’s not talking about cute little geckos or green anoles. He’s referring to these terrifying creatures which are about three feet long, covered in scales and spikes, and clearly just a teensy evolutionary micro-blip away from the T. Rex. Given this information, Gunc will tell his tale in the form of a question: How would you behave if you were a 200 pound, 43 year-old man, managing the care of three young girls, and one of these hissing monsters approached your beach chairs, its beady eyes trained on your lunch? You have five choices.

a) Stomp the ground, wave your arms, and shout “Shoo evil raptor! You will not devour my daughters and niece this afternoon!”

b) Gather said children in your arms and retreat into the relative safety of the water until such point as the danger passes on to another, more vulnerable, beach-going family.

c) Call “resort” security

d) Stab the reptile through the heart with a sharpened stick, build a fire, and make dinner for the entire island.

e) Abandon the children where they sit, lure the animal towards the waterline by holding a small piece of your sandwich perilously close to its razor-like teeth, drop the bread on the wet sand as bait, and begin pelting the predator with pebbles and chunks of coral. When confronted by an environmentally conscious 11 year-old Australian boy about your concerted efforts to harm a protected species of lizard, respond with the caveat that you were simply “Trying to train this iguana to fear humans!”

If you selected e) you may have something in common with Gunc’s B-I-L, Marty, (as well as lion tamers, Homer Simpson, and the Defense Department analysts responsible for planning the post-invasion management of the city of Baghdad): a very specific–and little understood–form of “intelligence”. If this is the case (or if you know someone like this) please help science to understand their synaptical mysteries, by sharing your story in COMMENTS below.

The Gay Uncle has returned from the tropics, now well informed of the difference between a TRIP and a VACATION (the latter is what one goes on without children), and ready to share his new pearls of wisdom. The first one revolves around wild animals. Due to some cruel Darwinian twist, the island of St. John–on which G.U. was tripping–is overrun with gangs of feral donkeys. One sees them everywhere–along the side of the road, among the ruins of Colonial sugar refineries, brushing past Jeeps in mini-mart parking lots””baring their menacing smiles and, when they”re feeling randy, their even more menacing erections! G.U. got to witness one of these first hand when he came upon a horny burro couple during a total-family snorkeling excursion. Donkey dick, indeed! Said member was roughly the size and shape of a baseball bat, and disappeared none too quickly into the female. As daddy climbed aboard and began rutting, G.U.”s three nieces watched in frozen horror. Fortunately, his brother-in-law Marty was on hand to explain the situation. “The one on the bottom is trying to give the other one a piggy back ride.”¯ Gunc reminded himself not to offer the girls said ride ever again.
A bit later, clearly feeling some post-coital hunger pangs, these donkeys reappeared near Gunc”s family”s shady beachfront set-up, and began nuzzling among their picnic scraps. Marty”s younger daughter, fresh from some pleasant experiences grooming horses at summer camp, decided that this signaled an opportunity, and approached the ass’ mangy snout, her hand outstretched, with petting its clear goal. “That”s a wild animal,”¯ G.U. said, repeating the information he”d read on about a thousand signs posted at five foot intervals around the entire island, and on every available piece of tourist literature. “They bite and kick whenever they feel like it, so it”s a good idea to stay away from them, particularly when they”re eating.”¯ This seemed to dissuade the girl briefly, and she returned to building sand-castles and taunting her sister and cousin. But when Gunc looked up from his book a bit later, he found Marty standing at the water”s edge, leading a hungry donkey into the sea with an apple core, his daughters right alongside him. Imagining that a child”s funeral might put a damper on the three remaining days of the trip, G.U. felt obliged to intervene. “I think the kids are a little close to that donkey,”¯ he said. “What exactly are you trying to do?”¯ Marty continued walking backwards; the donkey now in the surf up to its ankles. “I”m trying to lure it into the ocean,”¯ he explained, “so the girls can ride on it.”¯

The Gay Uncle is on vacation in the Caribbean with his boyfriend”s entire family this week, which means three things. First, he won”t be doing much posting, as the Cyber Hut at the “resort”¯ in which they are ensconced, is literally 188 steps down from the dumpy, claustrophobic room he and Tal are sharing. (Note that the rest of the family is luxuriating in larger, breezier suites, each with its own expansive view of the sea: Homophobia of the worst kind; or payback for all the scenes about them in his book? You be the judge.) Second, since his sister- and brother-in-law are both present and have their three young girls in tow, he will have access to a treasure trove of wonderful new bloggable material following the sojourn, which he will share with you, loyal readers, immediately on his return (or, if he decides to brave the steps again, perhaps even sooner.) Finally, since the trip south required a long airplane ride, G.U. was once again exposed to the consumer-fetish glories of SKY MALL, and discovered the little treasure pictured above and to the left (click on it to get the full size image). It is apparently meant to allow you to “Elevate your child”s world!”¯ by giving them access to all the exclusive experiences previously available only to those of us who are over four feet tall””things like looking into a sink full of dirty dishes, putting Tide in the washing machine, and utilizing a salad spinner. Besides the fact that this genius item costs $184.99, and looks like a cross between a wine rack and one of the little cages on the side of a box of animal crackers, Gunc believes we have a perfectly acceptable extant technology for granting children the ability to help mix cookies at the counter, and it”s one that most folks already have in their home (and usually matches the dĆ©cor much better than this chunky, charcoal monstrosity). It”s called a chair. If you turn it around so its back is to the desired viewing arena, and put a non-skid rubber pad under each leg (4 for 1.99 at any K-Mart), your kid will not only be able to discover the rich universe that exists over their heads, you will prevent them (and you) from looking like a total a-hole, like the dorky toddler in the ad. Admit it, you sort of want this kid to push that expensive red bowl off the butcher block, and receive a very inappropriate punishment.

The Gay Uncle had an interesting conversation with an expectant mommy recently in which they discussed one of his favorite topics: baby crap. Not the actual excrement (though he loves to talk about that too, encouraging parents to admit that, in reality, it does stink) but the consumer-y kind that one purchases at Kids ‘R Us. Those of you familiar with the Gay Uncle’s book will know that he covers off on this subject quite thoroughly in Chapter 3, Get Stuffed (and those of you not familiar with the book better buy it right now) but this friend wanted to chat about a specific topic that G.U. had chosen not to discuss in writing, thinking it to be almost clichĆ©: strollers. Bugaboo and Peg Perego jokes seem like standardized fare in the urbane world in which the Gay Uncle circulates, but as they talked, this mommy-to-be added an enlightening new twist. It seemed that she had spent the better portion of her recent Saturday attempting to get the nursery ready, and had managed to convince her husband to give up an afternoon of watching basketball and detailing his gas grill to accompany her to Buy Buy Baby. The gent was none too happy about this, wincing as they passed through aisle after aisle of adorable onesies, temperature sensitive feeding spoons, quilted infant in-crib sleep positioners, and PVC-free everything. But his interest suddenly piqued when they hit the stroller corral. “He spent at least ninety minutes there, listening to demonstrations, going over lists of features, and pushing the buggies around the store,” Gunc’s friend said. “It was exhausting for me. But his eyes were lit up for every god-damn second.” It was at that moment in the conversation that the G.U. made a startling realization: STROLLERS ARE VEHICLES! Straight dudes could give a shit about adorable outfits, satin-lined bassinet sheets, or padded nursing bras. But cars? Now we’re talking. No wonder there are now strollers that resemble G.I. Joe’s Blackhawk helicopter, take up as much sidewalk space as a Escalade, and have as many features as an iPhone (or a really good gas grill). So if you want to get your Baby-Daddy interested in shopping, keep this in mind. While you fill the cart with The Eighty Things You Absolutely Must Buy Before Your Baby Is Born, he can kick the tires, select his trim level, ask about option packages, and take out the home equity loan required to purchase your new Orbit Infant Travel System.

As part of his ongoing quest to prove that the world gets exactly what it deserves, the Gay Uncle would like to present to you a product called Heelarious . G.U. is not quite sure it is as “funny” as its brand name indicates, but then again, he’s never been a huge fan of debilitating footwear on children. It’s Gunc’s belief that all kids should be encouraged to wear shoes that allow them to run, jump, climb (and strut) with ease, while minimizing the risk of falls, abrasions, broken ankles, and strained spines. Based on these standards, he’s thinking that these infant stilettos don’t really make the cut. But perhaps you have different goals? For example, maybe you’re interested in foot binding. Or you think girls should learn to sprint in heels so they’re prepared for outrunning potential assailants in their teens. Or you wish to encourage your daughter to become a pole-dancing stripper/whore. Or maybe you just have one of those drag-loving femmy boys. In which case, have at it. Who knows, maybe wearing these will help your child develop a mean roundhouse kick, and they’ll become a “famous” action star. It worked for RuPaul!

Thanks to Nancy for the tip!

Mother’s Day and Father’s Day have traditionally been celebrated by purchasing cheap sentimental paper greeting cards, showering the appointed parent with gender-specific gifts, and relieving them of their traditional maternal or paternal duties. On Mother’s Day, this means that mom is supposed to be excluded from shit-work like, cooking, cleaning, wiping asses, and giving (but not receiving) oral sex. However, despite what the New York Times has to say on this whole “new equality” in contemporary parenting, recent studies show that the average American father (out of the 60% that actually live with their kid, that is) spends about 42 minutes a day dealing with his offspring. Thus, the Gay Uncle has one question: Exactly what is daddy going to be relieved of on his special day? Reading three bedtime stories? Giving one bath? Co-viewing two TiVo-ed episodes of Family Guy? Gunc also wants to know: What will daddy do with this extra three-quarters-hour? Read iPhone 2.0 e-opinion reviews? Do some additional grilling? Continue to hog the Wii?

Or perhaps things really have changed. The Gay Uncle’s daddy friends are all liberated, sensitive, and giving, and love to cook, clean, wipe ass, and go down. In fact, they’re the ones bringing up the time-on-child average for all those dudes who only spend a daily 42 seconds with their kiddies. He would honestly believe that anything is possible.

So, dear readers: Do Tell! G.U. wants to hear all about your Father’s Day plans! Let us know in COMMENTS below.
Best story wins a Say Uncle t-shirt, and gets published on the site…and maybe elsewhere?