Brett Berk

Learn all about how little men and women are made. Check out the Gay Uncle’s new essay on Babble, “The Gender Spectrum“. And while you’re there, take his “Gender Spectrum Quiz“.

Writing about outdoor toileting–a post on which the G.U. received more than a few notes–reminded Gunc of a time he spent with his darling nieces Brookie and Grace, the oldest of whom was then just three and a half. They were on one of his boyfriend’s famed total-family summer trips, on a barren barrier island off the coast of North Carolina. Being the gracious uncle he is, Gunc had volunteered to remain with his nieces on the beach after everyone else had left, as the girls wanted to continue playing in the water. [Full disclosure: Gunc had only arrived at the beach forty minutes before: the family had been out there since dawn; he and Tal had been in their room “working”, avoiding their dramas.] He was enjoying his time with the girls, digging holes and playing in the foamy wave edges, when suddenly, Brooke–a scrawny, rambunctious little child who G.U. adores–announced in a somewhat panicked tone that she had to go to the bathroom. Gunc pointed at the surf. “There’s your toilet, darling” he said. “Go for it.” Brookie nodded and walked toward the water, and the Gay Uncle returned to playing Drown Barbie with her sister. When he turned around to check on Brooke’s progress a moment later, she was back to happily chasing the breaking waves. But there, not five feet behind her was a tiny and perfectly pyramidical structure. Gunc rose to examine it, fearful that it might be a sea creature’s emerging head, or an alien’s signpost to a buried treasure. But when he was close enough to see it in detail, he discovered that it was neither. Indeed, it was a delicate pile of his niece’s poo. Unwilling to pick it up, allow it to disturb the path of egg-laying sea turtles, or leave it to be discovered by one of the wealthy home owners who gathered on the shore every sunset with fancy lawn-chairs and bottles of Chard, he turned to the girl. “I think you missed the ocean by a few feet. Please cover that up.”

The Gay Uncle is in the midst of writing an article about parents’ feelings on the first day of school, and in response to a request for stories, he received this one from a wonderful colleague of his. She explained that her older daughter was a very colicky baby–she cried all the time. Gunc’s friend had to resort to wearing ear plugs around the house in order to get any rest or peace. In keeping with the helpful habits of the medical profession, when she asked her pediatrician about this issue, he sighed and dismissed the problem, waving her off. “Babies cry,” he said. (Duh!)

Fast forward a bit to G.U.’s colleague returning to the work force. Her daughter was still quite little at this point, but said friend had found a great early childhood center she liked. She dropped her daughter off at preschool the first time, without mentioning this issue, and gleefully, and with much relief, peeled out of the parking lot to go back to her job.

When she came to pick her daughter up at the end of the day, the teachers looked kind of troubled and worn out. They pulled Gunc’s pal aside. “I want to ask this gently,” they said. “Do you think there’s a possibility that your daughter might be…colicky?” The proud back-to-work mom shrugged. “Babies cry,” she said.

The Gay Uncle wanted to alert you to the fact that his first “Gay Car of the Week” has posted on Vanity Fair’s website. His new column, Stick Shift, will appear on the site every Thursday for at least the next 25 weeks. Check it out.

A friend of the Gay Uncle’s–a mom, a suburban Detroiter, and employee at one of the big 3 automobile companies–wrote in to the G.U. the other day with a question/concern. Apparently, every day when she parks to wait for her son to finish up at day camp, she spots a mother (seemingly the same mother each time) marching her son or daughter to the edge of the lot and, in full view of everyone, having her kid stand or crouch, and pee. According to his pal, the poor kids appeared slightly mortified each time: no real attempt was made to move behind some foliage, and their mom had to cajole them into performing. The question was Gunc’s opinion on kids and public urination. His response? In a pinch, he’s all for kids letting it rip outdoors. (There was a big gnarled elm tree in the bathroomless playground he used to attend with his pre-school students behind which kids used to privately relieve themselves in an emergency: everyone in the neighborhood called it the Pee-Tree.) But he’s only in favor if there aren’t other options, and if the kid’s totally comfortable doing so. This is not something you want to make an issue out of, and creating a daily routine around it seems a little…odd, bordering on fetishistic (on the part of the mom). It’s the suburbs. There’s a Target/Rite Aid/Starbucks every fifteen feet, and they all clean their bathrooms at least once a day (Gunc’s seen the little charts on the door that prove it!) At the very least, these public restrooms are usually a tidier option than standing in the mud and risking the dampening effects of a blowback or an improper squat.

He told his friend all of this and she took it in. But in completing their communication, this friend–who was one of the G.U.’s interviewees when he was writing his novel set in the auto industry Safety Seat, and who was looking forward to being a regular reader of his new gay car blog Stick Shift–uncovered a perfect crossover topic which he could use to combine his dual interests (kids and cars). Now that minivans have televisions, refrigerators, sofas, and beds in them, she wrote, “Bathrooms are really the final frontier.” Gunc’s going to get going on a patent for an in-van can right away.

The Gay Uncle hosted one of his favorite guests at his house upstate this weekend, a fourteen year old former preschool student of his, Eddie. G.U. has known this boy since he was not even two two, when his mother approached him in the East Village park where he used to run his students and asked if she could join his school, and the longevity of their connection–as with all of his former students–is a source of boundless pride, interest, and hilarity. His boyfriend Tal–once afraid of Gunc’s young charges (“I feel like they’re judging me”)–of course joins full-force in the action when Eddie’s around, in their own personal take on the G-S-A (Gay-Straight-Alliance) popular in high schools across the country. Eddie provides the Straight, the Guncles the Gay. For example, the boy’s overnight last year featured the axe-wielding destruction of a toy metal car (which, perhaps symbolically, Eddie used to play with during long-ago upstate visits) as it’s Straight component, followed by the building of a complex car-wreck diorama, complete with realistic decorative elements (tiny painted slinky as razor wire, metal fountain pen ink reservoir as trash barrel) and landscaping (real moss and pine saplings) as it’s Gay one. [SEE PHOTO] This year’s visit included two such highlights: a very brief episode of Eddie piloting the Gay Uncle’s 1972 GMC Suburban through a wide riverfront National Park Service parking lot (Straight) following a long wildflower and geographic feature identification hike up a local mountain (Gay); as well as highly supervised target shooting with an air pistol (Straight) followed by the assembly and transcription of recipes for smoothies and Mexican food (Gay). The most fascinating thing to Gunc was the way in which all parties were equally fascinated in and entertained by all activities. He thinks that perhaps there’s a summer camp idea in all of this somewhere after all.

The Gay Uncle noticed that the venerable New York Times ran an article this weekend about how summer camps are having to change up their routines to cater to the current generation of parents. He didn’t bother to read the piece–the photo of a bunch of anxious women keening to get their children’s attention from behind the roped-off camp entrance before the start of visitor’s day was enough to let him know that it was going to be another screed about our contemporary breed of uptight, manipulative, egocentric, overprotective, micromanaging, neurotic, backstabbing moms and dads. Gunc says, kudos to the old gray lady for shooting this barreled fish, not only because he loves reading spirited denunciations (read: headlines) concerning his target demographic, but because it reminded him that he’d planned to write about camp the other week, but was distracted by getting drunk with his friends on the Cape. Whoops!

When their nine nieces were still infants and toddlers, The G.U. and his boyfriend Tal started hatching a long-term plan to eventually host a week-long retreat for all of these girls, to be held at their house upstate. They even hoped to build a cabin on a piece of property they own across the road to accommodate the campers. They cleared a path up to the site. They asked a friend to create a modular design. And in true gay fashion, they even designed a logo for Girls’ Camp (involving log letters) and an activities schedule (spitting, smoking, swearing, sawing, sewing). But as the nieces aged up, the Guncles avoided bringing the plan to fruition. Tal’s sister Lizzie finally confronted them by the tree during a family Christmas a few years back. “You two were so gung ho about Girl’s Camp. Why didn’t you ever start it up?” The G.U. glanced over at his nieces, who were engaged in a shouting match about who received the most Christmas gifts. “Well. We met the girls.”

Fast forward to this year, when four of the Guncles’ nieces coincidentally ended up attending the same sleep-away camp. Being the dutiful G.U.’s that they are, he and Tal sent letters to the girls at their bunk, describing their own summer activities (write, bike, drink, sleep, repeat), inquiring after theirs, and asking if there was anything they needed. Recalling the glories of sharing in the contraband received by other kids when they were boys at camp (their parents not having been the kind to send a single fucking thing), the Gay Uncles plotted purchases: whistle pops for sending secret signals between cabins, gummy eyeballs for grossing out the prissy campers, licorice ropes that could be tied into edible lanyards–or nooses! Eventually, they received a response. Only the most dutiful of the nieces–Amber–had managed to write back, but she failed to include a booty shopping list. This felt suspicious. So once she was home from Unicorn Village, the G.U. gave her a ring and asked for an explanation. “We’re not allowed to receive candy or any off-limits items,” she said, somewhat robotically. “That’s the whole idea,” Gunc said. “We sneak it in to you. That’s what makes it fun.” The girl paused and lowered her voice as if concerned that someone might be listening in. “They open our packages,” she whispered. “They open all our mail.” The G.U. thought to write a letter to the camp director, the local Unicorn Village newspaper, or even the Postal Police, with a tirade about protecting the time honored tradition of sending junky treats to campers, not to mention the sanctity of the U.S. mail. But, given the nature of our hideous times, he figured that the girls’ parents had probably had to sign away their privacy rights in the name of protecting campers from bio-terror or online predators. “Next year, if you go back to that came” he told his niece, “I’m sending you a metal file.”

The Gay Uncle received a startling phone call the other day. It was “Aunt E.” a fast-talking, joke-cracking, old family friend, who just so happens to have been the director of the first pre-school he attended as a wee lad in Detroit–a little place called Wee Wisdom. He hadn’t heard from her in exactly forever, but her message was straightforward: she was coming to New York to visit her son, and wanted to get together for a drink or lunch or something. Sadly, the G.U. was going to be out of town during her planned visit, but they managed to catch up during an extended phone conversation. Aunt E. had read about his book, and expressed her pride in his accomplishment. She also mentioned an advice book she’s been working based on her career working with young kids (a manuscript he looks forward to reading, especially since she described the first chapter as being about whining.) Finally, she regaled him with humorous stories about her own struggles bearing witness to contemporary parents, including a cringe-worthy anecdote concerning a young mother’s not-so-gentle reaction to a game of “Snow-Plow” involving a four year-old, a toy bulldozer, a wooden dining room floor, and a twenty-five pound bag of rice. After hanging up, G.U. thought about Aunt E’s hilarious, insightful, intelligent, snarky, and tack-sharp perspective in all things related to young kids, and he made a startling realization: she is his earliest and most central inspiration. So he just wants to say thanks to her for loving kids, for loving his annoying little self as a kid, and for being such a perfect role model. Everyone has those teachers they remember and look up to, The Gay Uncle couldn’t be more pleased that he ended up becoming just like one of his.

As part of the Gay Uncle’s ongoing quest to exploit his sexuality for fun and profit, he’s launching a new venture. It’s called Stick Shift, and it’s a weekly column about cars…from a gay perspective (his). It’s been commissioned by Vanity Fair and will appear on their website every Thursday, starting TODAY. Confused? Intrigued? Annoyed? All of the above? Well, the only solution to your dilemma is to check it out. Here’s the link.

While in Provincetown with his “nieces”, the Gay Uncle and his youthful ward Tal had occasion to watch the girls engage in some compellingly dangerous activities: playing in the ocean, consuming immense portions of artery clogging fried foods, and exploring his friend Danika’s grandparents’ eerie 19th century estate. The house has a tiny cupola atop its oldest portion, accessible only through a creaky series of stairways that climb along the edge of what used to be a barn, up into a strange balconied mezzanine, and then through a door and into a dark attic. Danika’s older daughter Erica is somewhat cautious, and generally avoids the space–sticking to prowling the yard looking for blueberries and bunnies–but her younger daughter Anna is more adventurous (reckless?) in spirit, and when offered the opportunity, clambered up there. She was gone for a few minutes, and when she returned, Guncle Tal asked her about her explorations. “I saw a ghost,” she said, flatly. “It went whoo-whoo at me.” Tal wanted to ask her more questions about this sighting, but it usually takes him a beat or two longer than necessary to come up with age-appropriate follow-ups even on ordinary subjects, and he felt flustered. He tried “who was the ghost?” and “did you see it?” and maybe “was it nice?” but he asked all three questions one after another, the second based on his insecurity about the comprehensibility and appropriateness of the first, and so on and so on, thus creating inevitable brain-fritz. Anna stared at him. “Can I have a popsicle now?” she asked. He and Gunc wish to remind parents (and uncles) that, when dealing with children’s reactions to the supernatural (or anything else–it’s nearly all supernatural to them), it’s important to s-l-o-w down, and allow time for answers.