Lesbian Dad

Are you a boy?

Our dear friends with the skirt-wearing, evening-glove bedecked, female pronoun-using son are staying over this week, before they return home to Israel, whence they came eight years ago for grad school. Though none of us in the household (counting seven of us, in our extended state) is a gender-bending boy, I at least am some kind of a gender bending girl, which Amit picked up on at dinner the other night.

“Are you a boy?” he asked me, out of the blue.

“Good question!” I said, thrilled that I might keep him company, if for a moment, along his brave journey deep into the nether space between the sex of the body and the gender of the spirit. “I’m a little bit of both.”

For a second I thought that might be confusing, or ambiguous. Which of course it can be. But seemingly mostly if you’re a grown-up.

“On the inside, you’re a boy,” he flatly declared.

“Yep, pretty much,” I smiled back.

He concluded, “In your heart you’re a boy, but on your chest, you’re a girl.”

My sweetie and I met eyes with his mother, and we all noted wordlessly to one another his stupefying eloquence. All I could reply was, “I couldn’t have put it better myself.”

Then back he went to his pasta.


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