a few months ago, i was in an airport, waiting to board. i had settled into a chair across from a young woman with a toddler in a stroller (as much as i try to avoid strange adults, when i get the opportunity to interact with kids, i generally grab it).
this one was a cutie--thirty months, give or take, with light-brown curls and a big grin. i'd catch his eye, make a face, he'd shriek, whip his head away and then peek back at me through his fingers and we'd do it again, over and over (much to the annoyance of everyone around us, no doubt, but fuck 'em--the kid and i were happy, and his mother was thankful for the break).
the game suddenly ended when, in mid-giggle, his eyes moved past mine and his expression changed from amusement to pure joy as he threw out his arms and cried, "daddy!"
i looked over my shoulder and saw the identical expression on the face of the man who walked up, bent down, scooped him outta his stroller and tossed him in the air.
kid never looked at me again.
* * * * *
i wrote a piece awhile back--one of my better ones, i think--called machine of wonder, in which i touched on my childless ambivalence.
i'd make a lousy father; of this, i'm fairly certain. i mean, i'd have my moments, sure, but i know myself--the good times would be overshadowed by my feelings of annoyance and entrapment by an endless, 24-hour-a day commitment to a small, dependent human. not that i'd ever be short or mean to little him or her--i'd grit my teeth, smile and hide it well--but kids always know.
but i'd make a good part-time mentor; of this, i'm also fairly certain.
* * * * *
some years ago, an actress i know did some publicity work for an organization that provides a place for inner-city latchkey kids to hang out after school--you know, watch tv, play basketball, study, stuff like that. they had begun a mentoring program, and she told me i oughta sign up for it--i'd be great.
what the hell--i gave the director a call, did the interview and was matched up with a shy 15-year-old named george. it was a once-a-week thing, which was perfect--every tuesday, we'd meet after school for a few hours, and i'd help him with his homework. simple, right?
yeah, well, as it happened, young george's achilles' heel was algebra, which was my weakness, too. so we developed a routine--i'd show up, grab his book, turn to the day's lesson, tell him to get lost for 15 minutes, and madly study my ass off. he'd come back, and we'd go over the work.
at first, it was like pulling teeth. george was bright, but he was not a math guy--he just didn't understand all those x's and y's. we struggled for awhile, as i cast about for a way to make it come alive for him. we stopped one day when his frustration grew too great, and i asked him what did turn him on--what he got without having to try. his passion, turns out, was art. he loved to draw--he took some sketches outta his backpack that he'd done of his friends and showed 'em to me, and they weren't half bad--but that wasn't gonna help us here.
"what else?", i asked, and after some hesitation, he admitted he loved puzzles and fantasy games.
i thought a minute, pointed to an equation in the book, said, "ok, see that x? he's an intrepid warrior who's been trapped by the evil y's and n's deep in their dreaded prison of parentheses. your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to free him, isolate him on the other side of the equal sign where he'll be safe, and reveal his secret identity to the world."
he laughed, said, "nobody's ever put it that way before--now i wanna do it." and, you know what? he did.
i can't say algebra ever became second nature to george, but by the end of the school year, and given enough time, he could game his way through even the tough equations, and i felt pretty good about that (and i got pretty good at it, too).
i also can't say that george and i became particularly close--there just wasn't that chemistry between us--but he eventually did start to open up, and would talk to me about school, his artistic aspirations and how he wished he could spend more time with his mother, who worked two jobs as a custodian and thus was hardly ever home.
we never talked about girls and shit, and if he knew or suspected i was gay he gave no sign of it, but he mentioned one of the other kids in the program one day--a dark-eyed, elfin boy named enrique
who certainly did know--he caught and held my eye in a knowing way more than once. i avoided him.
and said, "some of the guys give him a hard time because he's gay. i think that's bullshit--he's ok." i liked george for that.
on our final tuesday together (he graduated middle school with A's and B's, bitches) his mother showed up--hell, had taken off work--just so she could tell me with tears in her eyes how much my time with george that year had meant to the both of 'em, and to thank me personally. as this tiny woman clasped me in a warm embrace, i thought, "wait, she speaks broken english. she's probably illegal--i'd better call ICE."
just wanted to see if you were payin' attention, noblesavage
i told george my graduation gift to him was lunch and a movie of his choice on saturday. his eyes lit up, and he shouted "matrix!", to which his mother crossed herself and said por supuesto que no!, so we ate at cheesecake factory and ended up at some lame sean connery/catherine zeta jones bomb instead. it didn't matter--he was happy, got to have the sorta day he didn't have very often.
when i dropped him off in front of his apartment that night and we said our goodbyes, he reached for the handle, but i told him to hold on a second, fumbled around in the backseat until i found a large, slipcovered book i'd once paid too much for called anatomy for the artist or some such shit that had been collecting dust on my bookshelf for years, handed it to him and told him he'd damn well better reproduce every figure in it. he grinned hugely and promised he would.
i have only two regrets about my experience with HOLA: the first is that, despite my best intentions, i never managed to find the time to go back and mentor another one.
the other? why didn't i take that kid to see the goddam matrix?
* * * * *
so yeah, i'm thinking i'd like to mentor a kid again; i've been thinking so for awhile. but not once a week this time--more of a "big brothers/big sisters" kinda thing, where i could have a little more involvement.
see, every time i read a story or see a video about some lonely kid--boy, girl, doesn't matter--who was bullied because he/she was fat, weird, gay or thought to be gay, or possessed of some other pariah characteristic that didn't fit the standard mold, my heart breaks a little, and i wanna launch my own little up-close-and-personal "it gets better" campaign.
one of the things that's been holding me back, though, is the fear of being shackled to some kid i don't get and who doesn't get me, and having to soldier through it anyway--i mean, how do you tell a vulnerable kid he doesn't make the cut, and you have to move on? the answer is, you can't--period.
the other thing that gives me pause is, of course, the pedophilia (not-so) paranoia
hi, i'm a 55-year-old unmarried man. gimme a boy!
that has become so publicized and pervasive in organizations of the type i'm considering.
and it's a legitimate point--i mean, anybody who's read this blog for any length of time couldn't be faulted for asking, "yeah, but what if they pair you up with some hot, lost, fatherless little number who, if he were a few years older and posting on craigslist, you would consider fair game?"
* * * * *
one late-august sunday awhile back, i drove down to long beach with the intention of having sex with some guy, didn't because the vibe was just wrong, but ended up hanging out with him for the afternoon because his house and pool were so fabulous and i found him interesting in other ways.
somewhere between the third and forth double mojito, he said, "hey, if you wanna stick around for dinner, i have a surprise you might enjoy."
the surprise turned out to be the arrival of a 16-year-old swedish exchange student the guy had agreed to host for the upcoming school year.
kid was adorable--slight, shy, handsome and excessively polite, as northern european-types tend to be--and as he set his bags down in the foyer, his host grabbed him in an unnecessary hug and leered over his shoulder at me.
dinner was semi-uncomfortable (guy's mother lived with him--did i not mention that?)--the whole time, the guy plied the kid with the sorta veiled, seemingly-innocuous questions that would arouse no suspicion in the old lady, but raised the hairs on the back of my neck.
i couldn't get outta there fast enough, but before i did (because i knew i'd never come back), i managed to get the kid alone for a minute while the guy and mom cleared the table, shoved my phone number in his hand, told him, "look, i know you're totally alone here--if for any reason things don't work out in this house, call me and i'll come and get you. and i mean that."
and i would have, had he ever called. i like to think that it all worked out just fine for that kid, and that i did everything i could.
i like to think that.
* * * * *
they say you never truly grow up until your life becomes about something more than just yourself.
but what do you do when you're a manchild? can you irresponsibly whore around one day, and zip it up and be a responsible mentor the next?
is it possible for somebody like me to ever righteously earn some semblance of the feeling that dad had as he pulled his kid outta that stroller?
i dunno, but i'm betting i wouldn't be the first slut with a biological clock who's pulled it off.
