The Gay Stepdad
The gay stepdad often felt asexual and senile. He sometimes wondered if he was "not a happy man.” He sometimes thought he felt “too emo” for sexual arousal but other times he thought he felt too detached, and “emo” and detached seemed to be opposites which confused the gay stepdad, who
was 44 and currently having dinner with someone once a week then going to the person’s apartment to watch TV, hold each other, and sometimes kiss, if he felt confident the woman had good breathe. It was a woman. The gay stepdad did not think much anymore about gender. He considered whether or not the person was clean, if the person thought concretely, and if the person did things specifically to excite him in a way that maintained relational equilibrium. He also thought about if the person viewed the world existentially, morally, or “morally by way of a logical contemplation of existing in a universe of arbitrary nature, or ‘sarcastically.’” If the answer to some of these considerations were “yes,” “existentially,” or “morally by way of a logical contemplation of the results of existing in a universe of arbitrary nature, or ‘sarcastically,’” the gay stepdad usually proceeded in the relationship. After two or three weeks the gay stepdad usually did not speak to the person anymore. He often felt that his relationships proceeded in the way a small child might dig a hole in a sandbox then go somewhere else in the sandbox to do things with a toy truck.
“I am passive,” he said on gmail chat to his daughter, who was 22. “I wait for the other person.”
“Maybe she is waiting for you,” said the gay stepdad's daughter. “I was supposed to go out with the guy I used to date this weekend. But he ditched me. He did not confirm.”
“Hm,” said the gay stepdad. “I always try to confirm.”
“I know. I tried to confirm. Anyway. Now I feel ugly. And my clothes are stupid.”
“That is irrational,” said the gay stepdad.
“I am jealous of you,” said the gay stepdad's daughter. “You have the promise of a new relationship.”
“It is not the promise of a new relationship, it is the beginning of the demise of what was a promising new relationship.”
“Oh,” said the gay stepdad’s daughter. “My sweater is too small. My sweaters always get too small.”
The gay stepdad knew that his daughter's MySpace page said she was bisexual. The gay stepdad looked at MySpace often. He had no active MySpace page. He had an account registered under the name “gay-gay mcschnickertons” which he used primarily to read the 16 pages of comments that did not fit on the front page of his daughter’s wall. The gay stepdad had a daughter not because he was forced by society into a gender role but because he was not really gay. Or maybe he was, he didn't think about it much. He thought of himself mostly as “the gay stepdad” because it made him feel like he was in a Joy Williams story, though Joy Williams probably would not refer to a character as “the gay stepdad,” as her focus was existential, and any reference to sexual orientation, race, sex, or religion was made without rhetoric or else in satire or sarcasm, the gay stepdad knew, with confidence, as he often lay in bed at 3AM arguing with the important literary critics of his time and of other people’s times, specifically the 80’s. He often argued with John Gardner. It was hard because when he thought about John Gardner he often became distracted by an image of a bearded face moving around a room in the manner of the protaganist of Metroid for regular Nintendo when she turns into a ball and jumps in a forward direction.
“I am bored,” said the gay stepdad on gmail chat. “Are you.”
“Yes,” said the gay stepdad’s daughter. “I’ve updated my MySpace profile at least 20 times today.”
“I just thought ‘fuck you’ to myself and felt a confusion that felt faked, like I wasn’t really confused or something, I wonder if that indicates a base-level of existence that is sarcastic, already sarcastic,” said the gay stepdad. “I don’t know what I’m talking about. I feel insane and bored.”
The gay stepdad’s cell phone made a noise. He had a text message from a person he had acknowledged the possibility of liking. The text message was incoherent to the gay stepdad, though it was concrete and direct, and the gay stepdad deleted it with a strange feeling of victory.
“I’m going to sleep,” he said on gmail chat.
He stared at the computer screen, waiting for his daughter to type “bye” or something, and thought about how he sometimes considered whether or not he was like a Buddhist in meditation, focusing alternately on the images that passed through his consciousness and on nothingness, but then thought of an anthology of “Buddhist writing” he had read one Saturday night in college, in the library, that had a tone that was not, to the gay stepdad, “enlightened,” but reminded him of a vacuum cleaner his mother bought discounted from Wal-Mart one Christmas when she got in a fight with the gay stepdad’s father and left the house alone at 11PM in the family minivan, slamming the car door in the garage and waking the gay stepdad, who was 5 at the time and generally a happy child without social anxiety disorder or extensive knowledge of Kmart realism. The gay stepdad wondered if Kmart realism was “expendable” or not. He didn’t know what he meant by that. He stared at the computer screen and wondered if he was severely depressed. The answer seemed irrelevant.
was 44 and currently having dinner with someone once a week then going to the person’s apartment to watch TV, hold each other, and sometimes kiss, if he felt confident the woman had good breathe. It was a woman. The gay stepdad did not think much anymore about gender. He considered whether or not the person was clean, if the person thought concretely, and if the person did things specifically to excite him in a way that maintained relational equilibrium. He also thought about if the person viewed the world existentially, morally, or “morally by way of a logical contemplation of existing in a universe of arbitrary nature, or ‘sarcastically.’” If the answer to some of these considerations were “yes,” “existentially,” or “morally by way of a logical contemplation of the results of existing in a universe of arbitrary nature, or ‘sarcastically,’” the gay stepdad usually proceeded in the relationship. After two or three weeks the gay stepdad usually did not speak to the person anymore. He often felt that his relationships proceeded in the way a small child might dig a hole in a sandbox then go somewhere else in the sandbox to do things with a toy truck.“I am passive,” he said on gmail chat to his daughter, who was 22. “I wait for the other person.”
“Maybe she is waiting for you,” said the gay stepdad's daughter. “I was supposed to go out with the guy I used to date this weekend. But he ditched me. He did not confirm.”
“Hm,” said the gay stepdad. “I always try to confirm.”
“I know. I tried to confirm. Anyway. Now I feel ugly. And my clothes are stupid.”
“That is irrational,” said the gay stepdad.
“I am jealous of you,” said the gay stepdad's daughter. “You have the promise of a new relationship.”
“It is not the promise of a new relationship, it is the beginning of the demise of what was a promising new relationship.”
“Oh,” said the gay stepdad’s daughter. “My sweater is too small. My sweaters always get too small.”
The gay stepdad knew that his daughter's MySpace page said she was bisexual. The gay stepdad looked at MySpace often. He had no active MySpace page. He had an account registered under the name “gay-gay mcschnickertons” which he used primarily to read the 16 pages of comments that did not fit on the front page of his daughter’s wall. The gay stepdad had a daughter not because he was forced by society into a gender role but because he was not really gay. Or maybe he was, he didn't think about it much. He thought of himself mostly as “the gay stepdad” because it made him feel like he was in a Joy Williams story, though Joy Williams probably would not refer to a character as “the gay stepdad,” as her focus was existential, and any reference to sexual orientation, race, sex, or religion was made without rhetoric or else in satire or sarcasm, the gay stepdad knew, with confidence, as he often lay in bed at 3AM arguing with the important literary critics of his time and of other people’s times, specifically the 80’s. He often argued with John Gardner. It was hard because when he thought about John Gardner he often became distracted by an image of a bearded face moving around a room in the manner of the protaganist of Metroid for regular Nintendo when she turns into a ball and jumps in a forward direction.
“I am bored,” said the gay stepdad on gmail chat. “Are you.”
“Yes,” said the gay stepdad’s daughter. “I’ve updated my MySpace profile at least 20 times today.”
“I just thought ‘fuck you’ to myself and felt a confusion that felt faked, like I wasn’t really confused or something, I wonder if that indicates a base-level of existence that is sarcastic, already sarcastic,” said the gay stepdad. “I don’t know what I’m talking about. I feel insane and bored.”
The gay stepdad’s cell phone made a noise. He had a text message from a person he had acknowledged the possibility of liking. The text message was incoherent to the gay stepdad, though it was concrete and direct, and the gay stepdad deleted it with a strange feeling of victory.
“I’m going to sleep,” he said on gmail chat.
He stared at the computer screen, waiting for his daughter to type “bye” or something, and thought about how he sometimes considered whether or not he was like a Buddhist in meditation, focusing alternately on the images that passed through his consciousness and on nothingness, but then thought of an anthology of “Buddhist writing” he had read one Saturday night in college, in the library, that had a tone that was not, to the gay stepdad, “enlightened,” but reminded him of a vacuum cleaner his mother bought discounted from Wal-Mart one Christmas when she got in a fight with the gay stepdad’s father and left the house alone at 11PM in the family minivan, slamming the car door in the garage and waking the gay stepdad, who was 5 at the time and generally a happy child without social anxiety disorder or extensive knowledge of Kmart realism. The gay stepdad wondered if Kmart realism was “expendable” or not. He didn’t know what he meant by that. He stared at the computer screen and wondered if he was severely depressed. The answer seemed irrelevant.
33 Comments:
The gay stepdad is a decent man, I think. Perhaps not fit to be a dad. And fucked, he is most certainly fucked. But that's really okay.
"He looks very fucked in his author photo I think"
haha
i would be his friend too though.
I like how you wrote about gay things now. I just wrote a story about you and gay things a little bit. I am just me. I think I might be a fictional character sometimes. maybe we can be myspace friends. I think I am going to write stories about you until I get bored with you and find something else to do. I hope it makes you feel famous. Or maybe it will just creep you out. Maybe your fans will be extremely relieved to be able to read about you when you haven't posted anything yourself for a few hours.
i just posted something called "the gay nazi superhero" last night. there is a lot of gay stuff on the internet now.
i liked reading this a lot
moohbear,
he is fit to be a dad i think
ashley,
mutual friends
nani
who are you, i like your stories
sam,
i will look at this
prathna,
good, i am glad
i wish you hadn't deleted the parts you said you deleted
here's the parts i deleted:
That was the image he had and he did not think on it further. It seemed acceptable and final in the same way a Raymond Carver story (from Cathedral), the gay stepdad thought, might reach a sentence that inferred existential conclusion, and be the last sentence of the story. When the gay stepdad thought about Raymond Carver he saw someone in a graduate-level writing workshop acting like a terrible asshole (this was one of the few images the gay stepdad had that contained an abstraction like "asshole").
. He sometimes thought of writing a memoir called A Detached Admiration That Felt Asexual.
The gay stepdad's thoughts for the last few years were like this, they did not proceed to insights, but to images, usually the first image he had, often a non-sequitur. He once considered whether or not he was like a Buddhist in meditation, focusing alternately on nothingness and the images that passed through his perception, and at other times focused on the concrete world of phenomena, the pain and suffering that existed because of the world of phenomena, but then he thought of an anthology of "Buddhist writing" he had read that had a tone that was not, to the gay stepdad, enlightened, but reminded him of an expensive Christmas ornament his mother bought heavily discounted from a 24-hour Wal-Mart on Christmas night when his mother got in a fight with his father and left the house at 11 p.m. in the family car slamming the car door very loud waking up the gay stepdad who was five at the time and not yet asleep in his bed.
A few years ago the gay stepdad understood, and conveyed, at times, that kind of anger, of using more force than was necessary on household objects in order to convey emotional dissatisfaction to other human beings, but he did not anymore. He was writing a novel called It Is Not the Promise of a New Relationship, It Is the Beginning of the Demise of What Was a Promising New Relationship. Sometimes he thought of writing a memoir called A Detached Admiration That Felt Asexual.
He looked at what he had typed with a detached admiration that felt asexual, he thought. Maybe he would write a novel called It Is Not the Promise of a New Relationship, It Is the Beginning of the Demise of What Was a Promising New Relationship. Maybe he would write a novel called A Detached Admiration that Felt Asexual. The gay stepdad was not gay or a stepdad, he knew. He sometimes yearned to have sex with an extremely attractive woman.
The gay stepdad lived in a small room inside a house outside Jersey City. Some days he would wake up at 2 p.m., abruptly uncover himself by throwing the blanket onto the floor, take off his boxer shorts in a careful manner inconsistent with the throwing-away of the blanket, and lay naked on his back on his king-size bed feeling the sunlight on his body, face, and crotch. It was during moments like this, when he lay like that, in the sunlight, that he felt most like he "needed" to reread "Charity" by Joy Williams or else have sex with an extremely attractive woman.
Today the gay stepdad woke up at 7 p.m. after waking around 1 p.m. and staying in bed. He had a text message from a woman he had acknowledged the possibility of liking. The text message was incoherent to the gay stepdad, though it was concrete and direct, and the gay stepdad deleted it. (Lately even concrete, direct sentences were sometimes incoherent to the gay stepdad). The gay stepdad stood in his room in the dark and thought about screaming, "GRENARIO!" which was not a real word, he knew. He walked into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. He lived alone currently because his house mates were in Uzbekistan for the Peace Corps. He made a smoothie and looked his hand with a detachment so intense that he laughed aloud with real amusement.
and he also liked to receive oral sex but he did not like to feel guilty for not reciprocating and he did not like to reciprocate. These situations created existential pressures in him that made him feel bad. He also felt bad when someone liked him and he did not like the person as much and had to endure moments where the other person was not getting what they wanted from him, which was usually his attention.
The gay stepdad masturbated in his room sometimes when he was bored or felt aroused for some reason. Twice he had walked through his apartment building to the trash rooms of each floor to find magazines with men in them that he could look at to help him masturbate. The only books he had in his room were books of literary fiction, poetry, and political non-fiction. He read mostly Joy Williams. He was a vegan. He was conscious of spending money only at independent venues, and of those independent venues, only those that supported lifestyles focused on reducing pain and suffering in the world. He also thought it was immoral to eat grains and sugars and artificial or natural flavors, but did not understand why he thought this was immoral, maybe because he had come to associate unhealthy foods with corporations.
the gay stepdad has been met with unprecedented acclaim
I too have a detached admiration that feels asexual.
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the gay stepdad is a fag
dear the carnal philosopher, Your head made out of something like 8 thousand diamonds and a human skull and teeth is a piece of shit and I can't believe someone made it and then i can't believe someone payed a million trillions dollars for it, more than anything ever that is art. I am an art critic now. The guy who made your head didn't even make your head. What the fuck?
I covet it.
What is "K-mart realism"?
hi ae
brandon, google it or search this blog for it
I like this story very much.
I think you should write more stories featuring the gay stepdad.
Is he gay-er with a bow in his hair instead of a yellow turban? Has he resolved his sexuality issues by way of a new accessory?
i enjoyed this story and several times laughed a little beneath a breath at parts that were references which i understood.
i'm afraid to read the delete parts now that i have scrolled down and seen that you have posted them but i think i will anyway.
tao, that story doesn't make a lot of sense to me. in general i think you make a lot of sense and your writing makes a lot of sense and, for a bunch of reasons, i should really "get" that story. but i'm just confused and have nothing intelligent to say.
i am at work now and i made the gay stepdad III my background but i have to share this computer! i will leave it and see if she Jenny coworker says anything.
also, i am a little excited about the part about the process by which GS determines relationship longevity and i wonder also if it will ruin your writing career probably not.
i think there is a typo
you changed the picture!
I think the gay stepdad isn't really gay, he just likes to wear pink and sometimes put a bow in his hair and he doesn't think that this will be acceptable in his heterosexual circle.
He should know that there are plenty of men who like to wear pantyhose and lipstick while they fuck pretty ladies. It's okay to do that. I think that's a quote from Foucault?
tony, i want to expand the gay stepdad into a novella and publish it like this
brad, i don't know
hi colin
hi carmichael, i emailed you
hi cecilia
ryan, where is it
hi maya
hi brad, i wonder if you are the same brad as above, i will click your profile
oh, you are, the photo is the same
this is good, i think the sexual ambiguity is actually what keeps things interesting, so maybe thats why so many people commented. so maybe don't change that, or do, i don't know. i also like the bit about the compulsive myspace checking. i do that sometimes.
by the way, you misspelled "person" the first time you wrote it in one of the paragraphs in the beginning.
i like thinking about the gay stepdad when he was five and the part about kmart realism. i like it.
i think there's a gay stepdad in all of us. i say unleash the fucker
Ionesco meets David Lynch meets Augusten Burroughs (merely for the gay)
You are talented. And probably more than a little fucked upp
I think the gay stepdad is what Tao Lin envisions he will become by the time he is middle-aged.
When I'm middle-aged I want to obsessively paint portraits of cucumbers. People will admire my portraits, but they will always as me why I only draw cucumbers. They will say I am not making full use of my talents. I will always avoid answering their questions.
I think gay stepdad is somewhat paralysed. Like his arm has been caught under a rock whilst mountain climbing and he is searching, at first desperately, and then more calmly, around for some sort of axe or something sharp to cut off his arm with so he can get away.
I like that you included the deleted parts as well, so we could all see a bit of the editing process.
Keeping everything ambiguous is probably why I like your writing.
Reading this, I doubt I'd become "the gay stepdad". One time as I was getting a hot pocket out of the microwave I felt an intense heat from the piece of food. As I cradled it in my t-shirt I thought about whether or not I'd ever be a father. The hot pocket became my child, who I loved, protected, and would eventually consume for nourishment.
Sometimes I wonder whether or not I'd even be a good father. Perhaps this was too personal.
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