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Spilled Milk: Crossing The Big Black Line

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This post is the second in a series of Spilled Milk columns by Emmy Award-winning writer and producer William Lucas Walker that chronicle his journey through parenthood. Spilled Milk, which originates in The Huffington Post, appears on these pages every Saturday.

 

I’m six. My mom and I are in the front seat of her very smart 1962 Chevrolet station wagon when she turns to me and asks:

“Have you thought about what you might like to be when you grow up?”

Well, I have been thinking about it. Last night she asked my big brother Jimmy. He said astronaut. How dumb-dumb-stupid, thought six-year-old me. The costume is ugly and everybody knows there’s no bathrooms in space.

“Yes, ma’am. I’ve thought about it.”

“Really? What would you like to be? A doctor, like Daddy?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Maybe you could be a lawyer like Perry Mason on TV.”

“He’s fat and has weird eyes.”

“Then what about a cowboy? Or an astronaut, like Jimmy?

“I want to be an interior decorator.”

She lost control of the car and nearly smashed into a telephone pole. I wasn’t sure what exactly I’d said, but one thing I knew: I’d crossed a line.

It would keep happening throughout my childhood. I found it impossible to keep my little Crayola self colored inside the rigid lines of gender-role conformity. I always seemed to be wanting the wrong things, like Easy Bake Ovens and Prom Night Barbies. I learned early to pick my battles. There were four boys and no sisters in my family, so I knew Barbie was a pale pink pipe dream. But a light bulb that baked a cake? That was science, right?

Under the tree that year I found a sheriff’s costume, toy pistols and a baseball glove.

I grew up in the Bible Belt, where odds are, sooner or later, you end up getting born again. It happened for me at roughly 8:15 on a Friday night. I felt as though God had spoken to me personally, revealing that He had indeed come to earth in human form. And her name was Barbra Streisand. Watching her sing “I’m The Greatest Star” in the network premiere of Funny Girl, it was clear she was channeling the divine. Her voice seemed to seep into my every corpuscle, altering my chemical makeup. It was intense.

And so it continued as puberty bloomed. From Funny Girl to Sun-In’d hair to the Speedo shot of Mark Spitz ripped from my dad’s Sports Illustrated and stuffed inside my Boy Scout manual, I was, unbeknownst to me, a standard-issue homo-in-training.

This fact hit home with a thud a few years later when I moved to the city. New York has a benevolent way of siphoning boys like me from our far-flung hometowns and depositing us into one of the few places we might actually stand a chance. You would think I’d find comfort in that. I didn’t. I was mortified to find myself floating in a sea of me’s, and awakened quite rudely to the fact that I wasn’t the unique wonder I imagined myself to be. What I was, it turned out, was a Big Gay Cliché.

Almost. As I watched from the sidelines, one by one the other me’s emerged from their closets, dancing and jubilant. I was envious of the abandon and release they seemed to find, twirling under the great disco ball of ’70s freedom.

But something held me back. I found it difficult to make the same leap. Watching my freshly liberated brethren turn their backs on the past and eagerly morph into their new bodies and haircuts, I struggled with a stubborn dream I could not seem to let go.

I’d always liked the idea of getting married and becoming a father. My own dad — a real-life Atticus Finch, straight out of To Kill A Mockingbird — set a daily example of the best a man can be for his children, inspiring his sons to want the same for ourselves. But admitting I was gay meant saying goodbye to any such notion of family. Coming out meant crossing a line from which there was no coming back.

So I stalled for years, clinging to the ludicrous hope that out there somewhere was a woman who might change me. But by that time, Barbra Streisand was heavy into Don Johnson.

It was Fernando who brought the change.

Beautiful. Bi-polar. HIV-positive. Addicted. Addictive. His red flags should have sent me running; instead, I gathered them into a bouquet. We met in 1994 on a Los Angeles sidewalk one clear night just before Christmas. I was 38. And love, finally, bottomless and vast, swallowed me whole.

I was terrified of HIV, but adored this shy man in whose veins it swam. An artist, Fernando was always encouraging me to find my Big Work. I had no idea what he was talking about. But love has a way of enhancing vision, and his made it possible to see things ahead for me that I could not.

He had seen other things as well, horrors I could not imagine. Three years prior, he’d nursed a man he loved through an ugly illness to a hideous death. Having caught a glimpse of his own future, he spent each day remaining to him painting like a madman. Larger-than-life canvases of spectacular, dazzling women peopled his living room. Women in boats overflowing with flowers. Women lugging impossible burdens uphill. Women searching the sky for the secrets of flight. Peasants, queens, sisters, the idealized heroines of his native Mexico. They had populated his fevered brain for years, and he was determined to free them before time ran out. One by one, through his gifted hands they rushed in pastels and paint, surrogates taking their places in a world about to be done with him.

There was no way we could have known the drug cocktail that would have saved him was just beyond the horizon. I hoped we’d have five years together. We had 1995.

Suicide devastates, leaving its survivors jagged, in shards. Never again can you be as you were. In the wake of his death, slowly and over time, my life began to clarify. Unnecessaries burned away. I saw rising before me the outlines of a dream I’d long since thought impossible. I set about becoming a father.

Surprisingly, the most vocal opponent of my bringing new life into the world was the woman who’d brought me into it herself.

“Have you lost your mind? You can’t have a child. You gave up that right when you chose to become a homosexual. And you’re too old. You live alone. And what about the child? What if you have a son who turns out to be a homosexual. Or worse… a lesbian!”

I paused, trying to unravel that last one, but she wasn’t finished.

“I’m not finished: A. Child. Needs. A. Mother.”

There it was. The line. I was crossing the biggest, blackest, most sacred one of all. Motherhood.

It occurred to me in that moment that every screwed-up person I know has a mother, but I held my tongue.

Kelly was not expected, never part of the plan. I was not looking the day we met. At church of all places. When he asked me when we might go out to dinner, I told him it would have to be Monday or Tuesday. Why Monday or Tuesday, he asked, as any sane person might. “Because I have an egg donor flying to town on Wednesday, we’re making embryos on Thursday and implanting them in my surrogate’s uterus on Friday.” I held my breath so as not to choke on the cloud of dust any other man would have kicked up fleeing in the opposite direction. But other men aren’t Kelly. Who could have predicted that this amazing, smart, decent, deeply funny and very handsome man would plop into my complicated sphere at that precise moment in time, becoming the surprise love of my life and the anchor of my family?

My journey became our journey. A year-and-a-half later, after two surrogates, three egg donors, several reproductive endocrinologists, and a depleted life savings, our stunning, beloved Elizabeth was born. I was 44.

My mother came around eventually. Okay, quicker than that. The moment we told her we’d named the baby after her. She actually screamed.

“I have a namesake? You don’t MEAN it!!!”

We’ve since added a son to the mix — a dimpled tyro named James, after my dad. From that day till this, my wonderful, evolving mother and these grandchildren she once thought impossible have enjoyed a giddy love affair which shows no signs of lifting.

I found my Big Work, and 11 years later, we’re thriving. Marriage and family. My gut had been right — I was born for it.

Last year, when Elizabeth turned 10, I was recounting special moments from our life together, as I tend to do on her birthday. Suddenly, one surfaced I hadn’t thought about in years. A random, rainy afternoon when, at 2-and-a-half, after a long silence, out of the clear blue and apropos of nothing, she looked up at me, smiled and uttered two words I had no idea she’d added to her tiny vocabulary.

“Barbra. Streisand.”

A few weeks later, I wrote my only poem.

Elizabeth

We met
through the lens
of a microscope

I was much taller
you floated below
eight cells
huddled together
trying to become sixteen

No eyes yet formed
to peer back at me
Just eight cells
floating there
inscrutable

A pinpoint promise
of the life I dared to dream
daring back

Your eyes are fully formed now
They are mine
my father’s
his

They peer back now
beneath downtilt lids
familiar as the nearest mirror

Today you sing for me
beneath a torrent of impossible curls
press your face to mine
and collapse into giggles
and twirl
and twirl
and twirl
awash with possibility

A thousands days
since that morning
we first met
through the lens
of a microscope

Eight cells times billions now
you peer up at me
trying to buckle your seatbelt

“Daddy help you?”

Daddy help you.
There is no line.

* * * * *

William Lucas Walker is an Emmy Award-winning writer and producer whose television credits include Frasier, Will & Grace and Roseanne. He co-created the critically-acclaimed Showtime comedy The Chris Isaak Show. Bill and his husband Kelly are the parents of Elizabeth and James, born in 2001 and 2005. The children were gratified by the legal marriage of their parents in 2008, an event that rescued them from a life of ruinous bastardry.

Spilled Milk chronicles Bill’s misadventures in Daddyland. The first recurring humor column by a gay parent to appear in a mainstream American publication, Spilled Milk has regularly landed on the front page of The Huffington Post.

Follow William Lucas Walker on Twitter: @WmLucasWalker, @SpilledMilkWLW or Facebook: “Spilled Milk” by William Lucas Walker.       

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News

‘Blood on Your Hands’: Tennessee Republicans OK Arming Teachers After Deadly School Shooting

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April 23, 2024

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Republicans in the Tennessee House passed legislation Tuesday afternoon allowing teachers to carry concealed weapons in classrooms across the state, thirteen months after a 28-year old shooter slaughtered three children and three adults at a Christian elementary school in Nashville.

The measure is reportedly not popular statewide, with Democrats, teachers, and parents from the school, Covenant Elementary, largely opposed. The Republican Speaker of the House, Cameron Sexton, at one point literally shut down debate on the bill by shutting off a Democratic lawmaker’s microphone and then smiling.

Ultimately, Republican Rep. Ryan Williams’s legislation passed the GOP majority House as protestors in the gallery shouted their objections: “Blood on your hands.”

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The legislation bars parents from being informed if their child’s teacher has a gun in the classroom.

State Troopers were called to “prevent people from getting close to the House chambers,” WSMV’s Marissa Sulek reports.

“You’re going to kill kids,” one woman had yelled at Rep. Williams from the gallery on Monday, The Tennessean reports. “You’re going to be responsible for the death of children. Shame on you.”

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Democratic state Rep. Justin Jones said on social media, “This is what fascism looks like.”

“In recent weeks,” the paper also reports, “parents of school shooting survivors, students and gun-reform advocates have heavily lobbied against the bill, with one Covenant School mom delivering a letter to the House on Monday with more than 5,300 signatures asking lawmakers to kill the bill.”

The bill, which already passed the state Senate, now heads to Republican Governor Bill Lee’s desk. He is expected to sign it into law.

Watch the videos above or at this link.

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OPINION

Trump Complains He’s ‘Not Allowed to Talk’ as He Gripes Live on Camera

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April 23, 2024

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At the end of another short courtroom day that required barely three hours of Donald Trump’s time, the ex-president spoke to reporters inside Manhattan’s Criminal Courts Building to complain about a wide variety of perceived and alleged wrongs he is suffering, including, not being “allowed to talk.”

The ex-president’s presence was required only from 11 AM until just 2 PM. Judge Juan Merchan is overseeing Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s prosecution of the ex-president in a case that has already drawn a straight line through the “hush money” headlines to correct them to alleged criminal conspiracy and election interference.

Judge Merchan, for nearly two hours Tuesday morning, heard prosecutors’ allegations that Trump has violated his gag order ten times, and heard defense counsel’s claims that he had not.

It did not go well for the Trump legal team, with Judge Merchan toward the end of the hearing, during which no jurors were allowed, telling Trump lead attorney Todd Blanche, “You’re losing all credibility.”

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During the day’s hearing, jurors heard prosecutors’ lead witness, the former head of the company that publishes the National Enquirer tabloid, David Pecker, explain how he was working to help the Trump campaign.

“David Pecker testifies that, following his 2015 meeting with Trump and [Michael] Cohen, he met with former National Enquirer editor-in-chief Dylan Howard,” MSNBC’s Kyle Griffin reports. “Pecker outlined the arrangement and described it as ‘highly private and confidential.’ Pecker asked Howard to notify the tabloid’s West Coast and East Coast bureau chiefs that any stories that came in about Trump or the 2016 election must be vetted and brought straight to Pecker — and ‘they’ll have to be brought to Cohen.’ Pecker told Howard the arrangement needed to stay a secret because it was being carried out to help Trump’s campaign.”

Trump did not discuss any evidence against him with reporters, but he did complain about the gag order. And President Joe Biden. And the temperature in the courtroom. And his apparent attempt to stay awake, which has been a problem for him almost every day in court.

“We have a gag order, which to me is totally unconstitutional, I’m not allowed to talk but people are allowed to talk about me,” Trump told reporters, emphasizing the last word in that sentence.

“So they can talk about me, they can say whatever they want, they can lie. But I’m not allowed to say anything, I just have to sit back and look at why a conflicted judge has ordered me to have a gag order.”

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“I don’t think anybody’s ever seen anything like this,” Trump claimed, falsely implying no criminal defendant has ever had a gag order imposed on them previously. “I’d love to talk to you people, I’d love to say everything that’s on my mind, but I’m restricted because I have a gag order, and I’m not sure that anybody’s ever seen anything like this before.”

Trump then started to discuss the “articles” in his hand, what appeared to be dozens of articles he said had “all good headlines,” while implying they claimed “the case is a sham.”

Trump oversimplified the legal arguments attached to his gag order, as discussed with Judge Merchan Tuesday morning. The judge has yet to rule on prosecutors’ request to hold Trump in contempt.

“So I put an article in and then somebody’s name is mentioned somewhere deep in the article and I end up in violation of a gag order,” he told reporters, apparently referring to his posts on Truth Social with persecutes say violated his gag order. “I think it’s a disgrace. It’s totally unconstitutional. I don’t believe it’s ever – not to this extent – ever happened before. I’m not allowed to defend myself and yet other people are allowed to say whatever they want about me. Very, very unfair.”

“Having to do with the schools and the closings – that’s Biden’s fault,” Trump said, strangely, as if the COVID pandemic were still officially in process. “And by the way, this trial is all Biden, this is all Biden just in case anybody has any question. And they’re keeping me, in a courtroom that’s freezing by the way, all day long while he’s out campaigning, that’s probably an advantage because he can’t campaign.”

“Nobody knows what he’s doing. he can’t put two sentences together. But he’s out campaigning. He’s campaigning and I’m here and I’m sitting here sitting up as straight as I can all day long because you know, it’s a very unfair situation,” Trump lamented. “So we’re locked up in a courtroom and this guy’s out there campaigning, if you call it a campaign, every time he opens his mouth he gets himself into trouble.”

Watch below or at this link.

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News

Biden Campaign Hammers Trump Over Infamous COVID Comment

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April 23, 2024

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Four years ago today then-President Donald Trump, on live national television during what would be known as merely the early days and weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic, suggested an injection of a household “disinfectant” could cure the deadly coronavirus.

The Biden campaign on Tuesday has already posted five times on social media about Trump’s 2020 remarks, including by saying, “Four years ago today, Dr. Birx reacted in horror as Trump told Americans to inject bleach on national television.”

Less than 24 hours after Trump’s remarks calls to the New York City Poison Control Center more than doubled, including people complaining of Lysol and bleach exposure. Across the country, the CDC reported, calls to state and local poison control centers jumped 20 percent.

“It was a watershed moment, soon to become iconic in the annals of presidential briefings. It arguably changed the course of political history,” Politico reported on the one-year anniversary of Trump’s beach debacle. “It quickly came to symbolize the chaotic essence of his presidency and his handling of the pandemic.”

How did it happen?

“The Covid task force had met earlier that day — as usual, without Trump — to discuss the most recent findings, including the effects of light and humidity on how the virus spreads. Trump was briefed by a small group of aides. But it was clear to some aides that he hadn’t processed all the details before he left to speak to the press,” Politico added.

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“’A few of us actually tried to stop it in the West Wing hallway,’ said one former senior Trump White House official. ‘I actually argued that President Trump wouldn’t have the time to absorb it and understand it. But I lost, and it went how it did.'”

The manufacturer of Lysol issued a strong statement saying, “under no circumstance should our disinfectant products be administered into the human body (through injection, ingestion or any other route),” with “under no circumstance” in bold type.

Trump’s “disinfectant” remarks were part of a much larger crisis during the pandemic: misinformation and disinformation. In 2021, a Cornell University study found the President was the “single largest driver” of COVID misinformation.

What did Trump actually say?

“And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out, in a minute,” Trump said from the podium at the White House press briefing room, as Coronavirus Task Force Coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx looked on without speaking up. “Is there a way we can do something like that? By injection, inside, or almost a cleaning, ’cause you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs. So it would be interesting to check that. You’re going to have to use medical doctors, right? But it sounds interesting to me.”

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Within hours comedian Sarah Cooper, who had a good run mocking Donald Trump, released a video based on his remarks that went viral:

The Biden campaign at least 12 times on the social media platform X has mentioned Trump’s infamous and dangerous remarks about injecting “disinfectant,” although, like many, they have substituted the word “bleach” for “disinfectant.”

Hours after Trump’s remarks, from his personal account, Joe Biden posted this tweet:

Tuesday morning the Biden campaign released this video marking the four-year anniversary of Trump’s “disinfectant” remarks.

See the social media posts and videos above or at this link.

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