Full Transcript
Yeah. All right. Love this one. And uh let’s move on. Well, let’s talk about n next episode’s top three list. All right. I want to know thank you. And this is G3 art. So middle of summer. It’s all about the summer camps. Hot as shit. Hot as shit. Everything’s dead because it’s so hot, including my spirit. And uh but speaking of killing things, my kid did a soccer camp this week. Okay. And uh he is a really, really uh passionate soccer player. I mean, he lives and breathes and dies by soccer. And the what the coach actually made the comment to him that you’ll never be a professional soccer player if you dress like that. Because he was wearing a cotton t-shirt and not a like an under, you know, like a uh an athletic wicking t-shirt. And I said to him, wait, to my kid. I said to my kid, that’s not cool. Do you want me to say something to him? And he’s like already rolling his eyes at me. No, dad, I got this. But I wanted to be like, are you fucking kidding me? You’re leading a soccer camp and you are dashing my kid’s hopes for being a soccer professional soccer player. Now, I have no illusions of him actually growing up to be one, but I wanted- Yeah, but you don’t want him to think it’s because he wore a fucking cotton.
David:
What is this, the Bible? You can’t mix it up. Exactly. Yeah.
Gavin:
And I just thought, how dare you go around and uh theoretically be there to lift kids up and then break them down? What kind of thing? Our job as parents is to break their spirits, not your job. Also, like acting teachers and dance teachers are supposed to break spirits. Sports guys are supposed to be totally delusional that everybody can be a professional, right? Sports Do you hear it?
David:
Did everyone out there hear how you just called a game and you said sports guys? You’re welcome. You’re welcome. What do you need to bitch and moan about today? I this is not a bitch and moan, but this is like one of those weird like realizations of time passing. Because we talked, I think, last month about um, you know, that beautiful TikTok I saw and some other things about how you have, you know, a preschooler and you have a toddler and you have an infant and you have a whatever, and they’re all different people, and you never know when they switch from one to the other because time is weird and you just kind of all of a sudden realize one of those TikToks that showed you like a human being, actually, and you might have cried a little bit. Yeah, exactly, which is very unlike me. But um, I had one of those moments where I had this moment of I watch time change in front of me, and like my heart fucking leaped out of my chest. So my daughter is one and a half, and she is in the baby room at her daycare. And when we, my husband and I will go pick up the kids, and there are different rooms on different floors. So I’ll go and pick her up, and I walk into the baby room and I grab her, I pick her up and grab her bag, and then I walk, we walk up to where uh my son is, um, and I hold her. Like I’ve she used to be in the carrier, and then I started holding her, and that was a little bit of a time passage. Um, but that’s kind of how we do it. Well, she the other day forced me. She said, No, I want to like she wanted me to put her down, and I put her down, and she just wanted to walk out the door. And from now on, she wants to walk out the door. She doesn’t want me to carry her from the from the classroom to the car. She wants to get down and walk. So now the other day, this first time, she put down and then she just started walking in front of me. And I just this vision of this little girl walking down the hallway in front of me was the new kid that joined my life. And it was so fucking wild. And I just had this moment. I thought about you, Gabin. I thought about the show. I thought about everything. And I went, This is that moment. This is that moment in time where my little baby became a toddler, and the baby is gone forever. And I doesn’t mean I can’t still can’t hold her, or she’s it only a day older, but it was a that click of time, and ooh, that one that one made me actually feel real feelings, which I, you know, as you know, I don’t like. Are cold and dead. I’m cold and dead on the inside, and I’m proud of it.
Gavin:
So speaking of cold and dead, or maybe just dead, but hot. Um, it is the middle of summer, and I uh summertime is such a childlike, uh magnificent time of just fr uh freedom and frenzy and friends and hanging and everything. And efforts are efforts. But you know what? I fucking hate summer. Yeah. I don’t like the sun. I don’t like the sun, first of all. I don’t like being hot, but also the chaos. The the the our our previous guest, um uh MX Domestic, gave us the term chaos, right? The chaos in our house is just off the charts because nobody’s really taking responsibility for anything. All I’m doing is helicoptering my kids all the time. They’re driving me crazy. I’m driving them crazy. The the laundry isn’t really done, or it’s always in a half state. My older child now thinks that she gets to stay up till 11 o’clock, and she is, what is she doing? She is digging into my my partners and my daddy TV time because she’s just ruining everything by being there all the time. I mean, summer. You fuck up my last season of Ted Lasso, I’ll kill you for what you gotta tell her. I I mean, I I do need to start saying I will cut a bitch if you don’t fucking go to sleep and just like, I’m not ready to go to bed, so go read a book. I don’t care, just go lay in bed. This is my time.
David:
Leave me alone, I want to watch Black Mirror and And I need the daycare of school, taking my kids away so that I’m just my biggest fear with young kids is that I’m so used to nine to five Monday through Friday, these kids exist in another building with other adults taking care of them, of course, at a price. But when I I I see all the parents around me, you included, during summertime, panicking because their kids are just they they go from being in school all day to just being home. And these camps aren’t all day, every day.
Gavin:
Nope. And they’re always different, and they’re out earlier than school is basically. I mean, I do have a friend who has sent her daughter away to like eight weeks of camp. And I’m like, wow, that is that’s a little extreme, isn’t it? But then you’re like, well, I mean, maybe she’s making the right decision, right? Yeah. I mean, come on, eight weeks away, the kid is happier, the parent is happier. Oh, you miss each other for the first four hours, but then you’re over it pretty quickly. I mean, summer chaos is just it is a lot, it is managing so much, the schedule is constantly changing. I want to say that I’m in it and loving it and trying to be in the moment, but honestly, it’s just a pain in the ass.
David:
I teach at a kind of theater camp here in the city, and it’s like for acting, it’s like a musical theater intensive. But people send their kids here, and most kids don’t live in New York City, so they’re all living in New York City for these four weeks. Living their best lives. I know, I mean, like crazy, but they’re going to see Broadway shows at night, like it’s a big deal. But think about that. Not only are you with your kid all the time, but you’re with your kid in a hotel room in another state.
Gavin:
Oh god, no. Yeah. And no, that sounds that’s not vacation. I mean, none of this is vacation for the parents at all. It’s just like extra work.
David:
Well, anyway, let’s uh that that those are things that are very hard as a parent, but let’s move into our top three lists this week, which is the top three things that you thought would be a big deal when you were became a parent, but just are not. Yeah. So um, this is my list, so I will go first this week. Um, so in number three, uh, something I thought would be a big deal was being told I hate you by my kid. Uh my kid has said, maybe not those words, but said, like, you’re not my best friend and I don’t like you and go away and all the things. And before I was a parent, I was like, that’s gonna break me. I’m gonna be so sad. When my kid says, like, you’re not my best friend anymore, literally, my husband and I will go, Well, you’re not my best friend, go away, go put the dishes in the sink. Um uh number two, something I thought would be a big deal, meltdowns in public. I I thought that that would be so embarrassing or I would stress out about it. When my kid’s having a meltdown in public, I just stare at them like a science experiment. I’m like, Yep, nice, you want to have this? It doesn’t stress me out like I thought it would. Uh, and number one, the thing I literally thought would be the biggest deal in the world, and is I don’t even think about once, diapers. Uh-huh. Diapers, even though you gotta do 10 of them a day and they’re disgusting and they’re shit and there’s piss and there’s all kinds of things. I just, they were never a big deal. So uh that’s my number one. What’s your I love that?
Gavin:
So, number three for me is healing your kid when they’re sick. I was terrified of fevers, of throwing up, of my kid being sick and me not knowing what was going on and being confused and not knowing what to do, earaches, ear infections, toothaches. I’ve dealt with it all, and you just kind of like you just you get into problem solving mode. It isn’t actually that big a deal. Number two, managing all the shit. I thought I’d be like, oh, I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m not meant to do this. Actually, you just screw your head on and you just fucking do it. And we’re all capable of doing it. That’s gonna be.
David:
I mean, the thing you were just complaining about for 10 minutes before we started the top three list. You talking about that part, that’s easy. Yes.
Gavin:
Yes, but I I am managing it, but I don’t like it. But I can do it. And then finally, number one, being a sports dad. When my kids were born, I thought, oh dear lord, don’t let them be athletes, right? And now, I mean, I like it a lot, and I love watching my kids’ passion on the field, and I like standing and shooting the shit with the other parents on the sideline. I thought it would be a big deal, but actually, it’s not.
David:
So I totally understand that because I my son is in a soccer class right now, and by soccer class, I mean they’re all like three and a half year olds, so they just run around screaming, kicking balls, and they the the the poor coaches are trying to like as a mass of kids just all running around the ball as a like a as a big, I don’t know, a cell moving around a ball.
Gavin:
It’s ridiculous.
David:
And they do like games like you know, pick up the cones with your feet. They did it’s it’s a silly class. It’s not like they’re playing games or they’re learning how to actually play, but it’s fun. But I found myself the same way where I was like kind of dreading sports in general because I assumed all my kids would be straight. I don’t have to do this, and I just never like sports. But I tell you what, I became a sports dad. I became a soccer dad so fast. And when my son was like not paying attention or doing cartwheels like I did as in T-Ball, um, I get I’m like, get your head in the game. Come on, be aggressive. I became T-ball dad immediately, and I’m you know what? I’m totally here for it.
Gavin:
All right, so how about next week’s top three list? I want to know the three worst behaviors that you have witnessed in other parents. Oh. Now I know that we’re nothing but hypocrites, and so that often can morph into, and then I ended up doing myself, doing it myself. No, no, no. I want to hear about the three worst things that you’ve witnessed in other people, and you’re like, I will literally never do that. For sure, because I love judging other people.
David:
Yes. It’s literally my professional career.
Gavin:
I I uh I if we could only be paid for judging others, I would be I’d be a millionaire, quite possibly a billionaire.
David:
So our next guest is the author of Love Without Wings, a gay adoption fairy tale. Uh like me, he grew up in the South and somehow made it out alive. So please welcome to Gatriarch’s Adam Swain Ferguson. Hey, welcome, Adam.
SPEAKER_03:
Hi, and I’d like to say barely made it out alive.
David:
You have some residual uh uh North Carolinian-ness.
SPEAKER_03:
Uh yeah, still trying to watch it off me.
David:
Why don’t you tell us a little bit about your your your book? So I I found you because you posted in one of the kind of gay groups on Facebook about this book that you had written, uh, which kind of started this whole process. So tell us a little bit about your book.
SPEAKER_03:
Uh well, it’s it’s an adoption fairy tale. You know, when my uh son was born, he he he’s obviously he’s adopted, and I always wanted him to just kind of have that narrative of who he is, maintain his identity, never question, you know, where he comes from. Um, because I’ve had friends and family who have been adopted, and there’s there’s a little bit of trauma there. Um and you know, as his parent, you know, the best thing I can do is try to mitigate that from day one. And so I just started telling him this fairy tale that I was making up night by night about his own adoption story, because one of the things that I felt was missing in adoption books that I was finding was that narrative. Um and so I just put this together and uh eventually when I recorded myself telling it to him and decided to write it down and get it illustrated. I connected with an illustrator here in Santa Clarita, which the here’s kind of one of the most amazing things about it, though, is to me this book is a little bit of a bridge in a very personal way. So my illustrator, her and I become very, very good friends after starting off as just kind of like a casual business relationship, but she’s actually very much more on the conservative side. And so she illustrated this book, and you know, it opened her heart. And uh well, she’s got a very open heart anyway. I can’t I can’t say that, but she just she showed it so much love, and I was really baffled seeing that from it from another side. And one of the things that’s great when we kind of get together is even though I’m you know fiercely liberal and she’s definitely more on the conservative side, is we can just like still come together and have this love for a pro that we poured our hearts to this project. So that that’s kind of cool.
David:
But uh yeah, yeah, I’m so pessimistic about that shit that like I’m so I’m so glad there are people like you in the world who who are open to that because the second I I’m just so like I hear the R word or the C word, I’m just like, I’m out, I don’t want to talk to you. But it is important for people like you who are good people, not like Gavin and I. We’re yeah, obnoxious.
Gavin:
We’re obnoxious people who lead with um uh fire and brimstone and and all of our bad feelings and everything. And so good for you for making the world a better place.
David:
So do you think she has changed her mind publicly, or is this something like it was this something prior to that she was like anti-gay families?
SPEAKER_03:
I don’t think that she’s ever been anti-gay family. No, she’s just like one of the most loving and loving people that I’ve ever met. One of the things that I’ve seen in it is, you know, just kind of an opportunity, both not only for me to tell her my side of things, but also kind of hear her side of things too. We spent a lot of time together, whether we were meeting at Starbucks having coffee, or we went and we did a television interview in Bakersfield, which was a two-hour drive, or we had a flight to Seattle for another interview, and we’ve had these opportunities to just like you know get to know each other as people, and I think that’s really important. You know, I’m very much uh again fiercely liberal, but also I I know you also grew up in uh you know uh the rural south, but having grown up there, you know, I I’ve been immersed in it my entire life.
David:
Yeah. Well, so tell us a little bit about that because like I wanna I I I am also a Southern boy and I am fascinated by all the things Southern, good and bad. So you grew up in rural South or North Carolina, yeah, rural rural North Carolina.
SPEAKER_03:
Um uh not too far from uh I can’t call Fayetteville the city, but I guess. Sure you can.
David:
We’ve heard of it. My dad lives in Fayetteville to this day. I know Fayetteville very well, yeah.
SPEAKER_03:
So I like when I was like 15, 16 years old, that’s that was the place to go if you wanted to go to the city. But I mean now I go back and I’m like, oh whoops, Fayetteville. It’s uh definitely not somewhere I want to spend a lot of time anymore. But it was kind of a great place for me to, you know, learn a lot about who I was. So there was this coffee shop called the coffee scene that I used to go to, and that’s where I kind of discovered like a little kind of like queer and artistic community. And uh, you know, I’d love to create something like that again someday. But yeah, it was uh I grew up near Southern Pines, which is a town, but it’s still kind of like in the ruralish area, but very very charming, very, very quiet, very uh God, what’s that show that I want to compare it to?
Gavin:
Just very please tell me to be something about Outer Banks or uh the all of these uh teenagery kind of shows. Dawson’s Creek. That’s I want all of North Carolina to be Dawson’s Creek.
SPEAKER_03:
So I I also lived in Wilmington, which is where Dawson’s Creek was filmed. Wilmington is absolutely fantastic, it’s just like that. But uh it’s interesting though, growing up there because you have like we had horse communities, we had golf communities, and then you have me. I’m just stuck, you know, my house was across from a cowfield. But but it, you know, it’s it it’s got a lot to it, and it it’s I’ve been in some interesting positions in the South.
David:
So at one point I had uh same, but it’s a different, I think it’s a different thing than talking about.
SPEAKER_03:
Or maybe exactly the same, hopefully. Yeah, those two, David. But um especially with with what I’m about to tell you, which I think David, you and I discussed this before, but I managed uh an adult store in the rural south. Oh, I have so many questions with my mom as my employee, and so it’s really, really interesting is you’ve got all these people, so it’s a very, very conservative community, but you get all these people who just kind of show up and you become their de facto sex therapists, and you get a little bit more insight into who they are as people sometimes. I’ll never forget this.
David:
You can’t just race, I’m sorry, you just can’t race over that. We need to backtrack. So, not only how did you get the job at an adult bookstore, but did mom come into the picture? We gotta know this.
SPEAKER_03:
So I just moved back from Florida and I was looking for a job, and I was driving around with a friend, and there was a help want it sign in the porn store window, and they dared me to apply, and I did. So I started out as this part-time help, just kind of uh you know, working nights and a couple of weekends, and became really good friends with a manager who was I was 22 at the time, and I think she was just like a year or two older than me. And we just connected really well and became good friends. So then an opening came up in another store that was about 45 minutes away because this was a small chain uh that was distributed throughout North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia. And so an opening came up in another store, and I I applied for the manager’s job. So after I left, someone needed to take my place. Well, my mom was looking for work, and so I asked her if she wanted to interview for my old position uh because she was kind of going through her thing. She ended up getting the job and working there. Uh shortly after, my former manager, her her boss, decided that she wanted to leave and I wanted to cut my commute down, so I transitioned back into that store with my mom under me. And yeah, we’re gonna be able to do that. Was that weird?
David:
Or did you have a relationship with your mom where it was like it was cool that we can be like, hey, did you stock the dildos?
SPEAKER_03:
Well, that actually became a very much part of our like at-home conversation because we were living together at the same time. I was too poor to afford to live on my own. So I mean, our conversation at home would be like, Hey, mom, did you get the cock rings in? Did you make sure you stock them? So that was a very cool conversation.
David:
This is the this is the America the liberals are fighting for, right here.
Gavin:
But at the same time, I’m sure that uh it wasn’t a political thing, also. You must have had plenty of conservative people coming in who were probably repressed and needed a little of guidance, and you were suddenly their sex therapist, huh?
SPEAKER_03:
Absolutely, absolutely. I remember this one guy coming in, he’s like, and he was like whispering, I I need I need cockling. I’m like, Oh, okay, well, you’re the only one in the store. So I mean, it’s okay to say these things out loud. But uh yeah, it was a fun time. Definitely the most interesting job that I’ve ever had and profitable.
Gavin:
Oh, I was gonna I hope you made a lot. I would imagine you would make a lot of money because they’re good, they’re gonna, I mean, they stay open for a reason.
David:
People need these things and no, but it’s also I wonder if there’s like a shame aspect to it too, where people are willing to pay more for something that they’re ashamed of buying in the first place. Yeah. But also, I imagine in in conservative rural south, you have this, like Gaben was saying, there’s this repression in general, right? Conserv don’t get me started on this, but like there’s this general oppression of like anything that’s natural or real or uh whatever. Um, that you repress all of it, repress all of it, but when sex sometimes rears its fucking ugly head. And some of these conservative people being like, okay, well, maybe I’ll like let this out, right? It’s the it’s all the way to the extremes of like conservative congressmen in the fucking airport bathrooms, right? But I imagine you get this weird little window of seeing these conservative people being themselves for a second, not forward to buy the thing they need. Yep. Yep. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:
And they and and they are, and there was you know something empowering about helping them with that purchase sometimes too. I would imagine. And being able to discuss it with them.
Gavin:
And were you, I mean, sexually liberated at the time? Meaning, were you able to explain to them this is how you use a butt plug, this is how you use a cock ring? Or was it more like, uh, I guess I’ve read this is what you’re supposed to do.
SPEAKER_03:
Have product knowledge. I have to be able to talk about it. And someone who has never touched a vagina in my life, I had to be able to explain what this one product was that we had that was called the Wii Vibe, where you know it could stimulate the clitoris and it was like a wearable sex device. Uh, it uh I I know nothing of these things. And I mean, I but I did have to know about the product. And the thing is, is and the funny thing is, is I’m incredibly outside of this, I’m very introverted. I can I’m an INFJ. So I’m very introverted, but kind of like but force myself into extroverted situations, if that makes sense. And I’m very reserved. And I don’t talk about my like to this day, my mom live lives, actually still lives with now lives with me and my husband and my son. Um, and I’m still very reserved and do not talk about my sex life with my mom ever. But we were in this environment where just kind of I guess if it’s not talking about my own, if it’s talking about Mr. Jones, that’s fine.
Gavin:
Helps.
David:
Yeah, totally. Totally. My mom listens to this podcast, so uh, I gotta watch what I’m saying. So, wait, let’s let’s talk about your husband. So you met your husband at a bar, which is but if you think about it, is really fucking quaint because like this was back in the day where like you would meet people in the real life. Now we don’t do that, and that’s totally fine. But like you tell us about how you met your husband. Oh my goodness.
SPEAKER_03:
Um well, we’d uh were kind of both in the middle of breakups. Um, and he had just broken up with his girlfriend, and I had been seeing somebody for a while, and you know, was missing him, was feeling kind of down about myself and hadn’t heard from him in a few days. So I asked my friend Jake, I’m like, hey, can we just go to this bar is called Jack’s Tap in Fayetteville? And you know, I just just need a drink. And so we get there, and you know, this lovely ginger man approaches me and he asked to buy me a shot, and I like this Florence in the Machine t-shirt. And I said, you know, uh that that that that’s fine, but I’m kind of seeing somebody, and I just kind of blew him off. But I did a shot with him. Well, not five minutes later, this person that I’d been dating walks in the door hand in hand with another guy. Gay drama.
Gavin:
Jax tap. Yikes. Jax tap.
SPEAKER_03:
And uh, yeah, and definitely a little hole in the wall, but my favorite bar still to this day. Uh, and I asked Kevin, this this uh lovely, lovely human, to to go outside while I had a word with Mark. Um and raised hell in the bar, went outside and asked him if he wanted to go home. And we’ve been together ever since. Uh and and I when I say go home, we went back to his place with a few other friends because we did have mutual friends. Um, but it was kind of awkward the next day waking up and walking out, and his girlfriend was also working there. So that was interesting. But uh her and I are good friends now.
Gavin:
And I was gonna say, but yeah, how did that all shake out or shake down or just plain shake?
SPEAKER_03:
It just plain it just plain shook. It it didn’t, you know, and the funny thing is is we we started dating, I think that was in December, and we were married by July. So I mean, because like right after you know the United States v. Windsor decision came down, a month later, we were high tailing it to Maryland to get married because it still wasn’t legal in North Carolina.
David:
Uh so how did you how did kids come into the picture?
SPEAKER_03:
Well, yeah, we always wanted kids, but it was always a matter of just finding the right time and being the right spot in our lives. And one of the things we eventually realized is we’ll never be, it’ll never be the right time. It’ll never be the right spot. But what we did know is we wanted Kevin to be out of the army first. So he was medically retired in 2017 while we were living in New York. Um, we sold we’d sold our house up there and decided we were gonna move to uh greater Los Angeles, where he got into school. He was gonna pursue his uh PhD in neuroscience for six months. But um we always knew that we wanted a family, it was just a matter of when. So once we moved to California and he dropped out of school and got a career somewhere else um as an engineer, which is a far cry from what he wanted to do, uh we just decided, you know what, it it’s never gonna be the right time. Let’s just go ahead and do it. And we had always talked about whether we wanted to do adoption or surrogacy, and surrogacy, you know, I’m sure as many of you guys know, that it’s incredibly cost prohibitive and confusing. And we didn’t own a home at the time to like pull any equity out. So we’re like, okay, well, let’s do adoption. So we were able to find a loan from this company called Lightstream that specializes in adoption loans. And we we signed the paperwork and we waited. And it we were waiting for, I think it was like 19 months before we finally meshed. And it gotten to the point that um, well, in that time, I’m sorry, I should backtrack. In that time, we ended up buying our house, which is where we live now and uh hopefully our forever home, and you know, establishing our life here in Santa Clarita. I was still in school at the time, but um it was gonna be finished soon. So we decided, okay, well, now’s as good a time as any, and we we waited. Um, and that was kind of one of the hardest processes I’ve ever been through. It’s definitely an emotional roller coaster, it’s an understatement. Uh, definitely more lows than highs. But we weren’t matching. We’d been ghosted like three different times by prospective matches, and so at the end of the day, it definitely happens.
Gavin:
We’ve we’ve talked a lot about that. Pro the adoption process has an awful lot of ghosting that goes on. Yeah, you aren’t alone.
SPEAKER_03:
So the very I’ll never forget it. It was April of um 2021. I said, I’m done. I can’t do this anymore. I just don’t have the emotional bandwidth. So let’s go ahead, let’s pursue surrogacy. So we took out our home had had a lot of equity in at that point. So we took out a home equity loan. We found a surrogate that we liked, we found an egg donor that we semi-liked. The doctor was really confident in her um egg dropping abilities. And I I I I was telling Kevin, I said, you know what, I bet, I bet you anything that once we get serious about this, that what something’s gonna happen with adoption. And that’s exactly what happened. We had signed the contract with the egg donor, and the very next day we got a call about a baby who’s gonna be born in June in Nevada, and that is who would eventually be our son. So we decided, okay, well, we’re already moving forward with the surrogacy. We may as well just like follow this two-prong approach because you know what, a lot can happen, you know, even up until the last minute, like that baby can be born 72, 71 hours out of 72, the birth mom could always change her mind. So we decided to go ahead and follow this two-prong approach. A few days after Taryn was born, we got a call from our clinic that um none of the eggs had become embryos. And it was something that I was so at peace with at the moment because I was holding my child. I I I I was a dad, none of it mattered anymore. But now we’re actually in the process of surrogacy. Um, our son’s birth mom, who we became incredibly close to, ended up donating her eggs. So any child we had via surrogacy would be biologically related to our son, who’s a doctor. That’s amazing.
David:
That’s fascinating. I don’t I was saying to you when we were doing our pre-interview, I don’t think I’ve ever heard of that before. Like I’ve heard of, you know, adoptive like birth parents, you know, uh uh uh their adoptive parents adopting multiple children from them, but I’ve never heard of that, which is really fascinating.
SPEAKER_03:
Yeah, it’s it’s very cool because you know, we’ve maintained this relationship where, like I said, I always wanted to be open with Taryn about who he was, which is where the book came from. But she inspired a lot of it too, because she’s just been such kind of a force in our lives, and you know, she gave us this gift of our son, but now she’s continuing to give, and that’s also kind of a fairy tale in of itself, which is another book that I’m hoping to write. Totally.
David:
Are you writing more books? Is that is that the plan?
SPEAKER_03:
Yeah, I’ve got about seven online right now. That’s a that’s a lot of books. Yeah, I mean, just a lot of, you know, my kids well, of course, he’s very inspiring to me, but a lot of, you know, observations on things that I think, especially as gay dads, that I see are missing in the book market that I would like to address and put out there.
Gavin:
And something new. It sounds like you’re not just rehashing the the cliche topics, you’re taking unique experiences to help other other people along their path.
David:
That’s which is what we do. We just rehash the same old shit over and over and over.
Gavin:
Pretty much, pretty much the case.
David:
Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:
So, you know, I went I went to school for production and um I I got my master’s in producing, and I wanted to, I actually wanted to work in television development. But one of the things that they always hammered into us while we were in school is why are you the one to tell this story? Why can you tell the story better than anyone else? And so I feel like writing from my own experiences is kind of kind of the way to go, which is also why I want to one day sell the show about me and my mom working in the porn store. I have to do that. Yes, I told you on the phone.
David:
I said I would write this show today. I could sell that show today. Did you guys have booths there or was it just a store?
SPEAKER_03:
No, we did not have booths. Actually, the very interesting thing about how this store opened. Back to the porn shop.
David:
I mean, listen, you knew I was gonna you knew I was gonna put put the conversation right back there.
SPEAKER_03:
The the interesting thing about it, the only way that it was able to open, so it wasn’t classified as an adult establishment, it was classified as a, and this is actually part of of my story too, that I’ve that my treatment that I’ve written. But um, how they were able to open and be classified as a boutique instead of an adult establishment, was if you go in the store, you’ve got uh this first section that’s all lingerie, there’s some DVDs, there’s some gad gifts, there’s shoes. We catered to a local strip club that the girls would come in and they’d buy all their their dance wear from us. And then there’s a big door, there’s a big door that says must be 18 or older to enter. So the way that it worked in our community was 51% of all the merchandise had to be non-adult oriented to be considered a non-adult establishment. And that was by quantity, not dollar amount of worth. And so one of the things that the owner did was he stocked up on like these dollar DVDs and these gag gifts. I mean, it was like just a complete eyesore, but I mean kind of brilliant in a way, and incense, and every single stick of incense can’t can incense counted as one item. And so all of that, then you know, behind the door, we were able to sell our DVDs and our the our real DVDs and uh you know the toys.
David:
So that’s like Milo Notice in the front, and then there’s like call me daddy in the back. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:
Oh yeah.
David:
Um, so what’s the future look like for you and your family? Are you are you gonna continue to grow your family? Obviously, you’re gonna continue to write.
SPEAKER_03:
Well, right now we are trying to grow our family, so we actually just had an embryo transfer two weeks ago. So we’re gonna I don’t want to jinx anything, but we’re waiting to get to seven weeks before you know we can sure because we um we had an embryo transfer back in January, but it it and unfortunately ended up resulting in a in a miscarriage. So I’m trying to not invest emotionally in this potential child until at least there’s a heartbeat. But uh yeah, we’re we’re in the middle of it.
David:
So uh I found that was really hard when I I went through twice and both times. I I never knew when I was allowing gonna allow myself to be excited and hopeful and daydream. And I would always go, well, it’s gotta be seven weeks when it’s a positive pregnancy. Well, no, it’s gotta be 14 when there’s a heartbeat. No, there’s gotta be 20 when it’s um the 20-week scan. No, it’s gonna be 24 weeks for viability. No, it’s gotta be when they’re born. Like I I kept moving the goalpost, and I never just allowed myself to to enjoy and be excited. And I don’t have an answer, like, I don’t know when that is, but I remember thinking, like, I I I even told my husband, I was like, I don’t want to tell anybody we’re pregnant until 20 weeks because I was so afraid. Yeah.
Gavin:
Adam just announced on a podcast that he’s pregnant, but just waiting. We have 10 listeners.
SPEAKER_03:
There’s been a there’s been a transfer of just waiting for a heartbeat. But exactly. No, I found that last time I didn’t, and and so actually that’s one of the books that I’m at working on right now is um a story about you know uh a same-sex family who miscarries because who talks about that? Nobody, I’m not sure.
David:
And they should, because it happens all the time.
SPEAKER_03:
But I just I found myself I told so many people about that, and never thinking that, oh, well, this is in vitro, there’s there can be a miscarriage. I thought that it was kind of some somehow magically safe beyond that.
SPEAKER_00:
Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:
And I was actually, I’d gone up to um, was it Portland, and I was doing a television interview there for the book, and this the anchor had come in and she was talking to me, just kind of like getting to know me. And I even just told her, and she’s like, Oh, you want me to announce it on the air? I’m like, absolutely not. I don’t absolutely not. I don’t want to jinx it. And I’m glad I didn’t. So I mean, I feel comfortable talking to you guys about this and saying, you know, kind of like this is where we are, because you know what, other potential parents, parents are listening.
David:
So, you know, just just And you know, it’s it’s so common, not only is like traditional miscarriage, but chemical pregnancies and and failed transfers. It’s just like you we have to talk about it because once you dive into surrogacy or IVF, even if you’re a straight person, like that it’s so so common. Um, and it’s it’s a weird thing to do and to not only do, but like understand when to get excited about it as a person to start daydreaming. But also, when can I tell other people? Like I was saying, my husband wanted to tell people earlier when we were at like 14 weeks, and I was so afraid that at the 20-week scan we’d find out that they didn’t have a brain or whatever the like issue was.
Gavin:
I I am curious about in your um uh children’s story writing career here. I’m wondering, so you’ve already had the one book published, which is also, by the way, fantastic. And product placement here, don’t everybody go on, get love without wings. But in the other books that are waiting to be, you know, be written and illustrated, are they kid are they books for the kids or is it books for other dads, frankly, to help dads along the process?
SPEAKER_03:
So they are children’s books, they are written for children. But one of the things that like even with Love Without Wings, I wrote it with the parents in mind. It’s a it’s a way for the parents and the children to connect to. So it it’s it’s really for for everyone. Like I’ve had, you know, people who don’t have children who’ve bought my book and you know, had great had great things to say about it. So that that is that is my intention, is because I feel like um books and media are so important for the for the children, for them to see themselves represented. I know I know that would have been helpful for me as a kid seeing people who I thought were like me represented in a book, and you know, there’s still bullying and all kinds of crap out there. So if a kid can see themselves in a picture book, I think that that stuff can do a do a lot of good. So I think that’s kind of where I’m stick what I’m sticking with. And one of the other things too, what I like to kind of like set apart particularly about my book, and hopefully with future books too, is um, you know, my backgrounds in production and and video. So I took these flat illustrations, got with a motion graphics person who animated the illustration animated the illustrations. We got voiceover and original music, and now in the back of the book, there’s a QR code that if you scan it, it will open the video book for because like dads don’t always have the time as much as we might want to to sit there and read a book five times in a row. Well, now the kid can pull out their phone or iPad and have it read to them.
David:
I’m always looking, I was I’m always looking for ways for other people to parent my children.
SPEAKER_03:
One QR code to step away.
David:
Well, Adam, thank you so much for joining us. Uh, we love your book. We we uh gave it and I watched it this week, or the video clip or whatever. And so everyone out there, please go and and buy his book and all the future books. And um thank you for joining us on Gatriarchs.
SPEAKER_03:
Oh, my absolute pleasure. Thanks, guys.
Gavin:
So something great that happened recently was my kids were doing a camp, and at the end of the camp, they just uh pulled out all of their lost and found items and they just said, Here, can you just take these so we don’t have to take them anywhere? And my kids were so excited to demonstrate that they weren’t asking me to buy something for them for once. They wanted to say, look, dad, I’m reusing and recycling. And I guess they have gotten the the memo about not driving me crazy by asking them to buy more shit, but at the same time, I feel like they stole from other kids. And I was in a little bit of a dilemma, but I was grateful for that moment of uh lost and found uh distribution because it actually made uh my kid made out with a water bottle that she really wanted and um had been coveting. And um I’m not sure what to think about it, but I appreciate that she thought she was being environmental in the process.
David:
So, my something great is um I drive to the kids to school every day, and I decided that um I’m gonna educate them on music. Um, and by you know, not like I have some great education music, but like music I like. And so every week I choose a band or an artist or a genre or something, and and we play one song. It’s like a six-minute drive to school, so I can usually play one or two songs.
Gavin:
It takes a lot of thought. You really are putting thought on it.
David:
Well, not really, because so so like last week was black-eyed peas. So every morning I would choose a black-eyed peas. And of course, now my son is in daycare, going, shut up, just shut up, shut up, shut up, just shut up. And I’m like, we did it, we don’t say that in there. Um, and then uh this past week is in sync. So now my son knows bye bye bye. Um he knows a lot of the in sync songs. So uh my something great is the kids actually super into it. So now I’m educating them on mostly late 90s, early 2000s. Just uh superficial pop. But that’s uh that’s what we that’s definitely my genre. I’m with you. And that’s our show. If you have any comments, suggestions, or general compliments, you can email us at gatriarchspodcast at gmail.com.
Gavin:
Or you can DM us on Instagram, we are at Gatriarchspodcast and on the internet. David is at DavidFMVaughnEverywhere, and Gavin is at GavinLodge on all of the other stuff.
David:
Please leave us a glowing five star review wherever you get your podcast and sign up for our weekly newsletter.
Gavin:
Thanks, and we’ll quilt with you next time on another episode of Gatriarchs.