For as long as I can remember, I always wanted to be a father and an actor. I fantasized, as a child and well into adulthood, that I would have this incredible career and that I would meet someone spectacular who also wanted a large family but only after we had already traveled the world as a couple, had money and were established in our careers.
Instead, when I adopted my daughter, she was already 5 years old, I was single, broke, and decidely not a Broadway star. And to complicate things further, my daughter was also my niece. I had raised her off and on (along with my mom) since practically birth because of my sister's alcohol problem and the almost complete lack of her biological father's presence. So...I adopted her.
I had always wanted a family, I loved her immensely, and, well, heck, I thought if nothing else was going to go right in my life, at least I'd always have the child I had always wanted.
But I still couldn't give up on my childhood dream so 9 months after the adoption we moved to New York and started the next part of our journey, this time as father and daughter.
About 3 months after we moved back (I had lived in NYC in the late 90's and through '02), I started a blog. It was going to be all about my life as a single gay dad in the city--sort of like a gay dad Carrie Bradshaw. Well, wouldn't you know it, a month into writing the blog, I met Seth and my life was changed forever.
We've been together for a year now and he is very active in Juli's life. He takes her to school every day and goes to school functions. Because he never thought about having kids, we've had many discussions about the issue and about my wanting to have another child at some point. It's an ongoing discussion, one which, I'm sure, I'll write about here.
So here I am. Still trying to land that first Broadway gig and still struggling financially, but now I've got the kid and the man. It's all happening now. Right now. Just not in the order I imagined as a youngster! But it's my life and I hope to write about it as often as I can and with time, build the site into one in which other gay dads can discuss their own experiences about what it's like to raise children in the U.S.A. in 2008.
