One gay teen finally finds a home, with two dads
Rex and Sam had been together 32 years and already raised an adopted son (now in his 30s) when they decided to adopt a gay teen because they worried about high suicide rates among gay teens, especially in foster care. After a long search, the retired junior-high principal and attorney-turned-special-education-teacher were matched with Kyle three years ago. The family lives on the Washington coast and spends evenings reading aloud from books, including coming-of-age novels about gay teens. The magazine is not publishing their last names because Kyle is not yet 18.
I LIVED in 20 or so different foster homes before I moved here. I kept wondering what it would be like to live in a gay family. Then these guys found me.
Most of the foster homes I lived in were Christian, so I learned (being gay) was bad. I wasn't out. I was afraid to be. There were lots of homes I liked, but I knew they were homophobic and wouldn't accept me. After awhile, I was, like whatever. I don't care what you think, and went on with my life.
Gay family life has its ups and downs. You get in fights over little things, cell-phone bills. You have fun times, like any normal family. I hate normal. It's like the worst word in the world 'cuz I don't know what normal means. Now I like being un-normal. I know I'm accepted and I'm not going to be moved the next day if they ever figured out (I'm gay).
When I need to talk, they listen. We go camping. Rollerblading. We went to New York, San Francisco, Hawaii. I don't know anything about my (birth) dad other than his name's Mike. My mom, she was nice, kind, motherly. One thing I didn't know was the whole drug-using thing, which was why I went into foster care when I was 13 months old. She cleaned up and got me back when I was 4 or 5. But when I was 6, I went back into foster homes. On and on.
A lot of families treated me like Cinderella. I was the one doing all the chores. A few of my foster families hit me. The state promised to leave me and my sister together. That didn't happen. My mom promised she'd get me and my sister back — 20 or 30 times. I kinda stopped believing her.
So I kept my barriers up to protect myself from being hurt again. I kinda did that when I first came here (with Rex and Sam), too. They let me go on for awhile until they were like, "Kyle, we're not going to give you up. We can promise you that." They adopted me. I'm like, yeah, they kept their promise. That made me feel a lot safer, knowing I could actually trust someone.
We all have dinner at the table, not in our own rooms or on the stairs away from everybody. I hated eating with other people before because you had to fight for your food. The foster mom would only make so much.
Everything's different now. No one used to help me with my homework. Now they're all over it. I barely saw most of the foster parents. Now we're in the living room a lot. That's my reading chair, and that's my talking chair.
Being loved by a parent, there's no words for it. It's more than joyous.
They have different ways of showing it. Sam, he does little things. Y'know those Christmas calendars where you open the little doors and there's chocolates? And Rex is like, "I love you" and he's happy all the time. I can just tell. I've lived with so many families I've learned to pick up on the slight little things.
I used to be highly depressed. When I was younger I never thought I was going to make it to 16. I thought I was going to kill myself. Living here, I know I'm going to make it.
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