Having a Side-Kick is Great!

The other day I went to pick up Pod-Man. He attends the Columbia Collage Arts day camp and so we were coming back to Red Star on the Brown Line. At about Lake/Wabash he asked what I was reading:

Pod-Man: Are you reading the queer newspaper?

Dutchman: Yeah — it’s free.

Pod-Man: What are you reading that for? You don’t read everything that’s free.

Dutchman: Checking out this gay marriage thing.

Pod-Man: What about it?

Dutchman: Well, there’s got to be a grandfather clause.

Pod-Man: A what?

Dutchman: Do you think I would have married your mother, denied my true nature, and set myself up for nineteen years of living hell if I could have married Brian back in 1985?

[People start to look at us …]

Pod-Man: I guess not …

Dutchman: Shit no! Now, if they go changing the rules in the middle of the game, then don’t I get a do over?

Pod-Man: So — are you going to move to Vermont and marry Brian?

Dutchman: Faster than the wind out of a duck’s ass!

[Now they’re really staring …]

Pod-Man: Are you two going to dress like sailors?

Dutchman: In Vermont? Of course not! We’ll dress like lumberjacks.

Pod-Man: Do I get to live with you?

Dutchman: You don’t want to live with women do you?

Pod-Man: Will you let me smoke cigars?

Dutchman: When we’re not abusing you …

[At this point, I think everyone on the car was listening in …]

Pod-Man: What kind of abuse?

Dutchman: Now — If you had a word for it, then you’d go telling the authorities all about it, wouldn’t you?

Pod-Man [Evincing mock guilt]: I guess …

[The train pulls into Chicago Avenue.]

Dutchman: Our stop, let’s go!

[I pat his ass on the way out]