I went to a dinner party on Monday night, and I was incredibly surprised and excited to learn that a classmate is pregnant! 13 weeks! This is very strange for several reasons, but mostly because it reinforced the fact that I am an adult, and that my friends are adults.

We were talking about genetic testing, amniocentesis , and chorionic villus sampling , and what should be tested, and what should be left up to fate. (The classmate is an Ashkenazi Jew , so there’s an increased risk of a number congenital diseases. Note: most Jews in the US are Ashkenazi. I didn’t know this until last year; I thought Ashkenazi was some rare group of Jews. Not true.) If some serious genetic diseases were detected, they would probably terminate the pregnancy.

Anyway, I joked that they should also check for the gay gene (see, that’s funny, because there isn’t one), and somehow it came up that if the gay gene was positive, they’d have to think if they wanted to continue the pregnancy, as if being gay was along the lines of Tay-Sachs or something. I couldn’t help but identify with the fetus, and felt a little offended (I’m sure the friend didn’t mean to offend). I was just surprised at how different a perspective I must have. I guess I can see my classmate’s perspective-you wouldn’t want your child to have any extra hardships in his or her life-but I just have a hard time thinking of the notion of me not being here because my parents learned something about me. (This probably stems from my human egotism of existance, but let’s ignore that part of it for a minute.)

If you haven’t noticed, yes, it’s not necessarily the best fate to be the lucky person chosen by the Universal Order to play the gay for this lifetime, but I’ll be damned if I’m not a much better person for it. I understand compassion, kindness, struggle, injustice, stereotyping, ignorance, and unconditional love and blind hate better than many people that have grown up in similar, heterosexual shoes.

It’s part of me, not the most important part, but part of me, nonetheless. I’m pretty happy with how I’ve turned out, and I wouldn’t change any of it, even if I had the chance. (Well, okay, maybe a little less neuroticism, and maybe a nosejob. And maybe showering more in the 7th grade would have helped.) But I’m me; I’m not diseased, I’m not sick. Within the normal limits. Or just outside them. But anyway, who wants to be normal? Normal’s boring, if you ask me.

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