knew that his daughter’s MySpace page said she was bisexual.
The gay stepdad looked at MySpace often. He had no active MySpace page.
He had an account registered under the name “gay-gay mcschnickertons” which he used primarily to read the 16 pages of comments that did not fit on the front page of his daughter’s wall.
The gay stepdad had a daughter not because he was forced by society into a gender role but because he was not really gay. Or maybe he was, he didn’t think about it much.
He thought of himself mostly as “the gay stepdad” because it made him feel like he was in a Joy Williams story, though Joy Williams probably would not refer to a character as “the gay stepdad,” as her focus was existential, and any reference to sexual orientation, race, sex, or religion was made without rhetoric or else in satire or sarcasm, the gay stepdad knew, with confidence, as he often lay in bed at 3 a.m. arguing with the important literary critics of his time and of other people’s times, specifically the 80’s.

tao lin