“Are you her dad?” the perhaps six-year-old boy with a mohawk asked me. “No.” I replied, “I’m her uncle.” He then told me that my two-year-old niece and goddaughter, who we all know to be the family bully, had stolen his tokens. We were at Chuck E. Cheese’s two days after Thanksgiving. She merely stared at the boy defiantly, while I wrested the cup of tarnished gold coins from her hands and apologized to the boy. Without any signs of remorse from her or gratitude from him they separated and continued to run wildly around the strip mall amusement center, content to ride mechanical animals, waste tokens on games of chance, or focus their energy on winning enough tickets to trade them in for toys and candy a fraction of the cost to play. The very pursuits I loved more than anything when I was a kid.

In the tiny mall that was closest to where I grew up there was an arcade called The Machine. I don’t recall how many tickets I eventually won from The Machine but I have a feeling it was in the 1000’s because I was saving up for something really good. As a kid I was very in tune with the rewards of saving because I also sent in for any prize that only required UPC labels from the cereal boxes, and brought countless soup labels to my school to raise money as well. Perhaps it was because time seemed to move more slowly then, or the prizes seemed to be more valuable, but I often wish I could exercise the same kind of patience and commitment today.

The thought of saving money in New York is almost laughable. Unless your social life consists primarily of DVR and homemade meals, there is little opportunity to sock a lot of money away. We may forgo simple luxuries while prepping for the holidays or making a major purchase, but usually we go month-to-month, paycheck-to-paycheck, just barely scraping by. We make impulsive purchases and go out on weeknights when we swore we wouldn’t, and just watch our credit card debt slowly climb through our 20’s, meanwhile picking dates or mates that won’t put a strain on our finances. It’s nearly impossible to believe that my siblings were all married and somewhat fiscally responsible by my age, and now mostly with children.

Of course we all know the embarrassment of being asked if the boy we’re with is our boyfriend, whether it’s a friend or first date, but when I was 10 my oldest sister took me horseback riding, and our guide mistook her for my mother and called her mom to me several times without my sister noticing. I never bothered to correct her, probably because I thought it was funny, or I might have thought it was kind of fun to have such a young mom. I never thought how appalled or amused at the time my sister would have been if she’d known that had happened. I felt juxtaposition of emotions when I volunteered last spring at a Family Equality event and one of the middle-aged gay fathers asked me if I had any children. I sputtered, blushed, and tried to politely say that I wasn’t old enough, which he brushed off by saying, “Sure you are.” Not knowing an appropriate response, I simply handed him his silent auction win.

It’s funny how our attitude about time and goals change as we grow older. When we’re young, dozens of trips to the arcade, and countless quarters spent, justifies a 20-dollar toy. As we mature, though we’re broke, it seems we’d still rather spend our money than our time on any particular pursuit. So we streamline dating with website subscriptions, fine tuning our requirements and expectations of a potential mate, and then set up an efficient block of dates to screen potential applicants in one full swoop. If we were told that we’d have to chat for months or go on dozens of dates before committing, we’d probably never get started in the first place.

Our expectations for ourselves also change. When I was 20 I was worried that since I was single I’d never be in a relationship like my siblings’. I’ve come to realize that it may just take me a bit more time. I used to worry that I’d never want, much less be able to have kids of my own, which seems to become more commonplace every day, and now I don’t really worry about any of that. Perhaps because I haven’t reached a ‘crisis age,’ but I have become content to allow my tickets to pile up each day until I am ready to cash them in.

I suppose I’m not too young to be a father, at least in the biological sense, nor would it have been impossible to believe that my sister was my mother, or that I was my niece’s father. We sometimes worry about being labeled as single, player, or whore, but sometimes it’s the other titles that are truly frightening: boyfriend, husband, and father. Nevertheless, it’s nice to think that even if only in the eyes of children or strangers, that may just be what we appear to be. After years of games, minor wins, and major losses; it’s nice to think about the eventual rewards.

Originally posted on homo-neurotic.com