We were the only gay couple she knew, my boyfriend and I, and she had been initiating slightly awkward conversations about sex with us ever since we met. She seemed hung up on our gayness, but not in a bad way. What she seemed was jealous. She assumed that, because we were gay, we had both had wild sexual experiences, the kind of adventures she had missed out on, and after two or three glasses of wine she would start demanding the details. Tonight she wanted to talk about infidelity.

“Have you ever cheated on Terry?” she asked me.

I looked at Terry and made my “am I allowed to answer this question truthfully?” face. He nodded his head to one side, making his “if you must” face.

“Sure, I’ve cheated on Terry,” I said, after checking to make sure the kids were all out of earshot. “But only in front of him.”

She laughed and looked at me, then Terry, then me again. Were we joking? I shrugged my shoulders. It wasn’t a joke. I had “cheated” on Terry — but only in front of him, only with his permission, only with someone we both liked and trusted, only when we were in one city and our son was in another. So, yes, we’ve had a three-way — actually we’ve had a couple, and while three-ways barely register on the kink-o-meter anymore, they’re considered the absolute height of kink for people like us — for parents, I mean, not for gay people. As parents we’re not really supposed to be having sex with each other, much less have sex with someone else.

She demanded the details, but I would only give her a basic outline. One was a nice French guy who looked like Tom Cruise. The other was with an ex-boyfriend of mine, a Microsoft millionaire who spent hundreds of thousands of dollars building a “playroom” in his basement — a kind of sex toy wonderland. Terry wanted to see this playroom for himself and so we went over for dinner… and one thing led to another…

We emphasized that we regarded three-ways the same way Bill Clinton regarded abortion: They’re best when they’re safe, legal and rare. Really rare. Two in 10 years? We get to vote for president more often than we have three-ways.

When we were done our friend’s eyes widened and she leaned in and grabbed my arm.

“That’s wonderful,” she said, a little too loudly. “I would love to have a three-way. Or an affair.” She pronounced the word “ah-fay-yah,” for comic effect. “An ah-fay-yah, I think, would be better than a thu-ree-waya. I don’t think I would want my husband to know the details.”

She said all of this in front of her husband, of course, who laughed at what he believed was a joke.

- – - – - – - – - – - -

A couple of bizarre double standards have been getting a lot of press since those “unelected, activist judges” in Massachusetts, as George W. Bush likes to call them (should George W. Bush really be pointing fingers at unelected public officials?), and the mayor of San Francisco kicked the debate on gay marriage into high gear.

The double standard relentlessly promoted by opponents of gay marriage — and attacked just as relentlessly by supporters — is that marriage is about having children. Since gays and lesbians can’t have children, according to religious conservatives, we shouldn’t be allowed to marry. It has been almost comically easy to punch holes in this argument. Not all married straight couples can have children (the elderly, the sterile); many straight couples who can have children choose not to. And it’s not exactly a secret that thousands of gay and lesbian couples have had children or plan to have children through adoption or insemination. If marriage is about children, how is it that childless straight couples can marry but same-sex couples with children cannot?

By promoting this double standard social conservatives have unwittingly exposed the shocking truth about marriage in America today: The institution, as currently practiced, is terrifically hard to define. Marriage is whatever two straight people say it is. Kids? Optional. Honor? Let’s hope so. Till death do us part? There’s a 50/50 chance of that. Obey? Only if you’re a female Southern Baptist. Modern marriage can be sacred (church, family, preacher), or profane (Vegas, strangers, Elvis). What makes a straight couple married — in their own eyes, in the eyes of the state — is their professed love, a license issued by a state, and the couple’s willingness to commit to each other publicly. How a straight married couple chooses to express love, exactly what it is they’re committing to, is entirely up to them. It’s not up to the state, their reproductive systems, or even the church that solemnizes their vows.

This is the reason so many defenders of “traditional marriage” sputtered their way through appearances on “Nightline” and the Sunday morning news programs. Traditional marriage is just one option among many these days. A religious straight couple can have a big church wedding and kids and the wife can submit to the husband and they can stay married until death parts them — provided that’s what they both want. Or a couple of straight atheists can get married in a tank full of dolphins and never have kids and treat each other as equals and split up if they decide their marriage isn’t working out — again, if that’s what they both want. (It should be pointed out, however, that a religious couple is likelier to divorce than atheists who marry in a tank full of dolphins.) The problem for opponents of gay marriage isn’t that gay people are trying to redefine marriage but that straight people have redefined marriage to a point that it no longer makes any sense to exclude gay couples. Gay people can love, gay people can commit. Some of us even have children. So why can’t we get married?

But supporters of gay marriage have been peddling this same double standard, and it’s just as easy to punch holes in.

Gene Robinson, the openly gay Episcopal bishop of the Diocese of New Hampshire, told the Associated Press that “it serves the common good also to support same-gender couples who wish to pledge fidelity, monogamy and lifelong commitment.” On “Larry King Live,” Gavin Newsom, the heterosexual mayor of San Francisco, claimed that he was only “advancing the bond of love and monogamy.” On CNN “Newsnight With Aaron Brown,” conservative commentator and early gay marriage advocate Andrew Sullivan described the gay marriage movement as “a very conservative thing … We’re arguing for the same conservative values of family and responsibility and monogamy that everybody else is.” In the Washington Times, Democratic consultant Michael Goldman encouraged Democrats to defend civil unions for gays by saying, “[They're] about two things, which I favor — monogamy and accountability.”

But of course straight couples don’t have to be monogamous to be married or married to be monogamous. Monogamy isn’t compulsory and its absence doesn’t invalidate a marriage. There are hundreds of thousands of heterosexual married couples involved in the organized swinging movement and God only knows how many disorganized swingers there are out there. Married straight couples are presumed to be monogamous until proven otherwise, and that assumption serves as a powerful inducement to be (or appear to be) monogamous. Even most swinging couples prefer to be seen as monogamous by friends, family and associates. But as with children, monogamy is optional. It’s up to each individual couple to decide for themselves if monogamy is central to their commitment.

By promoting the idea that monogamy is central to marriage and that all gay couples who want to marry want to be monogamous, gay marriage supporters are puffing up a losing argument. Just as supporters of gay marriage can produce gay and lesbian couples with children, opponents of gay marriage won’t have to search too hard to find non-monogamous gay couples among the thousands of same-sex couples who wed in San Francisco (before the courts called a halt to same-sex marriages there), and are marrying now in Massachusetts.

Indeed, my own relationship presents a tough case for opponents and supporters of gay marriage alike. My boyfriend and I have a child; we’re thinking of adopting another. If children are the gold standard, we should be married. But if monogamy is the gold standard, then the couple of three-ways we admit to having disqualify us.

All sorts of nightmare scenarios play out in people’s minds when a male couple — particularly one with kids — admits to being nonmonogamous. While married couples are presumed to be sober monogamists until proven otherwise, nonmonogamous gay male couples are presumed to be reckless sluts until proven otherwise. So, for the record: My boyfriend and I don’t hang out in sleazy bars at all hours, we don’t have three-ways with men we’ve met on the Internet, and neither of us is willing to take irrational risks for the sake of the next orgasm. Like a huge number of straight couples, we have an understanding. “Cheating” is permissible under a few tightly controlled and highly unlikely circumstances; finally, all outside sexual contact has to be very safe — indeed, it has to be hypersafe, almost comically safe. We’ve never done anything, nor would we ever do anything, that would put our child at risk. (There will be no Kramer vs. Kramer moments, i.e., no strange adults wandering nude through our house in the middle of the night.) For all intents and purposes, the limits we’ve placed on outside sexual contact have resulted in a sort of de facto monogamy. In the 10 years we’ve been together the planets have aligned on a couple of occasions. We’re more nonmonogamous in theory than in practice.

So why not keep our mouths shut and let people assume we’re monogamous? For the most part that’s what we do — gay or straight, it’s what most couples with understandings about outside sexual contact do. Like most long-term couples, my boyfriend and I don’t rub our friends’ noses in the details of our private life — unless we’re pressed, of course, by drunk straight friends. But sexual honesty is a hard habit to break. Once you’ve told people that you’re gay, telling them that you’re nonmonogamous seems like pretty small beans. And with so many supporters of gay marriage busily promoting a double standard about monogamy, I thought at least one gay couple who wanted to marry but didn’t want to be monogamous should speak up. We want equal marriage rights, after all, not the right to be held to a higher standard than straight people hold themselves — on being parents or being strictly monogamous.

There are two lines of thought when it comes to allowing gay men to marry: Marriage will change us, making us more monogamous, or we will change marriage, making it less monogamous. On “Talk of the Nation,” Jonathan Katz, executive coordinator of Larry Kramer Initiative for Lesbian and Gay Studies at Yale University, made the case for the latter. “[Monogamy is] one of the pillars of heterosexual marriage and perhaps its key source of trauma,” Katz said. “Could it be that the inclusion of lesbian and gay same-sex marriage may, in fact, sort of de-center the notion of monogamy and allow the prospect that marriage need not be an exclusive sexual relationship among people?” In his new book “Gay Marriage: Why It Is Good for Gays, Good for Straights, and Good for America,” Jonathan Rauch writes that, “once gay couples are equipped with the entitlements and entanglements of legal marriage, same-sex relationships will continue to move toward both durability and exclusivity.”

I think it’s possible that Katz and Rauch are both right. If gay marriage is legalized once and for all, not all gay married couples will choose to be monogamous, just as not all straight couples choose to be monogamous. I would guess that married gay male couples will be nonmonogamous at higher rates than married straight couples. (Married lesbians, studies show, will be monogamous at higher rates than straight or gay male couples.) But with marriage comes the assumption of monogamy and, if a couple has kids, a host of logistical and ethical road blocks to being nonmonogamous. Marriage may not transform gay men into models of monogamous behavior, but marriage and family life will nudge us in that direction, moving us toward durability and exclusivity. But as gay people tend to be more open about the details of our sexual lives, gay couples with “understandings” about outside sexual contact are likelier to be honest and, therefore, likelier to promote the notion that marriage need not be an exclusive sexual relationship.

Ultimately gay people only want what straight people already have: the right for each couple to define marriage for themselves. Kids? No kids? Sexually exclusive? Open relationship? A lifetime? A starter marriage? Other people’s standards — particularly their double standards — do not bind straight couples. They shouldn’t bind gay ones either.

- – - – - – - – - – - -

Oh, and speaking of trauma …

I agree with Katz when he says that monogamy is “one of the pillars of heterosexual marriage and perhaps its key source of trauma.” It’s almost impossible for two people to be all things to each other sexually, and the expectation that two people can or should be all things to each other sexually — that they should never find another person attractive or act on that attraction — does a great deal of harm. Human beings didn’t evolve to be monogamous, and everything from divorce rates to recent impeachment proceedings prove, I think, that the expectation of lifelong monogamy places an incredible strain on a marriage. Being monogamous is hard work; it’s not natural (even disgraced virtuecrat William Bennett concedes this point!) and it doesn’t come easily to human beings or very many other mammals. But our concept of love and marriage has as its foundation not only the expectation of monogamy but the idea that where there’s love, monogamy should be easy and joyful.

Since I don’t demand or expect complete fidelity from my boyfriend, I’m not traumatized when he finds another guy attractive. Unlike a lot of straight couples, we’ve found a way to make our desire for others a nonissue in our relationship. Indeed, as most heterosexual swingers report, the times we’ve had sex with other guys have actually enhanced the sex we have with each other. Far from tearing us apart, the times we’ve had sex with another man — the times we’ve had sexual adventures together — have renewed and refreshed our intimate life.

All of this came rushing into my head when our friends — the couple with the three girls — announced that they were separating. The wife wants to have her sexual adventures, the ones she missed out on by marrying so young. Since there’s no room in their marriage for nonmonogamy — since they can’t even consider a sexual adventure together — their marriage has to go. It’s a shame, isn’t it? A little nonmonogamy could have saved their marriage, I’m convinced, but they can’t conceive of being together, of being married, without being sexually exclusive. So the desire to have sex with someone else, to finally go and have that ah-fay-yah, to have those adventures, means their marriage has to end.

It’s too bad for those three girls that their parents aren’t gay men, isn’t it?

Professionally, though, I’m more than concerned for Howard. I’m furious and distressed, actually. While I’ll admit it’s been thrilling to watch Stern, famous momma’s boy, battle FCC chairman Michael Powell, famous daddy’s boy, and his flock of flying monkeys, when the hammer came down on Stern last week my eyes were suddenly opened. It’s not just that I make my living, however meager it may be in comparison to Stern’s, doing something similar. Indeed, I was accused of being “the gay Howard Stern” early on in what I laughingly refer to as my “career.” (It was a rival advice columnist who made the charge — whatever happened to Isadora Alman, anyway?) I’m not having a “First they came for Howard Stern, but I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t an insanely wealthy shock jock …” moment. I don’t think I’m next on the hit list; my column is published on newsprint and the Net, not broadcast on our precious airwaves, the only scarce natural resource the Bush administration is remotely interested in defending. Thanks to the First Amendment, they can’t shut down “Savage Love.” Not yet, anyway.

No, what distresses me about Stern’s predicament is that civil libertarians, lefties and sex radicals aren’t furious and distressed, too, and that they’re not rallying to his side — and they should be. Stern’s fine, and his dismissal from those six Clear Channel stations, is the result of an April 9, 2003, show in which Stern discussed anal and oral sex. With his co-host, Robin Quivers, Stern raked one of his regulars, Stuttering John, over the coals about something John revealed about his sex life on the air during a previous show. Mr. and Mrs. Stuttering, apparently, enjoy anal sex — quite a lot — but they’ve been enjoying it a lot less since Mr. Stuttering blurted out this fact on the radio, much to the annoyance of Mrs. Stuttering. The moral of the segment was this: “You have to respect your partner’s right to sexual privacy — particularly if you want to keep banging away at her ass.” In another segment, Stern discussed a product called “Sphincterine,” a kind of spray/wipe/lotion for men who suffer from “swamp ass.” The guest invented the product after his girlfriend called off a blow job because he was rank. The moral of this segment? “Good personal hygiene is important.”

Both segments featured a lot of toilet humor, and Stern presided over them with his trademark salaciousness. (The transcript is available here.) And while most of Stern’s male listeners no doubt tuned in on April 9, 2003, to enjoy the shock jock’s bathroom humor, they nevertheless came away with two valuable lessons. Based on the mail I get every day at “Savage Love,” I would venture to guess that there are millions of men out there who need to be reminded to keep their mouths shut about their sexual conquests, and to shower on a regular basis. And if I may go out on a limb, I’d venture to guess that a disproportionately large percentage of these men listen to Stern’s show. More power to Howard for informing these stank-butts of the importance of sexual discretion and good personal hygiene in a way that they could understand.

Showing our support for good personal hygiene and sexual decorum aren’t the reasons why civil libertarians, lefties and sex radicals should be rallying to Howard Stern’s side, however. (Though you never know when you might wind up in bed with a Stern fan.) At bottom, this is an issue that transcends Howard Stern’s right to obsess over lesbian sex acts and the size of his own penis on the radio five mornings a week. It’s also bigger than the right of his millions of listeners to enjoy his brand of humor and, as we’ve seen, learn valuable lessons. We should be concerned because what’s being done to Howard Stern is part of a concerted effort by religious and cultural conservatives to stamp out the sexual openness that has come to define mainstream culture over the last 20 years.

Frank and explicit talk about human sexuality became a virtue in the wake of the AIDS epidemic that hit in the early 1980s. The United States had already been through a sexual revolution, but mainstream culture — television, radio and film — preferred to focus solely on the social impact of the sexual revolution (see “Love American Style,” “Three’s Company,” et al.), avoiding all talk of actual sex. It wasn’t until a new and fatal sexually transmitted disease emerged that Americans were forced to discuss not just the sex we were supposed to be having (heterosexual, missionary, procreative), but the sex many of us were actually having (hetero and homo; oral, vaginal and anal; procreative and recreational). AIDS forced Americans to start having open, honest conversations about sex and desire. It was an adult conversation about sex, and like all adult conversations about sex it involved a lot of humor. Dying is easy, as the AIDS epidemic made clear. Talking about sex is hard — and the sudden need to talk about sex in the wake of AIDS opened the door not just to condom commercials on television and safe-sex pamphlets in our mailboxes, but sexually explicit humor on “Friends,” “Sex and the City,” and Howard Stern’s radio show.

So now Howard Stern is in trouble for talking about sex like an adult, for using humor, and for doing it on the radio — something he’s been doing for more than a decade, something he was celebrated for doing until very recently. Stern didn’t say or do anything obscene — not by the standards of the communities where his show is aired, and certainly not by the standards of the people who tune in to his program. George W. Bush’s version of “the feds” are after Stern for what he symbolizes — the ’90s’ sexual openness, frank and humorous discussion of desire — and Stern is not the only one they’re persecuting. The through-the-looking-glass treatment of Janet Jackson after the Super Bowl, the Justice Department’s ongoing investigation of mainstream porn producers, the prosecution of a woman in Texas for selling sex toys — these are all dots that someone needs to connect to the treatment of Stern. And the right’s culture warriors are not just moving against sex: Tommy Chong is in jail for selling a few bongs while Rush Limbaugh, abuser of maids and illegal drugs, is walking around a free man.

Perhaps this is a “First they came for Howard Stern …” piece. And it’s time for those of us who value the freedom of adults to speak in public, and value the idea that not everything on radio or television (or the Internet) has to be suitable for children, to speak up. After all, what the hell good is free speech if you can’t speak freely about swamp ass?

I’m opening with my mom because it’s nicer than opening with George W. Bush, who took a break yesterday from trashing the economy, despoiling the environment and smirking at the queen to condemn the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court for its ruling on gay marriage. Things are apparently going so well in Iraq that Bush can now turn his attentions to more pressing matters, like doing all he can to make sure my mom never has a chance to cry at my wedding.

And my mom really, really, really wants to cry at my wedding, Mr. President. She talks about it all the time, and she didn’t appreciate your remarks on the subject. In fact, she thinks you’re an asshole. But you’re not the only thing standing between my mom and my wedding, Mr. President. There’s also the small matter of my reluctance to get married.

- – - – - – - – - – - -

I was interviewed on a radio news program yesterday about the ruling in Massachusetts, and the first thing the host wanted to know was if I, along with the rest of the gay community (that enduring fiction), “was celebrating today.”

Uh, no, I said, I’m not celebrating. While I’m pleased by the ruling in Massachusetts — it’s nicer to be called a citizen than to be called an abomination — there are several reasons why it’s premature to bust out the champagne. First, despite its strongly worded ruling, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court didn’t make it legal for gay and lesbian couples to marry each other. Instead, the justices ordered the Massachusetts Legislature to work something out, giving them six long months to posture, stall and demagogue. Gov. Mitt Romney has already promised to lead a drive to amend the Massachusetts Constitution. Also, the ruling has kicked into high gear the efforts of Christian conservatives to write anti-gay bigotry into the U.S. Constitution.

So any celebrations would be premature, I said on the radio. Monday’s ruling was a battle won in the struggle for gay equality, not the end of the war.

The next person to grill me about the ruling in Massachusetts was clearly in a celebratory mood — “Isn’t this wonderful! What terrific news!” — and wanted to know how soon I would be going to Boston to get married.

“Not anytime soon, Mom,” I told her, “not anytime soon.”

While the Massachusetts’ Supreme Judicial Court seemed to single out gay men like me and my boyfriend in its ruling — we have a 5-year-old adopted son — we’re not anxious to get hitched, which annoys my mother to no end. I’ve been with my boyfriend for nearly nine years, and our relationship is about as traditional as same-sex relationships get. I work and my boyfriend is a stay-at-home dad. Thanks to Terry, our son never had to go into day care — a fact that would please social conservatives greatly if DJ hadn’t spent all that time he wasn’t in day care hanging around the house with an avowed homosexual. It gets worse: My boyfriend cooks and cleans (He likes it! I’m not oppressing him!); I mow lawns and remove dead, stinking rat carcasses from our crawl space (I hate it! He’s oppressing me!). I haven’t done my own laundry in the last eight and a half years; he hasn’t paid his own Visa bill in the last five and a half years.

My mom looks at our relationship and sees two people who should be married — if not for our own sakes, then for the sake of her grandchild. Every time a country or a wayward U.S. state legalizes gay marriage or comes close, à la Vermont, my mom pops the question. She would be right there with us in Hawaii, she said. Then it was Holland. Then it was Vermont. Then it was Belgium. Then it was Ontario. Then British Columbia. Then Singapore. And now, Massachusetts.

But we don’t want to get married, I tell my mom, over and over again.

- – - – - – - – - – - -

We’ll get to the reasons why a “traditional in every way but the cocksucking thing” couple wouldn’t want to get married in a moment. First, some random reactions to the news from Massachusetts:

You see, I am no longer accustomed to reading book-length works. While I once devoured three or four books per week, it now takes all the energy I can muster to get through my weekly ration of New Republics, New Yorkers and Newsweeks. I confess that I read Mr. Eggers’ very fine new book as I might a magazine, i.e., skipping around, perversely reading from back to front, reading as I fell asleep in bed after taking two Xanaxes. I read chapters out of order, took no notes and in a moment of panic skimmed several chapters for my own name (which, to my relief, I did not find). And I may have inadvertently overlooked a chapter. Readers should bear all of this in mind and remember that this book review, like all book reviews, is merely one person’s opinions. In my case, these opinions were arrived at under other-than-ideal circumstances.

Not, of course, that my opinions matter much at this stage; I have no illusions. In no way can this review harm Mr. Eggers, something that I, as a fellow writer, instinctively wish to do. The New York Times’ Michiko “She Won’t Like It, She Hates Everything” Kakutani loved Mr. Eggers’ very fine new book, calling it a “virtuosic piece of writing” and Mr. Eggers “staggeringly talented.” (I didn’t read Ms. Kakutani’s review; these quotes were lifted from a later New York Times piece by a writer named Sarah Lyall. If they are inaccurate, Ms. Lyall is at fault.) The Wall Street Journal also heaped praise on Mr. Eggers’ very fine new book in Weekend Journal, an arts, living and real estate section recently added to that publication. (Friday’s Wall Street Journal is now a must-read among the film-going, book-reading, estate-buying set.)

Further evidence that Mr. Eggers has nothing to fear from me: “A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius” recently appeared on the New York Times bestseller list. This is an indication of robust sales, of course, but also an indication that the film rights to “A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius” have already been sold, or will be shortly. This places Mr. Eggers in the uncomfortable position of further profiting — he was paid $100,000 to write the book, he admits in his foreword — from the tragic deaths of both his parents, the unhappy event that opens “A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius.” Unhappier still, the sale of the film rights places Mr. Eggers in the excruciating position of having to discuss who should portray him in the upcoming film adaptation of his very fine new book.

(For reasons obvious to anyone who reads “A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius,” or to anyone who remembers Mr. Eggers’ very fine, if short-lived, magazine Might, Mr. Eggers is doubtless sick to death of being told he should be portrayed by former child star Adam Rich. If you have an opportunity to discuss the upcoming film of Mr. Eggers’ very fine new book with the author, you would be well advised not to bring up Adam Rich. If you do, Mr. Eggers has every right to lose patience and retaliate by making a cutting remark about your appearance.)

After being assigned this review, I spent some time pondering why a writer so singularly unqualified to review a book was nevertheless asked to review this particular book. The only reason that made any sense was that Mr. Eggers and I have something in common: Mr. Eggers’ very fine new book is a memoir about becoming, in effect, a parent. I recently wrote a memoir about becoming, in actuality, a parent. All similarities end there, however, for Mr. Eggers and I became parents under wildly different circumstances: My boyfriend and I adopted an infant; despite having two older siblings, Mr. Eggers took on the task of raising his 7-year-old brother, Toph, after their parents died of unrelated cancers within a few weeks of each other.

(Other differences: Mr. Eggers’ very fine new book is currently on the New York Times bestseller list; mine is not. Mr. Eggers’ very fine new book is 414 pages; my book tops out at 252 pages. Mr. Eggers is straight; I am not. And while we both suffered the trauma of watching our straight, blond hair turn brown and kinky in puberty, my parents are still alive.)

Mr. Eggers does not write of his tragedy — and there is no other word for it — as if it were the most horrific thing that has ever happened to a person. As Mr. Eggers states in his acknowledgments, “he is not the only person to ever lose his parents, and … he is not the only person ever to lose his parents and inherit a youngster. But he would like to point out that he is currently the only such person with a book contract.” (Mr. Eggers also includes one of my favorite lines from Oscar Wilde’s “The Importance of Being Earnest” in his acknowledgments: “To lose one parent may be regarded as misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.”) We live on a blood- and tragedy-drenched planet, and while the plight of the Eggers family is heartbreaking, worse fates have befallen other families.

For instance, at the same time I was giving a slipshod, Xanax-impaired read to Mr. Eggers’ very fine new book, my boyfriend was reading Philip Gourevitch’s “We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families,” an absolutely harrowing account of the genocide in Rwanda. (If you’re looking for fresh reasons to loathe the French, my boyfriend recommends Mr. Gourevitch’s very fine book.) Mr. Eggers’ parents died at home, surrounded by their helpless, anguished children, attended by nurses, while painkilling drugs dripped into their I.V.s. Here in Oprah-land, we like to pretend that pain is equal, that no one suffers more than the next person. That is not true, as Mr. Eggers admits. His parents died too soon, they died painful deaths, but they weren’t hacked to death in front of their children by their machete-wielding next-door neighbors.

The general thrust of Mr. Eggers’ very fine new book, besides fate’s maddeningly random cruelties, is how Mr. Eggers and other media-savvy, well-educated young people make their way in the world: They fake it. By holding the roles fate forces them to play (parent, wage earner, MTV “Real World” cast member) at arm’s length, Mr. Eggers and his contemporaries mock and inhabit their lives at the same time, living compromised lives like everyone else, but paradoxically on their own terms. We root for Mr. Eggers as he reinvents the role of parent in “A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius.” But like the dads we wish we had, and like the dads we all long to be (and can’t be), Mr. Eggers’ dual roles as sibling and father figure allow him to alternately play dad and best friend, wearing both roles lightly. If only to spite Jedediah Purdy, it is Mr. Eggers’ life-affirming cynicism and sense of irony that allow him to embrace his adult responsibilities.

That Mr. Eggers can keep his sense of irony alive while his parents are dying and then continue to keep it alive once he has stepped into the normally irony-free roles of parent, breadwinner and provider is no small achievement. Mr. Eggers knows that parenthood is a joke the universe has played on him, but he manages to pull off an amazing double-cross, turning parenthood into a joke that he’s playing on the universe (or, at the very least, on Simon & Schuster).

What’s most amazing about Mr. Eggers’ very fine new book, what staggers the reader and justifies the book’s title, cover art and position on the New York Times bestseller list, is how thoroughly Mr. Eggers’ self-deprecating tone and narrative tricks suck the reader in. Mr. Eggers allows us to remain as wary of cheap sentiment as he himself clearly is, paying us the compliment of not presuming we’ll weep on cue, like Oprah’s studio audience. Mr. Eggers doesn’t rely on the facts of his family tragedy or on his readers’ too-often-taken-for-granted empathy. He dares to entertain us, and then, once we’ve let our guard down, his very fine new book breaks our motherfucking hearts.

In fact, I challenge anyone to read even the first chapter of Mr. Eggers’ very fine new book and remain unmoved. As I lay in bed with my boyfriend one night, while he read about Rwanda and I read Mr. Eggers’ hilariously horrifying account of his mother’s death, I became so upset I had no choice but to take another Xanax and go watch “Letterman.”

I was the only new volunteer who walked through the door that day, and the campaign staffers didn’t quite know what to do with me. They didn’t seem all that accustomed to finding work for volunteers, and only after 10 or 15 minutes of asking around was Andy, the young Bauer staffer I was handed over to, able to find something for me to do.

If cleanliness is next to Godliness, then the Bauer campaign isn’t exactly crowding the Lord. The place was a mess, with paper strewn all over the floor, posters and flyers falling off tables and empty cans of diet soft drinks on every surface. Andy, looking every inch the capable campaigner in blue suspenders and a tie, showed me a cubicle, handed me a list of phone numbers and gave me a script. I was supposed to call everyone on the list and ask if they were going to their caucus on Monday night. If they were, I was supposed to ask them if they were going to support Bauer. If they were not supporting Gary, I was supposed to talk them into supporting Gary.

Pretending you feel fine when you’ve got the flu is exhausting — and I had the flu in a big way. On my flight to Minneapolis, I felt this itch in the back of my throat. Waiting for my flight to Des Moines, a headache kicked in. On the plane, I started to sneeze. In the cab to the hotel, I started to cough. By the time I got to my room, I had the flu. I got undressed, crawled under the covers and stayed in bed for the next two days. By all rights, I should be back in my hotel room laying in bed, where I spent the last 48 hours. I don’t want the Bauer people to realize how sick I am, so I’m relieved that they’ve stuck me in an out-of-the-way cubicle, where unobserved I can allow myself to look as miserable as I feel.

On day three, still sick as a dog, I decided I had to get out of bed and do my job. I had planned on following one of the loopy conservative Christian candidates around — Bauer or Keyes — and writing something insightful and humanizing about the candidate, his campaign and his supporters. Then, from my deathbed, I caught Gary Bauer on MSNBC. “Our society will be destroyed if we say it’s OK for a man to marry a man or a woman to marry a woman,” Bauer said. Seeing Bauer go off about gay marriage reminded me of something he said back in December when the Vermont Supreme Court came out for same-sex marriage. “I think what the Vermont Supreme Court did last week was in some ways worse than terrorism,” Bauer told the Associated Press.

In my Sudafed-induced delirium I decided that if it’s terrorism Bauer wants, then it’s terrorism Bauer is going get — and I’m just the man to terrorize him. Naked, feverish and higher than a kite on codeine aspirin, I called the Bauer campaign and volunteered. My plan? Get close enough to Bauer to give him the flu, which, if I am successful, will lay him flat just before the New Hampshire primary. I would go to Bauer’s campaign office and cough on everything — phones and pens, staplers and staffers. I even hatched a plan to infect the candidate himself. I would keep the pen in my mouth until Bauer dropped by his offices to rally the troops. And when he did, I would approach him and ask for his autograph, handing him the pen from my flu-virus incubating mouth.

My plan was a little malicious — even a little mean-spirited — but those same words describe the tactics used by Bauer and the rest of the religious right against gays and lesbians. The amount of gay bashing that goes on during Republican campaigns is staggering, so pervasive that the mainstream media tunes it out like so much white noise.

On the Saturday before the caucuses, there was a Presidential Rally for Family, Faith and Freedom at a church in Des Moines. Half the program was devoted to gay bashing, but none of the TV shows mentioned it, focusing instead on the Roe vs. Wade bashing. The one reporter (outside Salon) who did cover the gay bashing, Melinda Henneberger in the New York Times, wrote what was essentially a humor piece. But while straight reporters can roll their eyes and write off the gay bashing as so many Republican candidates tossing a little red meat to the hard right, it’s a little harder to ignore when it’s carved out of your own ass.

When Bauer tells people that gays and lesbians are a threat to families, I take that personally. I feel I have a right to be angry. And one day I’d like to pick up a newspaper or turn on the TV and see someone point out that if anyone’s threatening a family, it’s Bauer — he’s threatening mine. Or at least ask a Republican who asserts that gays and lesbians are a threat to families this obvious, though never asked, follow up question: “Oh, really? How?”

I had expected to be one of many energized, new-to-politics, true-believers working the phones on Gary’s behalf, but I appeared to be the only volunteer in the building. Once I was in my cubicle, I took a picture of my son out of my bag and set it on the computer in front of me. While I made calls, I overheard Bauer’s press secretary calling reporters and letting them know Gary would be holding a press conference at a cemetery at 3:30 p.m., at the grave of a fetus found in a ditch. Gary would give his usual complaint about the coarsening of our culture — standing on the grave for emphasis.

While I dialed, my eyes drifted over the pieces of paper pinned to the wall of my cubicle. A photocopied “thought for the day” caught my eye. “Remember, when someone annoys you,” the thought went, “it takes 42 muscles in your face to frown. But it only takes 4 muscles to extend your arm and SMACK THE ASSHOLE UPSIDE THE HEAD.” Hmm, that’s a little coarse, I thought to myself, chewing my pen.

The list I’d been given was of voters who’d indicated that Gary was their second choice. Of the 50 or so people I managed to get on the phone, most were voting for Forbes, a few for Keyes and only one for Bush. Despite ample opportunity, I’m not engaging in dirty tricks. I’m doing as told, reading from my script. Andy gives me a list of caucus sites, so that I can tell people where to go on Monday night. The list has both the Republican and Democratic caucus sites in each precinct. I’m tempted to send the Bauer supporters to Democratic caucuses in their neighborhoods, delivering them to the living rooms of Bradley and Gore supporters. I could cost Bauer a few hundred votes — and every vote counts, Andy tells me, every vote counts.

But I don’t do it. I can’t. My work ethic won’t allow it. The folks on the phone are so pleasant, and Andy is so nice to me, that I don’t have it in my heart to do a bad job. What if one of the nice church ladies I get on the phone — and that’s just what they sound like, Dana Carvey’s mid-’80s “SNL” Church Lady — walks into a room of pot-smoking Bradley supporters and dies of a heart attack? I couldn’t sleep at night if that happened, so I tell everyone the truth about their caucus locations.

Well, almost everyone.

James in Des Moines is just itching to vote for Bauer, he tells me. “Gary’s the only one who can stop the homos,” he tells me. “The Democrats are a bunch of goddam homo lovers, you know?” Yes, I know it well. “You know what we need to do?” James asks. Yes, I tell him, we need to go to the caucus on Monday night, bring all our friends and vote for Gary. Andy leaned into my cubicle and gave me a thumbs up. “We need to enforce God’s law when it comes to homosexuals, that’s what we need to do. God said that homosexuals have to die. We can shoot ‘em, stone ‘em, gas ‘em or whatever. It’s God’s word.”

I sent James to a Democratic caucus site.

Toward the end of my shift, with my head splitting, I blow up at a Forbes supporter. She tells me she was for Forbes because he was so strongly pro-life, an impression she may have gotten from Forbes’ up-with-fetuses campaign commercials. Exasperated, I pull the pen out of my mouth. I inform her that four years ago Forbes was a moderate on abortion, practically pro-choice! “But he’s had a change of heart,” she says. “No,” I say, “he changed his position. He flip-flopped. What if he gets into office and has another ‘change of heart’? Have you thought of that? Gary’s been pro-life all his public life. He’s never changed his position, you can trust him. He won’t have a change of heart on abortion. Gary’s pro-life now, he was pro-life four years ago, he was pro-life 20 years ago! And he’ll be pro-life twenty years from now. If you’re a pro-life voter, ma’am, then Gary is your candidate.”

There was a long pause.

“You’re right, you’re right,” she said. “You can put me down for Gary.”

Wow. This was the kind of retail politics I’ve read about in the New York Times. Volunteers and candidates reaching out to voters, making their case, arguing, persuading. Andy gives me another thumbs up. I’d done it! I’d convinced someone to vote for… Gary Bauer. How was I going to sleep at night?

On my way out the door, one of the staffers told me there was going to be a volunteer appreciation pizza party at a church basement at 1 p.m. the next day.

“You should come and meet Gary,” she said.

“Love to,” I said, chewing on my killer pen.

“Gary is having a press conference today at the World War II memorial by the state capitol,” Andy tells me when I arrive for my second shift at Bauer 2000 HQ. “We’d like to have a crowd of supporters there.” Andy hands me a list of phone numbers and shows me to a phone. It’s about 11 a.m. in the morning, and I’ve come thinking I could make calls for a couple of hours, cough on a some phones and then head over to the volunteer appreciation pizza party, where I’d give Gary Bauer my pen and, hopefully, the flu. But Andy wants me to call people until 15 minutes before the press conference, which means I’m going to miss the party.

I tell Andy I was really looking forward to meeting Gary and getting his autograph, and Andy tells me to come to the press conference at the World War II Memorial.

“Grab my arm at the press conference,” he said, “and I’ll make sure you get to meet Gary.”

Crushed that I won’t be going to the pizza party, I sit at the phone and make calls. An hour and half later, everyone else has left for the pizza party — except for Bauer’s press secretary, who is sitting in her cubicle rustling up media for Bauer’s W.W. II press conference. All alone, just me and the phones, the phones and me. I was going to miss the party, and that depressed me, but my sinuses were running like an open tap, so I probably didn’t need the pizza. And, anyway, I have work to do.

I went from doorknob to doorknob. They were filthy, no doubt, but there wasn’t time to find a rag to spit on. My immune system wasn’t all it should be — I was in the grip of the worst flu I had ever had — but I was on a mission. If for some reason I didn’t manage to get a pen from my mouth to Gary’s hands, I wanted to seed his office with germs, get as many of his people sick as I could, and hopefully one of them would infect the candidate.

So, much as it pains me to confirm a hateful stereotype of gay men — we will put anything in our mouths — I started licking doorknobs. The front door, office doors, even a bathroom door. When that was done, I started in on the staplers, phones and computer keyboards. Then I stood in the kitchen and licked the rims of all the clean coffee cups drying in the rack.

Feeling slightly sickened by what I had just done, I pulled a small bottle of Maker’s Mark out of my bag. I packed it so I could have a little drink before bedtime, without having to pay hotel mini-bar prices. But since I’d been sick the whole time I’ve been in Iowa, I hadn’t been drinking. I took a swig, swished it around my mouth, and spit the booze and germs into the toilet. Having licked all the doorknobs, telephones, keyboards and coffee cups, I returned to Andy’s desk to get my coat. But I couldn’t bring myself to lick Andy’s keyboard or phone. He’d been so nice, and however far apart we were politically, I wouldn’t wish this flu on him.

My phone calls to Bauer supporters didn’t convince many folks to come to the war memorial in the freezing cold. I’d spoken with dozens of Bauer supporters that day, and left at least hundred messages, but the turn out at the war memorial was skimpy. There were about two-dozen people there, mostly campaign staffers, their husbands or wives, and children. I had failed, failed utterly, but Andy didn’t seem to hold it against me. He clapped me on the back, handed me a Bauer sign, and told me to stand behind the podium with the rest of the crowd.

It was freezing cold and windy. Waiting for Gary, I took my pen out of my pocket and put it in my mouth. This was it, my one shot. I chewed the pen, cracking the plastic shaft. I turned the pen around and chewed on the tip, cracking that end, too. Gary arrived, toddled up to the podium and made some remarks about Red China. Gary’s remarks were mercifully brief, and as he stepped away from the podium, I stepped toward him, holding my photograph.

“This is my son,” I said. “Will you autograph it?” Bauer gave me an blank look. I needed to give him a little more. “I talked his mother out of aborting him. You’re my hero, Mr. Bauer.”

He looked at me with his little bug eyes, and broke into a wide smile, his strangely splayed teeth poking out from under his upper lip.

“Good for you,” Gary said, “that’s wonderful.”

He took the picture, and then I pulled the pen out of my mouth and handed it to him. Score! My bodily fluids — flu bugs and all — were all over his hand! When he went to sign the photo, no ink came out. Gary looked up at the cameras and said, “Looks like everything is frozen.” He grabbed a poster and scribbled on it to get the ink flowing, then signed the picture. He handed me my pen, and started to walk toward his van. He stopped to answer a reporter’s question, and I saw him run a finger under his nose. Perfect. I didn’t need to lick all those doorknobs after all.

The Republican caucus for the precinct my hotel was located in was at an old folks home in downtown Des Moines. If Gary Bauer was going to do well anywhere in Iowa, I figured he should do well in old folks homes, so I walked over to witness Gary’s triumph. When I arrived, I was seized by the desire to take part in the caucus, but unfortunately you have to be a registered voter and a registered Republican to participate. I walked up to the old man sitting at the desk and explained that I’d only just arrived in Des Moines, but I wanted to vote anyway. Apparently this wasn’t a problem: He handed me a form to fill out.

You must be a citizen of the United States. Check. At least 17 and a half years old. Check. Never been convicted of a felony. Check. Not currently judged “mentally incompetent” by a court. Check. Must be a resident of Iowa. Hmm … That one was slightly problematic. I was, at the moment, residing in Iowa in a dump of a hotel. But you know what? In the five days I’d spent throwing up in my hotel room, and the two days I’d spent at the Bauer 2000 headquarters making phone calls and licking doorknobs, I’d fallen in love with Iowa. In fact, at the moment I was filling out that voter registration form, I could honestly say I would never want to leave Iowa. I’ll send for the boyfriend and baby later in the week. I signed. I was an Iowan now.

Before we could vote, some “candidates’ representatives” stood and addressed the 70 or so people now gathered in the dining room. Half the voters were actual old folks in various stages of decrepitude, the others were young, downtown-dwelling professionals. A young woman spoke first for Bush. She had originally been a Lamar Alexander supporter, but after he dropped out, she looked at the remaining candidates and, in her words,”settled for” George W. Wow, talk about passion. A little weasel in a bad suit spoke for Forbes, an old man spoke for Keyes and a young activist — quite possibly a Democrat — spoke for McCain.

Strangely, no one spoke for my man, Gary Bauer.

Then we voted. And as it turns out, I needn’t have registered to vote, as the precinct captain just walked through the room passing out slips of paper with the candidates’ names listed on them. He didn’t even bother checking to see if any of us had registered. “We’re on the honor system here,” he said, “so no voting unless you’ve registered to vote and you’re a Republican.”

Whoa! Not that many people take part in the caucuses to begin with, so small shifts in numbers can mean Big Mo’ for a candidate. Someone with a lot of money, like, oh, Steve Forbes, might be tempted hire a bunch of little weasels to go to caucuses and vote for him. This process, I realized, could easily be corrupted by people of bad will or dirty tricksters from out of state.

Staring at my slip of paper, I balked. I couldn’t decide what to do. I had been a Bauer man all weekend, but last night I attended a Keyes rally — just to see what all the fuss was about — and I was really moved by the things he had to say. Keyes is so persuasive a speaker that I left the Val Air Ballroom in West Des Moines convinced that he was the hard-right candidate who could do the most harm to the Republican Party.

You see, when I vote in Republican primaries or caucuses — and I almost always do — I vote for the person who can most damage the Republican Party in the upcoming general election. I tend to vote hard right — I was a Buchanan man in ’96 — because the better the hard right does in the primary campaign, the more pandering the mainstream Republican candidate has to do on the hard right’s pet issues. Witness George W. Bush’s increasingly hard-line statements on abortion this week in Iowa. The pandering may excite hard-right voters, but it alienates those precious middle-of-the-road voters you need to get your ass into the White House.

So, looking over my ballot, it wasn’t hard deciding who would do the most harm to Ol’ George W., and it wasn’t Bauer or McCain or even Forbes. It was firebrand Alan Keyes, the man whose passion and ability to whip up a crowd was the only real story in Iowa this week.

Keyes was surging! And I wanted to be part of that surge, a surge that would be bad for the Republican Party, and bad for George W. in November. With apologies to Andy, I marked my ballot for Keyes and handed it to the precinct captain.

When the results of our caucus were finally read, I was shocked by the outcome. Bush came in first with 28 votes, and he was followed by Forbes with 22, McCain with 9, Keyes with 5 and Hatch with 3. And Bauer? How did Gary do?

He got one lousy vote. And it wasn’t even mine.