In a real-life case of the controversial 2005 children’s book about gay penguins, And Tango Makes Three, a male penguin couple in the Polar Land zoological park in Harbin, northern China, that last month were separated from their colony for stealing eggs from straight couples, has been given some of their own to look after, and now are being praised as model parents.

The flightless male birds were segregated after they were seen placing stones at the feet of parents before waddling away with their fertile eggs. Zookeepers said the couple were removed from the group not because of discrimination, but so as keep the colony tranquil during hatching time.

Dismayed visitors complained it was unfair to ostracize the couple and prevent them from becoming surrogate fathers, and urged the zoo to give them a chance at daddyhood. In response, zookeepers gave the prospective fathers two eggs to hatch “from another couple whose hatching ability had been poor, and they've [the male penguins] turned out to be the best parents in the whole zoo.”

“One of the responsibilities of being a male adult is looking after the eggs,” stated a zoo worker. “Despite the fact that they can't have eggs naturally, it does not take away their biological drive to be a parent.”

Central Park Zoo in New York City is home to Roy and Silo, the real-life happy penguin dads depicted in the children’s book. Zoos in Japan and Germany also have documented domesticated male penguin father couples.

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Image from the dailymail.co.uk

When I was half my current age, say 25, my beard was mostly dark brown with black and freak red and blonde hairs thrown in. Nowadays, pushing 50, my beard color runs what I call the full spectrum of gray — from dark brown to blonde and frosty red to silvery white, more dark hair than light still, in a facial hair pattern that some call a vanDude, with sideburns cut on the diagonal.

Let’s call it a van Dyke. Goatee works too. It’s thick along my chin in the places it’s not shaved, as of this writing about an inch long off the chin. Nowadays I don’t shave but every few days though I sometimes go for weeks without trimming anything. I enjoy being scruffy, and it’s a sexy look, but I still shave and trim my facial hair, though my work doesn’t require it, for various personal reasons.

The main reason I shave the sides of my chin is to keep the two sides symmetrical. I have a smooth triangular patch along my left jawline where hair won’t ever grow back. The hair follicles were burned out from radiation treatment for cancer five years ago, and the skin is bare but clean and healthy. I miss growing a full beard but I gratefully sacrificed it for being cancer-free.

So the vanDude style suits me, because I can shave enough of the right side of my face to even it out, and the section on my left side that doesn’t even need shaving also saves time and Barbasol shave cream.

Still, there’s fine, short hair peppered across my entire lower face, between and below my eyes, ears, nose. It’s all draining south from the crown of my head, down to my Adam’s apple, down my nape, across the shoulders, and down the back to my ass. Pretty much wall-to-wall carpeting.

President Abe “Log-splitter” Lincoln, who shared a bed with Joshua Speed for five years, was asked, “How long should a man’s legs be?” and replied, “Long enough to reach the ground.” A 1960s-era party joke riffed on that: “How large should a man's erect penis be?” to which the answer was, “Long enough to reach the ground.”

So let’s ask in all honesty: What size dick is big enough for you? Are you satisfied with your size? Why or why not? Do you have a different standard for the men you have sex with than for yourself?

Don’t tell me you never think or talk about these things. The obsession with dick size is infused in gay/bi men’s lingo (“size queen”) and omnipresent in queer men’s culture. Gay and especially bisexual men are stereotyped as oversexed — that is, as always wanting sex — but along with this common misconception is the idea that they’re also all well hung.

A  recent vodka ad run on the back cover of several gay men’s mags displays a metal ruler with each inch mark marked 8. Their press release stated that the display ad takes “a humorous look at gay men and their fascination with perfect, eight-inch ‘member’ measurements.”

Of course, if eight inches is considered the perfect cock size, more than 90% of all men fall short of the mark. That’s an expectation that is bound to fail.

As it turns out, defining “Daddy-ness” isn’t any easier than explaining “Bear-ness.” But we all know what our own Dad looks like, right? Older, mature, masculine. Facial hair, bald/ing or shaved head, maybe. Gray/ing hair. Paunchy or stout or muscular, hairy in all the right places. But WTF?! — isn’t that the description for Bear? Didn't Daddy magazine start around the same time as Bear mag anyways? These masculine identity/marketing shifts get confusing sometimes …

I was maybe 33 years old when I realized I was rapidly becoming a Daddy. My beard always made me look older, but I always went for older men. Once I was topping a man ten years older who started calling me Daddy. “Daddy-who? Me?” He responded so strongly when I called him “boy” that I knew he wanted me to teach him to be Daddy’s good boy. Being Daddy in bed was definitely a hot and safer experience, and I wanted more.

I did a self-assessment while contemplating the experience of being called Daddy during the rest of my thirties. True, I had grown some gray hairs in my medium-brown beard. Sure, my head hair was thinning and my chest hair was thickening. Hair sprouted on my ears, shoulders, upper back, and ass. It dawned on me that I was now old enough to be perceived as someone’s daddy, even though I was well aware that technically I was capable of fathering children.

I admit it, I’m queer. Gay. Bi. Homo. I’ve been all those and much more. I’ve even been happily, non-masturbatorily celibate for a year in my early twenties. But for just over four years now (our anniversary was October 10), I’ve been in a gay marriage. Queer marriage. Bi/gay marriage. Same-sex marriage.

Whatever you call it, I’m proud to admit that my marriage is by most standards unconventional. Two professional middle-aged Daddybears with two geriatric mutts who live in a house on a corner. We pay taxes, we volunteer, we always vote, we’re good neighbors. We were born in this country, and lived here all our lives.

So, other than the fact that we’re both dudes, in all other ways our married life is conventional. But our unconventionality is no reason my spouse and I should be denied the same civil marriage rights granted to the unmarried cross-sex couple who live next door. Why are they considered more worthy of civil marriage rights than our family?

As my husbear and I have been learning for nearly four years now, married life in a same-sex relationship is amazingly fulfilling.

Had it been possible 30 years ago that I could marry the man of my dreams, I would have. But many of us thought that, since gay/bi men were supposed to act like mansluts and fuck multiple partners, why would we want to settle down and get married?

So because society tells us that we’re innately incapable of creating loving families, we buy the lie. This “conventional wisdom” is circular logic: gay people are promiscuous (have multiple partners) because they can’t get legally married, and at the same time they’re denied the full status of civil marriage because society considers them promiscuous.

My usual tip for friends visiting New Orleans is: Never drink anything named after a natural disaster. Now I would add this friendly bit of advice: The best way to encounter a hurricane … is from a distance.

Evading Hurricane Gustav by a day, the husbear and I arrived back home late Sunday afternoon on Labor Day weekend, returning early from our holiday trip to New Orleans for Southern Decadence 2008.

We were two of nearly two million people evacuated in the Gulf region, and two of several hundred daddies, bears, leathermen, and other homomasculine guys and hunters whose “decadent” plans were dramatically altered by the prospect of a hurricane directly hitting the city — not the kind of blowjob savored by the thousands of queer men partying on Bourbon Street over the long weekend.

Queer or not, NOLA residents and tourists alike were keenly aware that Southern Decadence was cancelled during Hurricane Katrina three years ago.

Major gay/bi men’s events scheduled during the weekend were interrupted, including Bear Decadence, a fundraiser hosted by the New Orleans Bear and Bear Trapper Social Club (NOBBTSC). Fortunately, the parties start Wednesday, and like us, dozens of other butch homos came early enough to enjoy a couple of decadent days before flying out by Sunday 6pm, when the airport would shut down.

We arrived in N’awlins Wednesday afternoon, staying at the charming Frenchmen Hotel, located on the eponymous street just outside the French Quarter. Normally we would stay at the Auld Sweet Olive, the gorgeous guesthouse owned by our pals Dale and Dave — I proposed to my husbear there five years ago — but they were booked for the event.