Gather No Moss, bandslash
Title: Gather No Moss
Author: giddygeek
Pairing: Pete/Patrick
Summary: This isn't going to be another puff piece about Pete Wentz.
Notes: 3500 words, a companion piece to Make My Troubles Rhyme. A totally, utterly shameless wallow in such a particular way that it may just be MY wallow, but whatevs. *g* Many thanks to misspamela for the beta!
Gather No Moss (A Day in the Life)
An Interview with Pete Wentz, by Genn Smythe.
This isn't going to be another puff piece about Pete Wentz, the young State Rep from Illinois who made such a splash on the national scene last year. This will be a hard-hitting story, an expose, the truth behind the man and the marriage; the man behind the myth, the curtain, the feather boa and outrageous politics.
Right. Who am I kidding?
~~~
I followed the aggressively friendly, charmingly pig-headed, and sweetly in love Wentz around town on a warm day in early June. We set out early. I had arrived at the Stumph-Wentz home at 6:30 in the morning, just in time to hop in the car with Wentz as he headed out to drop his eldest daughter off at school.
"Normally we ride our bikes," Memmy told me. In case you think that Wentz is an evil man to stick a name like that on a kid, let me offer some reassurance -- it's a pet name. She's Emily. She's a fifth-grader at a local public school. She looks like her father, with his dark hair, dark eyes, olive skin and bright smile. She's adopted. Although technically the eldest, she's the newest member of the family, and younger sister Jasmyne nicknamed her Memmy on day one.
"Jasmyne couldn't say 'Emily'," Wentz explains. "And she was like, immediately possessive of her big sister -- that's just Jasmyne. So Memmy is kind of short for My Emily."
Mystery solved.
Why aren't we riding bikes today? Wentz is known for his stance on environmental issues, after all. The car is a nice hybrid, but the school isn't far from home. This trip seems out of place. At first I wonder if perhaps I'm already seeing a crack in Wentz's shell, but Memmy sets me straight.
"Dad fell off his bike yesterday," she tells me, eyeing Wentz with grave disapproval before sighing. "No bike for Dad for a week now."
Doctor's orders? Wentz seems unharmed -- no casts, bruises, scrapes, or slow movements.
"Patrick's orders," Wentz says. He grins. "I'm grounded."
"Stunts," Memmy says. "Jeez, Dad."
"I'm too old for that kind of stuff, I hear," Wentz says. He's still grinning.
Pete Wentz is 31.
~~~
His life story is pretty well-known. He was born Peter Lewis Kingston Wentz III, to Dale and Peter Lewis Kingston Wentz II, a school administrator and lawyer respectively. He was raised with a younger brother and sister in an upscale Chicago suburb.
By all reports he was a troubled kid who had a hard time coping with his twice-married, twice-divorced parents. There are unsubstantiated rumors about drug abuse, alcohol abuse, fighting, sexual hijinks. His average grade between fifth grade and sophomore year was a C-. Friends from those days say Wentz was wild, angry, and disturbed.
"You never knew with Pete," Darren Hightower says. He and Pete were close friends for much of their childhood. A fight about Wentz II's marriage to much younger woman caused a split between the boys when they were teens, and took years to mend. "He could be happy and sort of manic, or he could want to hurt himself and maybe you, too. It was just the kind of kid he was."
His soccer coach, Greg Evans, saw the same personality traits in the young boy. "He'd give another player the shirt off his back, and two days later punch the same kid in the face. He was at times the best and worst kid on the team, until he stopped playing early in his sophomore year."
And junior year? By then, Pete Wentz was a different person altogether.
"He went on anti-depressants and stuff," Meghan Horowitz recalls. She and Wentz dated through much of his junior year, although she detested him their first few years together in school. "He took a lot of pills, went to therapy, wrote some weird songs. All stuff you'd think would make him less dateable, but it just seemed to make him more Pete. It was night and day."
During his senior year of high school, Wentz tried out for the soccer team and made it back on, helped lead the team to a state championship. He was accepted to DePaul University. He slowly healed relationships with his father and closest friends. He seemed happier.
He'd come out of the closet and, through much of that year, dated a series of classmates, guys from bands on the local scene, and college students.
"He was experimenting," Hightower says. "We all were, back then."
~~~
With Memmy safely deposited at school, Wentz and I head into the city.
"Slow day," Wentz says. I've seen our schedule. His slow day is a month's worth of appointments for me. I mention this, and he laughs. At the next stoplight he offers his journal -- a day book he carries around everywhere, preferring to back up his Blackberry with paper. It is a slow day, compared to the last three weeks. His scrawl fills most of the available space; meet this person here, vote Y on 17, meet this group there, take Patrick to dinner. Some pages are marked by small scribbles, stick figures, illegible letters.
"The kids," he says, shrugging. "Jasmyne's learning cursive, Owen's learning to print. I get a lot of notes."
Four weeks back, another adult hand has written Come home on time. Get presents. There is a smiley face beside the notation. Wentz won't tell me what presents he received, or even who wrote the note.
That's all right. I can guess.
~~~
Jasmyne was their first adoption.
"I didn't know how bad I wanted kids until we got JD," Wentz tells me as we sit down to a quick breakfast in his office, before his first appointment. JD is his English Mastiff, a huge snoring, drooling beast well-known for his, say, delicate aroma, and his mild personality. JD was a wedding gift to each other, what they got instead of a honeymoon. "Patrick knew all along -- he'd wanted kids since he was a kid himself, pretty much. But I was too cynical, telling him the world was going to end, war was always coming, our kids would be paying off our debt forever; all was lost, you know?"
How did a dog change all that?
Wentz looks thoughtful. "The puppy would curl up to sleep on my chest and everything would seem all right," he says. "Patrick would scratch behind JD's ears and JD would snore and I'd look at Patrick's wedding ring and at that sleepy little dog face and think, there is good in the world."
This was before his stint in politics began, when he had only recently passed the bar and taken a job as a defense attorney in Chicago. He worked so many hours that his salary averaged out to be less than minimum wage. He was struggling with the depression that had plagued him his entire life. He needed to be reminded that the world was worth it, and credits Stumph and JD with keeping him afloat.
He credits Jasmyne with making him into a political wunderkind.
"Once I thought the fight was worth it, I started to realize the world could be a better place. And I was listening to Patrick talk about his kids -- he was doing internships then -- and I realized that he was like, twenty, but he was already ready. It took me six months to get to the point where I was ready too, and then I wanted to go out and adopt every kid in the world. I could've brought home fifty kids, a hundred kids."
Jasmyne was less than a year old when Wentz met her, a tiny girl with white-blonde hair and big eyes. She was very quiet. She'd been abandoned at a hospital six months before.
"We thank God her mom left her somewhere safe," Wentz says. "But she was pretty sick. Underweight, you know? She had lice, bruises. She didn't seem to bond with people very well. A baby so young and cute should've gone home in an instant, but it took her time to get better, and then she was so slow to warm up to people. Patrick thinks she was waiting for us."
Stumph had sung a lullabye for Jasmyne the first time they met, when the baby was ill with a cold and irritable, fighting sleep.
"I held her," Wentz says. "I held her, and Patrick sang her a song, and when our visit was over, we were so in love with her. And she was in love with us. She didn't want to be taken away. We knew she was meant to be ours."
How did that spark a career in politics?
"She'd had it so hard already," Wentz says. "I thought, I have to make the world better for this girl. All of it. Even the parts she may never see."
Does Wentz feel he's accomplishing that goal?
"Yes," he tells me firmly, without hesitation. "I'm getting there."
Then it's time to meet with representatives from local Gay-Straight Alliance groups. Wentz watches the kids come into his office and I watch him watch them. I realize, this is no political sophistry. Pete Wentz is out to change the world.
~~~
Owen is the baby of the family. He's a preschooler now, adopted as a newborn almost five years ago, and he's the only child they got to name themselves.
Wentz knew his mother and there's some speculation that Owen is actually Wentz's biological child, which Wentz and Stumph have flatly denied. He resembles his parents less than the two other children, actually, and is least like his parents in terms of personality.
"Memmy has a quick temper," says Andy Hurley. He's Wentz's assistant, and has known Wentz since college. "But she's the most amazing, resilient kid in the world."
We're sitting in the outer office. Wentz is meeting privately with a few of the kids from the GSAs. One had broken down in tears durng the meeting, overwhelmed as she related a horrific tale of harassment and humiliation. Times have changed, but pockets of bigotry remain.
"Memmy's more like Patrick," Hurley tells me. "She has the same kind of heart."
And Jasmyne?
Hurley is a very serious-looking guy. Some say he's at least half the brains behind the Wentz political machine. He's reserved, polite, intense. He has a bright smile on his face when he says, "Jasmyne's just like Pete. She's a spitfire. She's more sensitive. She loves everyone in the whole world like it's her job."
Joe Trohman is Hurley's assistant. "On paper," he tells me with a grin. He too has been a part of Wentz's political career from the beginning, and is also a friend from college. He's wearing a pin on his jacket that says '#1 FAN! WENTZ!' in glitter on a black background.
I ask Trohman to explain how Owen is different from his sisters, his parents, and he immediately says, "Owen is laid-back." He pulls a photograph from his wallet, of Owen playing a tiny drum kit before a glittering Christmas tree. "No talent for music like, at all, either," Trohman says, looking fondly at the photograph.
Hurley nods, pained -- he had been a professional drummer.
Trohman tucks the photograph away again, saying with a grin, "That's how we know Owen isn't really Pete and Patrick's, biologically."
Hurley sighs. "That and basic human anatomy," he says, wry.
The private meeting breaks up, the office flooding with teenagers who look much more relaxed than they had ten minutes ago. They file out, shaking Wentz's hand as they go, and then Wentz comes to tell me that we're off to meet with a group of female business owners.
"I could feel my ears burning," Wentz says playfully, casting curious glances at Hurley and Trohman.
Aren't they always burning?
"The past couple years, maybe," Wentz says. His smile is a little less carefree than I'd seen before; a spitfire, but more sensitive, Hurley had said about Jasmyne, relating her to her dad. The comparison makes more sense now.
~~~
Lunch comes late. Before sitting down to eat in the early afternoon, Wentz charms the businesswomen, then a group of retirees with pension concerns, a Boy Scout troop, and a waitress.
"But after we eat, when we go back to the office? Protesters." Wentz munches away at a salad, dips french fries into vinegar, has a brownie, and explains. In the afternoon, there are almost always protesters -- at least three days a week. Wentz is popular for a politician, but not everyone is a #1 fan.
"I only get mad when they bother Patrick," Wentz says as we walk back. Stumph has a reputation for telling protesters off in no uncertain terms. "I'm always afraid he's going to, like, throw a punch."
Wentz is smiling. He is maybe afraid that his husband will start throwing punches in his defense, but he looks more delighted by the idea than anything else.
We walk straight through the small group of people with signs, professionally printed, calling Wentz all sorts of names that this publication won't reprint.
Or maybe we will.
They call Wentz a fag, a pedophile, a sinner, a hypocrite, on their signs. They scream the words at him as he passes. They stay safely out of range so that security won't bust them, but not so far away that they can't be threatening. We could have gone in a different door. We could have avoided all these people and their messages of hate.
"I rarely do that," Wentz says, waving from the top of the stairs. "I like them to have to look right at me when they pull this shit."
Is that appropriate language for an up-and-coming young politician?
"I'm a rebel," Wentz says, comfortable with that label, at least.
We go back to work. The protesters can be seen from Wentz's private office. They leave after a while, and no one else seems to notice or care.
~~~
Wentz packs up to head home in the late afternoon. He needs to pick up Memmy from a soccer practice, and she climbs into the car still in her grass-stained uniform. It's as if we're in any suburban soccer-mom's life, really. Jasmyne gets picked up from her after-school program at the library and tells a story involving two squirrels, a deer, and Bobby, the boy she chased around the playground at recess. Then Owen gets picked up from Marita's house -- she watches him for a few hours after preschool two days a week.
"Patrick has band practice until six, some nights," Wentz says, unbuckling Jasmyne's seatbelt back at their home. It's at least the twentieth time he's mentioned his husband.
We bring the kids inside. JD greets us with a wave of gas, and the two smaller dogs, mixed breeds named Vonnegut and Palahnuik, commonly called Vonnie and Pal, bounce at our feet. Wentz lets the dogs out into the fenced backyard and settles everyone down at the kitchen table with homework and a snack.
It's now, in their homey kitchen, that I ask Wentz about his relationship, his husband, this man who merits so many small mentions throughout the course of the day.
Everyone knows the basic story of their courtship. After an opponent dragged Stumph into the election melee, accusing Wentz of statuatory rape and more, Stumph had come out swinging. He won over a lot of hearts when he talked about Wentz, and the kind of people they really were -- until that point, many had assumed that Wentz was slick, and perhaps a little sleezy. All surface, no depth.
Stumph insisted nothing could be further from the truth. Wentz said, "Maybe a little. But mostly not."
Maybe a little, but mostly not. They did meet when Stumph was underaged; fifteen, actually. His band played a small show at an all-ages club off Pete's campus.
"Joe introduced us," Wentz says, sipping at his fourth coffee of the day. "He'd met Patrick at a bookstore maybe a week before. At the time, Joe and I were tossing around the idea of a band, and thought that Patrick could be the drummer that we needed."
Was he?
"Probably," Wentz says. "But I wasn't thinking about that when I saw him play. I was just thinking, I need him."
They didn't date for years. Stumph was too young at the time, Wentz admits, and his own life was in a bit of a rough patch. His grades were good, and he knew he'd be going on to law school, but he'd recently been cheated on, dumped publicly, humiliated.
"I was a messy heartbreak," he tells me. "I was bleeding all over the place then. It had been a rough couple years."
How rough?
Wentz's eyes flash. He sips his coffee. "Rough," he says, and that's that.
Wentz, Stumph and Trohman remained friends, although their band never really got off the ground.
"I was biding my time," Wentz says. "Until Patrick was nineteen. That was how long I was going to wait. Until he was in college -- he was working on a double major in music and education -- and I was in law school. Then I'd pounce."
And?
Wentz laughs. "And Patrick pounced first," he says.
They were married two years later, after Wentz had passed the bar, just a few months before Jasmyne came along.
"Shotgun wedding," Wentz says, looking at Jasmyne. "Except kind of literally."
They were one of the first gay couples to marry in Illinois.
"I worked up my nerve to ask Patrick if he would tie the rest of his life to the rest of mine," Wentz says. "And he told me that we were already married. I totally expected more of a fight. I thought he knew better!"
Knew better?
"I was a recovering asshole," Wentz says with a shrug. "I still had a lot of shit to get straight in my head. But Patrick saw something in me -- a spark, he says, who knows what. And a couple weeks after I asked him, we just did it."
There were protesters then, too.
"Yeah, that's what made it our shotgun wedding," Wentz says. He flattens his bangs over his forehead. "Everything I've ever done has sparked a protest somewhere. I think that means I'm doing things right."
~~~
Patrick Stumph's return home from work is marked by dogs barking with gruff delight, three kids who couldn't be happier to see him and rush to get quick kisses, tight hugs; a husband who waits his turn impatiently and then asks me if I want a 'Patrick-hug' too.
"They're pretty great hugs, I guess," he says, thoughtfully. "They're popular around here."
I almost accept out of curiosity. But Stumph is flushed, pulling his cap lower over his red-gold hair, and I decline. Wentz takes my share as well.
We sit down to dinner. The meal is very simple; salad, a stir-fry with tofu, garlic bread. My questions are set aside in favor of family conversation -- warm, sharp, funny and sweet by turns. The dogs beg. The kids want M&Ms and peanut butter on bananas for dessert. It feels like dinner in my own home while I was growing up.
After, Stumph and the kids go off to play, and Wentz tells me a little about his own childhood; the marriages, the splits, the second family and third divorce. I ask if he thinks he functions well as a family man, despite all that.
He hesitates for a long moment, lost in thought. Then he tells me, "I still feel like I had a solid foundation. I knew my parents loved me."
And Stumph?
"His parents are divorced too," Wentz says. "But Patrick is kind of awesome. He can't fail, and I can't fail when I'm around him."
~~~
Stumph comes back to the kitchen after the kids are all tucked away -- two asleep, one planning to read until she passes out. Stumph sits beside Wentz, across from me. At dinner there had been children sitting between them; now they lean together unconsciously, shoulders brushing. They both look a little tired, like any young, busy couple with children.
They look unbeatable.
What's next for them?
"Sleep," Stumph says immediately, looking at Wentz with raised eyebrows.
"I swear," Wentz says, right hand raised. He's an infamous insomniac.
Maybe a little less next than that?
They have a moment of silent communication, then Wentz says, "We're not worrying too much about that. For now we've got our careers, our kids, and each other. We have plans like anyone else has plans, I guess."
World domination?
"Patrick won't sing the subliminal messages like I ask him to," Wentz says, pouting.
Stumph rolls his eyes. "Pete thinks a little highly of me," he says, dry, but visibly pleased.
"Mostly I just think of you," Wentz says, flirtatious.
But really.
"Really, we've sort of got a few things planned," Wentz says. "We're going to Africa when school lets out -- Invisible Children is one of our favorite organizations in the world. Until then we both have things to do, Patrick's kids have competitions and stuff, and I have important votes coming up. The kids have what, seven recitals and a million games. The dogs need to go to the vet. And I want to watch a few stupid movies with Patrick, and hopefully at some point maybe kiss him a little."
Sounds busy.
Wentz shrugs. "Idle hands equals bored Pete equals fireworks."
Figuratively?
"No," Stumph says, and they grin at each other, sharing a secret moment.
Are you sure you're a politician, I ask Wentz -- my last question of the night. Because you seem like an awful nice guy.
Pete Wentz laughs at that. "Pretty sure," he says. "But maybe I'm a rock star in another life. Who knows?"
Author: giddygeek
Pairing: Pete/Patrick
Summary: This isn't going to be another puff piece about Pete Wentz.
Notes: 3500 words, a companion piece to Make My Troubles Rhyme. A totally, utterly shameless wallow in such a particular way that it may just be MY wallow, but whatevs. *g* Many thanks to misspamela for the beta!
Gather No Moss (A Day in the Life)
An Interview with Pete Wentz, by Genn Smythe.
This isn't going to be another puff piece about Pete Wentz, the young State Rep from Illinois who made such a splash on the national scene last year. This will be a hard-hitting story, an expose, the truth behind the man and the marriage; the man behind the myth, the curtain, the feather boa and outrageous politics.
Right. Who am I kidding?
~~~
I followed the aggressively friendly, charmingly pig-headed, and sweetly in love Wentz around town on a warm day in early June. We set out early. I had arrived at the Stumph-Wentz home at 6:30 in the morning, just in time to hop in the car with Wentz as he headed out to drop his eldest daughter off at school.
"Normally we ride our bikes," Memmy told me. In case you think that Wentz is an evil man to stick a name like that on a kid, let me offer some reassurance -- it's a pet name. She's Emily. She's a fifth-grader at a local public school. She looks like her father, with his dark hair, dark eyes, olive skin and bright smile. She's adopted. Although technically the eldest, she's the newest member of the family, and younger sister Jasmyne nicknamed her Memmy on day one.
"Jasmyne couldn't say 'Emily'," Wentz explains. "And she was like, immediately possessive of her big sister -- that's just Jasmyne. So Memmy is kind of short for My Emily."
Mystery solved.
Why aren't we riding bikes today? Wentz is known for his stance on environmental issues, after all. The car is a nice hybrid, but the school isn't far from home. This trip seems out of place. At first I wonder if perhaps I'm already seeing a crack in Wentz's shell, but Memmy sets me straight.
"Dad fell off his bike yesterday," she tells me, eyeing Wentz with grave disapproval before sighing. "No bike for Dad for a week now."
Doctor's orders? Wentz seems unharmed -- no casts, bruises, scrapes, or slow movements.
"Patrick's orders," Wentz says. He grins. "I'm grounded."
"Stunts," Memmy says. "Jeez, Dad."
"I'm too old for that kind of stuff, I hear," Wentz says. He's still grinning.
Pete Wentz is 31.
~~~
His life story is pretty well-known. He was born Peter Lewis Kingston Wentz III, to Dale and Peter Lewis Kingston Wentz II, a school administrator and lawyer respectively. He was raised with a younger brother and sister in an upscale Chicago suburb.
By all reports he was a troubled kid who had a hard time coping with his twice-married, twice-divorced parents. There are unsubstantiated rumors about drug abuse, alcohol abuse, fighting, sexual hijinks. His average grade between fifth grade and sophomore year was a C-. Friends from those days say Wentz was wild, angry, and disturbed.
"You never knew with Pete," Darren Hightower says. He and Pete were close friends for much of their childhood. A fight about Wentz II's marriage to much younger woman caused a split between the boys when they were teens, and took years to mend. "He could be happy and sort of manic, or he could want to hurt himself and maybe you, too. It was just the kind of kid he was."
His soccer coach, Greg Evans, saw the same personality traits in the young boy. "He'd give another player the shirt off his back, and two days later punch the same kid in the face. He was at times the best and worst kid on the team, until he stopped playing early in his sophomore year."
And junior year? By then, Pete Wentz was a different person altogether.
"He went on anti-depressants and stuff," Meghan Horowitz recalls. She and Wentz dated through much of his junior year, although she detested him their first few years together in school. "He took a lot of pills, went to therapy, wrote some weird songs. All stuff you'd think would make him less dateable, but it just seemed to make him more Pete. It was night and day."
During his senior year of high school, Wentz tried out for the soccer team and made it back on, helped lead the team to a state championship. He was accepted to DePaul University. He slowly healed relationships with his father and closest friends. He seemed happier.
He'd come out of the closet and, through much of that year, dated a series of classmates, guys from bands on the local scene, and college students.
"He was experimenting," Hightower says. "We all were, back then."
~~~
With Memmy safely deposited at school, Wentz and I head into the city.
"Slow day," Wentz says. I've seen our schedule. His slow day is a month's worth of appointments for me. I mention this, and he laughs. At the next stoplight he offers his journal -- a day book he carries around everywhere, preferring to back up his Blackberry with paper. It is a slow day, compared to the last three weeks. His scrawl fills most of the available space; meet this person here, vote Y on 17, meet this group there, take Patrick to dinner. Some pages are marked by small scribbles, stick figures, illegible letters.
"The kids," he says, shrugging. "Jasmyne's learning cursive, Owen's learning to print. I get a lot of notes."
Four weeks back, another adult hand has written Come home on time. Get presents. There is a smiley face beside the notation. Wentz won't tell me what presents he received, or even who wrote the note.
That's all right. I can guess.
~~~
Jasmyne was their first adoption.
"I didn't know how bad I wanted kids until we got JD," Wentz tells me as we sit down to a quick breakfast in his office, before his first appointment. JD is his English Mastiff, a huge snoring, drooling beast well-known for his, say, delicate aroma, and his mild personality. JD was a wedding gift to each other, what they got instead of a honeymoon. "Patrick knew all along -- he'd wanted kids since he was a kid himself, pretty much. But I was too cynical, telling him the world was going to end, war was always coming, our kids would be paying off our debt forever; all was lost, you know?"
How did a dog change all that?
Wentz looks thoughtful. "The puppy would curl up to sleep on my chest and everything would seem all right," he says. "Patrick would scratch behind JD's ears and JD would snore and I'd look at Patrick's wedding ring and at that sleepy little dog face and think, there is good in the world."
This was before his stint in politics began, when he had only recently passed the bar and taken a job as a defense attorney in Chicago. He worked so many hours that his salary averaged out to be less than minimum wage. He was struggling with the depression that had plagued him his entire life. He needed to be reminded that the world was worth it, and credits Stumph and JD with keeping him afloat.
He credits Jasmyne with making him into a political wunderkind.
"Once I thought the fight was worth it, I started to realize the world could be a better place. And I was listening to Patrick talk about his kids -- he was doing internships then -- and I realized that he was like, twenty, but he was already ready. It took me six months to get to the point where I was ready too, and then I wanted to go out and adopt every kid in the world. I could've brought home fifty kids, a hundred kids."
Jasmyne was less than a year old when Wentz met her, a tiny girl with white-blonde hair and big eyes. She was very quiet. She'd been abandoned at a hospital six months before.
"We thank God her mom left her somewhere safe," Wentz says. "But she was pretty sick. Underweight, you know? She had lice, bruises. She didn't seem to bond with people very well. A baby so young and cute should've gone home in an instant, but it took her time to get better, and then she was so slow to warm up to people. Patrick thinks she was waiting for us."
Stumph had sung a lullabye for Jasmyne the first time they met, when the baby was ill with a cold and irritable, fighting sleep.
"I held her," Wentz says. "I held her, and Patrick sang her a song, and when our visit was over, we were so in love with her. And she was in love with us. She didn't want to be taken away. We knew she was meant to be ours."
How did that spark a career in politics?
"She'd had it so hard already," Wentz says. "I thought, I have to make the world better for this girl. All of it. Even the parts she may never see."
Does Wentz feel he's accomplishing that goal?
"Yes," he tells me firmly, without hesitation. "I'm getting there."
Then it's time to meet with representatives from local Gay-Straight Alliance groups. Wentz watches the kids come into his office and I watch him watch them. I realize, this is no political sophistry. Pete Wentz is out to change the world.
~~~
Owen is the baby of the family. He's a preschooler now, adopted as a newborn almost five years ago, and he's the only child they got to name themselves.
Wentz knew his mother and there's some speculation that Owen is actually Wentz's biological child, which Wentz and Stumph have flatly denied. He resembles his parents less than the two other children, actually, and is least like his parents in terms of personality.
"Memmy has a quick temper," says Andy Hurley. He's Wentz's assistant, and has known Wentz since college. "But she's the most amazing, resilient kid in the world."
We're sitting in the outer office. Wentz is meeting privately with a few of the kids from the GSAs. One had broken down in tears durng the meeting, overwhelmed as she related a horrific tale of harassment and humiliation. Times have changed, but pockets of bigotry remain.
"Memmy's more like Patrick," Hurley tells me. "She has the same kind of heart."
And Jasmyne?
Hurley is a very serious-looking guy. Some say he's at least half the brains behind the Wentz political machine. He's reserved, polite, intense. He has a bright smile on his face when he says, "Jasmyne's just like Pete. She's a spitfire. She's more sensitive. She loves everyone in the whole world like it's her job."
Joe Trohman is Hurley's assistant. "On paper," he tells me with a grin. He too has been a part of Wentz's political career from the beginning, and is also a friend from college. He's wearing a pin on his jacket that says '#1 FAN! WENTZ!' in glitter on a black background.
I ask Trohman to explain how Owen is different from his sisters, his parents, and he immediately says, "Owen is laid-back." He pulls a photograph from his wallet, of Owen playing a tiny drum kit before a glittering Christmas tree. "No talent for music like, at all, either," Trohman says, looking fondly at the photograph.
Hurley nods, pained -- he had been a professional drummer.
Trohman tucks the photograph away again, saying with a grin, "That's how we know Owen isn't really Pete and Patrick's, biologically."
Hurley sighs. "That and basic human anatomy," he says, wry.
The private meeting breaks up, the office flooding with teenagers who look much more relaxed than they had ten minutes ago. They file out, shaking Wentz's hand as they go, and then Wentz comes to tell me that we're off to meet with a group of female business owners.
"I could feel my ears burning," Wentz says playfully, casting curious glances at Hurley and Trohman.
Aren't they always burning?
"The past couple years, maybe," Wentz says. His smile is a little less carefree than I'd seen before; a spitfire, but more sensitive, Hurley had said about Jasmyne, relating her to her dad. The comparison makes more sense now.
~~~
Lunch comes late. Before sitting down to eat in the early afternoon, Wentz charms the businesswomen, then a group of retirees with pension concerns, a Boy Scout troop, and a waitress.
"But after we eat, when we go back to the office? Protesters." Wentz munches away at a salad, dips french fries into vinegar, has a brownie, and explains. In the afternoon, there are almost always protesters -- at least three days a week. Wentz is popular for a politician, but not everyone is a #1 fan.
"I only get mad when they bother Patrick," Wentz says as we walk back. Stumph has a reputation for telling protesters off in no uncertain terms. "I'm always afraid he's going to, like, throw a punch."
Wentz is smiling. He is maybe afraid that his husband will start throwing punches in his defense, but he looks more delighted by the idea than anything else.
We walk straight through the small group of people with signs, professionally printed, calling Wentz all sorts of names that this publication won't reprint.
Or maybe we will.
They call Wentz a fag, a pedophile, a sinner, a hypocrite, on their signs. They scream the words at him as he passes. They stay safely out of range so that security won't bust them, but not so far away that they can't be threatening. We could have gone in a different door. We could have avoided all these people and their messages of hate.
"I rarely do that," Wentz says, waving from the top of the stairs. "I like them to have to look right at me when they pull this shit."
Is that appropriate language for an up-and-coming young politician?
"I'm a rebel," Wentz says, comfortable with that label, at least.
We go back to work. The protesters can be seen from Wentz's private office. They leave after a while, and no one else seems to notice or care.
~~~
Wentz packs up to head home in the late afternoon. He needs to pick up Memmy from a soccer practice, and she climbs into the car still in her grass-stained uniform. It's as if we're in any suburban soccer-mom's life, really. Jasmyne gets picked up from her after-school program at the library and tells a story involving two squirrels, a deer, and Bobby, the boy she chased around the playground at recess. Then Owen gets picked up from Marita's house -- she watches him for a few hours after preschool two days a week.
"Patrick has band practice until six, some nights," Wentz says, unbuckling Jasmyne's seatbelt back at their home. It's at least the twentieth time he's mentioned his husband.
We bring the kids inside. JD greets us with a wave of gas, and the two smaller dogs, mixed breeds named Vonnegut and Palahnuik, commonly called Vonnie and Pal, bounce at our feet. Wentz lets the dogs out into the fenced backyard and settles everyone down at the kitchen table with homework and a snack.
It's now, in their homey kitchen, that I ask Wentz about his relationship, his husband, this man who merits so many small mentions throughout the course of the day.
Everyone knows the basic story of their courtship. After an opponent dragged Stumph into the election melee, accusing Wentz of statuatory rape and more, Stumph had come out swinging. He won over a lot of hearts when he talked about Wentz, and the kind of people they really were -- until that point, many had assumed that Wentz was slick, and perhaps a little sleezy. All surface, no depth.
Stumph insisted nothing could be further from the truth. Wentz said, "Maybe a little. But mostly not."
Maybe a little, but mostly not. They did meet when Stumph was underaged; fifteen, actually. His band played a small show at an all-ages club off Pete's campus.
"Joe introduced us," Wentz says, sipping at his fourth coffee of the day. "He'd met Patrick at a bookstore maybe a week before. At the time, Joe and I were tossing around the idea of a band, and thought that Patrick could be the drummer that we needed."
Was he?
"Probably," Wentz says. "But I wasn't thinking about that when I saw him play. I was just thinking, I need him."
They didn't date for years. Stumph was too young at the time, Wentz admits, and his own life was in a bit of a rough patch. His grades were good, and he knew he'd be going on to law school, but he'd recently been cheated on, dumped publicly, humiliated.
"I was a messy heartbreak," he tells me. "I was bleeding all over the place then. It had been a rough couple years."
How rough?
Wentz's eyes flash. He sips his coffee. "Rough," he says, and that's that.
Wentz, Stumph and Trohman remained friends, although their band never really got off the ground.
"I was biding my time," Wentz says. "Until Patrick was nineteen. That was how long I was going to wait. Until he was in college -- he was working on a double major in music and education -- and I was in law school. Then I'd pounce."
And?
Wentz laughs. "And Patrick pounced first," he says.
They were married two years later, after Wentz had passed the bar, just a few months before Jasmyne came along.
"Shotgun wedding," Wentz says, looking at Jasmyne. "Except kind of literally."
They were one of the first gay couples to marry in Illinois.
"I worked up my nerve to ask Patrick if he would tie the rest of his life to the rest of mine," Wentz says. "And he told me that we were already married. I totally expected more of a fight. I thought he knew better!"
Knew better?
"I was a recovering asshole," Wentz says with a shrug. "I still had a lot of shit to get straight in my head. But Patrick saw something in me -- a spark, he says, who knows what. And a couple weeks after I asked him, we just did it."
There were protesters then, too.
"Yeah, that's what made it our shotgun wedding," Wentz says. He flattens his bangs over his forehead. "Everything I've ever done has sparked a protest somewhere. I think that means I'm doing things right."
~~~
Patrick Stumph's return home from work is marked by dogs barking with gruff delight, three kids who couldn't be happier to see him and rush to get quick kisses, tight hugs; a husband who waits his turn impatiently and then asks me if I want a 'Patrick-hug' too.
"They're pretty great hugs, I guess," he says, thoughtfully. "They're popular around here."
I almost accept out of curiosity. But Stumph is flushed, pulling his cap lower over his red-gold hair, and I decline. Wentz takes my share as well.
We sit down to dinner. The meal is very simple; salad, a stir-fry with tofu, garlic bread. My questions are set aside in favor of family conversation -- warm, sharp, funny and sweet by turns. The dogs beg. The kids want M&Ms and peanut butter on bananas for dessert. It feels like dinner in my own home while I was growing up.
After, Stumph and the kids go off to play, and Wentz tells me a little about his own childhood; the marriages, the splits, the second family and third divorce. I ask if he thinks he functions well as a family man, despite all that.
He hesitates for a long moment, lost in thought. Then he tells me, "I still feel like I had a solid foundation. I knew my parents loved me."
And Stumph?
"His parents are divorced too," Wentz says. "But Patrick is kind of awesome. He can't fail, and I can't fail when I'm around him."
~~~
Stumph comes back to the kitchen after the kids are all tucked away -- two asleep, one planning to read until she passes out. Stumph sits beside Wentz, across from me. At dinner there had been children sitting between them; now they lean together unconsciously, shoulders brushing. They both look a little tired, like any young, busy couple with children.
They look unbeatable.
What's next for them?
"Sleep," Stumph says immediately, looking at Wentz with raised eyebrows.
"I swear," Wentz says, right hand raised. He's an infamous insomniac.
Maybe a little less next than that?
They have a moment of silent communication, then Wentz says, "We're not worrying too much about that. For now we've got our careers, our kids, and each other. We have plans like anyone else has plans, I guess."
World domination?
"Patrick won't sing the subliminal messages like I ask him to," Wentz says, pouting.
Stumph rolls his eyes. "Pete thinks a little highly of me," he says, dry, but visibly pleased.
"Mostly I just think of you," Wentz says, flirtatious.
But really.
"Really, we've sort of got a few things planned," Wentz says. "We're going to Africa when school lets out -- Invisible Children is one of our favorite organizations in the world. Until then we both have things to do, Patrick's kids have competitions and stuff, and I have important votes coming up. The kids have what, seven recitals and a million games. The dogs need to go to the vet. And I want to watch a few stupid movies with Patrick, and hopefully at some point maybe kiss him a little."
Sounds busy.
Wentz shrugs. "Idle hands equals bored Pete equals fireworks."
Figuratively?
"No," Stumph says, and they grin at each other, sharing a secret moment.
Are you sure you're a politician, I ask Wentz -- my last question of the night. Because you seem like an awful nice guy.
Pete Wentz laughs at that. "Pretty sure," he says. "But maybe I'm a rock star in another life. Who knows?"