Tales from the Dad Side Read online

  “When should we start a college fund?” She sounded like a Morgan Stanley commercial.

  “Why bother?” I said flippantly, unaware of the power of compound interest over twenty years; instead, I turned my attention momentarily to pressing matters. “Pass me the People magazine. I want to do the crossword.”

  A five-letter word that means “review word for a successful show”?

  BOFFO I carefully printed perpendicular to BORK, waiting for nature to take its course. Killing time later, I walked past the nursery with all of the bassinets lined up in rows with screaming strangers, and at that moment I wondered what my parents had gone through on my birthday almost exactly thirty years earlier. Family historians remember my mother had contractions for thirty-six excruciating hours—a labor any longer and they’d have made her an honorary Teamster.

  Eighteen months after my mom and dad’s wedding and honeymoon in the Wisconsin Dells, where they memorialized their big trip by keeping every menu from every restaurant they visited, it was time for my world premiere. At two o’clock in the morning on October 19, my mother was in the delivery room of the town’s only hospital when her attending physician made the shocking announcement that my birth was delayed because I was essentially stuck somewhere between the Panama and birth canals. My heart rate was slowing into the red zone, so the doctor quickly gave nature a helping hand and dragged me into this world with a set of stainless steel forceps that looked like jumbo salad tongs.

  And where was my dad? He was not in the room, he was not in the state, he was not even in the country. Eight months before I was born my father had entertained a hard-to-resist employment opportunity. The job promised exciting travel, accommodations, and a fantastic new wardrobe if you liked camouflage. He was drafted. After a basic training that made sure he understood the correct end of a rifle to point at the bad guys, the army lickety-split dispatched him to Stuttgart, Germany, to make sure disgruntled Mercedes-Benz employees didn’t take over the world on their lunch hours.

  “Put down the cluster bomb, Dieter, and go rivet some diesels.”

  My father saw me for the first time when I was eighteen months old. Despite missing hundreds of diaper changes, crying jags, and a near deadly whooping cough, I was by his account still adorable.

  The stern draft notice from the Pentagon was the reason my father was not in attendance for my birth, but back then few guys were in the delivery room for the actual birth. Generally men would drive their wives to the hospital, park the car, and wait for an announcement. Fast-forward a generation and I was not only in the same room with my wife, but I was her labor and delivery coach, having spent at least half a dozen evenings in various community center basements learning Lamaze breathing, to help my wife during the miracle of birth. Here’s a news flash: that breathing is a scam. It doesn’t work. I prompted Kathy to pant and blow exactly as we’d been taught, and yet during several raving intervals she informed me that it felt like she was trying to pass a DeLorean.

  The cynic in me wonders whether the breathing exercises were developed by nurses and doctors who had grown tired of the expectant father asking “Is it time?” and wanted to give both the man and the woman something to do while they waited for the baby to squirt out. It did nothing to ease my wife’s pain, but if it was simply a distraction to give her something to concentrate upon, may I suggest they abandon Lamaze and install a Guitar Hero 3. That way she has something with which to pass the time that’ll distract her from her contractions, and if she can score seventy-five thousand points before the baby is born, she should get free parking.

  Thirteen hours after our predawn arrival a nurse noticed that our baby’s heartbeat had slowed down considerably, and there was some worry that he was stuck, which could mean the ultimate disaster: a lawsuit. A brief conversation in hushed tones and a flurry of activity as something was pulled out of a sterile drawer, and just as I was delivered three decades earlier, my son arrived courtesy of a set of giant salad tongs. Peter James, the most beautiful child the world had ever seen, made his debut with a handsome complexion the same color as Superman’s hair, blue.

  That event marked the single greatest moment of my life. My legacy weighed seven pounds eleven ounces and would have stood twenty-two inches tall if he’d been able to stand, which that first day I wasn’t going to demand. The only thing he could do at that moment was lie there in a blue knit stocking cap like the neighborhood’s youngest felon waiting to knock over a 7-Eleven.

  “We’ll just wrap him up like a tater and put him under the lamp,” one of the reliable nurses said as she placed him under the cozy glow of what looked exactly like the heat bulb at McDonald’s that keeps the fries warm; the only thing missing was the shaker of salt. Daydreaming about how my life had changed in that instant and how I finally had someone to watch wrestling with, I overheard the nurse querying the delivery team members, filling out his Apgar score, which I learned was how one evaluates a newborn’s physical condition. The closer to ten, the better the score.

  “He’s a nine, very good,” the nurse announced.

  His first test, and already he’s an A student! Later by the vending machines I met a new dad who proudly articulated his son’s grade. “He’s a seven,” he bragged.

  “That’s a great score,” I said, which was a lie. Already so far behind my son. I should have just told that father to forget about Harvard and send an early-admission application to Clown College.

  There was a further wrinkle to our delivery day. One week earlier, a baby had been snatched at a suburban hospital, and now that we could stop being worried about a healthy baby, we could advance to nonstop parental hysteria and worry that our only child was about to be kidnapped by some slug of the earth who craved what we had, a Smurf-blue baby. Ergo we made a pact that our baby Peter James would stay the entire time in my wife’s room and not the public nursery, which meant one of us would have to be awake around the clock eyeballing the baby. We did not consider ourselves paranoid, and the voices in my head reassured me of that, but my wife was positive a direct Bruno Hauptmann descendant was circulating nearby with a minivan and an extension ladder on the roof.

  “You go home and get some rest,” Kathy told me as I kissed my only legal tax deductions good-bye. Amped up on adrenaline, I intended to go directly to sleep, but I was too keyed up, so I started calling friends and family members to tell them the good news. First our parents, then our siblings, followed by miscellaneous family members, lifelong pals, our Lamaze coach, and finally people at work.

  “What are you doing home? We need to celebrate,” said one of my best friends who just like me also had a new son at home. My own father had told me that the night I was born, the guys from his army unit took him to one of Stuttgart’s finest beer gardens and served up what they did best, a large hangover.

  “I really can’t, at six I’m on kidnapping duty,” I told him, which seemed like an easy dodge, despite the feeling that made me want to celebrate the greatest day in my life.

  “One drink,” he pleaded. In fact, an adult beverage would actually help me relax. Besides, when a man wins an Oscar or the Super Bowl, do you think he goes home and falls asleep with the rich chocolate taste of Ovaltine?

  “All right, but I’ve got to be home by midnight.”

  On the way to my house, he picked up my boss, who would give me political cover with my wife if she ever found out about my cocktail guzzling while she was standing shotgun over our son, the future president of the United States. For my extra-special single celebratory drink, my friends had selected a very popular spot, which I’d read was a watering hole for celebrities, lobbyists, U.S. senators and congressmen, and even the mayor of Washington.

  “Let’s go,” my buddy announced as he and my boss handed the valet the keys. Suddenly paralyzed, I could not in good conscience party with my pals while the mother of my child was two miles away in a lonely semiprivate hospital room with bad lighting, strung out on intravenous drugs and delusional that the
bogeyman was going to stop by after visiting hours. There was one other major reason I was uneasy getting out of the car: they’d brought me to a strip joint.

  “I came here when my son was born,” my friend divulged as he paid whatever it cost to see people naked. “When they find out you’re a new dad, lap dances are half price!”

  The way he said it, it sounded like an unbeatable deal for the value-conscious porn addict, which I was not. However, it was the end of a very long day, and while my wife rode the storm with the benefit of an epidural, I was thirsty, and there was absolutely positively no way she would ever find out. I thanked my boss for paying the cover, which I knew he’d eventually expense as a business lunch with the sports guy.

  Inside it was very dark, and the music volume was set to melt eardrums. Aside from our new-father fiesta, there were guys at three or four other tables aimed in the direction of an abandoned stage. The waitress stopped by to take our drink order, an amiable girl who wore a junior college cheerleader uniform that was three sizes too tight and way past anything comfortable. The only one who could pull off wearing that size in public would be Polly Pocket.

  “What are you drinking, guys?” she screamed over the music in a voice at a volume one would usually associate with an airplane evacuation.

  Despite my plan to have a single highball, I was told there was a two-drink minimum, so I ordered a double vodka, which was actually a sensible selection as it was not only pure alcohol, but it could be used as an antiseptic, which could be useful in that disgusting hell-hole of a club where a sane person would flush with his foot.

  Just as the watered-down cocktails arrived I heard the police siren.

  Uh-oh.

  Simultaneously a door flew open and the room was filled with red flashing lights. My first time in a strip joint was the night of a police raid. Tomorrow the Washington Post would run a photo of me being led out with my hands over my face, under the headline “TV’s Father of the Year,” opposite a picture of my one-day-old boy being held by my future ex-wife, who’d been sitting up bug-eyed all night, with a frying pan in hand waiting for the evildoers to take our baby. From the perp-walk photo the new dad would appear to be sporting a skillet dent in the forehead.

  When in mortal danger one either puts up one’s dukes or runs. It’s called fight or flight. I’m a flighter, opting for an immediate evacuation, and was surprised that my friends weren’t ready to run. Instead, they were clapping—what were they, members of the Police Benevolent Association, happy the cops were about to take us downtown?

  Scanning the room, I saw that nobody was leaving, and curiously, there were no uniformed officers in the room. The siren was actually the intro of an Ohio Players song, and the lights were just part of the show. No police. I was momentarily convinced that karma was punishing me for being there. Add my hyperactive imagination, fueled by exhaustion and straight vodka, and my mind played a funny trick on me. I had punked myself. Thankfully, that night at the strip joint there was no bust. Allow me to rephrase that—I didn’t have to make bail.

  In an ironic turn of events, the first performer was costumed as a registered nurse. Looking exactly like one of the two dozen angels of mercy I’d met that day, this Florence Nightingale was swinging a stethoscope à la Mae West’s feather boa. What a multitasker—not only was she an exotic performer, but with her diagnostic equipment she could detect mitral valve prolapse.

  As she tossed her hat with a big red cross on the front into the front row, and long before she was able to gyrate out of her hospital whites, I excused myself from the table, but my companions didn’t care; they were, after all, devoted lovers of live theater.

  Looking for the restroom, I found a deserted backroom saloon that had a couple pay phones and an odd feature for this type of business, a salad bar. Momentarily questioning who in his right mind would eat that stuff considering all of the germs and bacteria and belly button lint floating around, I spotted some of those little Chinese corns that have been a weakness of mine since college. Picking up a styrofoam plate and a plastic fork, I loaded it up with the second pair of salad tongs I’d seen that day.

  It was delicious, but then again I was starving. I nonchalantly dined on a plate and a half of salad parts, and when I returned to the room the nurse was gone and a French maid was on the catwalk. I suspected this was a maid who did not do windows, but did everything else.

  “I have got to go,” I barked on my return, but my companions were oblivious. As I left to hail a cab, they remained visitors to Silicone Valley.

  The next morning at six I was at the hospital, where I found my wife rocking our baby, her head twisted uncharacteristically to the left. I estimated she had a three-Tylenol stiff neck. “I haven’t had a second of sleep and I’m dying for a bath,” she said, carefully handing me the boy. “What did you do last night?”

  “Not much, just headed home,” I replied, which was technically true. I did go home, and I didn’t do much else, unless you counted eating a salad teeming with E. coli in the back room of a notorious burlesque theater. Completely truthful, to a point, I had that same nauseous feeling one has after a Steven Seagal film fest.

  Around noon our friend Tommy Jacamo from the Palm restaurant, where we’d gotten engaged, brought my wife a lobster that was exactly the same weight as my son, seven pounds eleven ounces, which at that place would have cost eighteen thousand dollars, plus parking. By the time the lobster carcass was sucked clean, I was helping the new mom remove the napkins I’d festooned around her neck when my friend whom I’d left at the strip joint twelve hours earlier materialized at her door with a wrapper full of grocery-store flowers. A lovely thought. He then sweetly offered an unparalleled compliment to a mother who’d just gone through over a dozen torturous hours of delivery and a sleepless night in a scary metropolitan trauma center.

  “What’s with the kid’s hair? You’re both blonds. He looks Cambodian.”

  A wonderful bedside manner. He was the kind of person who really needed sometimes to edit his conversation but did not, which was evidenced by the next thing to spill out of his yap trap.

  “Did you tell her about the strip joint?”

  “Strip joint?”

  “He’s kidding,” I guffawed, knowing that he would instantly gauge from the nervous yet brazen tone of my voice that this was a third-rail topic that must be derailed at that exact moment.

  “The fancy one up from the Safeway.”

  Luckily for him we were in a hospital, so in a few moments after I’d choked the life out of him and left his body near a Dumpster out back, somebody in a white coat could revive him, as long as he had a valid Blue Cross card in his pocket.

  “Are you telling me…” I could tell by the tone of my wife’s voice that this would be the mother of all butt chewings. “While I was here after fifteen hours of labor on the hottest day of the year staying conscious so nobody would kidnap our baby, you were at a topless joint?”

  “It was bottomless, too,” my soon-to-be ex-friend chimed in. “But he didn’t stay for that.”

  What was he doing? Was this a hidden-camera segment for Montel? This must have been what it was like on that mountain with the Donner party at the moment they realized that they had limited buffet options. “If you’re not using your fingers…can I snack on your index?”

  An unhealthy period of quiet swept across the maternity ward as he tried to change the subject, rapping his fingernail on the side of the plastic see-through bassinet, trying to wake up our son. Luckily, our blue baby with the thick black hair was a very sound sleeper. Sensing that his work destroying our family was done, my friend left.

  “She wasn’t really mad, was she?” he asked a week later.

  “Not at all,” I snapped back as I stared at his rib cage, trying to use mind control to stop his beating heart. In reality, she was hurt, but she had a 7-pound baby to tend to, and a 170-pound bigger baby to train. For that next year, I always wondered whether she’d memorized Raoul Felder’s 800 n
umber, occasionally dialing it for practice.

  While it’s easy to become a dad, the simple act of a birth does not make you a father; that is something that is learned along the way. Intelligence does not equal wisdom. It’s been twenty-some years since that night, and considering the emotional blowback, I can honestly say I have not been to a strip joint since, and I’ve got the single-dollar bills to prove it.

  My friend was never invited to share the miracle of my two daughters’ births. Mary was born on November 1, All Saints’ Day, which I have a feeling God had a hand in. According to what I’ve read on Craigslist, that is one of the hardest days of the calendar year to book a lap dancer.

  Our final child, Sally, was also born in July, and within an hour of her arrival, her brother, Peter, and sister, Mary, were in the room, singing “Happy Birthday.” Mary was a typical three-year-old, mesmerized, paying rapt attention to the new baby for almost a minute, and then bored silly. She must have thought she was at a restaurant: “Me use potty?”

  She excused herself to the private bath, and a few minutes later, after some suspicious giggling, the door swung open, and there she stood naked. We knew it was an attention-getting reaction to the new baby, but it was also really cute. That was around the time U.S. House Republicans had something called the Contract with America. “Look at the nudie,” my wife said, laughing. “She’s a regular Nudie Gingrich.”