an fp mini-book by RYAN MARKEL


Throughout a month or so, during my mid-early twenties, my oldest friends might remember me asking them for reasons they wanted to have children – those of them who eventually wanted to have them. Hetero and homosexual and whatever else, alike, I asked them. I wanted to hear an answer that sounded unselfish to me, although I was sure none like that would come. As it is, I don’t recall a single answer of theirs. No matter, for feeling different as one who definitely does not want children, I suppose I was looking to find myself better for not wanting them. I do not pose this question to my new friends, at all, or to my old friends, any longer. It is obvious to me, now, that that particular desire is dictated by something beyond personal taste or even choice. The selfish, the selfless, the competent, the incapable (biologically), the hetero, the homosexual – people want kids. Not me.

Last summer, I recall, I had a lunch party to introduce some old and new friends. Molly made a light soup of Chilean bass and vegetables. Maggie and David helped me put out cheese and fruit. Kelly and Sebastian brought over a few bottles of Pinot Grigio. We listened to Edith Frost albums. It was all very nice. Danny, however, had brought with him, as a party-prop, a clipping from the local paper for that day. The article was about successful donations collected around town for a local girl in severe need of all sorts of money. There was a photograph of this eight-year-old-girl as she was. Her right eye sat high up on her misshapen forehead, and her left eye hung on top of her slacken check. Her nose was a mess and just under it her tiny mouth was filled with huge, indecisive teeth. She had no chin to speak of. She was born this way.

Now, Danny decided to pass this around the party as we sat down to eat and said, with a shit-eating grin, “Doesn’t she look like a super hero?”

I can’t say I didn’t laugh. But, I would like to pose a question of my own, here: Would you rather have a child with a face like hers, or a mind like his?

Living in a border town, as I do, it is my contention that you should probably be in a gang. I’ve convinced a large group of friends of this, and we’ve started one called Balmorhea. Our sole gang-activity is sitting or dancing or standing around somewhere, drinking and laughing. A faction of us ended up in a park some months ago to have lunch in the sun. Aside from eating and then smoking pro-digestive cigarettes, we mostly sat around the picnic table, cynically watching a group of kids, ranging from a sad thirteen to a pathetic twenty-one, running around in cheap, plastic, medieval costumes, swatting and poking at each other with Styrofoam swords. I tried to get a feel for the rules they seemed to play by – how many hits equal a death, what was out, who was in – but the tableau was just too embarrassing to study. I turned to a couple in our crowd, Monster and Heavy, and warned them, “You better hope your kid doesn’t come from school some day to tell you he’s signed up for Amp Guard.”

Quick with a reply, Heavy remarked, “God, I’d rather my kid have a sick obsession with the Ouija board.”

I believe, when she was little, Heavy haunted and grieved her own poor Catholic mother with just that sort of fixation.

It is easy to fool children. It is simple to play on their gullibility. In the role of a parent, I don’t think I would be able to resist that fact. No chance. Too easy.

“Baby Jesus came from a crane,” I can see myself telling my six-year-old around Christmas time. “One special morning, down by the river, a crane gently lowered baby Jesus to the ground and the people found him and the people loved him. That’s why we have Christmas.”

Then, I would instruct my child, with crayons and paper, to draw for me the miraculous delivery of the Christ child. The kid, of course, would hand the scribbling over for inspection and I’d look over what I’m sure would be a globular baby and a crude machine with a long, hoisting arm.

“No, no, no,” I’d say. “A crane is a tall, adding bird! Baby Jesus came down to Earth off the wings of a bird! How could you think I would tell you something so dumb like a baby came from an industrial vehicle? Huh?”

Just to see how he or she would respond.

To think of all the stupid possible pranks! Endless anti-boredom, right there. And there would be games for me, too. I could change the kids name every week or so. Percy, one week, say, and Pizza, the next; If I can keep the names straight for two months, I get an extra pack of cigarettes. If not, I buy the kid a surprise pack of Nerds, or something. Surely, that would be some of the fun of it.

I don’t know why I’m thinking of fun, at all. I’m thinking of all this, anyway, for the phone call you just placed to me. I want to e-mail you every word I’ve just written but that would be rash. I could be hasty. Right now, I think the most rational thing for me to do is to go back to the event, the behavior, that brought you, that brought us, to this phone call, this morning.

About a month ago, you called me on a Friday night, making sure I knew about the party going on up in the Kern neighborhood. I did.

“Do you have a ride?”

“Not just yet.”

“Well, then, why don’t I just come get you?” you suggested, with the exasperation of the extra two miles clear in your voice.

You and I arrived at the house having had a beer each, on the way. As we walked into the living room, we saw Barefoot passed out on the couch. It was only 9:30pm.

“Oh, he looks just like an angel.” you observed sarcastically.

“An angel with Down’s Syndrome.” I agreed.

The Shins were blaring on a stereo for the sixtieth time this year. I spotted La Giggles and Twinkie (Balmorhea! represent) in the dining room, so we shouted and walked over. Twinkie, who works as a mortician, began to tick off the highlights of her workday. I was terribly interested but your obnoxious disgust and juvenile fear of death led us away. In a hallway, I stopped you.

“Speaking of angels with Down’s, take a look at these.”

On the left wall, there were five abstract pastels in browns, oranges, and olives, and blacks with smatterings of neon-blue Krylon sort of drip-spayed on top.

“These are Barefoot’s latest,” I informed you. “He calls this series Venereal Diseases of the Old Testament. I can’t tell if I really like them or if I just really like the name.”

“They look more like miscarriages to me.” you said. “Figuratively.”

You proceeded to the kitchen where you thought you’d find more like quiet. More like chill. On one of the counters a small television set played a Spurs game, loudly. On the counter in front of the TV was a pile of cocaine and in front of that pile was our German friend. He was glass-eyes and chanted, “Catherine Zeta-Jones sells cell phones by the sea shore,” over and over. I wondered if it was some senseless evocative ploy he was spewing, in favor of the poor Pistons, but I didn’t get a chance to ask before you dragged me to the back yard, beyond the screen door.

There, a good number of our friends stood around with wine bottles in their hands, flip flops on their feet, and cigarettes poking in and out of their smiles. For an hour, we chatted around and bantered between ourselves until we were approached by Ari (who’s been bluing my balls for a year, now) and Loner. My hands began to shake more than usual, my knees weakened, and I became uncharacteristically tight-lipped. It was so embarrassingly demonstrative of me and, apparently, even more humiliating for you. After minutes of some invisible force pushing me suddenly near and then pulling me immediately back from Ari (my heart colored all over my face), and you trying to hold down conversation, you grabbed my wrist.

“Excuse us,” you spoke to them with your anger for me.

You pulled me, dramatically weaving through the crowd, back into the house and into a back bathroom, slamming the door.

“Control yourself!” your voice echoed off the tiles.

I hung my head and muttered, “It’s beyond me.”

“You’re acting so stupid! Pull that shit together. Ari doesn’t care for you in that way, at all.” you told me and watched the truth semi-sink in. “And, anyway, Ari’s going out with Loner, now."

I was still shaking as you dug through your purse and instructed, “I’m going to bend over and you are going to get that b.s. out of your system, got it? Here, put this on."

Instantly infuriated by the rubber, I screamed, “The only plastic I use is a Visa, thank you!”

“Fucking fine, then."

I had my back to the shower as you bent over the sink and peeled up your skirt. Minutes after making myself accustomed, I began working you way over and your knees knocked resoundingly on the wooden cabinet doors below the sink. I was taking true advantage of your strange offer, screwing you more violently than is my usual way and obviously more so than you were used to.

You shot over your shoulder, hair flying, “Just what, exactly, are you trying to assert?”

“Well,” I yelled, “it’s white and sticky and it customarily comes out the hole at the end of my dick!”

“I told you to pull out, asshole!”

“No, you didn’t.” I said smartly, but truthfully, and you elbowed me.

You heaved backwards so I fell into the shower and you stepped aside, huffing, watching me regroup and pull my pants up. But it was too late.

“This was a stupid idea.”

“No shit, and it was yours.” I spat.

“Find your own ride home. I’m leaving.”

After you slammed the door, I smoked a cigarette and waited for my hard-on to slacken entirely. I walked out the door, calmly, and Boner stopped me in the hall.

Concerned, he asked, “What’s going on with Jenny?”

“Oh, she’s just paranoid about something on her drugs. I don’t know exactly what.”

Boner nodded, knowing, and I asked him for a ride home.

You’re moving to San Diego in a month, you’ve been saving all year. You’re only twenty, that’s what twenty- year-olds do. You called me this morning to tell me you’re pregnant. You called me. That’s what twenty-year-olds do.

San Diego’s still in your plan – your best friend is out there waiting for you. Your life is supposed to begin out there. You sounded as if you still don’t know what to do about the baby. You sounded as though you wanted me to ascertain from your tone that I have no place in the decision. I can understand that. (You don’t really know me, Jenny.) So many girls I’ve known have left the guy in the lurch – out of anger and out of fear, or out of a staunch belief that the child will and always will be much better off leaning on her and her decisions alone. Often times, that has seemed true enough to me, too, in some cases. But, if that’s your angle, why did you call me?

I know you well enough to know that you won’t give it up for adoption, which is good for me to know. If I could have some say, I would say all or nothing. To keep it, or to get rid of it entirely, are the options that fit into those categories. They are those categories. All or nothing.

We’ll talk again, soon, and you may or may not be in a calmer mood. You may or may not ask for my advice or opinions. I won’t show you these papers, but I will tell you this: I can vaguely imagine loving someone that way, but I cannot, at this stage, imagine loving someone that much. I can’t decide for you. In the end, you have the power to decide for me. You will. Either way, I suppose I should start looking for a job. Get back into school. Some good, I guess.

//

Ryan Markel can balance a cigarette on his tongue but is, himself, horribly imbalanced. He lives in Santa Barbara with his wife and his two dogs, Sarah and Aaron.