The timing of her period was off, so on a whim S. decided to use one of the pregnancy tests we had in the medicine cabinet. Oblivious, I walk in the door, slightly earlier than normal. Down the hall from where I entered the apartment S., startled expression on her face, darted nude from the bedroom to the bathroom, slamming and locking the door behind her. My pants halfway off, my coat still on and my the-game-is-afoot eyebrow raised, I crab walked down the 10 feet of hallway.
"What are you doing in there?" I asked, mouth pressed up against the door for maximum acoustical seduction effect. Toilet flush. Muffled, "Nothing." Very coy, I thought.
"Why don't you come out here and say hello?" Very Rico Suave. (A passing thought of the Ale! Ale! refrain.) "No," S. replies.
"Ok." Somewhat wilted, I gathered my clothes, most of which, save for my winter coat and one sock, were on the floor. I puzzled on how I removed my shirt without taking off my coat or, possibly, why I decided to put my coat back on after removing my clothes. Neither S. nor I had a flashing fetish. Very pervy, I thought as I grabbed the Britta, and snuck a drink straight from the pitcher.
I heard the creak of the bathroom door, and S.'s feet padding down the hall toward me in the kitchen. I put the Britta down quickly, composing myself as nonchalant. The sound of something small and plastic clattering on the wood dining table. A question, to me, "Why are you dressed like that? You look a bit unhinged."
"Why are you wearing only a towel?" I asked, the Rico Suave vocal effect, creeping back into my voice. I grabbed S. and kissed her on the mouth quickly.
"Do you think this means I'm pregnant? The second line looks pretty faint." I look over at the table, to see the pee stick, cover on, sitting on the table where S. had chucked it. I buttoned my coat for some modesty, as I picked up the test and looked in the small results window.
We'd recently pulled the goalie, but had been using the Pope's Preferred Method, sheets be damned. Pulling the goalie had generated some significant anxiety in both of us, but we expected to have some time before the puck hit the back of the net. Early thirties preggers is supposed to be far more difficult to achieve than or current situation would demonstrate -- at least that's what Conception magazine indicated, right next to its advertisements for herbal remedies to infertility and do-it-your-self IVF kits.
There was no faint second line. There was a blue line, the one demonstrating the pee stick had been peed upon. Next to it was a neon blue, batten-down-the-hatches, you're-with-child heart-stopper of a line. Strangely, the creeping fear, the Lovecraftian peek into the madness that lies just over the horizon of the cosmos, did not grip my heart. My bowels did not loosen, nor my bladder unstopper. Gibbering insanity was not part of the equation. Just a very calm response, "Well, it looks like you're pregnant. You should take another one in the morning just to double check."
I put my arms back around S. and continued with my now, for obvious reasons, vain attempts to seduce her while dressed like a playground flasher -- but in a very stylish coat mind you.
I did realize that this was a momentous occasion, and I'd been harboring suspicions that S. was pregnant, so I was not lightening-struck. Sex had been frequent of late, but for all those other reasons you have sex rather than conception. Even still, there were two nights where we threw all caution to the wind, leading to numerous lamentations to the gods the next morning. While those lamentations were mostly on S.'s part, as I was quite satisfied with myself, I did have some sharp "Holy Shit!" while munching my peanut butter toast the next morning following our two breaks with "My god! Pull out!" doctrine.
Leading up to this point I wasn't sure if I'd be ready, and had a number of scenarios simmering on the back-burner of my mind.
a) I'd have some existential crisis about who I am, what the fuck was I doing, and down the rabbit hole, where I'd clink alone at the bottom of a cheap liquor bottle, the last marble in a jar a of wasted life
b) I'd weep, belly up to the magical powers of conception and the universe
c) I'd pump my fist in the air shouting about the power of my cock and its two veg.
OR, my most dreaded,
d) the howling void of total whatever.
It's d) that gave me the willies. I heartily believe we live in a mediated society. People consume a massive amount of media throughout their lives, and it can't but affect behavior. How many funerals or weddings have you been to in your life? How many have you attended via media? Hundreds? Based on all those experiences from multiple viewpoints, the mourning wife, the devastated parents, the orphaned children, the happy wife, the bitter mother-in-law, the drunken best man, the sluttly bridesmaids, you have a very rigorous and structured emotional behaviour mapped out for every situation -- even if you've never been to a wedding or a funeral before.
Army troops in basic training, never been battle tested, yet ready to fight when the shit hits. The Manchurian Candidate. You see the queen of diamonds, or in this case a coffin or a white dress, and you act accordingly, either dabbing away tears (very cinematically, of course) or dramatically sifting dirt from your fingers on to a coffin.You've even been to the outer extremes of these life-changing experiences: the deaths of children, husbands, parents, pets, the marriages of old and young, gay, straight and transexual. You have an emotional code embedded in you for each of these situations. This code is there, most importantly, whether or not you want it to be, and you're likely to act on it unthinkingly.
So my big fear was hearing "I'm pregnant!" and then finding myself falling back into pre-programmed, media created emotional subroutines. Or worst of all, not knowing how to act, finding that my natural emotional understanding of the situation has been completely short circuited, or had withered to nothing, and I would fall between the cracks of created emotional knowledge, real emotional knowledge, and the real emotion that emerges in life changing situations. I didn't want to be locked up in the ever more constraining ties of "How should I create myself to be in this situation?" The mediated father, a tasteful combination of behavioral paralysis and emotional flatline. I believe increasing mediation leads to the deadening of life's substance, and the emotions that should touch you and create the apotheosis of feeling. There are certain things through which you should commune with God, and this is one of them.
For me, I found there were no pre-programmed responses. These events, which found both of us half naked, standing in the entrance to our kitchen, our cats yowling plaintively in the background, NPR droning doom from the kitchen radio, the click of the fridge ending its cycle, the distant horn on the street below, the Brooklyn winter night knocking police-state-style ("Open up motherfucker!") on the window-glass, were trailblazing.
A rent zigged through the mediated New Yorker façade, cynicism and wry bon mots fell meaningless to the floor. Profanity was struck dumb and purposeless, with the requisite "Oh, fucks" and "Oh, shits" sounding as ridiculous as they look here in writing. The scales fell away.
Everything was then quiet, a break in the radio patter and the feline chaos in the den, a pause in the winter air swirling outside with no reptile hisses from the radiators. Reality swelled around us and the mediation of our worlds cracked, flaking like paint, the chips of our life's mediation scattering across the floor. Canned laughter, jumpcuts, swelling violins and authoritative editorial voices receded before tiny unformed fetus feet.
The reality of now washed over me. Filled the space between us, binding S. and me and life.
There was a pause, but we were both smiling.
"Are we ready for this?" S. looked at me.
We continued to smile.
"I am." The most sincere sentence I've ever uttered in my life.
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