Don't Stand Too Close to a Naked Man

have a baby?sitter, it's almost unbearable the first time the kid stands at the door as you're trying to get into the car, crying wildly because he or she doesn't want you to go out. Try and enjoy your dinner then.'

How much being a parent would change my life didn't occur to me until I was heaving up my dinner the day my daughter was born. I'd had dinner at the hospital, then had to stop in the parking lot and throw up: once because of the baby, twice because of the food. When I finally got home, my first instinct was to pack a suitcase, leave a note-'I can't handle this'-and run away.

- -

Before my daughter was born, we learned that she had a potential genetic defect. It's a horror that a lot of people go through. I understand it. Our doctor was very concerned. A specialist said, 'It's within normal values for this certain enzyme, but it's on the edge.'

Everything worked out okay.

During the tests, our doctor had a picture of my daughter's chromosomes on the wall.

'Well, there she is. You must be very proud.'

'God, she looks so. . small.'

'All those rods are what will determine her every detail.'

So I asked if there was a way we could give her bigger tits. The doctor took me seriously.

'No!'

'What about better eyesight?'

She got really mad. 'You can't go in there and start fiddling with your child's chromosomes, young man!' With that, my wife and I took our chromosomes and left. Later, Laura told me the doctor wanted to test me, as well. Before our appointment, Laura kept reminding me to wear clean underwear.

'Are they clean?'

'I don't know.'

'What do you mean you don't know? How can you not know?'

'They were clean when they originally started, but I went to the gym today and I've been running around.'

Laura explained that the doctor was going to want to see my penis. That sounded like a reasonable request. Besides, I'd been wanting to show it to her. Not really. In fact, quite the opposite. I felt very uncomfortable. Every time the doctor would ask me a question, I got pissy.

Finally, I said, 'Enough with the questions. When do I get to show you my penis!' The doctor said nothing.

Then Laura piped up. 'Sorry, doctor. He's like this with everybody.' Then they both started laughing.

I discovered later that the two of them were in on this and just trying to get back at me for that crack about the chromosomes.

I had to kill them both.

My next book will be about single parenting.

- -

It was a natural birth. That is, there were no Satanists in the delivery room. We used the Lamaze method. Look at the word closely. With a little male ingenuity, a well?positioned apostrophe, and French as a second language, Lamaze could be rewritten as L'Amaze. That's what birth is. Amazing.

At the time, though, I kept thinking it was LaFromage, or LaDecoupage, or something like that.

My wife didn't want her drugs until after our daughter was born. I told her, 'This is not the Olympics or a gladiator movie. If it starts hurting, take the damn Demerol.'

That, and a stern look at the attending nurse, and I didn't have to say it twice.

My wife was really good. We'd gone to childbirth classes together and she wanted me there. She could have cussed out the nurses when the pain got too intense, but it wouldn't have meant as much to her as cursing someone who would take it personally.

It's a good thing I was around. Laura was breathing all wrong and the baby started coming out before it was ready. I had to remind her to hold on.

'Honey. Honey. Hold your breath. We've got to wait until the doctor putts out on the eighteenth green.'

Before my kid was born, I used to think very differently about being in the delivery room. Like: There's absolutely no reason to be around. You're there for support, but you're really just a pain in the ass. You coo and whisper supportively, trying to help your wife concentrate on her breathing. It never works.

If it was me having the kid, I'd want to hear a manly song I could sing along with: 'In 1814, we took a little trip, along with Colonel Jackson, down the mighty Mississip. We took a little bacon and we took a little beans. .' I could breathe to the drum cadence.

Men also say such stupid things in the delivery room. Men are such lamebrains. She's lying there, and we're going, 'God, honey, that's gotta hurt,' or 'Will I be able to use that area again?'

The woman is also angry, but she's drugged up, tied down, and what the hell is she going to do about it?

You've got a take your licks when you can.

'I don't like your cooking all that well, either. Honey. And you look like hell on Sunday morning.'

But that attitude changed the minute we got into the birthing room. I gained considerable insight and realized that birth has a deeper meaning for men than we suspect. Seeing the process firsthand just reinforced my belief that men are far more jealous about women's ability to bear a child than we'll admit. Men can build a skyscraper, but we can't hug it, feed it, change it, coach its Little League team, teach it about sex, or spring it from jail when it's caught joyriding in the family station wagon at three in the morning.

I've read that men are like bees; they just hover around the uterus trying to reproduce themselves. I've also heard that men come out of women and spend the rest of their lives trying to get back in. I don't think it's very complex. The whole business of men and women is reproduction; there's nothing else to it. All the arguments, all the horseshit, all the rhetoric is, at bottom, about reproduction. We can't do what women can, so they have the ultimate power. We act like they don't. We treat them horribly because we can't have kids. We demean them-not because they'll accept it, but just to keep them in their place. If women understood the power they have, I don't know what we'd do.

Maybe they do know. Nah, I can't even consider that. Too scary.

I can't even fathom having a kid. I watched that child come out. The pride swelled up in me. Also the anger, and the competition. What I witnessed was something that hurt my woman and I couldn't stop it. And something that made her happy in a way that I've never been able to make her happy.

This doesn't mean her screams didn't make me think, 'Boy! I'm glad I'm a guy!'

That's right. I'm not sorry I'm a man. True, men have all of the destructive tendencies. We're encouraged to be little destroyers from birth. These traits come in handy, though. Once we have a family, we'll destroy anything we have to that threatens it. Women like us for that. Sometimes men get so confused they actually destroy the family.

Some men want to understand pregnancy so desperately (or just get their wives to shut up when their ankles swell to the size of holiday cheese logs) that they'll strap on one of those fake bellies and walk around for a while. This is going a little too far. If you're going to write about it so that we all understand it, okay. It's like Black Like Me. But if you just want to find out what it's like to weigh eighty pounds more, you can eat a lot of those cheese logs or make a movie like The Santa Clause.

- -

An odd thing about fatherhood is the change in camaraderie with other male parents, especially when your kids are still very small. You bond, but the adhesion principle is altogether different from the stereotypical macho posturing about one's fertility and already being able to pay for the kid's college education. That went out long ago, with the eighties. This bond is rife with genuine tenderness, vulnerability, and a little sadness. I don't know why. It just is maybe because having a kid finally connects a man to something he loves unconditionally that, unlike his car or power tools, can actually love him in return.

One guy I know is afraid that someday somebody wearing a suit and carrying a gun is going to walk up to