…as if told by Joe himself.
It all started, like most things do, when I met The Dame. We were head over heels nuts about each other right off. We had good times. It was swell. So swell that after a while I gets to thinking that this was maybe “it”, you know, the big committed LTR to end all LTRs.
So we starts yakking about The Future, stuff like that. It was cool. Time went on. Then I gets to thinking that I ain’t getting no younger, you know? I mean, here I am at the wrong side of 30 with 40 knocking on the door and I figure maybe it’s time we starts talking about having some progeny.
The Dame, though, says, “no” right off. Just “no”. I don’t mind telling you, I’m kinda hurt by this. Don’t she want my kid or what? She ain’t ready she says, wants to save up enough dough so she don’t have to work for a while after having the kid, she says.
No problem says I. I got enough dough for the both of us. I was doing pretty good with my business and all and I don’t mind ponying up for a few years of her looking after the kid. It’s either that or daycare, right? And she’s got a big pickle up her ass about not wanting to send no kid of hers to daycare on account of her once working in some nightmare daycare place or something.
So, anyway, I tells her this and still she says no. Okay, so I wait and just mention it in passing like once in a while just to keep the thought in her head, you know. Which is good, because it ain’t too long before I can tell she’s softening to the idea. I can see meanwhile, she’s socking away the dough, anyway even though I told her I’d look after everything. But oh, well, as long as she’s on board, right?
Sure enough one day she says okay. Swell, says I and before you can say jack robinson, she’s got a bun in the oven. ‘Course me, I’m over the moon, braggin’ to my buddies and making plans and all. Life is perfect for a couple a months.
Then…well… I don’t know exactly what happened, but things changed. She changed, for sure. Maybe me, too. I’m starting to feel peculiar, like I can’t breath or something alla time. And The Dame ain’t so much fun anymore – wants to sleep a lot, don’t want to go out so much, wants to eat healthier, talks about nothing but babies alla the time.
Also, and this totally freaked me out – she starts getting fat. The Dame was fit, you know, real fit, so I never pictured her getting all shapeless and fat. She’s still running and working out and all, but it ain’t doing no good. She just keeps getting fatter and fatter. Okay, I’m not stupid, I know dames up the duff put on a lot of blubber on account of the baby and all, but still, it totally freaked me out when it happened to The Dame.
Also, she started to smell different. I can’t explain it but it totally turned me off, you know, between the fat and the smell. I mean, I couldn’t bring myself to…you know…doing it with her no more. I know, you guys out there understand what I mean, right? The Dame don’t get it though and get all super bitch about it.
And to top it all off, then she’s also always after me to go shopping for baby stuff with her or go to the doctor or meet the midwife or hold her hand at another ultrasound — like I got nothing else to do or to worry about but baby stuff. It was always something and I’m a busy guy, specially since now she wants me to earn for all of us, right, on account of she told ’em she ain’t going back to work for five years!
Just when I think the nagging ain’t never gonna end, she quits bugging me and starts doing all this baby stuff with some fag friend of hers from work, which is okay with me.
Matter of fact, I’m starting to think maybe I’m not really cut out for all this baby shit after all. I mean it’s all that’s ever in her head – baby, baby, baby…24/7. So I kinda runs the idea by her of maybe we’re not ready for a kid, you know and she just kinda looks at me and says in that real sarcastic, fake nice way of hers, “Okay, Joe, pass the coat hanger.”
That was uncalled for, right? I didn’t mean nothing drastic like that, did I? I don’t want to stop her having a kid or nothing, just maybe realizing that it ain’t what I want no more, maybe.
I know I wanted a kid and all, but I guess I didn’t know how it was gonna be. I mean, what happened to having a life, you know? We’re still people. We’re still a couple, right? We should try to forget about the kid once in a while and just let loose, right? Nah, she wasn’t having none of it.
So, what I did, and I’m not exactly proud of this, but I got me some nookie on the side. It didn’t mean nothing or nothing — not like some big love affair or nothing. Just a few women I’d meet through work or at bars when I went out at night with my boys. And it ain’t all my fault neither ’cause The Dame was always welcome to come along, but she alla time says no on account of she says she don’t like hanging around smokey bars no more. Well, okay, but you gotta know shit happens when a bunch of guys go out on the town, am I right? Still, like I said, I ain’t proud of it or nothing.
‘Course she found out and I expected her to be a bit pissed, but I figured given the circumstances and the fact that she was usually pretty cool about other stuff, she’d be okay, you know, once I explained.
Wrong! Man, was I wrong. She flipped-totally. Called me all sorts and then told me to “get the fuck away from her”. And I’m quoting directly here and I want youse all to remember that it was her who told me to get lost, right?
So, I get lost for a while, figgering I’ll give her a chance to cool down a bit, knowing how all that hormone stuff can make dames do and say stuff they don’t mean.
A few months go by and I shows up at her place one morning just to see what’s going on and fuck me if she ain’t in labour!! There’s two dykey looking broads with her. One of them’s got her hands up The Dame’s twat and the other one’s trying to give me the old heave ho.
But I stick my ground, ‘cause that’s my kid she’s squeezing out there, right? And I wanna be there and make sure my name goes on the paper that says I’m the kid’s old man. So I hang around. It takes the whole day and most of the evening, but then out pops this baby and it’s a girl and I gotta tell ya, I felt a little something grabbing me in the vicinity of my heart when I look at her and all.
It was something alright, but the day pretty much drained me like nothing else ever has, so I crashed on the couch while they was all still cleaning up and doing whatever a bunch of chicks do when there’s a baby around.
When I woke up The Dykes had gone and The Dame and The Kid were sleeping and I had to get to work on account of missing the whole day before so I took off, trying not to wake them up.
So after all that I don’t hear nothing from The Dame for days and then when she does call she wants me to bring her groceries. I’m wondering what this means, so I gotta ask, “Does this mean we’re back on?” She says no, it just means she needs some groceries and it’s the middle of winter and she don’t wanna take The Kid outside.
Well, I gotta think more about this ‘cause I don’t wanna be used here. I mean, I’m feeling sorry for her and all and I’d like to see what The Kid looks like in daylight and all, but I don’t wanna start any kind of precedent or nothing, so I don’t go. I mean, it’s not like she don’t have nobody else to fetch shit for her, right? Why me?
There are a few more pissed off phone calls from The Dame after that, so I starts to thinking this ain’t a good situation no more and it’s time I did something about it. I give The Dame one more chance to take me back and tell her if she don’t I’m leaving town. She tells me to go fuck myself! Nice talk, eh? Does she kiss her kid with that mouth, I asks her.
So, I sells up my business and “liquidate all my assets”, as they say and then not only do I leave town, but I leave the whole bloody country. There were a few things I’d been meaning to get into anyway and here was the perfect opportunity.
Time goes by as it usually does. The Dame and I have plenty of friends and friends of friends in common so I hears things about them once in a blue moon and probably she hears stuff about me, too, I don’t know. And I know I made the right decision on account of it ain’t good for a kid to be in a situation like where the parents are at each other’s throats alla time, right? And me being around was just gonna set up expectations all around that weren’t going nowhere.
So anyway, pretty soon, I hears how she had to go to court to get full custody of the kid on account of my names on the birth certificate and she wouldn’t be able to do nothing of a legal nature with the kid without full custody. That’s cool. I get served some papers that say, blah, blah, the usual legal mumbo jumbo. There’s a bit tacked on about support of some piddly-assed token amount which I know nobody’s gonna bother about and which I’m sure The Dame don’t need and don’t want off the likes of me anyway. So ignore the whole thing and get on with my life.
The Dame is an independent cuss anyhow and she’ll be fine and I know she’s gonna do a good job with The Kid. She don’t need nothin’ off me, right?
I work my ass off over the next 12 years or so, sometimes doing two jobs at a time to keep my fingers in lots of pies, ‘cause that’s the kinda guy I am. I made me some good dough and met me a dame who ain’t so prickly as The Dame and married her. I told her flat out – no kids and she’d cool with that, so we’re doin’ real good.
So, then a couple of years ago, we decide to move us back to Canada to start putting The Retirement Plan into action. I got myself a nice house on the beach on the west coast. Both the wife and I love sailing so I sunk some dough into a swanky boar. I’ve got a few swell investments and a tidy little nest egg to keep us in our old age. I ain’t rich by no means, but comfortable, you know and looking forward to taking things easy.
The End, right? Not on your life. A few weeks ago, out of the blue I starts to get a whack-load of legal shit in the mail telling me I owe 15 years of back child support!! Then they tells me how I also gotta start paying the monthly child support from now on or they’re gonna seize my dough and house and boat and the investments and everything!!! Like holy fuck!? What kinda world do we live in where some dame from more than a decade ago can come along all of a sudden and mess up my life?
If I fight it, I gotta pay some lawyer a pile of dough as well. So I’m between a rock and a hard place, right? What the hell does an ordinary working stiff guy do? One option the papers say is to get holda The Dame and get her to back off (well, they call it, “make alternate arrangements”). I tries, I really do. I leaves her messages, but she don’t return none. I figure she don’t want to make no alternate arrangements, but that’s all I can figure. I can’t for the life of me figure, for instance, what the hell else to figure. Why’s she doing this now? I just can’t figure it, man.
So finally I writes her a big note.
I tells her how this is really hurtin’ me and ask why she wants to do this. I tells her how it ain’t fair that she’s hittin’ me with this just when me and the wife are getting’ ready to wind down the hard work and gearing up to relaxing more.
Then I points out that one day The Kid is gonna want to look me up, see her old man, so if she don’t back off with this money shit now, I ain’t gonna be too friendly when The Kid comes knocking at my door in a few years, am I? I know she won’t want to mess that up for The Kid, so fingers crossed, eh?
XUP 