Fathermucker (6 page)

Leaving the magazine next to the his-and-hers bottles of Tums on the vanity, I go downstairs, fire up another
Max & Ruby
, check on the progress with breakfast—Roland's eaten most of his bagel, Maude half of hers—and retreat to the bathroom to try again to shower. I need to shave—Maude told me so last night—so I'll be in there a good ten minutes. With any luck, they won't kill each other while I'm indisposed. Or if they do, it will be quick, painless, and easy to clean.

No sooner does the hot water jar me into some semblance of higher awareness than I remember that Roland's class has a field trip this afternoon. Vanessa, our hapless but always-available babysitter, is coming at noon to stay with Maude—after the playdate at Jess's—and I will be joining the Thornwood preschoolers for the annual foray to the pumpkin patch. Last month, when we went apple picking, pee-wee Zara Reid—whom Roland has a thing for, as best as I can tell; he tends to like littler girls—was accompanied by her notorious old man, erstwhile lead singer of the seminal D.C. punk band Circle of Fists. It was his incongruous presence at the apple orchard, in fact, that prompted me to pitch the interview to
Rents
in the first place. So Chris Keeslar's note was well-timed. It may well be that I will encounter Daryl “Duke” Reid this very afternoon. And what better place to approach him about a parenting interview than a preschool field trip? He might not show, of course. But if he doesn't come, his wife—the Québécoise model Céline St. Germain, whose
Sports Illustrated
swimsuit issue pictorial, although a good ten years old, remains the stuff of masturbatory legend—probably will. And I could ask her. Although frankly, Reid is less intimidating. Either way, better brush up on my Circle of Fists trivia before the pumpkin patch. I'm at best a casual fan; I only have the one album, the one with “My Heart Is Hydroplaning” on it,
The Worst Crime
, the same one everybody else has. I don't know if I can even name a “classic” Fists song, one from the vault that predates their signing with Universal, learning how to actually play their instruments, writing melody lines with hooks. Talent and musicality are anathema to punk, and knowing more than three chords akin to selling out, so a generation of early Circle Jerks turned on the band when “My Heart Is Hydroplaning” came out. A shame, really. It's a catchy tune, so much so that I find myself engaged in the time-honored pastime, singing in the shower:

My face is full of lather—or rather, the left half is; the right is already smooth, give or take a stray graying whisker—when the phone rings. No way to get it in time, not with the shave half complete, so I don't try. But whatever momentary peace I'd derived from the gallons of almost-scalding water on the back of my neck evaporates, and the curiosity eats at me, and a I feel a tinge of distress
who could be calling at this hour?
, so I finish up as quickly as I can, nicking my upper lip in the process. Ablutions as unsatisfying as the previous evening's self-generated orgasm. A cold shower of a hot shower.

Puddling water on the cheap hardwood floor in the bedroom, I check the message. Stacy, on the voice mail. Early in Los Angeles—half past four, there. Jet lag, five days in?

The recording begins with an intake of breath, as her messages always do, and then she speaks:

She called, what, five minutes ago, so it's probably okay to call back, but before I can dial, Maude summons me again—“Daddy! Another
Max & Ruby
! Another
Max & Ruby
!”—and I'm back to the basement, still in my towel, to play yet another new episode, or, rather, an episode they've watched a million times but not yet this morning (they didn't finish the last one; it was rejected as too familiar). What can you do. At least those rotund rabbits are enhancing my children's understanding of
INTER-
and
INTRAPERSONAL DYNAMICS
.

Then Maude says she's hungry—in her whine-infused accent—and I come upstairs to find a banana, and I'm just about to peel it when she starts wailing, and when I get back down, now wearing only boxer briefs, Roland is on top of her, and they're wrestling on the sofa, what probably began as play fighting—both of them like physical contact; Maude like a power forward who bangs under the boards, Roland delighting in the tactile stimuli until all of the sudden it becomes too much and his faulty sensory processing systems overload—and I have no idea how this started, or who started it, or why, and it's a good fifteen minutes before I can separate them and restore order, and by then, it's too late to return Stacy's call.

While this is all happening the episode plays on a loop on the TV, the insidious theme song burrowing its way into the recesses of my brain:

(The melody is almost as inventive as the lyrics.)

T
IME WAS, MY INTEREST IN MY APPEARANCE WAS MORE THAN
cursory. Not that I was ever a clothes horse, but there was a certain artsy look I tried to cultivate. In New York, this was easy to achieve; I simply wore the customary East Village uniform: black shirts, black sweaters, black Doc Martens, (not black) jeans. However hackneyed the ensemble, my clothes communicated what I wanted them to communicate, namely,
Please do not mistake me for a banker, stockbroker, or lawyer.
When we moved up here, where no one would ever mistake anyone for a banker, stockbroker, or lawyer—even Gloria's husband Dennis, who
is
a lawyer, dresses like a high school English teacher—I resolved to “go native,” as it were, and began wearing
say it ain't so
colors. Black, after all, is for the clergy, and, for obvious reasons, I felt a priestly look would be inappropriate attire for someone who spent the lion's share of his time with small children. When Roland was still an infant, I took a trip to Woodbury Common, the celebrated outlet mall, and splurged on new shirts, new jeans, new sneakers, new Doc Martens that were brown, not black; hanging all the bags on the handle of Roland's Maclaren stroller until the damned thing threatened to topple over. Notwithstanding the stray online T-shirt impulse-purchase, I have not expanded my wardrobe since. For the last four years, I've pretty much punted on fashion. There's just no point. We seldom go out, and what's the use of blowing fifty bucks on a swanky DKNY shirt if the principal activity I'm engaged in while wearing it involves wiping someone's ass? I have a pair of jeans that I wear every day. This is not an exaggeration—I wear the same pair of jeans
every single day
, only changing to sweatpants during the fortnightly washing. I think they're stylish, these jeans, as they sort of look like what the dudes from
The Hills
wear in the
Us Weekly
layouts, but I have no real way of knowing, no touchstone of chic. What I do is, I pair those jeans with a T-shirt—I have a drawer stuffed with them, most procured from that vaunted boutique of cutting edge
couture
, Target—and if it's cold, as it is today, I first throw on a lined long-sleeved white undershirt. In the summer, I substitute shorts for the jeans, and brown Crocs for brown Docs. This combination is what I've worn for probably 1,585 of the 1,600 days we've lived in New Paltz. Carson from
Queer Eye
would take one look and turn into a pillar of salt.

I've just pulled on today's T-shirt—a blue-on-blue number bearing the inscription
NEW JERSEY: THE ALMOST HEAVEN STATE
over a line drawing of my home state, which I bought to honor my son's latest obsession, and also because the indeterminate irony of the sentiment amuses me—when Roland meanders into the bedroom, running a Matchbox car along the wall as he walks, and stands at attention next to me, or as close as he can to attention, which involves a considerable amount of spinning, rocking, and the making of odd hand gestures. He comes up to my belly button, tall for his age.

“Daddy,” he tells me. “I'm bored of watching TV.”

His gaze meets my own, but unlike his sister's, there is no intensity to it. His eyes look like mine must look when I'm getting my hair cut, and my glasses are on the table next to the brushes and combs, and the cute stylist pauses in her ministrations to offer some pithy comment, glancing at me in the mirror, and I direct my myopic gaze to where I think she's looking, but I am physically incapable of making genuine eye contact.

“Oh, really.”

“And what shall I do now?”

We have the same conversation every morning—repetition is key for Roland; once something works its way into his routine, the habit becomes difficult, if not impossible, to dislodge—so I know where he's going with this, but I try and draw him out, have him articulate his needs explicitly, rather than in this indirect way, despite his employment of grown-up words like
shall
, that frustrates his ability to get what he wants. Roland often speaks in riddles, coming off like a pre-K sphinx.

“I don't know. What would you like to do?”

“Something else,” he says.

“Like what?”

“Something that begins with ‘c.' ”

I pause, pretending to contemplate this. Part of the game. “Cat? You want to play with Steve?”

A broad smile breaks across his face. He really is a handsome devil. He's got that going for him, at least. “Nooooo.”

“Car? You want to ride in the car?”

“No. It starts with ‘c' and ends with ‘puter.' ”

“Cat-puter?”

“No!”

“Car-puter?”

“No!”

And I pretend to have an epiphany. “Ohhhhh. You mean the
computer
?”

“Yes!”

“Okay.”

We go back in his room, and I set up the old laptop. Roland and I used to peruse the real estate websites together—he likes looking at pictures of the interiors of houses, especially if chandeliers are involved—and one day I got so bored of this that I showed him how to click around.
Teach a man to fish.
The first day, I had to help him every few minutes, but by the second day, he'd gotten the hang of it. The third day, I went to check on him, and found him on Google, his
Field Guide to American Houses
open on the desk next to him, trying to type “Louisville” into the search engine bar (there are a number of lovely old homes in Louisville; it's his second favorite city after Cleveland). He also enjoys surfing through the various lighting sites—
Lamps Plus, Shades of Light, Capitol Lighting
, and so forth—and checking out the torchières and the floor lamps, the sconces and the accent lights.

“What do you want to look at?” I ask him.

“I don't know,” he says. “You pick.”

He says this, but I know he knows what he wants; he just won't come out and tell me.

“Lamps?”

“No. No lamps.”

“Houses?”

“Okay.”

I go to the real estate subsection of pluggedincleveland.com, and click on the
SHAKER HEIGHTS
link. Presto, rows and rows of listings, in neat little boxes, each box a portal to dozens of images—enough to keep Roland busy until it's time to go to school. The flip side of Asperger's: if he's doing something he finds “interest,” as he puts it, he'll amuse himself for hours. Sitting down, his ass halfway off the chair, he falls under the spell of the photographs of dining rooms and master baths, eat-in-kitchens and finished basements, and I leave him in peace.

R
OLAND PLUGGED IN TO
C
LEVELAND
, M
AUDE IN THE BASEMENT
with her animated bunny chums, I have a moment to relax. I'm sprawled on the bed, a beached starfish. All I want to do is surrender to the Sandman's call
it's a Sand
woman
, not a Sandman, and not a call but a siren song, she's Salome dancing the dance of the seven veils, half-naked and writhing on a pole, her heart-shaped ass plainly visible behind the gossamer, primped in a gesture of promise, anything I desire, anything at all, to lure me to the Land of Nod,
but I can't, because if I fall asleep now, only to wake ten, eleven, twelve minutes later, the fatigue will be
worse
, if that's possible; the aching in my bones will intensify, the dull headache
cavalry stampeding in the space behind my eyes
will magnify, the nausea will become unbearable, and I cannot fathom how anyone, surgeon, midwife, mother offering newborn child her chapped nipple, can function under such dire conditions without breaking down and falling apart sooner or later
I can't go on I must go on I will go on
but I
do
understand, with hi-def clarity, the efficacy of sleep deprivation as a method of torture, the hard-on it gives Dick Cheney, because if I were an al-Qaeda operative at Gitmo—me, Josh Lansky, how I feel at this precise moment—and some G-man in mirrored shades entered the oubliette and promised me twelve hours of undisturbed sleep if I named names, names would be named,
habib
; every last name I knew, one long litany of guttural utterances, of Abduls, Muhammeds, and Ibrahims, of Osamas, Khalids, and Anwars, and when every last morsel of so-called intelligence was extracted from my weary head, I would lay it on the pillow, or the cold, pig-blooded cement floor, and
Allahu Akbar
resume relations with Salome the Sandwoman, who after all is not unlike one of the virgins promised me in my thwarted martyrdom, and I would sleep soundly and without remorse,
al-salatu khayru min an-nawm
be damned.