The day my first child, a daughter, was born

The day my first child, a daughter, was born, I was pissed off and
no mistake. Now that may sound quite harsh, but when you're trying to
be faithful to the truth, things can often get pretty nasty. The truth
is that when I heard my wife had given birth to a baby girl I wasn't
the proud father I would have been if the child was male. It was damn
near the happiest day of my life when I first learned I was going to be
a father, what with statistics showing male virility is quickly on the
decline and everything I was just relieved to know my most vital organs
were still in full working order.

The thing is that I'd always had a sort of dream, well, again, if I'm
being completely honest, more a little obsession, of fathering enough
children to create my own football team. I've listened to innumerable
boring, overweight, beer swilling arseholes bragging they've probably
impregnated enough women to already have one without their knowledge,
but while that sort of talk never impressed or involved me in any way,
since an alarmingly early age my paternal and managerial instincts
became mystically entwined. On the day of my fifteenth birthday I
almost immediately set about finding the future mother of my sons. It
took me just over four years to find a suitable enough candidate who
had so much natural maternal instinct within her she might well agree
to bear my seed enough times to complete my vision. After extensive
groundwork and personality tests, she finally proved herself and I
married her in a shot. However, with a daughter now in evidence, this
woman would subsequently have to give birth to at least another
thirteen children, all of them boys, if I was going to have enough for
a full team and subs.

This was not the sort of worry I wanted to be faced with. I'd already
spent a great deal of time devising a plan that would account for the
age differences within the team itself. What I decided was that a child
every ten months or so meant two out of every four would almost be in
the same academic year together and that the last child, the
thirteenth, would be just over ten years the first one's junior. With
that in mind, the last child would be realistically eligible to play
when he was fifteen, with the eldest around twenty-five at the time
there should be no problems entering an open-age league there and
then.

I remember standing in the delivery room seconds after it was announced
my wife had given birth to a girl, my head filled with the permutations
arising from this unfortunate outcome. I was twenty at the time and it
would be at least another twenty-six years until my team could be fully
assembled, barring any other mishaps like this one or multiple births
of course. At forty-six I'd hardly be the youngest manager ever but at
least I'd be the first to create a football team using my own sons.
It's quite an achievement when two brothers play professional football
at all, never mind for the same team, and I would be there, managing a
team entirely consisting of blood relatives. We'd be an absolute
sensation. My boys wouldn't even need to make it as professionals to
become famous, they could play in a Sunday morning pub league and we'd
still have the paper's swarming around us. There'd be the stories we
could sell to the papers - mine as the proud father, hailed as the most
virile male in the country. The best players could sell their stories
of drunken debauchery with pin-ups, whilst others could talk about how
they divided their time being successful in their jobs as well as
playing for the most famous football team in England. Even those who
couldn't really play that well would have the opportunity to sell their
jealous-as hell or proud-to-be-a-brother stories.

I'd planned it so meticulously, I could make myself and my children
rich without really having to think much about it. There would be TV
appearances, book deals, merchandise deals, sponsorships, everyone
would want a piece of the family team. And now this had happened. The
most incredible scheme of the century had been delayed and possibly
destroyed by a woman. Why should I be surprised? I'd picked her so well
though, she worked as a cook in a school, one of those quite small
women you could just tell would be enormous by the time they hit
thirty. She adored kids, cooking, cleaning, anything that was even
remotely domestic. She didn't just do it, she actively enjoyed doing
it. I also discovered, to my absolute wonder, that she came from a
family known for multiple births - her grandmother was one of twins and
apparently this phenomenon had skipped a generation for longer than
anyone cared to check. I had been treating her pretty well up to that
point anyway, but when that particular discovery came to light I
carefully switched her pill for a personally adapted aspirin,
meticulously crafted whilst she was at work, got her pregnant and
subsequently pressed all the right buttons. We were married two months
later, admittedly not the Church affair I had previously wanted, but
when there were considerations as important as mine at hand, I didn't
mind adapting my wedding arrangements as long as my master plan could
get underway.

I had worked it all out. She was dead set against abortion so the
moment she recovered from each child, a careful switch of the pill
here, a pin prick through the rubber there, and contraception was out
the window. The only problem that could ever arise would be if she were
to do something stupid and snip her tubes or the like, but I was
relying on my powers of persuasion and the notion that she would love
being a mother so much she would never want to stop producing. I had
not, however, been counting on this. I've got three brothers and
they've all got sons, so I always automatically assumed I'd have sons
too. This sort of thing never even occurred to me. I was supposed to be
standing there, looking at my wife and my new born son with gooey eyes
filled with happiness and pride. Instead I was secretly wondering
whether or not to risk trying for another child with this sweat covered
woman and her blood speckled baby at all. What if I stayed with her and
this happened again? I'd be so far behind in my schedule by that time I
might be in my fifties before the plan could start properly. Then
again, I was altogether less than confident about finding such a likely
vessel of motherhood as this one. Even if another could be found, there
was no telling how long it would take before I could get her up the
spout and married only to run the risk of it all going horribly wrong
again. I was so flustered I left the delivery room immediately after
the birth and went home.

It didn't take long for the arguments to start. I couldn't be bothered
wasting my time on the kid if it wasn't going to reap any rewards later
in life as a footballer, so I left all the changing, cleaning and
feeding to my wife. Not that she minded, well, not at first anyway. At
first she was happy showing the baby off to all our neighbours and
relatives, but she became pretty tetchy as it dawned on her I had
little interest in our daughter. She went off sex too. Even my
carefully planned reproducing schedule couldn't help but go to pot with
her never in the mood. I had a chart at work and everything
highlighting the optimum days I should try and impregnate her again,
but she was having none of it. I'd accounted for refusals shortly after
the birth of each child, yet we were almost three months down the line
and any sort of entry into the discussion was still barred. She
couldn't understand why I wanted another child so much when I didn't
even seem to care about the first one. I told her that I just felt
awkward being thrust into fatherhood like that and everything, but she
wouldn't listen. The real crunch came when she told me she had no
intention of having another child again so soon, citing some rot some
she'd read about psychology of children and the time periods that
should be left between each birth. I realised with dismay that I had
picked the wrong woman entirely for my purposes, and so, cutting my
losses, got all my stuff and promptly left.

I don't want people to be too quick to judge me, it's not like I never
provided for my child or anything. I paid my maintenance every month
and did the honourable thing and divorced her mother as soon as I
could, getting myself well and truly out of the picture so that she
need never think of me as a bad father. I never wanted that. I always
sort of kept in touch. I'd drive by her school and see her mother
picking her up, watching her grow up and all that sort of thing, but I
never got involved enough to care for her, apart from financially. A
couple of years and a great deal of searching later, I finally found
another woman who met all the necessary criteria and had five sons with
her using my original plan. Not quite the dream I had in mind, but once
they were all old enough I put them in a five-a-side league and managed
them myself. They weren't too bad for a while until the goalie decided
he was gay and didn't want to play football anymore. It was the biggest
blow any father could have, especially considering the others weren't
all that good anyway. The only other half decent player, our right
winger, was a bit of a boffin and gave up sports later in life to
become a doctor or something.

So, all circumstances withstanding, I gave up on my own kids and
started managing another little Sunday league team. They aren't a bad
lot, but it just doesn't feel the same, not being related to them in
any way. I'm with another woman now, quite a bit younger than myself,
and to cap off the perfect disaster my attempts at fathering a football
team have been she gave birth to triplets. All girls. Mind you, I do
have a kick about with them when I get the time and at least they're
all the same age. As for my first daughter, she became a pretty
successful actress on the West End. She's quite a beauty considering
her mother was never up to much. I went to see some musical she was in
the other week and even waited at the stage door to get her autograph,
although I never told her who I was of course. Her "father" is her
manager, a real git from what I've seen of him. She seems to be alright
though. I had a brief chat with her when she was signing my programme
and from what I could tell she's grown into a nice enough woman all
round. God knows what happened to her mother, it's her "father" who's
always at awards ceremonies and on TV shows with her, calling her his
"prot?g?" if you please. As for the little lady, she was nowhere to be
seen, probably at home with the kids I shouldn't expect, I'm reliably
informed my girl's got two sisters.