Day 14. Playing Tag Or How I Begrudgingly Became A Father

Day 14. Playing Tag With My Sperm, Or How I Begrudgingly Became A Father.

An unnamed someone listened to her pros and cons the other day, the same ones I listed a while back, and told her that the reasons to not have a child were selfish and the reasons for having a child were selfless. Didn't I see that on a greeting card somewhere, or read it on a Baptist handout? She actually offered it up as a kernel of wisdom, like it would appeal to me because of its cunning.

We can go back to her reasons if you want but trust me everyone one of them hinged on the ugly chant I want. And she dares to call this selfless?

It called it pap for what it was right away and then had to define it, which always takes a little steam out of an advance.

Webster's ninth: a soft food for infants or invalids. That's what her logic amounts to. Or this one: something lacking solid value or substance. Need I say more?

She finally agreed that many people have children for completely selfish reasons. But in our case, she said, this was foisted upon us and we can't look at it as something done for deliberate reasons we just have to trust what life brings. In that regard, I reminded her that just over a hundred years ago that's what people were saying about malaria until someone got fed up and decided to do something. We have a choice, or rather she does, which makes this all the more distasteful because as a man I have no rights. But she'll tell me of course that I do have a choice. I have a choice to not have anything to do with her or the child as far as she's concerned. Or I have a choice to fully participate. Or I have a choice to begrudgingly be involved.

The three options boil down to one for me because I can't be something I'm not in the middle case and morally I can't ignore the consequence of my actions. That leaves me begrudging. Now is that a good place I ask her?

And here she'll admit that it's fucked up and unfortunate but...she looks at this as her only chance possibly to have a child by someone she loves she says.

So I'm IT, I say, because you've given up on the future and the past is done?

Well come on, she says, what are the chances of meeting someone that I care so much about and that wants to have a family?

So this is just about what you want and I just happen to be an unwilling victim. That's nice to finally realize, that I'm just here out of default, another accident in your string of accidents. In other words, if you thought you might meet someone - if you could bank on it say - the decision would be different?

Here she's sort of backed into a corner because she'd rather have it the other way, the right way, but she doesn't think she can reel a man in honestly, so this is her resort and I'm just serving up sperm in it.