Here Comes the Son
by Michael Dare

      Nothing can prepare you for it. I’ve seen the movies, pondered the books, grilled friends and strangers, yet the being itself comes with no instruction manual. He expects nothing but needs everything, he gives without any expectation of reward and takes without the slightest intention of returning the favor. He knows more than he can possibly communicate and he’s so stupid that you have to help him do everything. You cannot possibly teach him as much as you learn from him. He may shine you on but you can never shine him on. He will not do what you tell him to do, but all he knows he learned from you. He is the ultimate responsibility, the relationship upon which all others will be measured. He redefines love, happiness, and commitment. There’s no turning back, no way to go Ooops and gracefully bow out. For better and worse, in sickness and health, the nurturing of a newperson.
     Mine is named Michael, but I call him Buster. I was pretty surprised when the judge gave him to me since the report from the social worker looked pretty dim, but Her Honor banged her gavel and gave me a receipt for a baby, to be picked up from baby prison at my discretion.
     I didn’t have to do it. There was a chance, only a chance that he was mine. But his mother had named him after me, and it was clear that the state wasn’t going to release him to her. Not after she freaked out at the Marion Davies Children’s Clinic at UCLA and had to be taken away. She had no income, no address, and a serious attitude problem. This was the second child the courts had taken away from her (the first had nothing to do with me), so all I had to do was let go of him, just let go and get on with my life. Sometimes it seemed like that was what everyone wanted me to do. It would have been easy. I could have just sat back and watched the new little Michael Dare baby get sucked up into the system. But I was already in love. His purity had invaded my life. It began with a cliché.

    It was a dark and stormy night in February, 1988, when I heard a knock at my door. I peeked outside to see Bobbe Paris standing outside my modest Hollywood courtyard bungalow, wearing a shawl, standing in the rain, crying, and holding a little baby in her arms. She told me the baby was mine, it was a boy, and she had named him after me. She was also homeless and needed a place to stay. Despite a promise I had made to myself years ago that this madwoman would no longer be welcome in my house, she did have this thing with her, this very young, very cute, very alert and inquisitive thing, a gurgling baby boy that might be mine. I could have pointed my finger and dramatically pointed to the outside world, in imitation of the oldest cartoon in the universe, but I decided to have half a heart. I let her in.
     She set the baby down in my favorite spot on the sofa and threw a bunch of bags on the rest. She started going through her things while I stared at the baby.
     “I named him Michael Dare,” she said. “I’m pretty sure he’s yours. Anyway, I’m really tired of living on the street. We just need somewhere to spend the night. Have you got any juice in the refrigerator? I’m so tired, I haven’t had a bath in four days. Have you done laundry? I’m just going to put these clothes in the hamper. Do you need a towel? I found this towel in a park yesterday and it’s perfectly fine, just needs a wash. Do you mind if we heat a bottle?”
     She handed me a bottle full of formula, which I handled like an extremely foreign object. “What am I supposed to do with this?”
     “Put it in a pot of hot water until it reaches skin temperature.”
     “Right.” I scurried to the kitchen, filled a pot with water, put it on the stove, put the bottle in the pot, and started muttering to myself while contemplating my dilemma. For years, Bobbe had made my life miserable. I had attempted to break up the relationship oh so many times, but she persisted in sleeping in my garage and pestering my friends, lovers, and relatives. She left weird messages on my door, scrawled backwards in lipstick, twisted off my motorcycle mirrors, and painted hearts on my door stoop. She broke into my house, looked in my appointment book, and showed up unexpectedly at restaurants, professional interviews, or screenings. She brought me gifts, broke my windows, and generally made the Glenn Close character in Fatal Attraction seem like Mother Theresa.
     Due to her irrational ravings and violent temper tantrums, Bobbe had been banished from my house for years. One night the winter before, she had been prowling around the premises when she discovered the front door unlocked. She managed to slide unnoticed into my bed, and I awoke to find himself already being made love to.
     Men who hear this tend to giggle. It’s a great erotic fantasy, to awaken from a sound sleep and find oneself already imbedded, and I admit that I got off on it. But when a woman wakes up to find herself being made love to by her ex-boyfriend, that’s called rape. It doesn’t work the other way around because the Supreme Court decided long ago that a man cannot be raped unless he is getting penetrated, not doing the penetrating. And, of course, if rape is strictly defined as a crime of violence rather than simply sex without prior consent, what happened to me certainly wasn’t rape.
     This means that if a man finds himself kidnapped by a gang of Amazon biker women who tie him to a bed, tear off his clothes, tickle him with feathers till he becomes erect, and fuck him for 15 hours straight, he hasn’t got a legal leg to stand on if he wants to have them arrested for rape. His most treasured appendage could be rubbed raw, he could have truly found the experience unpleasant, but it makes no difference in the eyes of the law. Never mind the fact that every man gets two to five involuntary erections every night, never mind the fact that your standard horny adult male would get an erection if Adolph Hitler were giving him head; it is assumed that an organ standing proud and tall is one from which the owner is deriving pleasure.
     And that I was. I suppose I could have pulled out, but it wasn’t likely. I felt like a living letter to Penthouse, and I could do nothing other than finish the act. Because of this lapse, which I realized was almost exactly fifteen months previous to the rainy knock at my door, I had to admit that the child might be mine.
     I was hoping he wasn’t. I didn’t want to have to deal with Bobbe ever again, and nothing would have suited my purposes more than a negative paternity test. But here she was in my living room again, babbling on and on, confessing that she had been doing a lot of hitchhiking in the hopes of running into a friendly truck driver who would let her stay in his house while he trucked. She conceded that she wasn’t absolutely sure if the child was mine, but he did have my blood type (which only meant I could be the father) and my name (which only meant that Bobbe wanted to think so).
     I made it very clear that this evening’s arrangements were only temporary. She offered to sleep on the sofa while I slept in my bedroom, though I use the term “slept” quite loosely. I’m sure I had to be somewhere in the morning, and I know it involved something important. But all I can recall for sure is the persistent howling from the living room, the phrases repeated over and over in my head, “I hate this. I hate this. I’ve got to get them out of here. I hate this. Why won’t he shut up? Why did I let her in? I know he isn’t mine, I know it. I hate this. I hate this.”
     The next morning I was delirious from lack of sleep, seething with anger, and unwilling to cope with anything. Suddenly, Bobbe came into the bedroom and plopped little Michael on the bed next to me. She went off to take a shower, leaving me alone with the baby.
     I was not in the mood for human contact. I was still under the covers. I could feel something moving on the bed, so I knew I couldn’t possibly wring another minute of sleep out of my hideous night. I rolled over and opened my eyes, ready to kill. Instead, I had one of those cosmic moments you keep reading about in bad fiction. An avalanche of emotional wreckage suddenly became unblocked when I saw my son sitting on my bed, looking me in the eye. My anger evaporated in a flash. How could I experience any hostility towards this innocent and beautiful being?
     Little Michael wasn’t crying or laughing, he was just looking at me going “Now what?” All thoughts of sleep went away; this had to be dealt with. There was no way that I could be angry at him. It wasn’t his fault that he was plopped down on my bed, it wasn’t his fault that his mom was irrational and indigent. He wanted to play.
 Finally, he said something incomprehensible, and I said the same thing back. He laughed, cried, laughed, cried, then said something else. I decided to grab hold of a baby’s train of thought and see where it would take me. It went something like this:
     “What are you doing? What am I doing? Can I do that? What is this? Can I eat it? Who are you? Who am I? Hold me. Let me go. Where are we going? Where were we? Can I play with you? Pay attention to me. Leave me alone. What are those noises coming out of your mouth? Why am I screaming? What’s going on. Where are we? What is this? What is that? Am I hungry? Why does this taste good? Look at that! Look at me! I’m so happy! Owww! That hurts! What’s going on? Hold me. Let me go. Let me out! What is that? Can I eat it? What is this? Can I eat it? Who are those big guys? What is this? Why am I small? What are you doing? I wanna do it too. Let me do it. What are you doing? What am I doing? Can I eat it?”
     For the first time in my life, I watched a six month old going through its routine. He sat up on my stomach, made noises, and flapped his arms for ten minutes. He didn’t have the slightest idea what he was doing, just exploring everything that occurred to him, a new impulse every nanosecond, a velocity freak in a dervish of abandon.
     Successfully communicating with a baby is an uncompromising primal experience; their attention spans nothing. Their whole life is an endless loop of experimentation. You can’t use verbosity or talent or ego to parley with a baby, just instinct.
     I couldn’t stop staring. I bit his ears, toes, and nose, cuddled, and made stupid sounds. He was unbiased and ever-changing. Make him laugh and you just killed ten seconds. Make him laugh again and he may get the hiccups. Go “boo” and the hiccups will go away but he will start crying again. Bounce him on your knee and he will laugh and burp and fart. There was instant rapport. I liked him.
     Then mom came out of the shower and stood there at the foot of the bed wearing only a towel. I was reminded of how we had a child in the first place. My little brain started doing some thinking on its own. Little Michael had fallen asleep. Bobbe crawled into the bed, hot and wet, and we made love before she grabbed him back to the living room.

     In my whole life thus far, I had spent approximately five minutes with babies, and that was a minute here and a minute there, spread out over 35 years. For the next couple of days, I witnessed what makes them tick. It was an endless cycle of eating, pooping, drinking, peeing, laughing, crying, getting angry, getting hurt, spitting up, drooling, finding amusement, finding pain, surprising themselves, delighting themselves, delighting others, trying to remember, forgetting, getting cranky, trying to remember, forgetting, going to sleep, all in one hour, every hour, every day.

     Bobbe seemed to get more upset if I displayed any affection for him, so I tried to keep my feelings reserved. There was no sense in getting too emotionally attached to a child in the care of someone whose life was so unpredictable. I knew that she would only be around until all the food in the refrigerator was gone and all the towels were wet. I had written Bobbe off as someone destined to the streets, so for my own emotional well being I tried to convinced myself that the baby wasn’t mine. I wanted to distance myself from the child the same way I had distanced myself from the mother.
     It didn’t work; I needed to be sure of my parenthood. I had read that genetic fingerprinting was a foolproof method of determining paternity, so I called up a company that performed DNA tests. I was told that the tests cost $500 apiece, and that they needed to test the mother, the father, and the child. They could use blood or hair, but they needed at least fifty follicles. I cut off locks of baby hair, and I figured I could give blood. Bobbe would never help me do anything, so I actually started saving her hair that had collected in the drain after her shower.

     Living with Bobbe wasn’t easy. If anything she was a worse housekeeper than I was. I watched her make breakfast, frying eggs while smoking, oblivious to the cigarette ashes falling into the eggs. Her glasses were broken and taped to her forehead. The water was overflowing in the sink.
     Since I worked at home, neither of us ever left the house. At the time, I was a film critic for the L.A. Weekly, a freebie with a pitiful 100,000 circulation that was given away at the finest clothing stores and burger joints in Los Angeles. Okay, it wasn’t the New York Times, but I got to see movies for free, and every week I got to see my name in print. Usually I was insulting someone.
     I also reviewed videos. I was on lots of mailing lists and got dozens of tapes in the mail every week. She would look at the tapes with me, and took particular offense at Deathstalker II. “It’s pornography” she mysteriously decreed.
     “It’s not pornography,” I said, “it’s a B movie with tits, rated R. Pretty funny really.”
     “It’s pornography,” she replied. “I don’t want it in the house. I don’t want our kid to see it.”
     “I wasn’t planning on showing it to him” I explained before she threw it in the trash.

     My friend Lewis Arquette was having family problems too, but he’s a comic, so I’ll leave it to him to tell you about his offspring and their ma. Luckily, he was one of the few friends who continued coming by the house, despite my domestic situation. When Bobbe caught us talking, she accused him of conspiring against her. She threatened him with a knife, then locked herself in the bathroom and ran the shower for hours. Lewis explained that he always had that effect on women.

     Two days later, Bobbe insisted that I accompany her to the baby’s pediatric check-up at the Marion Davies Children’s Clinic at UCLA. Once there, I was taken aside by a doctor and grilled about my relationship with Bobbe. “I can’t make any sense of what Bobbe told me about her situation,” the doctor told me. “and we’re concerned for the safety of the child.”
     “Until they showed up at my door last week,” I told her. “I think they were living in the street.”
     “We’re considering removing the child.”
     “Really? Gee, I don’t think she’s dangerous. I mean she’s only been with me a few days. We don’t really get along, but the kid seems to be okay.”
     After a few more questions, I was taken back to the examination room with Bobbe and the baby. Her behavior had become so irrational that a staff psychiatrist had been brought down. “What seems to be the trouble?” they asked Bobbe.
     For some reason, this question caused her to completely lose control. Bobbe picked up the baby and started stomping about the examination room, extremely agitated, ranting about the conspiracy against her, and making graphic threats aimed at me. “I don’t believe you’re doing this.” she said. “Everything’s fine, just fine. Can we leave now? What did he tell you? I’ll kill that asshole. I’m going.” She headed for the door.
     “Not quite yet,” said the doctor. “There are still some questions we’d like answered.”
     She started pacing the room even more wildly, screaming “Get away from me, everything’s fine, just fine.” She was so loud that the security guards didn’t even have to be called, they were right outside the door when the doctor opened it.
     “I don’t believe it, it’s a conspiracy, I’m going to kill him. What did he tell you? The baby’s mine, you understand, mine. What are you doing, stop that, you can’t take my baby away, he needs me. That BASTARD, what is HAPPENING TO ME, I can’t believe you’re doing this.”
     Two men in white coats entered the room and took Bobbe away. She screamed from down the hall “You’re not going to get away with this, I mean it, I’ll kill him. What did he say to you? That bastard. I’ll get him. I’ll get him.”
     I was left alone in the examination room with the doctors and the baby.
     “What’s going to happen to her?” I asked.
     “They’re going to keep her for a minimum 72 hour hold. If she shows improvement, she could get out in a week.”
     “What about little Michael? Can I just take him home with me?”
     “I’m afraid not. A social worker will be coming by to pick him up. She’ll tell you where he’s being taken, and you can visit him there. Then if you want him released to you, there will be a hearing in three days.
 I was led to the waiting room in a daze. The men in the white coats took Bobbe away to a state mental facility, while a social worker took the baby away to baby prison. I stood there watching the yin and yang of my newfound family disappearing in both directions.

Chapter Two
 

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