Baby prison turned out to be a home in the valley. I knocked on the front door and Doris, a pleasant middle-aged woman answered.
     “Can I help you?”
     “I hope so. I’m here to visit Buster Dare.”
     “Who?”
     “I guess you know him as Michael, Michael Dare.”
     “And your name is?”
     “Michael Dare.”
     “Just a moment.”
     She closed the door and I lit a cigarette, took one puff, and put it out. I exhaled away from the door just as it opened again.
     “Come on in.”
     It was a large living room lined with playpens and cribs. The floor was covered in toys, so I made some space on a sofa. Doris handed me a piece of paper on a clipboard, saying “Just sign in while I go get little Michael.”
     As she left, I quickly decided to look around. I followed Doris down a hallway, peeking through every open door. Each room contained four cribs, each with one little occupant. The rooms seemed like prison cells, with each baby clutching through the slats of their cribs, reaching at me like prisoners behind bars. I arrived at the last one just as little Michael was being lifted from his crib by Doris. She noticed me.
     “You’re not supposed to be back here,” she admonished.
     “I just wanted to see where he was sleeping.”
     “Well, you’re going to have to conduct your visit in the living room.”
     “Fine with me.”
     We headed back to the living room where I properly seated himself on the sofa. Doris gently handed me the baby. “You’ve got fifteen minutes. Would you like to give him a bottle?”
     “Sure.”
     She headed for the kitchen, leaving me alone for the second time with my son. We stared at each other. I put out my palm, saying “Gimme five!”
     Buster looked at my hand and slapped it.
     “All right, Buster. How you doing? You dig this place? They treat you good? Hell, they’ve got a lot more toys than I do. You wanna play? Let’s play.” We got on the floor and started playing with the toys when Doris returned with a bottle.
     “Do you know how to feed him?”
     “No problem.”
     I sat back on the sofa, took Buster in my arms, and gave him the bottle. Buster was into it. He dug his bottle, closed his eyes, sucked away, then passed out. I took the bottle from his mouth. It made a “pop,” leaving the baby’s lips still pursed, as though the bottle were still there. It’s the cutest thing I have ever seen. I kissed the baby on the cheek, and whispered in his ear. “Don’t worry, little guy. I’ll spring you from this joint.”
     I decided that I would try to break him out. It’s not that the place was so bad; there was a nice backyard, a playground, and a caring staff. But he was the youngest baby there, which meant that he was facing a childhood of getting beaten up by bigger kids. I still wasn’t sure if he was mine, but I decided that, under any circumstances, he’d be better off with me than with them.

     The next week, there was a hearing to determine whether to return the child to Bobbe, who had been released from her involuntary three day hold. I headed downtown on the Hollywood freeway towards juvenile court, which was in the criminal courts building. Not my favorite place. I was always leery of being judged by a higher authority. I figured that on certain subjects, like my own life, there’s no higher authority than me.
     Bobbe arrived a little bit late and came right up to me. “I’m going to kill you. I hate you. Hold me.” She threw herself into my arms, kissing me passionately. This erotic clutch was the last thing on earth I was expecting. I started to back away, but I was against a wall. Finally, the door to the courtroom opened and a bailiff stepped out, saying “The case of Michael Dare.”
     Bobbe and I separated, caught our breath, and entered the court. Bobbe was suddenly huffy and refused to acknowledge my existence.
     The judge was a pleasant, surprisingly humorous black woman who commanded all around her. Bobbe was called before her. I sat in the back of the court and observed a montage of witnesses.
     “There was something strange about her. She was quite agitated, so I called in the staff psychiatrist.”
     “After a couple of hours of witnessing her behavior, I decided to commit her. In many ways she’s a classic manic depressive. She also exhibited various signs of schizophrenia, psychosis, and neurosis. She may actually be all of them.”
     “I admitted her into the sanitarium. She was in such bad shape that we tried to keep her for the full 14 days, but we had to release her to attend the trial.”
     Finally, they put Bobbe on the stand. “It was on and off, on and off. I don’t know exactly how long we were together. He told me he loved me but his mother broke us apart. I stayed in his garage for six months, and yes I took speed and grass, but no, I was only in the room for two minutes, not two hours, and they were lying about me, just like everybody does.”
     The judge read through some papers on the desk, then said “After careful consideration, the court declines to return the child to his mother due to her ‘long term mental illness.’ Child is remanded to the custody of Children’s Services for a period of...”
     Wait a minute! It was over? Why didn’t they call me? At the back of the court, I stood up and interrupted the judge.
     “What about me?” I said. “I’ll take him.”
     The judge was stunned, as was everyone else in the court. It was then I noticed for the first time that the court was all women, women who clearly devoted their days to chasing down fathers, and here was one just standing there. Nobody had to drag him in.
     “Who are you?” said the judge.
     “I’m Michael Dare, the father.”
     The court was pleased but suspicious.
     “It’s not his baby, your honor!” Bobbe blurted out.
     “Then why does the child have his name?” asked the judge.
     “I don’t know,” said Bobbe. “It was a mistake. Oh God, I must have been crazy.”
     The judge looked at me. “Mr. Dare, do you believe the child is yours?”
     “Yes.”
     “Anybody could have been the father!” Bobbe cried out dramatically.
     The judge was not impressed. “That will be enough from you, young lady. Mr. Dare, I assume you work. Who would take care of the baby during the day?”
     “I’m a writer, your honor. I do most of my work at home during the day at a computer, using a modem to send my work in. Sometimes I have to go to screenings. I’ll get baby-sitters.”
     “He’s got pornographic tapes in the house!” Bobbe called out.
     I couldn’t believe she was bringing this up. “I review videotapes for the L.A. Weekly,” I tried to explain. “I get dozens of them in the mail every week.”
     The judge quickly looked through the papers and said “Wait a minute. This is a six-month-old child!” She looked at Bobbe in awe that this subject has been brought up. “Mr. Dare, we assume you will keep these tapes out of the hands of the toddler.”
     I couldn’t believe it, my dream come true, a sarcastic judge. I said “Yes, your honor,” then she started talking to attorneys we had never met.
     Attorney #1: “As the state appointed attorney for the mother, I would request that this child be released to her immediately.”
     The judge looked around the room. She spied an attorney who had been barely paying attention, Theo Goodwin, small, meek, and balding. She flagged him up to the bench and he quickly took center stage.
     Attorney #2: “As the, ahem, newly appointed attorney for the father, I would like to request that the child be returned to him forthwith.”
     Attorney #3: “As the state appointed attorney for the child, I would like to check out Mr. Dare before we release the child to him.”
     “So be it,” said the judge. “Mr. Dare, you are ordered back to this court in one week. In that time, you will receive a visit from a social worker. I suggest you baby proof your house. Good luck. Next case.”
     I still couldn’t believe what was happening. Did those words actually come out of my mouth? Bobbe followed me as I left the court. I walked as fast as I could, but she caught up with me by the time I reached the car.
     “Going to Hollywood?” she asked.
     I let her in the car. “Where to, exactly?” I asked.
     “Don’t talk to me.” she said.
     I kept driving till she said “Here.” I pulled over. She didn’t get out. She turned to me. “I’m going to get you back, I’ll make you suffer like I suffered. Give me ten dollars.”
     I searched my wallet. “I’ve only got, let’s see, two dollars.”
     “Give it to me. What about change?”
     “You want my change?”
     “Give me your change or I won’t get out of the car.”
     “Here, here’s all I’ve got.”
     “I don’t believe what you’re making me do. Some day I’m going to tell Buster the truth, and you better hope he doesn’t believe me just like the court didn’t believe me.” Finally, she got out of the car and slammed the door.
     She went to live with her mother, Joanna, in an isolated trailer in the desert. Joanna was truly frightening, a deeply disturbed woman who passed down her madness to her daughter. Bobbe and Joanna have a strange love/hate relationship. Joanna screams that Bobbe should have never had another baby. After all, she had to give the last one to distant relatives. Bobbe screams that she hates it here, hates her mother, and wishes she was dead. Their life is even more disorganized than mine.

     That week I babyproofed my house. I moved all the wiring, cleaned the floors and walls, borrowed a crib, got some toys, and generally turned from Mr. Bachelor into Mr. Clean.
     Six days went by and I hadn’t heard from anybody from the court, so I called my attorney, who referred me to a social worker, who sent me to another social worker, who told me she would put me in contact with my case worker, who was out to lunch. She called back and I mentioned that I had to be in court tomorrow and that the judge wouldn’t be able to make any decision without her report, and my baby would have to spend another week in baby prison instead of with his daddy.
     The visit was short, and I thought positive. The social worker was thorough and inquisitive. One look at my cluttered abode and she knew I wasn’t normal, but at least she seemed convinced that I wasn’t a lunatic.

     When I got to court the next morning, I was surprised to find that her report advised against leaving the baby with me. It went on to explain that I appeared suitably prepared to care for the child, but she wasn’t sure if I was capable of providing him with adequate protection from his mother. She thought the baby would be safer in prison.
     Despite this negative recommendation, the judge asked me one question. “Mr. Dare, are you sure you can care for this child?”
     “I’m not sure about anything, your honor. I’ve never done anything like this before. It’s just seems like the right thing to do. I know that I have no son but Buster Dare, and he has no father but me. A twist of fate has brought us together, and I think it would be a terrible shame to bring a halt to it now.”
     The judge took her time, looked around the room, them made her decision. “First, I’m ordering a paternity test. In the meantime, Mr. Dare, I’m going to release the child to you. Ms. Paris, you may have three visits a week of two hours in duration, visits to be monitored by Mr. Dare. You are both ordered to return in three months. Mr. Dare, you will never, under any circumstances, leave the child alone with the mother.”
     “Yes, your Honor,” I promised.
     “We’ll see about that,” Bobbe muttered.
     Then the court gave me my favorite souvenir of the whole affair, a receipt for a baby. I took it with me to baby prison, and little Michael was released to me. They overloaded me with diapers and clothes and mysterious baby accouterments whose purpose I would discover later.

     There were immediate changes in my lifestyle. In 1987, I spent more than 1,500 hours in movie theaters, went to hundreds of night clubs and gallery openings, and generally lived the life of your standard single man about Hollywood. In 1988, I changed more than 1,500 diapers, watched a lot of television, didn’t go to a single nightclub, and generally lived the life of your standard housewife.
     I bought books on parenting and pumped all my friends who had kids for information and help. Luckily, they rallied around me, offering used cribs, playpens, high chairs, toys, clothing, and baby-sitting. I discovered that if I cut out my own extravagances, they would pay for the baby’s necessities. I learned how to make formula, how to feed and change the baby, and how to survive without ever getting a decent nights sleep.

     I almost named him Random because that’s what he was, but I realized it would quickly degenerate into Randy, and the world doesn’t need a Randy Dare. I also considered Babyface Gurglestein, Barney Tickletoe, Keith Maniac, Ducky Sootherteether, Folio Happenstance, Leapold Barnsmell, Morty Prest, Parsley Garni, Plasmo Boopchik, Random Dubious Robobaby, Rasta McBellybottom, Reginald Toebiter, Tahini Shelflife, and Tyrone Shoelaces. I didn’t mean to give him the name of every dog on television, but Michael Rafael Paris Dare may heretofore be referred to as Buster. Buster from the random element.

     Nobody could be more stunned than me at this turn of events. I never liked babies. Though I certainly wasn’t adverse to the idea of having children, it seemed to me that they weren’t much fun till they were out of diapers. I wanted a son I could talk to, a little friend I could take with me to movies. As for his first few years of childhood, I expected to wait until I was rich enough to afford a house, a wife, and a nanny to handle all the icky stuff. Now that I’m changing diapers myself, I realize that most fathers tend to cheat themselves out of the primary joys of parenting. Not that it’s particularly pleasurable to wipe a baby’s bottom, but it is unquestionably gratifying to take full solo responsibility for the life of a helpless little being.

     When I was ten I remember seeing a middle-aged woman writhing on the floor in hysteria, crying uncontrollably, tearing at herself, unable to comprehend the depths of her misery. I was watching the news on TV, and they were showing a clip of a woman at the airport who had just been told that her son wasn’t coming home because of a crash. Secretly, I wondered if my mom would act that way if I didn’t come home. She probably would.
     I never wanted to experience anything like the misery I had just witnessed, so I decided then and there that I would never lose a child. This infantile concept manifested itself years later as a genuine fear of fatherhood.
     It was a way of thinking that had to go when mandatory fatherhood was introduced into my life. It may have been a perfectly logical series of thought processes at the time, but if you expect logic to reign supreme on earth, you might as well kill yourself right now and get reborn on another planet.
     Earth is the planet of the random element. It is how you are here, and it might be why you are here. Buster, no matter how carefully you plan your future, it will not turn out that way. You will set goals that you will achieve and you will be elated. You will set goals that you will fail at, and you will be miserable. If you live life without goals, you will be bored out of your skull.
     All goals look the same when they first start out - they’re just fragile thoughts that can accumulate into big ideas. Buster, you are going to get good ideas that I happen to know are bad. There are hundreds of things I know that I am not going to tell you. It would be like giving away the ending of a movie you were halfway through; there are certain things you’ve got to find out for yourself. I ask that you come to me for advice before doing something that might be dangerous, but other than that you’re on your own. Maybe the random element can make all the bad things that happened to me become the good things that happen to you.

     Is it possible to convey how great this kid is without bringing him over to your house right now? I don’t think so, because you wouldn’t believe me. Something special is happening here, and it’s him.
     I look other fathers in the eye and we have an understanding. In the sixties, I would nod at another long-haired hippie and we would presume that we had a contract, that we would help each other out, that we would get each other high, that we knew something the straights didn’t. In the eighties I look at another father and we’re in the same secret society, we’ve suffered similar initiations into the realm of the daddies. We’ve been kept up all night. We’ve rearranged all priorities. We are all brave because we have faced the blank slate of our helpless little offsprings.

     When I lived in my loft on Hollywood Blvd., I had a large two story wall covered in burlap. My cat had kittens, so naturally I used to throw them up against the wall. They would cling to it like velcro, then crawl up to a little walkway that led down from the ceiling. It was great fun, and many a lively afternoon was spent hurling projectile pussies towards the second floor.
     People who knew me then look at me with this baby and raise their eyebrows, wondering when I’m going to carpet the walls, cover my kid in velcro, and hurl him against the wall.

     Now I live in an old Hollywood Bungalow courtyard, and my neighbors are all friendly. I found that if I put up simple barriers at two exits, I could let the baby go outside - with the whole courtyard as his playpen. I work at a computer which faces a window, so I can easily write while keeping an eye on the baby as he wanders through the foliage. I stay home most of the time, and I take him with me when I leave. Together, we go to art openings, playgrounds, and interviews with movie stars.

     At the age of nine months, I taught him how to get down off the sofa by crawling backwards towards the edge of the pillow and letting his legs dangle till they touched the floor. He practiced it a few times and was quite proud of his new accomplishment, giggling and looking at me every time he got down without banging something.
     A week later, he tried it on the bed and it worked there, too. He was possessed with glee. He had it all figured out.
     The next time I put him in the playpen, he spent half an hour futilely trying to crawl out tail first, getting his legs caught between the bars, secure in the knowledge that moving backwards is the way out of anything.

     I let Buster play on the lawn while I sat at my desk inside. I looked up and suddenly he was nowhere. He couldn’t have been missing for more than five seconds. I ran to the door and looked out.
     He was right at the doorstep with his hand at his neck. He had crawled in desperation all the way across the lawn with something unknown in his throat, unable to breath, coughing and wheezing, gagging and choking, phlegm coming from his nose, tears in his eyes. I picked him up and opened his mouth. I couldn’t see anything.
     I thought of turning him upside down and shaking him, but I didn’t. I also considered trying some miniature version of the Heimlich Maneuver, but it seemed risky. I tried to think of what I could stick down his throat when I remembered that scary green bulbous rubber thing that the people at baby prison had mysteriously given me when I first picked him up. It looked like it was for squirting things into orifices, and I didn’t want to think about it. But I figured they gave it to me for some reason, and I left it on top of my dresser, knowing I’d never use it.
     Good thing. In a dramatic flash, I realized that it would also be useful for sucking things out of orifices. I ran with the baby into the bedroom, grabbed it from the dresser, squeezed it, shoved the end down the baby’s throat, let it go, pulled it out, and the suction pulled a leaf covered in saliva out of his mouth.
     He cried and coughed a lot. I gave him a drink of water, and five minutes later everything was all right. Once again, I had saved his life.

     I got a call from the Sony Corporation telling me about a new product they had called a camcorder. It was a camera and recorder all in one, and they were very excited about it. Could they loan me one to try out and maybe write about it? You bet.
     It was Buster’s first birthday, a hot summer day, and he jumped out of the bathtub without warning, ran out the front door, and started wandering about the yard. I did what any parent would have done. I grabbed my camcorder. It had autofocus and a handle on top, so I simply held it down at Buster’s level and followed him around the yard. He played with the hose, chased a cat, and kept falling on his butt.
     Later, I edited the footage to Randy Newman’s Beware of the Naked Man, ending up with one of the most adorable videos ever made. Everybody loved it, including Bobbe, to whom I gave a copy. When I reluctantly gave the camcorder back to Sony, I showed them the video and they loved it. They thought it was a perfect example of how parents could make creative home movies, and they asked if they could use it in some sort of promotion. I declined. Later, I wrote an article about the camcorder and the making of the video for Movieline Magazine.

     There are periods of growth that are so accelerated, you’ve literally got to watch them every second. At 18 months, he’s in control of the world for the first time. He can move anything anywhere, stand up on it, and climb to somewhere else.
     I went to the bathroom for one single minute, and when I came out he was on top of my desk, rearranging my floppy discs. He was very neat about it too, There were no random floppy discs frisbeed across the room, they were all still in the wooden roll top file, but in absolutely no order. Sometimes it’s like he’s purposely trying to drive me crazy, but that requires a level of motivation he hasn’t attained yet. He simply does what I do, he rearranges things.
     I pick up a newspaper from outside the front door every morning, look through it, and then put it someplace else. So he goes through absolutely everything he can get his hands on, and puts it somewhere else.
     He doesn’t like it when I brush his hair, so the hairbrush disappeared. I tore everything apart, rounded up none of the usual suspects, and went outside with my hair un-brushed.
     The next day, he was playing with it in the middle of the living room. I took it from him and furiously brushed my hair, leaving the brush somewhere he couldn’t reach. The next day I got out of the shower, grabbed for the brush, and it was nowhere. I tore apart the house for five days. No brush. Suddenly, he’s playing with it in the middle of the living room. Do you understand what I’m saying? My baby has gained control of my hairbrush. From now on, only he can decide whether I will be well coifed when I leave the house. Does this happen with all 18 month olds? Is it just a phase he is going through? Or am I to understand that from now on, for the rest of my life, nothing is safe?

     Sometimes he gets into a rearranging fury, spinning around the room, throwing the TV Guide to the floor, waving his arms as fast as he can, trying to move the whole room somewhere else. Now I understand why parents come in pairs. It is mathematically impossible for one adult to clean up as fast as a child can mess up. Just when you’ve put your records back in order, you will discover that he has smeared his Cheerios across the living room floor.

     Everything seemed to be working out fine when the crap hit the diaper. My landlord threatened to evict me because I put up barriers, and Helen, my staunch feminist female editor at the paper started insulting my work and blaming it on the baby. She told me my writing had gone downhill since I had become a father, and she purposely gave me worse and worse assignments. Finally, because I was late on deadlines, she gave me three weeks off without pay.
     Imagine a male editor telling a female writer that her writing had gone downhill ever since she became a mother. It sounded like a job for the ACLU, and they agreed with me that I had a case against my newspaper for job discrimination. Nevertheless, I declined to do battle for the privilege of reviewing B-movies for a female chauvinist pig. I had more important worries; Bobbe was taking me to court for custody of the baby.
     I tried to explain to her that since the state had found her unfit, if I lost the child, we would both lose him, probably to adoption. She decided to fight me anyway.
     I girded myself for battle. We were to go to court in front of the Honorable Stanley Weisberg, the judge who eventually handled the McMartin School trial, the Rodney King beating, and the Menendez murders. But even at the time he had a remarkable history. As a prosecutor, he had been responsible for more death sentences than any other DA in California. His nickname was...Doctor Death.

Chapter Three

 

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