Here Comes the Son
by Michael Dare

 CHAPTER THREE

     His purity has invaded my life, like a single flicker of flame in a dark subterranean cave. Each day he adds a new candle, illuminating my being, giving structure where there was once chaos. As I fan his flame, I see more of myself and I like what I see. He is as affirming and life-giving a being as only a baby can be.

     I’ve never had someone throw up on my hair right before I left for a meeting. I’ve never had someone chew on my nose because their teeth hurt. I’ve never had to feed and clothe anyone. I’ve never had to wipe someone else’s butt. I’ve never felt love so natural and free-flowing. I’ve never been so scared but I’ve never been less worried.

     For the past three days, all I have to do is close my eyes and pretend to be asleep, and he will crawl up to me, put his head on my shoulder, and try to go to sleep with me. It’s an amazingly sensual relationship. We roll around in bed and kiss and laugh and hug and play games. We’re lovers without sex.

     My keys were missing for a week, so I had to specially order another motorcycle key. In the meantime I was stuck inside, so I decided to mop the kitchen floor. There they were, and there was no doubt about who was to blame. Nobody else would have taken my keys off the desk and put them under the kitchen sink in the bin with the floor cleanser.

     “Someday little Michael is going to be old enough to be told the truth, and I’m going to tell him. No matter, it doesn’t really matter. I’m not going to call any more. Someday I’m going to shove it in your face and that’s the only way I can let you go at all, if you’re still worthy of being a father. Little Michael is the hardest part, so just call me if anything happens. Tell him I love him and give him a hug for me”

THE ULTIMATE BABY TEST

     Around 6:00 we were rolling around on the bed giggling hysterically when there was a knock at the door. I got up, walked into the living room, and discovered my visitor was at the wrong address. When I went back into the bedroom, Buster had climbed off the bed and was standing there, holding onto nothing. When he saw me, he took three little steps towards me, his very first, then fell down. I shouted with delight, picked him up, and continued rolling around on the bed. He walked twice more that evening, never more than three steps, but walking nonetheless. Later, he stuck his finger in his nose for the first time. Do all babies learn to walk and pick their noses simultaneously?

     There were 100 people in a hallway with 75 chairs, waiting for a judge to decide whether they were good parents or not. The only place to smoke is the stairway, which is packed with puffers. Other than the lawyers and one middle aged construction worker type, wearing a cap that says “I still have it but nobody wants to see it,” I was the only adult white male there. The hall was jammed with kids. A little boy was spinning around while sucking on an orange, bumping into walls. The hallway resounded with the laughter of children and the cries of parents:
     “Come here, girl, sit down.”
     “What did I tell you to do, stop running.”
     “Leave that alone.”
     This first hearing was to determine whether the state had the right to take the baby away from Bobbe in the first place. A vast parade of social workers and psychiatrists testified to Bobbe’s state of mind, but no evidence was more convincing than Bobbe’s actual behavior in court. She kept calling witnesses liars, and generally speaking when not spoken to. Judge Weisberg kept having to tell her to be quiet.

     Five people gave testimony, each cross-examined by three different attorneys: mine, Bobbe’s, and the baby’s. It took all day, even though I noticed that Judge Weisberg seemed to have made up his mind in the first five minutes. I sat back and watched the system jerk itself off for a while.
     First, there was the social worker who testified that she was the first to notice something a little strange about Bobbe. On the fateful day five months ago, she was the one who had called in the psychiatrist.
     Second, the psychiatrist testified that Bobbe was bonkers, though Bobbe’s attorney made her define schizophrenia and psychosis and neurosis and manic depression. She explained that Bobbe may be all of the above. Then she explained why she thought it was necessary to put her in a happy place for a while. At some point in her testimony, Bobbe shouted out “How can she say that? She wasn’t even there!”
     Third, there was the Doctor who admitted Bobbe to the hospital. He testified that Bobbe was in such bad shape, they wanted to keep her for a full 14 day hold. But the court ordered her released to attend a hearing, so the hospital reluctantly let her go.
     Fourth, there was me. I testified that to the best of my knowledge Bobbe had never had a job, that she hitchhiked around the country when she was pregnant, and that she was indigent. I explained that I believed the child was mine, and that Bobbe had shown up at my door on that proverbial rainy night, wearing a shawl, and carrying little Michael. I told them that I saw Bobbe do speed and smoke grass. I admitted that I had smoked grass with her, but that I didn’t do speed. I told about her sleeping in my garages, on my doorstep, about her screaming all night till the neighbors called the police, about her locking herself in the bathroom.
     Last came Bobbe, who testified that “it was on and off, on and off, don’t know exactly how long we lived together. We were in Seattle for at least a year when he lied to me, he told me he loved me but his mother broke us apart, and then there was Hollywood Blvd., and that was at least a year, and yes, 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 everyone does...”
     Judge Weisberg decided that UCLA was indeed within their legal rights to take the baby away from his mother. He ordered us back for a custody hearing. In the mean time, he ordered a paternity test, saving me fifteen hundred dollars. That night, I threw away Bobbe’s hair.

     Buster barfed just as Bobbe showed up for her visit, a lovely sight with appropriate sound effects. I bounced him till he calmed down and we went for a walk on Melrose. I talked jive to Buster - “Say baby, what it is!” - and Bobbe complained. Maybe she thinks I’m trying to turn him into a black by subtly influencing him during his pre-vocalization phase.

     The Federal Building is the scariest building in Los Angeles. It has blinders on all the windows so that those facing north can see nothing but a vast government graveyard, and those facing south can see nothing but a parking lot. Since this was obviously built into the plan, I have always had an intimate repugnance of THE BUILDING THAT EQUATES DEATH WITH PARKING. Luckily, I get to drive right past it. My appointment for the paternity test is in a much less imposing building right across the street, where the parking is in the north and the graveyard is in the west. I somehow find this comforting.
     I was nervous, though for the first time in my life, I knew that the government was actually looking out for me. It was entirely in the state’s interest to prove that I was the father. If I wasn’t, then they just gave away a baby to a strange man who happened to appear in court. Though there was once a time when I would have done anything to prove he wasn’t mine, I now find myself making up speeches to give Judge Weisberg if he turns out not to be mine.
     “Your honor, I have no son but Michael Dare, and he has no father but Michael Dare. I don’t care what the paternity test says. A twist of fate has brought us together, and it would be a shame to bring a halt to it now. We’ve got a relationship going and it’s not one-sided.
     “If you gave random paternity tests to the general population, you would undoubtedly discover a surprising percentage of children who were not their father’s. And if you used that as an excuse to take these children from their fathers, you would have quite a fight on your hands.
     “At this point, I would undoubtedly be disappointed if little Michael turn out to be someone else’s biological child, but it wouldn’t effect my love for him in the slightest. I’ve clothed him, fed him, washed him, changed his diapers, and taught him capably and with affection. To take him away from the only stability he’s ever known would unquestionably be harmful to the child and particularly cruel to me. You can explain it to me, that my paternal instincts are illegal, but how are you going to explain it to a one year old. He calls me da-da and no court paper is going to convince him otherwise.”

     I walked down the hallway only to see Bobbe come out of a room. “You’re here. I was sure you weren’t going to come. I got so angry. I just knew that you were going to desert me like last time.” (What last time? What is she talking about? I look in the door and see a couple of nurses watching Bobbe. I realize this performance is for them, not me, so I let her play it out.) “I waited as long as I could, then I panicked and called a friend who brought me here. I already took the test. It didn’t hurt at all.” (Too bad)
     They took a Polaroid of me and the baby which they had me sign. Then they stapled it to a card and had Bobbe sign it to identify me as the potential father. We’re both smiling. Then they handed me a card with Bobbe’s picture on it, and I signed the back identifying her as the mother.
     They gave me a doggy bone to hold tightly in my left hand as they tied a rubber hose around my bicep, wiped me with alcohol, and stuck the needle in. It was in for ten seconds when the nurse fiddled with it. I waited another 30 seconds, then the nurse fiddled with it again. I looked at the hideous pictures of cute little baby animals on the wall. She fiddled with it some more and left it in another 30 seconds before taking the goddam thing out. She gave me cotton and told me to close my arm. I looked at the table and watched while she labeled each of four full test tubes of my blood. She handed me each one and asked me to verify her spelling of my name. I give her the nod.
     Then they asked me to put the baby in my lap with his legs between mine and my right arm across his chest, holding his left arm, offering it to the doctor. She put a rubber hose around his forearm, he yelled, and started jerking around. Then came the poke and he started some serious crying. He desperately tried to get loose, and it became clear that he was crying just as much because of the way I was holding him as what they were doing to his arm. I held tight and refused to watch. After a full agonizing minute, they finally stopped, and Bobbe said “You didn’t get anything, did you?” I look at the nurse who is holding an empty test tube. They didn’t get anything.
     I turned little Michael around and let him cry on my shoulder while the nurses went into the other room to confer. When they returned, they got a third nurse to help restrain him. They said I didn’t hold him tight enough, so I left the room as a strange Egyptian nurse held what I now considered my baby, They poked into his right arm and he screamed and looked at me and screamed and looked at me. I could see that they were getting blood, but I couldn’t look. I could only pace and look at Bobbe. Together, we shared a moment of terror as we helplessly listened to a little boy cry.
     When they were done, they handed him to me and I walked him down the hallway. A nurse looked at us and said “you’re welcome.” I couldn’t tell if she was facetiously speaking to the baby, or seriously speaking to me. Maybe she thought she was doing me a favor. Maybe she didn’t realize that it’s impossible to thank someone who just caused your child pain.

     Meanwhile, I kept getting surprise visits from social workers, whom I did my best to charm with my elaborate home videos of the baby.
     Bobbe wasn’t charmed by anything. Her court-granted visits were a choice series of scenes from hell. Each visit would end with a heartfelt farewell, and a promise that this would be the last time I would ever see her. Then she’d show up the next day to borrow two bucks.
     Once, while I was in the bedroom changing the baby, Bobbe stole all my change and rifled my desk. Days later, she called me and told me that if I didn’t come visit, I would never see my stapler again.

     “Your Honor, she lives in the garage when I won’t let her in my house. Quick, am I talking about a cat or a human being?”

     Sickness. Changing diapers had become routine until one day something hit him from the inside and strangeness started coming out. It was exactly like the scene in Three Men and Baby, except it was just me. I couldn’t offer Steve Guttenberg a thousand dollars to deal with the problem, I had to do it myself. It was horrifying and noxious, filling the crib every night with overflowing diapers, something acidy that caused a class-A diaper rash, making every wipe a cause for anguish. No change in diet made any difference, everything that went in one end came out the other end as toxic waste for three days.
     I ran out of prescription diaper rash medicine, so I went to the pharmacy for more. The pharmacist wouldn’t give it to me till he reconfirmed it with the doctor. I explained that my baby had diaper rash and was crying in agony at that very moment. There was no need to take him to a doctor to have it confirmed, but the pharmacist remained adamant. I had to wait an extra day so that he could contact the doctor. (What is the worst case scenario for buying some more diaper rash medicine? Is there something else you can do with it that I don’t know about? Can you get high on it? Is there a black market for creams and salves for baby bottoms?)
     The answer to all bottom problems came in a surprise gift from one of Buster’s surrogate moms. It is a little green tin with a picture of a cow surrounded by roses. It is called Bag Balm, and it is meant to be used on cow’s udders after milking. In L.A. you can get it at The Soap Plant, without a prescription, and it will get rid of any diaper rash. Just ask your vet.

     Buster, you are going to spend the rest of your life trying to create a particular reality that suits you, and only time will tell whether the real world will respond to your requests. Your success may depend on how popular your personal reality is, on how many other people share your individual view of the world.
     Some men and women never create their own reality, they spend their lives trying to emulate the reality of others so that they can be popular. You can spot these people all over the place. Their heart isn’t in whatever they’re doing.
     You can only be happy if what you do stems from inside rather than outside. The world will become a game of “How would you like to behave vs. what kind of behavior is acceptable in your surroundings?” Obviously if you are totally alone, if you are the only living being on the planet, you can behave absolutely any way you want, all the time. Rant and rave, blow things up, drive as fast as you want, get high, jerk off, who cares, no one’s watching.
     But as long as there is one other person whom you may come in contact with, you’ve got to accept that you are being judged. You may not give a damn what one person thinks of you, (and that person may be me) but for the moment I’m in total control of your life. I had a terrible childhood simply because I had no ideal release for my thought processes. I was told that God was this and good was that, and I had to accept it or get walloped. I am going to be the world’s best father to you because I am going to allow you to make up your own mind about what is possible to achieve on this planet.
     Let your mind wander like a balloon, see the sights, inhale the aromas of free flight, let the air currents make your decisions for you. You can always come back to reality, reality is what we all share. But no one can share your thoughts unless you decide to share them, in your time and in your way. Your thoughts may have nothing to do with words. They may be feelings, they may be colors, they may be music, they may be tremendous, they may be infinitesimal. If you see buildings, I will help you build them. If you hear music, I will help you play it. If you see colors, I will help you to splash them across the canvas of your choosing.

     “Your Honor, if you were on the road, living on different people’s sofas week to week, what would you have with you? Would you bring your toiletries, a towel, perhaps some slippers and a change of clothes? Not if you were Bobbe Paris.
     “Your Honor, if you let Bobbe stay on your sofa for just one night, it will probably turn into a week. You will get up the first morning and find that she has used most of your shampoo and all of your conditioner, that the caps are off the tubes, and they are oozing their pathetic remnants all over the tub. You will inevitably discover that your last plastic razor is hopelessly clogged and laying in tangled web of Bobbe hair, that her panties and one of your T-shirts are wrung out and drying over the sink, that all your towels are wadded up in a soggy prehistoric lump near the toilet, that she used your toothbrush and left globs of toothpaste still on it, and that your new electronic bathroom scale doesn’t work anymore because Bobbe decided to wash it.
     “Your Honor, she’s wearing your last clean shirt, the one you needed for that meeting, and she is making breakfast which consists of fried eggs with their yolks broken, never scrambled, no, don’t ever scramble Bobbe’s eggs or she’ll get you for it. There’s a new burn mark on the top of your toaster oven because of a cigarette which Bobbe accidentally left there while trying to save the burning bacon which has left an artistic array of splattered pig grease across your previously mentioned only clean shirt.
     “Your Honor, when you examine the shirt, you see that Bobbe has tried to clean it and failed, so she has drawn little colored circles around the stains with your marking pens in order to make it seem like it was supposed to look that way. You reach into your inner coat pocket to find your wallet, which you pull out, only to witness your new watch go flying across the room and shatter against a wall. You ask Bobbe about it later and she says she put it there so you wouldn’t lose it, but you wouldn’t have lost it, you knew exactly where your new watch was, it was on the top of the piano.
     “Your Honor, would you let this woman stay in your house? Even if she was pregnant? Even if she had your child?”

     I stopped at a garage sale where I bought some puzzles and one of those plastic gadgets with the arrow in the middle. Just pull the string and it says something different depending upon where the arrow is pointing. Point it to the dog and a human voice says “Can you hear the dog?” and a dog barks. Point it to the cop and a human voice says “The Policeman is blowing his whistle,” and you hear a whistle. Like all of these educational devices, the fun is what happens when you give the string a little yank somewhere in the middle of playback. You get messages like “Listen to the train” followed by a dog barking.
     This one worked perfectly, and I bought it for a buck, along with a little stepladder/baby toilet seat combo that fits right over the regular toilet. Just to be on the safe side, I also bought a special little potty that plays “How dry I am” whenever this one little person I know manages to pee into it.
     I tried it out with a glass of water and it went off, but frankly I am still petrified at the thought of toilet training. Though there are dozens of big thick books explaining how easy the process can be, they are clearly too much work to read.
     Everyone tells me not to rush it. Everyone tells me to simple praise him whenever he gets it right and scold him whenever he gets it wrong. I’ll keep you posted.
     When I brought the booty back, I dropped and broke my favorite toy. Now, when I pull the string on the talking whatever, it goes real slow, like Lurch on the Adam’s family. I put Buster into my lap, pull the magic string, and he hears...
 

CCCCCCCCaaaaannnnn
   yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyoooooouuuuuuuu
     hhhhhhhheeeeeeeeeerrrrrrreeeeeeee
       tttttthhhhhhhe
 trrrrrrrrrraaaaaaaiiiiiiiiinnnnnnn?????????????
Cccchhhhhhuuuuu
  gggggaaaaaa
   ccccchhhhhhuuuu
    ggggggaaaaa
Woooooooooooo woooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

     He enjoys it, but it seems a particularly cruel gift for someone just learning to speak, unless of course you want your child to sound like he’s playing back at the wrong speed. I threw it away.

     The whole top drawer of my desk has become community property. My box of rubber bands ended up in the toy chest. I fell into bed last night on top of my hole punch and magnifying glass. (Thanks, kid, they came in handy) This would never do, so I’ve attached a special latch inside the drawer which adds one teeny little step to the act of opening it. It works. He can’t get in my desk. My paper clips are safe.

     Baby’s first double take - at a passing bottle! Baby’s first snore - when he woke up with a cold and learned to breath through his mouth! Baby’s first cherries, which came out the other end intact!
     He found a wadded up paper towel on the floor. I was lying on the sofa when he came up to me and wiped my face with it. He saw a big stack of paperback books on a shelf, so he knocked them on the floor. Then he picked them up one at a time and tried, unsuccessfully, to put them all back on the shelf.
     If you give him a slice of lemon, he will bite into it, make a funny face, stick out his tongue a few times, smack his lips, and then take another bite, make another funny face, etc. He hates it but he loves it.

     Two major breakthroughs today, both good news/bad news situations. For the first time, he figured out how to unscrew the nipple from his bottle, and he poured his juice all over the floor. Later, we took a long walk, during which I bought some things at a drug store. When we got home, I took him out of the walker, and a nice new pair of sunglasses fell to the ground.
     All baby advancements seem to create perfect dichotomies of reaction. He learned how to unscrew things, hooray! I have to clean up the mess, boo! He learned how to put on sunglasses, hooray! He didn’t pay for them, boo!
     On the one hand, he’s learned how to grab things and hide them, which means he understands that objects are still there even when he doesn’t see them. Not only that, but they can often be found later in the exact same place you left them. This means he doesn’t have to cry whenever object/daddy leaves the room, because it is more than likely that object/daddy will return. Everything is safe, the world is not falling apart, all the stuff you grooved on today will still be here tomorrow. Unfortunately Michael II decided to reaffirm this principle in a drug store by stealing sunglasses.
     Do I take him back and make him apologize? Do I casually attempt to sneak the sunglasses back into the store? Do I get angry?
     The answer to the bottle problem was easy - just screw the nipples on tighter (though God knows how long that will work). The answer to problem number two is the hardest for anyone to learn. It’s the aspect of fatherhood that has probably had the most profound effect on my other relationships. With a baby, you can’t get mad at his actions since there’s clearly no intent. The baby did not mean to make a mess or shoplift, the baby was simply examining the world around him. He has discovered that objects can come apart, things like bottles full of fruit juice or two pieces of a plastic puzzle put together. His intent is never malicious when he crawls up to something and tries to do something with it.
     If you can see the baby in everyone, then you can never get angry at their actions, only their intent. That jerk who almost sideswiped you doing ninety-five on Sunset the other day? Maybe his house was on fire, maybe someone was having a baby, who knows? His intent was not sideswiping, his intent was getting somewhere fast. Maybe you would have driven exactly the same way if you were in his shoes. Don’t get angry. What if it was just a baby behind the wheel? What if he was crying and didn’t know what to do and just wanted someone to hold him and tell him it’s all right, baby, it’s all right?
     If you’ve got to get up early tomorrow and you hear a baby crying in the middle of the night, you can’t get angry at the baby. The baby hasn’t even figured out the difference between asleep and awake. The entire concept of “keeping someone else awake” is well beyond his grasp.
     In any case, babies can get you into trouble. Now I’m a shoplifter because I haven’t returned the sunglasses. But I haven’t worn them yet either, and I swear I’ll return them as soon as I’m done writing this. There, I just turned off the computer and I’m on my way to the store.

     I’ve begun seeing everything as a phase. For the first three months his grip was astonishing. He couldn’t do a pull-up, but if you stuck your fingers out, he would grab on so tight with both hands that you could lift him up. It was a way of showing off, for me, not him. I would make him display his amazing grip in front of anyone lucky enough to cross our paths.
     At the same time, he would “give you five.” Just show your palm to him, facing up, and he would hit it with his palm as an automatic reaction.
     But now he’s out of those phases. He won’t grip anything and hang on for dear life, except your hair, which he pulls with great glee. Show him your palm and exclaim “gimme five” and he will look at you as though you’re crazy and he may even smack you somewhere else. Showing off how great your baby pulls hair or pokes you in the eye doesn’t quite have the panache of his previous tricks, but when you’re a father you make do with whatever the kid can do at the moment.
     Phases can last only a day. One day he looked at me, stuck out his tongue, and did a raspberry. I laughed and he laughed. He did raspberries all day and constantly cracked both of us up.
     He totally forgot about it the next day and he hasn’t done another raspberry since. I guess he’s already gone through his raspberry phase, but I’m sure it will re-emerge.

     We walked all the way to West Hollywood Park at San Vicente and Santa Monica so that Buster could experience his first playground. I put him on the baby swing, strapped him in, and gave him a push. He started giggling hysterically, as though it were the most fun he’d ever had. Then he got the hiccups. He had a very hard time swinging and hiccuping at the same time, so I took him off and put him on the baby merry-go-round. He held on tight as I spun him slowly, then a little faster. He went around about five times before he let go and flew off, landing on his face in the sand.
     Sand in his eyes, sand in his nose, sand in his mouth, a nasty scrape on his forehead, he didn’t stop crying for an hour. It felt like the first betrayal, he was having fun, trusting me that nothing could go wrong, when suddenly, inexplicable pain. I took him to the drinking fountain and washed him off, but nothing would calm him down. I walked home with him crying all the way. Finally, he stopped bawling, but he remained cranky all the rest of the day. I thought he’d never trust me again, but the next day, everything was fine again.

     Bobbe was given the rights to have monitored visits with the baby, three days a week, for two hours. Judge Weisberg looked me in the eye and gave me one of those hard looks that said “Hey you! Pay attention to me, Mr. Dare. You will do precisely what I say. You will never, under any circumstances, leave the child alone with the mother.” Yes, your Honor.

     For the past three weeks she has shown up on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, disappeared Thursday through Sunday, and reappeared on the next Monday. These visits consist of little other than vilification and threats. She tells Buster he’s gotten stupider since he’s stayed with me. She tells me she’s going to hire some junkies to cut me up. She complains about the ring in the bathtub and the glob of baby food on his shirt and the bagel I let the baby eat and about how hungry she is.
     She asks for a hit of grass, and she calls me an asshole when I tell her I don’t have any. She complains about the floor, she insults my mother, she kisses the baby, she shakes the baby, and she makes herself something to eat. I ask her to eat it outside since the fumes are making me sick, and she calls me an asshole, which I resent since Judge Weisberg didn’t say I had to let her eat my food.
     Why did I just let her make breakfast? Probably because I didn’t have enough energy to stop her since I really am sick. I imagine that I have let a poor pathetic creature in from the street for a meal, and that the payment I am receiving is the sight of her glomming down my food while calling me names. So I get up and overturn her breakfast and say “no, that’s an asshole.”
     She cries and shoves a piece of toast into her mouth that had fallen right side up on the pavement. She runs past me into the kitchen and grabs the last two remaining baby bagels and tries to eat them, but I grab them from her and step on them. She runs from the room while I attempt to pick up a baby bagel with my toes and offer it to her while she yells.
     “You’re sick Michael Dare, you’re a sick little fuck and I hate you, you’re just a whore, I don’t know why I ever thought I, brrrrr, oh geez, stupid, stupid, why do I put up with this, oh, I don’t know, you’re really a jerk, I can’t believe you’d rather step on the bagels, boy oh boy, you’re gonna get what’s coming to you, just you wait, I’ll get you for that, buster, just you wait, I won’t be a whore for you, not for anybody.”

     I was returning from a long walk with the baby in the stroller when she showed up and walked along with me. She has already visited three times that week, so this visit is verboten.
     She said she needed to use a phone. I told her there was one on the corner. She said it was broken. I told her there was one at the Standard Station. She asked why I was treating her like this. I told her she was a leach. She called me an asshole, and started hitting me in the back of the head. I turned around and pushed her back, blindly flailing my arms, once, twice, stopping on the third punch only when I realized I was stopping to take aim, and all I could see in front of me was a crying woman. I grabbed the baby, run inside, and locked the door.
     My neighbor, the one who chanted, took Bobbe to the hospital. I went out with friends. When I returned, there was a message from Bobbe saying that she was at the bus station, that she has pressed charges against me, that I can expect the police to arrest me any second for assault, and that they’ll be taking the baby away. Good-bye.

     At the next hearing, my lawyer handed me the social worker’s report which recommended leaving the Dare child with me. The court would clearly take the report into consideration, and all that remained was to see if anyone would contest it.
     Suddenly, Bobbe stormed past us in the hallway and said “Bye.” He ran off to find out what happened, and returned with typical news. Bobbe’s lawyer naturally recommended for her to accept the findings and bow out gracefully. Not Bobbe. She went before Judge Weisberg and demanded that her lawyer be fired. He refused, and assigned a date for the trial.

     At our next visit, Bobbe told me that she’ll just prostitute herself in order to make enough money to hire a real lawyer. “I’ll just go to Nevada where it’s not against the law so Judge Weisberg can’t hold it against me, and I’ll make an incredible amount of money because now I know how to do just what they want. Before I used to gyp them because I was so uptight, but now I’m good at it, thanks to you, you little creep. All you did was fuck me. I’ve still got a key to your house, you know, and I think about coming over here and smashing your computer because you love it so much, but you’d know it was me, but I’d be out of here fast, and I could take it all. I want visitation without you around. That’s the next thing I’ve got to bring up in court.”
     I went in the other room and put a frozen pizza in the oven, when, in one hysterical sob, she blurted out “I would never take you back, Michael Dare, unless you admitted to all the lies.”
     Geez, this is great. Now all I have to do is make sure that I never admit to any lies in front of Bobbe, and I’m guaranteed she’ll never take me back. What a relief.

     You never have been, and never will be, trusted as much as a baby trusts you. It is total trust, implicit trust, and you will have no choice but to become trustworthy or he will die. You are his protector and savior. If something goes wrong, it is your fault. If something goes right, it is his.

     Bobbe once had her sister call to tell me that she had been killed in a bus wreck. She wanted to hear my reaction, to see if I cared, but her sister was so clumsy at the impersonation of an official, I knew right away it wasn’t real. Contact with Bobbe is detrimental not only to the baby’s health but to absolutely anyone she associates with. She should come with a warning label.

     I just got a call from Bobbe’s roommate, who told me if I ever wanted her to testify that Bobbe was crazy, she would be more than willing to say Praise the Lord, Hallelujah, this woman is out of her mind. She had been listening to Bobbe complain about me, and had assumed that I was just another macho male who beat up women. Clearly, I was the bad guy. But now she wanted to beat some sense into Bobbe herself, and she just had to talk to me about it.
     I told her that nobody could claim that they really knew Bobbe until they had seen her hysterical. I welcomed her to the club and asked her what had happened to change her mind.
     This time it was the mayonnaise. Bobbe went crazy because of something having to do with the mayonnaise that Linda took some of and intended to replace tomorrow, but instead she just yelled and yelled for hours and hours, pathetic screaming that she was going to get them back, that she was going to sue the landlord, that, don’t touch me, that always, leave me alone, that always happens, cut it out for Christ sake, that always happens when, why are you doing this to me, that always happens when she, Oh God, you’re all alike, I hate you, that always happens when she comes, why can’t all you horrible people just leave me alone, This isn’t happening to me, I can’t stand it, that always happens when she comes down, I’ve had enough of people like you, you’re scum, you don’t deserve to live, that always happens when she comes down off, You’re just like Michael, you just want to take, it makes me sick, you rotten little asshole, look at me, you better do something fast, don’t leave me like this, that always happens when she comes down off speed.

     Before we went into the courtroom, Bobbe stopped me in the hallway.
     “You’re a sleazy little liar Michael Dare, and I’m going to prove it if it’s the last thing I do. Can I have a cigarette?”
     “Sure.”
     “I don’t like that kind. Haven’t you got any white ones?”
     “No.”
     “Okay, I’ll smoke that.”
     “Don’t do me any favors.”
      “Don’t pick on me. Look, the only reason the social worker said all those things against me in the report is that I chain smoked in front if her.”
      “You were pregnant.”
      “So what? My mother chain smoked and had eight kids who were all fine. (?) I smoked when I was pregnant with Michael and he’s okay. Anyway, you smoke too. I’ve seen you smoke in front of the baby.”
      “I’m not pregnant.”

     Nice visit. she tells me she’s going to bring proof into court that fifteen years ago, dealt drugs. Now the judge who handed out the most death sentences in the State of California is going to have to decide whether this baby should be brought up by an ex-drug dealer or an ex-prostitute. Of the two professions, I’d say that he’s more likely to have delivered a death sentence against a drug dealer than a prostitute. Now I have to prove that I’m no longer a drug dealer, she has to prove that she’s no longer a prostitute, and, ultimately, that she’s sane. Since I’ve seen her snap, I know that if you ask her the right questions, she will give the wrong answers. Just ask her why the baby can’t wear clothes with bunnies on them. Ask her where she lost our dog.

     I’m starting to see my life in terms of National Inquirer headlines. CRITIC RAKED OVER THE COALS BY THE MADWOMAN OF HOLLYWOOD! JOHN DEMANDS CUSTODY OF HOOKER’S CHILD! THE DARE-PARIS SCANDAL! She says they’ve been lovers for years! He says she’s a hound from hell who’s been pestering him for years. She says they were in love. He says he forgot to lock the door one night when the bad news babe snuck into his bed. She says she loves him from the middle of her soul. He says he woke up in the middle of the night in the middle of Bobbe. Killer Judge to decide fate of Dare child! Whom does this child belong to? Whoever can hold on to him longest, and he’s moving fast.

     Every stage of growth is frustrating, enlightening, and powerful. You can’t blame him for being curious, but you don’t enjoy picking your record collection off the floor and tying it to the shelves with a leftover piece of telephone cord.
     The plateaus are the most frustrating, the days where nothing new happens, when he just calmly sorts through the input already delivered and tries to make sense out of it.

     I’ve started to play games with his sleep patterns. While he’s napping, I rearrange his stuff, so that every time he wakes up there’s a new set of toys displayed around his crib. I take all his blocks and put them neatly all around the piano bench. He wakes up, sees them, looks at me, smiles, then knocks them all down.

     I interviewed Dean Stockwell for Movieline last week. I wrote as much of it as I could off the top of my head, watched a bunch of his movies, taking copious notes. I saved the horrible task of actually transcribing the interview until the last moment.
     The piece was due at 2:00, and I knew that the only time I could transcribe was when the baby was asleep. I put him down for his nap at 11:00, knowing he’d nap for at least two hours, and I rushed to my computer to get to work. I plugged in my ghetto blaster to listen to the tape, but I discover that my little pocket sized portable cassette player was nowhere. I tore the house apart for an hour and a half. I was prepared to call up Movieline and tell them that I’m sorry, I lost the interview, when the phone rang.
     Bobbe told me that she borrowed my cassette deck last night when she visited, she hopes I don’t mind, but she had an appointment that she really needed to tape and she didn’t think I would loan it to her.
     I told her that I might have loaned her the player, but NOT THE GODDAM TAPE IN THE PLAYER, WHICH NEEDED TO BE TRANSCRIBED AND TURNED INTO THE PAPER IN 30 MINUTES. I told her to get here immediately, that I would pay for a cab.
     She arrived 15 minutes later and gave me the tape. She had hitchhiked, but since I had promised it to her, she asked me for the cab money anyway. I gave her ten bucks. The baby woke up and she stuck around and entertained him while I worked. I handed the piece in at 5:00 instead of 2:00.

     After a long bath, he got up, walked to the front door, closed it, then spent a minute reaching up on his tippy toes to play with the doorknob. He knew that was the way to get out, he just didn’t know how it worked. I went to the computer to type this down and it distracted him. He walked over to see what I was doing. He’s grabbing onto my leg and yelling. He fell down, grabbed a toy, and started banging my chair with it. He’s standing between my legs right now as I try to type. He hears the sound of the keys clicking and he wants to do it too.

     Once in a while there’s an hysteric display of anger, tensed muscles, shaking fists at the universe, always yelling DAGA DEEGEEWA dada Dooboo! Mad at the world, nothing in particular to complain about, just twisting, turning, can’t stop, gotta move, gotta find out, gonna find out something, Gotta find out. “Who put me here? Why does my mouth hurt? What’s going on? Hold me. Let me go. Hold me. Let me go. Gnnnaa Gnnnaaaa What a world, what a world. I can’t stand it. What did I do? Why do I deserve such misery? Gnnnaaa Gnaaa Gna Gn gee, what’s this? It’s cold. It’s in my mouth. I can taste it. It’s juicy. It’s that red stuff, Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy...” and I gave him a large enough piece of watermelon to give me precisely enough time to get away from him and write this paragraph.

     The time that he’s asleep becomes so valuable. When he is awake, you are his servant, and your day, no matter how meticulously preplanned, will end up revolving around his day. And his day is a constant search for something new.
     Buster’s latest craze is PUTTING THINGS INTO THINGS. Put absolutely anything that can move into the trashcan. Take absolutely everything out of the trashcan and place it all around the living room so that you can see everything from where you’re sitting.
     I can point to things and he will look away from my finger towards what I am pointing at, which is a sterling leap in data processing for him. He finally understands that one object can be referring to another object. He crawled across the room and brought me one of his stuffed toys, then I pointed at a duck and he brought me the duck, giggling and laughing, falling into my arms each time.
     As his dependency upon me deepens, I feel the tug of a deep and permanent relationship; the joy of his presence, the fear of losing him, all bound together like a braid. When I see him figuring out something like the front doorknob, I encourage him, say good boy, even though I know that his acquiring this new piece of knowledge is going to make it harder work for me to keep him indoors. I want him to be as smart as he can be, but I’ve also got to be one jump ahead of him, which is already getting harder and harder at the age of one measly year.

     Babies are like pets, except they’re smarter than you, not dumber. No pet owner will ever walk into the room to find that his parrot has picked up his letter opener from his desk and inserted it into the VCR. Parents rarely have to deal with the problem of their baby humping the postman’s leg. It’s true that kittens don’t barf all over you during their first year, but no matter how many times you feed your animal, it will never come up to you and offer you food, getting genuinely upset if you refuse the gift.

     I can already see that the piano could be considered a problem. He loves banging on it, and I can handle the noise, so I figure why ever get him a baby piano. I’ll let him play the Steinway, just like I do. A wrong note on the piano isn’t nearly as bad as a plastic dagger in a VCR. I say let ‘em rip. If he wants to join me every time I play, then I’ll never have to give him a lesson, he’ll just watch me and learn. I never have to force him to the piano. I just put him on the bench and lift the cover from the keys.

     One day, while I was discussing my motivation in pursuing custody of this child, Lewis mentioned that at least I was saving him from the smell of industrial strength Lysol. This week, as though a beacon call had been sent, my mother showed up with paper towels, toilet paper, and a super-economy size can of industrial strength Lysol.

     Bobbe wanted to defrost her freezer but she didn’t want the food in the refrigerator to spoil. She left it on and just hacked away at the ice with a knife and a hammer till she broke through a line and send freon all over the place.
     “The landlord won’t fix it because I admitted that I did it, so now I don’t have a refrigerator. Can I come by and put this raw chicken in yours?”
     “Why don’t you just cook it?”
     “I’m not hungry now, I’ll be right over”
     She dropped off the chicken and left. I cooked it, she came by the next day, and I offer it to her. She refused it because it wasn’t fresh.

     I’m generally passive and I find it hard to resist when anyone comes on strong. She knew all my weaknesses and preyed upon them, always looking for openings, always keeping a secret, always confessing the wrong thing to the wrong person at the wrong time. These are not endearing traits, but she clings to them like the holy Grail.

     She took the chest carrier. She had been doing her own little imaginary voodoo, hoping and praying for me to have an accident on my scooter, and she didn’t want little Michael to be involved.

     The older a child gets, the more they can make decisions based upon personal experience rather than what they’ve been told. Therefore, parenthood becomes a gradual series of loosening of rules. At first, you feed the child, you don’t let them near forks or knives. Then, one day you decide, hey, he’s older, he’s wiser, I bet he can handle a challenge. And you change the rules, you give them silverware, standing guard to make sure they don’t stick a knife in their eye.
     One day it’s “Never cross the street without holding my hand.” - a simple and practical rule to give a two year old. Then one day you see them look both ways before crossing the street, and you realize that you no longer have to enforce the rule as strictly. Soon, you’ll get rid of it entirely.
     Adults who need to live by childhood rules are called retarded; they must be treated like children all their lives.
     There used to be a rule that you must wash your dishes after every meal but the invention of paper plates sent that rule out the window. People who wash paper plates just because of the old rule are called morons.
     The same thing applies to the human race, and anybody who clings to a belief system that is more than one generation old is evolutionarily retarded.

     Daddy tells me that this is blue. I go out in the real world and say “This is blue” and everybody agrees with me. Daddy is right. Daddy is truth. I can trust Daddy. The world as he describes it doesn’t conflict at all with my personal experience of it.

     The baby changed this week from formula to low-fat acidophilus milk without throwing up or getting diarrhea. No more very expensive formula. I’ve seen him through the sensitive journey from babyhood to toddlerhood, made him wear shoes, taught him how to eat corn on the cob and ribs, how to wipe his face after he eats, how to piss on my pillow, how to throw up in my hair. Can you possibly believe it when I tell you I don’t mind? That it is a privilege to be around this child, maybe any child, but especially this child. We have bonded, a term I never understood before encountering such unadulterated trust.

     He has figured out where food comes from. All in mime, he got my attention, led me to the refrigerator, made me open the door, and pointed to a peach. I cut up half of it, put it in a bowl, and sat him on the sofa to eat. He finished it and ran up to me with the empty bowl, obviously demanding more. I went and cut up the other half, which disappeared just as quickly.

     He has learned the concept of trade. He took my bank card and my YMCA card out of my wallet. God knows how he knew they were the ones I use the most, but he picked them out of dozens and ran outside with them, refusing to give them back. He would walk up to me with his arm stretched out, offering them, then he would pull them away at the last second, refusing separation from the useless cards simply because he knew they meant something to me.
     I picked up a rock and offered it to him. As he tried to grab it from me with his left hand, I tried to grab the cards from his right. When he realized what I was doing, he let go of the rock and ran away with his precious cards. He tried to grab the rock two more times, but each time I tried to grab the cards. Finally, he yelled, ran across the courtyard, and dropped the cards on my front doorstep. Then he ran back to me and tried to grab the rock, sure in the knowledge that I couldn’t grab the cards, they were too far away. Aha, he got me.
     But I still wouldn’t let go of the rock. So he ran back to the cards, picked up one of them, and laid it down in front of me. I stared at my one-year old in stunned disbelief. He was trying to Jew me down. I immediately made the exchange. Hell, if he took a rock for my YMCA card, he’d probably take a clump of dirt for my bank card. Finally, after numerous exchanges of foliage, I was able to put my wallet back together.
     Then he did the most remarkable thing of all. He led me into the bedroom and pointed to the crib. I looked in the crib and assumed he wanted his blanket but he refused it. Then he climbed up on the bed and laid his head down. He was telling me that he wanted to go to sleep. I took off his clothes, put him in the crib, gave him a bottle of water, and he was out in two minutes.

     Buster is 19 months old, and Bobbe thinks he’s retarded because he doesn’t talk yet. Her sister’s baby could talk before he was one.
     Meanwhile, Jack went to a benefit for retarded children, and came back to tell me how lucky I am to have a child that’s healthy and normal.

     At the next hearing, Bobbe’s old, stoic, female, court-appointed attorney was dismissed by Judge Weisberg, and immediately replaced by a guy in a gray suit from out of nowhere. He looked like a cross between Christopher Walken and David Byrne - tall, thin, intense, bug-eyed.
     He asked for a postponement since his client was at that very moment in labor, then he described the intensity of her dilations at that very moment. My attorney hastened to describe her actions as “just a trick,” but Judge Weisberg saw otherwise and granted her request. Then I left the room while they set a date for the trial.
     When my lawyer came out to get me, he explained that Bobbe had somehow convinced the largest law firm in the state of California to handle her case pro-bono. He couldn’t understand why they would show such interest in her case. Clearly this guy had never met her, and had barely read the files.
     Court is convened. The attorneys both request December 16th, and the clerk of the court writes it down. Judge Weisberg says “How many units?” My attorney says “40” and it’s agreed upon.
     As we leave, I ask him what a unit is and he says 15 minutes. There was no one else on the schedule but us. We just booked an entire day in court.

Chapter Four

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