I spread a book out across his chest.
I say, “Read to me. Or make something up. I want to hear your voice.”
He picks the book up, himself with it. He flips around a bit, licking his fingers every few pages, in a way he knows will get to me. Nobody needs to pout their lips so much not on purpose.
He stops, reads silently for a bit. And then he laughs.
“What’s so funny,” I ask. “Read to me.”
“I will. I will.”
I close my eyes. I can smell his reading like my library: comforting and yet a little on edge.
“My wife wants a dog. She already has a baby. The baby’s almost two. My wife says that the baby wants the dog.”
I’ve heard this one before.
He continues: My wife has been wanting a dog for a long time. I have had to be the one to tell her that she couldn’t have it. But now the baby wants a dog, my wife says. This may be true. The baby is very close to my wife. They go around together all the time, clutching each other tightly. I ask the baby, who is a girl, “Whose girl are you? Are you Daddy’s girl?” The baby says, “Momma momma momma.” I don’t see why I should buy a hundred-dollar dog for that damn baby.
So I don’t buy a dog. I buy another baby, instead. I buy a baby that has two feet and two hands and seven fingers and a lazy eye. This baby says “Dada” all day long, and I help wipe the drool every time.
I wipe up a lot of drool.
I don’t change his diaper. A boy doesn’t need someone to change his diaper, so I tell him, “You’re going to sit there and do it yourself or at least learn to enjoy the stink of it. It’s you.” The new baby doesn’t have much to say on the subject. He says “Dada” over and over and I think he’s referring more to Tzara than to me. He’s still wearing dirty diapers and the look on his face says to me he’s none too pleased about it.
I don’t think he listens to a word I say.
I take the new baby out for a walk. He doesn’t walk, can’t crawl even, so it’s more that I’m walking and carrying him. Taking myself out for a walk, with additions. Cupping him, I can feel the shit building in his diaper, and am disgusted by this fact. A child, even with a lazy eye, should still be able to see what is appropriate for public display.
“Dada,” he says.
“I have lost confidence in our culture,” I reply.
I decide there’s only one place for us to go.
And so we walk the 48 blocks to West 53rd Street.
And I leave him there. With his shitty diapers, with his MOMA.
I open my eyes and kiss him, more for how ridiculous he is than out of love.
Later, after noticing what’s left of my dinner on his dick, I say to him:
Reality is just a frothy nothing.
We wake up, ten hours later, and go to breakfast, then a movie, and then back to bed.
