“You suck at laundry,” she said.
“Is it that I suck at laundry or that YOU suck at teaching me laundry?”
“Just take her to the goddamn class.”
And so I did.
From the parking lot, I saw nothing but a mass of yoga pants and strollers heading for the gym. There’s something inherently terrifying about knowing you’re going to be the only dad at one of these things. I would be parenting in front of a live studio audience consisting of nothing but women. I mean, I was a real father. I handled feedings and played peekaboo and talked baby talk. I did all that, but the crude stereotype of the modern American father is that of a clueless dumbfuck who couldn’t mix a bottle of formula even if the instructions were tattooed on his penis. I imagined the mothers judging me in the class, watching me carefully for any glaring fuckups. Oh, look at the poor dad. Trying to act like a competent parent. How pathetic.
Well, I wasn’t gonna take that shit lying down. I wasn’t gonna be a slave to the American Mother Hypocrisy Complex—this group of women who demand that men do their fair share but still want to be considered the superior caregivers. I was gonna ROCK THAT CLASS. I was gonna get down on that dirty mat and sing and hold hands and play all kinds of crazy baby games with the girl. And then all the women in that class would be simultaneously ashamed and turned on.
I got the girl out of the car, took her in my arms because she wasn’t fully walking yet, and marched straight to the elevator. The door was still open, and a new mom and her mother were standing inside with a little boy. I confidently strode to the elevator with the girl in the crook of my arm. And right as I crossed the threshold, the door began to close and I bashed the girl’s skull right into the side of it. You could hear the smack from across town. Sounded like someone dropped a crate of oranges out of a window.
“OH FUCK,” I yelled.
The girl began to scream as the doors shut. Not a standard baby scream. The kind of scream that turns heads from a mile away.
“Oh my goodness!” said the mother’s mother.
There was a blue horn growing on the girl’s forehead.
“Can I help you?” the mother asked me.
“NO! No, everything’s fine! She’s just fine!”
“She sounds like she’s hurt,” the grandma said.
“Oh, you know . . . ,” I said. I didn’t even know what I was saying. I bounced the girl up and down and stared at the floor, hoping that staring at the floor would render me invisible. It did not. The two women could totally still see me. The elevator ride never seemed to end. I wanted the cables to snap so we would plummet down to the ground and this would all be over.
We finally got to the top floor and I walked into the class. The girl was still erupting. A dozen mothers turned and stared at me. There I was, the shithead father. I had already failed. I had justified all the stereotypes. I could hear them thinking about how incompetent I was. Awww, that poor girl. Such a shame she has a negligent ass for an old man. I felt the urge to flee, to run to a nearby bar and eat nachos for exactly forty minutes before taking the girl home and telling my wife that our day at Gymboree had gone just super.
But I couldn’t. I wasn’t gonna give up and turn tail in front of the coven, confirming their worst fears. I was representing American fathers here. I was their ambassador. I would be goddamned if I was gonna fail. But mostly, I hoped the class would get my daughter to stop crying.
The Gymboree class was housed in a nondescript room inside a shopping plaza, with the standard fluorescent lights and gypsum ceiling tiles. You could have moved everything out and converted the gym into an empty space for lease in less than thirty minutes. We found ourselves greeted by kiddie tunes blasting from a twenty-dollar boom box resting on the floor mat. A receptionist had me sign in and give my phone number. Parents have to do this in case they decide to go get a taco and the gym suddenly bursts into flames. I signed the form while the girl was crying. She was the only fussy child in the room, and I desperately wished that another child would throw a shitfit so I didn’t look like the only person who didn’t have control of his offspring.