Please say Cleveland. Please say Cleveland.
"Papa watched a movie last night and the guy said he felt like he was driving around in a vagina. Can I drive a vagina? Does a vagina have windows and a horn?"
Oh holy mother of shit.
"Shit. Son of a bitch!" Claire cursed as she walked back into the living room.
Gavin opened his mouth but Claire was quick to cut him off.
"Don't you even think about repeating what I said. Go to your room and find some clothes to wear. You have to go to work with Mommy today."
Gavin scampered off and his vagina comment was momentarily forgotten when I saw the look of worry on Claire’s face.
"What's going on? What happened?"
She flopped down next to me on the couch, rested her head on the back of it and closed her eyes.
"My dad was supposed to watch Gavin today so I could finish up some things at the shop but he got called in to work," she said with a sigh.
Light bulb.
"I can watch him for you," I said immediately.
She lifted up her head and stared at me with her mouth open.
"Seriously, Claire, let me do this for you. I would be happy to take him today and get to spend some time with him."
After forty minutes of Claire listing all of the small objects he could fit into his mouth, making me repeat the number for Poison Control back to her eight times and drawing me a diagram with stick figures on a paper towel of how to do CPR, Gavin and I kissed Claire good-bye, got into my car and headed to the library for story time.
It was a public place, full of kids and parents who knew how to take care of kids in case I had a problem or questions. What could possibly go wrong?
***
"…and the sex? Oh you can just kiss that shit good-bye right now. Before we had our son my wife was a dirty little whore. She'd give me blow jobs while I drove down the freeway, she'd dress up in a naughty nurse uniform and greet me at the door when I got home from work and whenever we went out, we always pulled the car over on the way home and fucked in the front seat."
The man sitting next to me let out a great big sigh. He was another father I met when Gavin and I arrived at the library. He was there with his three-year old son and eight-year-old daughter. His daughter was from a previous relationship and he had his son with his current wife. We started talking when I sat down next to him on one of the couches while the boys sat in a circle with a bunch of other kids a few feet away listening to the librarian read them a book. After telling him the condensed version of my relationship with Claire and Gavin, I asked him for some parenting tips since he’d been around the block a lot longer than me. Little did I know it would turn into a "how much kids fucked up my life" speech.
"But after our son was born, my penis got put on the "do not call" list. Sometimes, if I listen really closely, I can often hear the sound of "Taps" being played from my lonely balls," he whispered to me as he waved his hand and smiled at his son.
Jesus. Claire and I hadn't even got to the sex part yet. Was this really how it would be? Before I demanded that this guy tell me something good so I wouldn't have nightmares tonight, his daughter Finley ran over to him with a book in her hands.
"Daddy, can you read me this book about horses?” she asked sweetly as she climbed up onto his lap.
“Sure, baby girl,” he replied, wrapping an arm around his daughter and taking the book from her hand.
See? Look at how sweet kids could be. They might be little hellions sometimes but they definitely had hearts of gold. And there was nothing sweeter than watching a father with his daughter.
"Oh Jesus, Mary and Joseph…where did you get this book?" the man asked as a few parents looked in his direction and shot him dirty looks.
I glanced over to see what the problem was and noticed the book in his hand read “The Big Book of Lesbian Horse Stories.” My mouth fell open in horror and I looked around to see if anyone had noticed that there was porn in the children’s section of the library.
“Honey, go pick out another book,” he told her calmly as he hid the book behind his back.
“But I want that one, it’s got horses in it,” she argued.
“Well, you can’t read that one. That’s a big person book. It’s not for kids.”
Finley rolled her eyes and huffed, handing him the other book she brought over with her, “Poop Eaters”.
This time, her father was the one to roll his eyes. “Poop Eaters”? Again? Really, Finley. You need to find another hobby.”
“She’s got this thing about poop,” he told me as he took the book from her. “When she was little, she used to finger-paint her room with the poop in her diaper.”
He chuckled at the memory and I covered my mouth with my hand to keep the vomit inside. I stared at the little girl’s hands expecting to see it covered in shit.