Laid-Off Dad

I don't think this is what Beyoncé meant

Recently, the cosmic tumblers blessed us with sweltering heat and a day off school, so the Three French Men made our first beach trip of the summer. I was expecting a low-key weekday crowd, but I forgot about the eight or so billion college kids who've already been released into the wild. True to their diverging forms, Robert spent most of the time hanging out with other boys in comically oversized clown shorts, and TwoBert chatted up the Bikini Honeys. 

And it was within one of these chat-ups that I came in contact with something new: a woman with a piercing in her coin slot.

I consider myself a somewhat worldly man. I've traveled a bit. I've experienced a lot of what New York City coughs up every day. And I'm not be-pierced or be-tatted, but I get that where you find one, you very often find the other. Most piercings are about decoration or gratification, but I can't see where clamping a stud atop your butt cleft achieves either. This woman, who also had many tattoos, had I guess run out of places to feel pain. Or maybe she put cards with her body parts written on them into a large drum and picked out a lottery winner. 

I'm also curious about the procedure. Did a professional wad up what little flesh there is back there and cram it into a butt stapler? Has such a thing been invented? If so, I salute the person who saw a need, a gaping hole in the hole-making market, and achieved his/her own unique legacy. Because it is due to your efforts, oh great innovator of the upper-ass-puncture, that my sons and I spent the entire traffic-soaked trip home improvising songs about "butt rings."

The dads meet up

Last night was HBO's screening of "The Kids Grow Up," which will begin airing on Father's Day on HBO2. If you're a subscriber (as I am, because I like my TV with no ads and a whole lotta cussing), I hope you'll get the chance to tune in and see it. As he voiceovers early on in the film, parents have countless resources for welcoming a child into our lives, but nothing prepares us for the emotional impact of sending them off to buy their own goddamn groceries. 

I have a singular talent for looking at stormclouds on the faraway horizon and lamenting how shitty it will be when they finally arrive. I confronted this when R turned 9--exactly halfway to his being able to vote. And possibly vote Republican. At that point, it would have surprised no one if I had gotten a little verklempt that half of my son's youth was over. (And let's face it: With his teens ahead, we've got the crappier half to look forward to.) Instead, I took it all in surprising stride, in part because this film helps me remember to enjoy the present and embrace change when it comes.

I had a great time, and a great deal of shrimp and beer. I met the National Fatherhood Institute's Roland Warren, who is engaging and eloquent and whose vigor might make you think he is in his mid-30s. And then you learn he has a 28-year-old son, and you think, "I'll have what he's having."

Thanks to HBO for having us in, and to all the dads who came out, like Rufus and Marlon and Lance. And a big cyber-brohug to Doug, who took Catherine and me to the Algonquin Hotel bar, so we could sit at our little Round Table and wonder if Dorothy Parker and Robert Benchley ever sat in that exact spot, over $20 cocktails, and engaged in a sardonically intellectual, highly nuanced discussion of Congressional genitalia.

Tardy boys

The boys and I were late to school yesterday. This might sound like a mundane thing, but it's a big deal for me.

I am ordinarily not the promptest man, mostly because I assume it takes half an hour to get everywhere. I blame the city, which teaches you that if it's more than a half hour away, it's not worth going to. Since the number of places that actually require a half hour to reach is a small fraction of the whole, my success rate for on-time arrival is lacking. And if I am on time for something, I've likely arrived there a while ago and am killing time in the drug store that is always within a block of where I'm going.

School, however, is different. You have to be on time for school, for two reasons. First, you have to get there in time to size up who's there and who's absent, assess your loyalties, and get your game face on.

And second, every drop-0ff is an endurance test of waking and dressing and feeding and lunchbagging and equipping, and after the 197-block schlep, I am Roger Fucking Bannister, awash in adrenaline and exulting in my 3:59 mile. I don't know if I was born to live this lifestyle or I've merely adjusted to what the city inflicts on me, but there I am, arms raised, taking a victory lap to my coffee joint.

I had been late one time before, when the A train, that fetid alimentary canal that swallows us at one end and craps us out two blocks from school, got a really bad intestinal blockage. We lingered on the platform for a decade or so with 20,000 of our closest, sweatiest friends until slow and steadyish digestion resumed. By the time we finally wobbled out of the ground, the boys had already missed first period and I was desperately trying to override the urge to take a cab to Hurricane Harbor.

Yesterday was a half day, which meant no lunchbagging. So I had the brilliant idea that the boys and I would just dress, grab our stuff, and head out for a leisurely bagel breakfast before school started. Once again, however, the A didn't cooperate. It wasn't as bad this time--a little gastritis, maybe?--but after another overlong, overcrowded ordeal, we got out with about a minute to spare before school started. 

We could have joined the herd and sprinted to school like gazelles fleeing a tiger's charge. But no kid deserves to be thrown into a classroom stressed, sweaty, and starving. So we sauntered perpendicularly to the bagel shop, savored each bite as every human should, and luxuriated in our mini-truancy. TwoBert might write his E's backward for another week because of it, but the great world will continue to spin.