About Becoming a Dad, if You're Me

At the exact moment I began to type this I was sitting at a bar in Midtown Atlanta. My first child was due to expunge herself from my wife's womb on Monday, June 27th. I figured it was as good a time as any to get a few hours in at a bar.

For more than half my life I've spent a significant amount of time in watering holes. I bartended a couple years in college, but mostly sat myself on the opposite side, diligently working through pints and shots, the occasional pool game, sometimes, in Nevada, even plunking quarters into the meaty hole of a video poker machine. Take what puns you'd like from all of that.

I used to smoke. I've often said that the hardest thing I've ever had to do was stop smoking. That shit ain't true. The hardest thing besides living is living without a bar. I love the bar. You decide if I'm an alcoholic.

It's not the booze that keeps me coming back. There's some quality of light in a dimly-lit bar. There's something about the daylight patronage. Since I quit smoking I cannot stand to be in bars that allow that vice. Call me a pussy. But still the bar ebbs at me, gravity sucking me towards the tinted windows looking out on a gray sky, the hush of conversation. See, I like bars. I don't like clubs. I don't like busy bars. In fact, a crowded bar is the last place you'll find me. I don't like a bar at happy hour. I don't like bars on weekends. I like the weekday bar, the dive without a band. The dives, even, at such times include minimal smokers.

I work in bars. I take my computer and my books, papers to grade. I don't talk, usually, to the other patrons, though I often listen to their conversations. When the crowd piles up, I pay my tab. I'd rather not be there with family or friends, or any of all those after-work people. I'm busy.

Speaking of fathers, mine just had a stroke. This stroke occurred after he'd checked himself into the emergency room (on the day we brought our baby home from the hospital, no less) for what he thought was a lingering cold he feared was mutating into pneumonia. Turns out he had congestive heart failure. My pop is not a bar person, but he likes his beer and wine. In fact, it's not uncommon for him and my mom to share a bottle of wine over dinner, and that's after dad's had four beers. I know what this says and what a doctor would think. But I've seen my dad only a little buzzed maybe two or three times in my life. Like me, beer and wine just don't phase him. And yet, I learn on Wikipedia that a contributing factor to congestive heart failure could be a thickened ventricle due to prolonged alcohol abuse.

I knew that upon my baby's arrival I would not be able to spend as much time in bars. Beer makes me tired. I don't want to be tired while my little one's an infant; I need to be alert. And I ain't about to try to calm her, to swaddle and swing her on one arm to shush her to calming, after I've had a few beers. I ain't fucking with that shit. So that day was my last hurrah, as they say, my so long. I kiss you, bar, goodbye. In eighteen years, I shall see you, old and weathered though I'll be, and, bar, most likely some corporation will make you look the same, so that I feel at home. Perhaps at that time they'll pipe in an organic, healthy odor of cigarette smoke.

Selling Signed Freaks + Prose

Since I'm embarking on this dad venture, I won't be off on book tours or even doing any local readings for a few months at least. That leaves me with a box mixed with fresh copies of The Book of Freaks and Prose. Poems. a Novel. that I'd like to sell to you, special people. The prices here are cheaper than you'll find at Amazon or elsewhere. Basically, you'd get a signed book shipped your way without having to pay for all that shipping.

I am going to be someone's dad. I've been learning lots of new dad stuff. Today I learned that the fire department is good for some things and shitty for others. What the fire department does best is make light and noise, and some fire fighters are good drivers. I say "fire fighters," but they're more like "fire maintainers." At least, in Atlanta, I haven't seen too many fires get put out. Mostly these public employees keep the fire from spreading and let whatever's already burning burn the fuck down. Perhaps more than anything, they instill a sense of relief in people experiencing emergency scenarios. The real help shows up later in the form of a doctor, at a hospital. But doctors work in another line of incompetence that I'll get to at some other time. Fire fighters and the departments they represent suck at the following:

answering the phone
being around their fire station
caring about helping you
being knowledgeable in their supposed areas of expertise

In particular, my local fire station and the firepeople therein purport to maintain a carseat inspection center. But here are the problems: First, you can't call the fire station, because no one answers the phone. So I jogged down there and walked all over the station, looking in the fire trucks and everything, and finally some guy in uniform on his cell phone, looking very bothered that he had to stop his conversation to talk to me, said that he would inspect the carseat right then. I said, okay, but I had to jog back home to get the car.

So I did and when I came back I couldn't find anyone again until I walked inside the building and hunted around till I found some dude watching TV who also seemed very upset that he had to turn the program down to talk to me. When I said another fireman said he'd inspect my carseat, this guy sighed and went to turn off the TV and get up, presumably to reluctantly inspect my carseat himself. But, lucky, at that moment the original guy I talked to walked into the room, still on his cell phone, saw me, and said "I'll be outside in a minute."

He did come out promptly and looked at the carseat and said, "I think you got it in there pretty good." I took the carrier off and explained to him that there was a base that was the actual part that I had to secure.

He looked at it and said I didn't need the shoulder strap lock because our car's shoulder straps locked on impact. He took it off to demonstrate. I smiled and said okay, but I was beyond skeptical; knew that that was not the case. He saw me struggling to tighten the belt that he had just loosened, said "congratualtions," on my forthcoming child, shrugged, then left, and I reinstalled our carseat base the way I had it before this retarded adventure began.

I keep forgetting to update and mention stuff. I'm gonna be in Virginia next week! Hail to the Union! I mean the Confederacy! Whatever!

Man Martin has a new novel that will be officially released June 6th, or thereabouts. We talked each other into doing readings, and so that's what we're doing. We'll be at Over The Moon Bookstore in Crozet, VA on June 7th @ 6 PM. Come on out yall!

Next we're in Charlottesville, VA, at Writerhouse. That's at 7 PM on the 8th.

By the 9th we'll be in Baltimore, MD, kicking it with pals Adam Robinson, Justin Sirois, Joe Young, and likely a whole gaggle of othe Baltimorean language stuff peeps. I'll be looking out for you, Jen Michalski, and you, Jamie Gaughran-Perez, and you, Lauren Bender. I think Michael Kimball will still be in the dirty dirty deep south, since he's read for us here in Atlanta, at solar anus on Sunday. We're gonna barbecue pig and drink beer and read from books. There might be whiskey. Last time there was.