Текст книги "Seduction and Snacks"
Автор книги: Tara Sivec
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3. Have You Seen This Sperm Donor?
Sometimes I blame my lack of desire to have children on my mother. She wasn’t a bad mother; she just didn’t really know what she was doing. She realized early on that living in a small town out in the country wasn’t for her and that sitting around day after day watching television with my dad and dealing with a sassy pre-teen wasn’t all that she wanted out of life. She wanted to travel, go to art shows, concerts and movies, she wanted to be free to come and go as she pleased and not have to answer to anyone. My mom told me once that she never stopped loving my dad. She just wanted more than he could give her. They divorced and she moved out when I was twelve to get a condo in the city about thirty miles away. I never felt like she abandoned me or anything, I still saw her all the time and talked to her on the phone every day. And it’s not like she didn’t ask me to go with her when she moved out. She did, but I think it was only because she felt like it was expected. Everyone knew I’d choose to stay with my father. I was and always would be a daddy’s girl. As much as I loved my mother, I felt like I had more in common with my dad and it just seemed natural that I should stay with him.
Even though she didn’t live with us, my mother still tried to nurture me as best she could. Her parental skills weren’t all that great to begin with though, and after she moved out, they pretty much turned into one big train wreck. Regardless of what people might think, she really did love me; she just acted more like a friend most of the time than a mother. Three days after she moved out, she called and told me that according to something she saw on Oprah, we needed to do something life altering so that we could forge a stronger bond between us. She suggested getting matching tattoos. I reminded her that I was twelve and it was illegal. I have enough “Chicken Soup for the Mother/Daughter Blah, Blah, Blah” reference books she’s given me over the years to open my own bookstore and have been tagged in one too many photos of her and I on her Facebook page with the caption “Me and my BFF!”.
People thought it was strange the way the three of us lived, but it worked for us. My dad didn’t have to listen to my mother nagging in his ear all day long about how he never took her anywhere, and my mother was free to do as she pleased while still having a close relationship with us. Some people just aren’t meant to live together. My parents got along much better when there was a twenty-five minute car ride separating them.
Aside from the advice she received from bad talk shows, my mother used the “Parenting with Idioms” book to raise me. Every piece of advice ever given to me was in the form of a one-liner she read in a book or heard Paula Dean use on the Food Network. Unfortunately, they never made sense and were never used in the correct context. When you’re six-years-old and you tell your mother someone at school made you cry and she replies with, “Don’t pee down my back and tell me it’s raining,” you sort of learn to handle things on your own and stop asking for her advice.
When I found out I was pregnant, I didn’t immediately have dreams of being some independent, women’s lib, equal rights, “I don’t shave my legs because the man won’t keep me down” type of person, perfectly content to do things on her own without the help of anyone. I'm not a martyr. As stubborn and self-sufficient as I was, I knew I would need help.
As soon as I took eleventy-billion home pregnancy tests, after drinking a gallon of milk so I would have enough pee for all of them, I realized I needed to hunt this guy down. Of course, this was after I Googled "milk and pregnancy tests" to make sure I didn't just spend thirty-seven minutes of my life staring in horror at positive pregnancy tests littered all over my bathroom that may or may not be correct because pasteurization messed with the hormones in your body and created a false positive.
It doesn't, just in case you were wondering.
I was a twenty-year-old full-time college student, and according to my mother, “You don’t have two nickels to pull out of a duck’s ass with a penny in its name.” My dad, George, worked the same job he had since he was eighteen and made just enough to pay his bills and help me with my room and board. Thank God my dad’s best friend Tim was right all those years ago. I was smarter than I looked and received a full ride to the University of Ohio, so I didn’t have the burden of student loans or grants. Unfortunately though, that meant I went to school full time and worked my ass off, taking twice the course load as other students, leaving no time for a job and no money saved.
In some ways I took after my mother. I wanted more out of my life than waiting tables at Fosters Bar and Grill where I worked all through high school. I wanted to travel, work hard and one day own my own business. Unfortunately, life doesn't throw curveballs; it throws an eight pound, one ounce infant at your face when you're looking the other way. Life is a vindictive little bitch. I was smart enough to know I couldn't do this by myself and wanted more than anything to keep the inconvenience of my mistake away from my dad for as long as possible. Any other woman would probably call her mother to cry and plead for help as soon as the stick turned pink, but at the time, I wasn’t in the mood for my mother to tell me that “Rome was not built with two birds in your bush”. That left me with the person who helped put me into this situation. Unfortunately, I had no idea who the guy was I slept with. I was too mortified by my actions that night to ever repeat the performance so I knew without a doubt Mr. Beer Pong was the father. I just had to find him. Who the hell gave a guy her virginity and never even bothered to ask him what his name was?
Oh yeah, that would be me.
The first day I decided to try and find him was spent talking to every single dumb jock that lived at the frat house where the party occurred. No one there had any clue who I was talking about when I tried to describe this guy and the friend he had with him that night. It could have been due to the fact that everyone I talked to smelled like a brewery and stared at my boobs the entire time I was there. Or maybe it was because I wasn’t fluent in stupid. Really, either option was viable. On the way back to the apartment I shared with Liz, after my hunting expedition, all I wanted to do was kick my own ass. The morning after when I woke up, I felt silly admitting that the feel of his arm wrapped around my waist made me sigh a little. I should have stayed. I should have waited until he woke up, thanked him for a good time and put his number in my phone. But as much as I itched to run my fingers through his hair or slide my hand down his cheek, I knew I couldn't. At that point, I couldn't afford any distractions in my life and that's exactly what he would have been. If we were together, stone-cold sober, I knew I could have easily lost myself in him and forgot everything I had been working towards all my life. I found it was much easier to brush something off and say you did it because you were drunk than admit you made a mistake. I didn't think sleeping with him was a mistake really, just the way I went about it and my actions the next morning. Instead of sticking around, I slithered out from under his arm and the warmth of his body and thought about how bad it would have been if I woke up next to some ugly troll. At least he was hot as hell in the light of day, and I didn't have to perform a coyote ugly and chew my own arm off to get out from under him. I threw on my clothes as fast as I could and left him naked and sound asleep in bed. No one moved as I stepped over the lifeless bodies spread throughout the house and performed the morning-after walk of shame, out the door and into the bright morning light.
I turned around a total of six times to go back to that house and wait for him to wake up. And each time, I talked myself out of it with the same argument. I used him to finally get rid of my stupid virginity. Did I really want to know why he did it? I was definitely not the best looking girl in that place. People tell me I’m cute and I guess I probably am, but what exactly did he see when he looked at me? Maybe he could just tell I would be a sure thing that night. I'd rather remember him as the sweet, buzzed, hot guy who rid me of my virginity and made me laugh. I didn't want to know if he was some skeezy womanizer that was sleeping his way through the student directory, and I was just lucky enough he finally made it to the M's.
When I got home that day, Liz made me retell the story over and over so she could squeal and tell me how happy she was for me and that it was no big deal she struck out with his buff friend because she found some guy named Jim who was all alone at the party and it was love at first sight.
Her squealing and patting on the back continued until five weeks later when she came home from class and found me sitting on the bathroom floor surrounded by little white plastic sticks that all said "Pregnant" on them, crying hysterically with snot running down my lip as I rambled incoherently about milk and cows taking pregnancy tests.
For two months Liz helped with my crusade to find this guy. She never got his friend's name either because as soon as she made eye contact with Jim "the rest of the world disappeared" or some disgusting shit like that. We contacted the admissions office and we poured through a dozen yearbooks in the hopes that we might recognize him in one of the pictures. We even tried locating that skanky chick Niki that slammed into me, with no luck.
Did these people just appear out of thin air or something? How is there no fucking record of their existence at this school?
Liz even tried talking to the guys at the frat house herself, taking Jim along with her, but she didn't have any better luck than I did. She did however come home completely trashed because every guy she talked to made her and Jim do a shot every time they said the word “goat testicles”. Honestly, I have no idea how that word came up in their conversation so many damn times. Do you have any clue how annoying drunk people are when you are forced to be sober? Especially drunk people who are in love, touchy-feely and quoting Walt Witman to each other while you've got red, puffy eyes from crying, haven't showered in four days and just got done throwing up the contents of your stomach because you saw a commercial about goldfish – the crackers, not the real fish. But those damn things looked so much like real fish all I could think about was swallowing a live, slimy goldfish that stared at me with its beady little eyes before I put him on my tongue.
I knew the chances of me finding this guy were slim to none. I couldn't very well move into the frat house and be the boys' token pregnant roommate in the hopes he would one day come back there before the child I was carrying was in college and possibly living there himself.
I also couldn't hold off on telling my dad any longer. I saw the campus nurse that morning and she confirmed with a blood test that I was pregnant, and going by my calculations of the one and only time I had sex, I was thirteen weeks along.
Now, I'm all for a woman's right to choose. I believe it is your body and do with it as you may and blah, blah, blah. With that being said, as much as I dislike tiny little humans, I could never get rid of my own flesh and blood, by abortion or adoption. It just wasn't something I was personally comfortable with. So, with Liz holding my hand, I took the chicken shit way out and told my dad over the phone.
Let me explain something about my dad. He's six-foot-four, two hundred and fifty pounds, has tattoos up and down his forearms of snakes and skulls and other scary shit, and he always looks pissed off at the world. He scared the shit out of several boys in high school when they knocked on the door and my dad would answer. When I came to the door, they’d tell me they thought my dad was going to kill them and I’d reassure them that no, that’s just the way his face always looks.
In all honesty, my dad was a nice guy. He got his tattoos when he was young and in the army and he always had a scowl on his face because he was exhausted. He worked twelve-hour days, seven days a week for months at a time before he got a day or two off. He wasn't big on talking about his feelings or being affectionate, but I knew he loved me and would do anything for me. He was a great guy, but he was still a force to be reckoned with and God help the person who ever hurt his little girl. Liz started spewing Chuck Norris quotes in high school and replacing Chuck's name with my dad's. She did it so much that I find myself doing it from time to time. He reacted to the pregnancy news pretty much like I expected him to.
"Well, I'll get your room ready so you can come back home when the semester is done. And if you find this guy in the meantime, let me know so I can rip off his balls and shove them down his throat," he said in his usual deep, monotone voice.
If you spelled George Morgan wrong on Google it didn't say, "Did you mean George Morgan?" It simply replied, "Run while you still have the chance."
After the semester ended, I applied for a leave of absence with the school so they would hold my scholarship. They would only keep it active for one year before I would have to reapply. I never intended to be away from school that long, but I also never intended on a baby completely fucking up my life. Er, I mean, bringing me years of great joy.
For the next six and a half months, I worked as much as my growing stomach and cankles would allow so I could save plenty of money for after he was born. Unfortunately, in the small town of Butler, there's not much to choose from employment-wise that would pay well. Unless of course I wanted to be a stripper at the town's one and only strip club, The Silver Pole. I was approached by the owner at the grocery store when I was seven months. In the middle of the cereal aisle he told me there were plenty of patrons in his club that thought the pregnant body was beautiful. If there weren't children around at the time, I would have told him off. Oh, who was I kidding? If Jesus himself was standing next to me, I would have still told that douche bag that if he ever came anywhere near me again I would rip his dick off and choke him with it. I would have apologized to Jesus before leaving though of course.
On the bright side, the president of the Butler Elementary PTA was standing there with her six-year-old and heard every word. I guess I shouldn’t hold my breath waiting for the invitation to join, huh? Shoot. Now where am I going to find the will to live?
With my pregnant stripping career over before it started and my proverbial tail stuck between my legs, I groveled for my old job as a waitress at Fosters Bar and Grill. Luckily, the Foster's still owned it from when I worked there in high school, and they were more than happy to help me out considering my situation.
When people in a small town talked about you to your face, they whispered the words that they believed might offend someone if they were to overhear your conversation. In my opinion, they should be whispering words like “fuck”, “anal sex” or “Did you hear Billy Chuck got caught with his pants around his ankles down at the Piggly Wiggly with his dog Buffy?” Whispering the word “situation” kind of defeated the purpose. I whispered random words all the time just to mess with them.
"Mrs. Foster, the bathroom is out of toilet paper."
"Mr. Foster, I need to leave early to go to the doctor."
I talked to Liz every single day after I moved back home, and she kept up her search of the missing sperm donor when she had time. Her family was from Butler as well so she came home to visit me as often as she could but towards the end of my pregnancy, she just didn't have time to make the three and a half hour drive as often. Her professors convinced her to double up on her course load so she could graduate a year early with her degree in Small Business, majoring in Entrepreneurship with minors in Marketing and Accounting. With her full-time studies, part-time internship with an at-home consulting firm and her blossoming relationship with Jim, I knew she had a lot on her plate and didn't begrudge her any of her successes or happiness. I was a big enough person to admit that I was only a tiny bit jealous. Liz and I always talked about owning businesses together. About how we'd rent out buildings right next to one another with a door that led into both and how we’d live in a loft upstairs and throw awesome parties every weekend. We also dreamed about both of us marrying one of the members of N’Sync and living a life of polygamy with our new band N’Love.
Fingers still crossed on that one.
In all of our talk about the future, Liz never really cared what kind of business she ran, she just wanted it to be hers and be in charge. I always knew I wanted to own a candy and cookie shop.
As far back as I can remember I was always in the kitchen covering something in chocolate or baking cookies. My dad always joked that I could never sneak up on him because he could smell the chocolate on me from a mile away. I was pretty sure it leaked out of my pores at this point. I was so happy that my best friend's dream was coming true. I tried not to dwell too much on the fact that my dream was going on the back burner until God knew when.
I missed seeing Liz every day once I moved back home, and I was sad that my future needed to be put on hold, but nothing was as depressing as going into labor on my twenty-first birthday. While all of my friends celebrated their twenty-first birthdays by drinking every alcoholic beverage on the menu, sitting on the floor of a public restroom while singing along to the music piped through the speakers and then hanging out of the passenger-side window of a car on the way home screaming, "I'M DRUNK FUCKERS!", I was stuck in a hospital trying not to punch every twat nurse in the face that kept telling me it wasn't time for my epidural.
I decided then and there that someday, I was going to be a labor and delivery consultant. I was going to stand next to every single woman in labor and every time a nurse or a doctor or hell, even the woman's husband said something stupid like, "Just breathe through the pain," it would be my job to squeeze the living fuck out of their reproductive organs until they were curled up in the fetal position asking for their mommies and I’d say “Just breathe through the pain, asshole!” And anyone that gave the new mother a dirty look after an eight pound, one ounce bloody, gooey, screaming pile of tiny human was cut out of her stomach when she asked her father to grab the bottle of vodka out of her overnight bag because, "morphine and vodka sounds like a stellar way to celebrate the birth of my spawn," would get their McJudgy glare smacked right off their face.
And I guess that brings us up to speed.
The next four years were spent working my ass off trying to make enough money to set aside for my future business, while raising my son and trying not to sell him to gypsies on a daily basis.
After a while, the search for Mr. Cherry Popper fell by the wayside as life got in the way. It didn't mean I never thought about him. Every time I looked at my son, I couldn't help but think about him. Everyone told me that Gavin looks exactly like me. And I guess he does to an extent. He has my nose, my lips, my dimples and my attitude. But his eyes were a whole other story. Every single day when I looked into the crystal blue pools of my son’s eyes, I saw his father. I saw the way the corners of his eyes crinkled when he laughed at something I said, I saw the way they sparkled when he animatedly told me a funny story and I saw the sincerity in them each time he brushed the hair out of my eyes that night. I wondered where he was, what he was doing and if "Heathers" was still one of his favorite movies. Every so often I would be struck with a sharp stab of guilt at the fact that this man would never get to meet his son, but it's not like I didn't try. There's only so much I could do. I wasn't about to put out an ad in the paper that says, "Hey, world! So this one time, at a frat party, I was a total slut and let a stranger go where no man has gone before and now I have a son. Won't you please help me find my baby daddy?"
Jim became more of a permanent fixture in my life as well as Liz’s. I probably talked to him on the phone as much as I did her. It was a no-brainer that the two of them would be Gavin's godparents. They spoiled him rotten and I liked to put all the blame on Liz for the mouth on that kid. I didn't think anyone screamed louder than I did when I found out Jim asked Liz to marry him and that they were going to move to Butler to be closer to her family and me. As soon as they moved back, Liz began tirelessly working and researching for the next few years to get a solid business plan in place. She told me a few months ago that she finally figured out what she wanted to sell, but she didn't want to tell me until she was certain she could do it. After that phone call, the most I saw of Liz was a blur as she ran from one appointment to the next. She was constantly on the phone with realtors and banks, running back and forth to her lawyer's office to sign paperwork and making daily trips up to the county court house to get all of the small business forms completed. I reluctantly agreed during a night of girl-time, after five too many dirty martinis, that I would help her out on a part-time basis as a consultant. I think my exact words were “I love you Liz. And I love vodka. I shall hug you and squeeze you and call you Lizdka.” Liz considered that a yes.
All Liz told me about the job was that it could be considered sales and I would have a blast doing it. Being a bartender, I considered myself pretty damn good at sales.
“What? You say your wife dumped you for a woman in her book club? Here, try a bottle of Patrón.”
“Oh no, your best friend’s neighbor’s ex-wife’s dog was hit by a car? Here, Johnnie Walker should do the trick.”
Liz liked to make even the most mundane things suspenseful and wanted to keep me in the dark and surprise me about what I would be selling. And since I was drunk at the time, I would have agreed to sell do-it-yourself enema kits and she knew it. I worked a few hours almost every night at the bar after Gavin went to bed and made some money putting together candy and cookie trays for parties around town but I could always use the extra cash, so I was okay with it as long as helping Liz out didn't cut into my time with Gavin too much.
Tonight was my "orientation" so to speak. I was going to tag along with Liz to one of her engagements so I could get a feel for the business. Jim was watching Gavin for the night so I offered to drive, dropping him off when I picked Liz up.
They met us out in the driveway as I pulled in. Liz was lugging the biggest suitcase I had ever seen behind her and shooed Jim’s hand away when he tried to help her heft it into my trunk. I should have taken Jim’s knowing smirk when we pulled away as a huge red flag. In my defense, I don’t get out much. I assumed we would be selling something like candles, Tupperware or beauty products; all things that Liz loved. I should have known better. Or paid closer attention to the words "Bedroom Fun" stitched into the side of the suitcase in pink, elegant script.
