There's this great scene in which Michael Keaton is dropping his older son off at school, obviously for the first time. He pulls into school the wrong way and completely screws up the traffic pattern, and of course the moms (to whom this is all routine) insult and and scream and honk their horns at him.
"Jack...you're doing it wrong."
I thought of that scene today while dropping off my son Hendrix. Except I wasn't playing the part of the dad who was getting screamed at -- I was one of the moms who was screaming and honking their horns at the brainless idiot that tried to enter the traffic pattern in the wrong way.
"What the hell are you thinking, you fucking moron?"
"Daddy," Hendrix said from the back seat. "You said a bad word. Put a quarter in the jar."
This is serious. I am becoming one of the "moms". I think I may be growing ovaries, for god's sake.
Now I've done manual labor all my life until I got into the adult biz -- I built semi trucks and school buses on an assembly line, worked on truck docks, had my CDL with all the endorsements, worked at the airport sorting freight and loading planes and running my own crew for 13 years in the dark and the freezing cold. Then I managed a strip club for 6 years. I've gone skydiving. I've broken my back... not once, but twice.
And now I'm turning into a woman.
I thought about the last 24 hours of my life... putting together this blog yesterday afternoon while my wife and Hendrix were at school and my baby girl was taking a nap. I didn't have to DJ at the club last night, it being Wednesday, so I made dinner while my wife helped Hendrix with his homework. Nothing fancy, polish sausage and scalloped potatoes out of a box. Then I ran out and grabbed a bag of diapers and some Nyquil at the Family Dollar, came home and got the boy into bed while my wife laid the baby down, and helped her study for her big IV Therapy test today. She had gotten the kids into their jammies while I was out, God bless her, and she also got Hendrix to finish his homework, which is damn near impossible at times.
She hit the sack at 11pm, and I set our alarms so that she'd be back up at 5:45am. Then I turned on the laptop and got some writing done in the middle of the night while I washed a pair of scrubs for her to wear to school. I got up with her this morning early, made her some coffee, packed her lunch, gassed up and warmed up the car, then when she left for school at 7am I got our boy dressed, went over his homework with him, read him a book, got him some breakfast, changed the baby and got her dressed, and then we took him to school.
Whew.
Now I'm home. With the laptop back on. Writing this. Thinking about a short story I want to work on today, one about a strip club manager who pimps out his dancers and keeps them hooked on the heroin that he supplies.
(The story, by the way, is not based on fact. Seriously.)
Now getting by these days with kids is a team effort; at least in my house, it is. You do your thing, I do mine... you clean the bathroom and I'll cook -- you vacuum the stairs and I'll go to the parent/teacher conference -- you keep getting straight A's and I'll do my DJ thing and we'll try to pay the bills on time and when you graduate, by god, we'll be okay.
I love my life, and I love my wife, and I wouldn't change either one of them for the world.
But if some porn producer ever decides to shoot a XXX parody of "Mr. Mom", I want them to save a small part in it for me. Preferably one where I can keep my clothes on. I'll play the exterminator or something.
That is, if I can find someone to keep an eye on the kids while I'm on set.
You'll have to excuse me now. I think I'm ovulating.
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