Joan Rivers made a movie (Rabbit Test) about the subject of this story some time ago. The movie is all but forgotten. Joan Rivers, who has turned out to be a pretty good interviewer, is not.
There's a lot to say on the subject, but in the movie, as in most stories dealing with same, it's said by others and not the subject most concerned. Daniel Dern addresses that imbalance in the cheerful, easygoing, no-problem-here style of ...
I TRY TO imagine, amid our early-morning tussling, what it must be like, in her body, how it feels, to have foreign flesh pushed within me; how strange it is, that in pressing two bodies so close together another body could be formed and plucked from me. And that would be the meaning of it all, a meaning so clear that all attempts to subvert it would seem distasteful, no matter how necessary. And I would stay home and cook and wash dishes while she went out to hustle nine to five (assuming rotation rather than revolution) and the moon would go round the earth and I would feel mysterious and burbling (so they say); but I'll never understand, all I can do is hold her tight as one of us bucks above the other, and smile, feeling that I do understand something, and that I must pretend the rest. Or make do, accepting that there are some things I will never understand.
We drift back to sleep, and then the alarm is going off, brrp, barrupp, ho, time to get up. I blink hard, tap the switch for silence, and walk my fingers up the arm across my chest to her neck, chin, nose. Her face tells me she has cramps, slight ones; I kiss her gently and place my palms below her stomach for a moment, then turn her on her side and rub her back, paying special attention to the diagonals behind her kidneys, where the warmth is most needed. We get up, and in the shower she pinches my waist; you're getting fat, she says, so I promise to skip lunch and jog, which satisfies her. Then, as we clear away breakfast and she leafs through her papers for the morning's appointments, she curses and snaps the briefcase shut, biting her upper lip between the teeth.
What's wrong? I ask. She has to go to the clinic, some special test they want her to take, a urine sample, sugar levels, whatever. Can I help? I offer. She goes and dials a number on the phone, chews on a nail while they leave her holding. I put the dishes away and knot my tie. Yes, she tells me; I can bring it in for her. In fact, they want my sample, too, while I'm there. One moment. She shuffles through the shelves. Here, this will do. Hang on.
Lawyers—even bright-eyed, red-haired, long-nosed lawyers—have to start their days early. Especially when they're just out of law school, as my wife is, and don't own or run the office, which she doesn't. Us photographers have it easier. No model is going to show her body, much less her face, before ten, and all the adfolks I know believe it's immoral to start drinking before ten-thirty. So all I have to do, unless there's work left over from the day before, is know what to set up and check over my equipment and hope it's merely another long day in the studio and not some bright sales maven's idea of inspiration to make me go out on location chasing long-legged dreams in this New York's most unlikely folly of a cold, cold winter. Never mind my solidified sinuses and blue-tinged fingers—do you know what those subfreezing temperatures do to my film? Not to mention my shutters? Give me a CIA special Besseler Topcon Super D and I'll shoot your frozen beauties; just spare, if you will, my poor gray Hasselblad.
So while she makes ready to go off to help honest, outraged prostitutes bring suit against the police department in arresting sellers while ignoring purchasers—tort for tart, she calls it—I hunt up a book to accompany me to the clinic, knowing there will be a wait. "Feel better?" I ask as she leaves. She nods. "See you tonight."
Her family's got this hyperglycemia habit; we check her every so often but luckily haven't nabbed her metabolism yet. She shows traces, however, so she eats real careful. Me, I got my own worries. Now they find another new test, or it's a golden oldie, or maybe they just want to keep us worried, whatever the reason, off I go, maybe we'll learn something new today.
The doctor's office is typically clogged; squalling rug rats quiver in their mothers' laps; lizard-skinned septuagenarians sit motionlessly; I twiddle a Reader's Digest, taking two and three readings to decode each joke. Vaguely I remember my first visits as a child: brown block toys, the bristling smell I now know to be ammonia, the anticipation of pain. My eyes take in the paragraph once again; I know there is humor in there, but it evades me with Middle-American cunning.
A starch-white nurse gargles my name.
I quickstep down the hallway and return with filled bottle and vial, extract from my pocket the home brew. Tests, yes, mumble check babble the doctor mutters, see you at pay the next week call you. Still cringing from the shot my childhood memories awaited, I rebundle and trudge off.
It's a problem day, they keep sending models with skin tones half a zone off, too dark, too light, I'm tempted to send them back saying, not cooked enough, another turn on the spit please. Finally we slide the last film back off and call it a day. That's all girls see you tomorrow and don't break that smile.
The phone is ringing when I unboot in the doorway; I ignore it, knowing you never make it in time. Settling back with a light drink and heavy novel, I brood over Eleanor of Aquitaine until another car rattles in the driveway.
She is perturbed, I can tell; I start tea and gentle her as she uncloaks. The doctor called, she recites, they want me in for testing.
I hold her and ask, did they say why; she shakes her head. Tea, news, dinner, work, wine, shower, and bed. I hold her again and whisper not to worry. She cries out as she clutches me, and in relaxing, weeps.
The look upon her face next evening is stranger still: They thought I was pregnant, but I'm not; they want to see you tomorrow at ten.
Penetration, relaxation, penetration, relaxation—whose arrogance is it to classify this act "invasion"? For every woman demanding out, out, is there not a male whose inner voice screams, keep it in, don't let anything escape, and then roll away before feeling becomes a fact. Lock it in, lock it out; it is the violation of surfaces that distresses. I cannot imagine what it would be to have her squirt inside me, fill me and lie by my side empty and drained. Nor the inexhaustible transport of her release; this jealously will never be reconciled. What soft, bleary smile might I drift with after such elevation, and the warm knowing shit-eating grin that would mist my eyes till noon?
I cannot know, only cause; rod and tongue march around her flesh like Jericho horns until she crumbles.
The office is still fey; they pluck fluids from me, prod me, ray me, invade me, with stiff lights and cold devices up every orifice, and gather like flies to prognose.
It is evident, it is impossible, I am enceinte.
A blessed event! Will it be a boy or a girl? Shall I knit booties and crave pickles? What are the rules in such circumstances? Man Expecting, tabloids would hawk. Hubby Takes Turn—Mom Stays Mum. Men's faces grow pale; women guffaw. They have to be carried; their deep laughter overcomes them. The rich chortling echoes down the hallways and explodes in amazed whispers. I sit there, stomach twisting; I am not amused.
Ectopic pregnancy, they chant. Parthogenetic reproduction, reverse ovarian drift. Not impossible, not odd. Perfectly explainable. Nature not putting all her eggs in one basket. Liber oparous hominem. Homo anticipatus. Their professional mumbo-jumbo permits them to gloss over the miraculous with blase jargon, but I am not fooled. They are staggered and still reeling from the blow; all their fancy words are just a mask for their fright. I loosen my belt thoughtfully; I've got love in my tummy.
How do I tell her? Am I going to be a father or a mother? Will she be suspicious, suspect another woman? Is she willing to accept this child? My God, suppose she refuses—am I prepared to sacrifice this flesh of my flesh, say yes to the silver knife and sucking tube? Not with my child you don't!
Then again, this could be more than a mild disruption in my life: by what right would the church and others decide what I will do with my body?
Thoughts avalanche faster than I can cope: what about my job, my career? Is it all right for me to work, can I get paternity leave?
I wonder if my medical plan will cover the hospital bills. And will my dry breasts blossom in time to suckle my child?
First she is amused, then startled, then shocked. As she slowly believes, her emotions do a tango. The lawyer's cool surfaces, mixed with spousely concern. Unbelief returns; she cannot grasp the truth. Jealously. Confusion. Love. Fear. Joy. Humor. Concern. Doubt. She proves equal to the situation; she is no more capable of accepting it than I am.
We sit and think.
A strange, loving look suffuses her features. Never before has she been gentle in this way. It is a deep loving we make late that evening, almost irrelevant to pleasure. I hold her close and weep.
My belly is swelling; we have abandoned tobacco, alcohol, aspirin. Loose trousers hide my precious paunch; even so, I get comments—Too much beer, old fellow? Better get to work on those pounds, boy.
I banter back and look chagrined. Conveniently, the clinic has maintained my delicate condition entre nous and sub rosa and no doubt oy vey iz mir, but I still fear someone will discover me.
Is it embarrassment or the inevitable pursuit by the media and fanatics that encourages my furtiveness? It is not yet too late for this all to turn out a bad dream, or at least a creative tumor.
No one could be more loving, more supportive than that bright-eyed, red-haired, long-nosed lawyer who is my wife. "The entire legal establishment is prepared to defend you." she assures you. "At least, I pledge myself without cost in your cause, no matter how prolonged. So long. Mom, and all that. Here is a list of precedents I have made up for you already."
Spencer Tracy never received so magnanimous an offer from his legal-minded screenmate Kate; happy am I to have such a wife, to care for the swelling life within me.
The doctors are very puzzled.
"It's not a [parthen]," they declare. "It's clearly got both your chromosomes. Confess, sly scoundrel, how did you do it? Did Johns Hopkins pull this fast one? What perverse position did your wife and you employ that fatal night? Talk, or we shall publish!"
I stay silent, aware of my rights. Their bluster cannot budge me. I know they are relieved that Christmas will come only once this year.
She is gentle with me now, allowing me the bottom in all but our most energetic moments. Even so, my tongue is more convenient. We do not go out much; our evenings are preoccupied with reading and talk. We have much to discuss; all these years she has been a woman and I have failed to take interest except in the obvious. Suddenly I am very concerned; the rights of mothers, Lamaze and painless birth, proper nutrition, obligations to the state—I find I am less alert to the outside world than I used to be; my mind drifts at unlikely moments and fills with thoughts of sky.
To hide our fear, we joke: will she join me in the delivery room, or pace frantically outside, choking on cigars?
Someone has told the papers, the mercenary scoundrel. Peace is a forgotten concept; the household, the driveway, the entire block is littered with newssneaks. Our phone sounds like an ice cream truck. Our mailbox is overrun; indeed, the mailman has taken to doing our house as an entire bag drop. Luckily, no one has yet been violent.
The church is rather off-balance. Hurrah!
I can feel movement already. My body feels light in spite of its new bulk; I rest my hands on my hairy navel and wonder whether some mistake has not been made. Surely the noble doctors could not be wrong?
Perhaps the women never really did it at all, it is only a lie spread and carefully maintained by some mysterious power structure. It is as likely as my being the only one.
The thought does not console me.
Spring has exploded: the air is overpoweringly sweet. Birds sing, worms turn, leaves unroll ... I feel a mysterious kinship with the earth, and cautious of my cargo I take to our garden.
Sitting in the class together, my wife and I attract strange glances, but everyone is too polite to talk to us. I don't mind, I would say, come, do you believe in breast-feeding. But beneath their distance I know I frighten them, so we do not press for company. One, two, one, two, we all chant together. Breathe. Breathe. Relax.
You have given your fellow men another tool for oppressing us, an angry woman writes. Now you don't need us at all. Uncertain, I ponder this. But: You are a brave man, another letter says, to share our burden with us. I wish you well.
I answer as many of these letters as I am able; their encouragement strengthens me. The others, the distressed mudslingers, I skim for originality and then feed to the trash.
Business is booming, I can report. Vicarious notoriety has brought flush times to the law firm. Multi-digit offers from institutions and periodicals cover our bulletin board. We contemplate the temptation, but steadfastly refuse to say, "Come on over."
I drink milk, take vitamins. Obviously I have not been to work in weeks; my condition is distracting when not downright encumbering, and I feel as if I am in front of the cameras instead of behind them. Well, that's what you get for not taking precautions. I wonder if she would have married me, had we been single when it happened.
Our parents, who have always pestered us to have children, do not appear satisfied by the recent development. There's no pleasing some people.
The companies are beginning to get obnoxious again; they view me as a viable sales gimmick. Entire new markets! Dolls! Sweatshirts! Advice to unwed fathers! Bah!
The only consolation I have is that Pravda has not yet announced the previously unpublicized case of a Russian man who gave birth to a healthy seven-pound boy—or maybe twins—back in 1962.
Well, we had to give in; Blue Cross would not spring for my obstetric expenses. We expect to win the lawsuit, but in the meantime the clinic's offer was our only hope of financial nonruin. We intend to get those hard-fisted bastards, however. Deny childbirth coverage on account of my sex, will they? I will relish watching them squirm in court. Let's hear it for the Equal Rights Amendment, brothers!
Buying a suitable nursing brassiere was quite an adventure.
It is a triumph worth crowing over. Single-handedly, I have thrown an entire medical research team into panic. Now that they've got me, they don't know what to do with me. Hi-ho, they're so confused! They'd love to be able to say, there's been a mistake, it's only a strange growth, but not after the X rays.
Actually, it began as a wart on my ass.
My art is suffering, I admit, but I realize I am not the first whose baby preempted a career.
When the child is two months old, I intend to go back to work full-time, if at all possible. Meanwhile, I am catching up on my reading.
I have accepted an invitation to speak before the upcoming Gay Rights Conference. My topic (by request): Male Mothers: A Viable Gay Alternative to Adoption.
[Though uncertain how I feel about all this, I was too flattered to refuse.]
The day has come. Swollen-bellied they cart me away, accompanied by a certain red-haired lawyer. The connection between my vast abdomen and a son or daughter seems tenuous even at this moment; it is hard to believe that another living creature is in there. I think Saul's a good name for a boy, although Minerva might be more appropriate. Though the prospect of being a househusband swaddled by mewling babes frightens me, the whole experience has been most enlightening. I wonder if my feelings are common.
They have the operating theatre all ready for me. Doctors circle like eager vultures. (A large fuss was needed to get my wife's permission to be with me.) TV cameras wait, ready to dolly in for the close-ups; should we have sold tickets to the intrigued M.D.? But viewing privileges were included in the deal we made.
It will have to be the knife. The one thing I lack is an egress; however the little bugger managed to sneak inside me, he or she forgot to provide for a graceful exit. For some reason, neither my wife nor I really worried about it; I guess I thought I would sprout a zipper in the final week, or something.
They assure me the caesarean is routine and I do not have to be afraid.
Since this is a high-class operation, well-funded, I get the luxury of an epidural. I would have insisted on a local rather than general anesthetic in any case. I will not sleep through the birth of my child. In their arrogant professional distance they assumed I would take a dive. And not know what they were doing to me? I will endure pain if I must, but I will be there and awake the whole time.
The insufferable maleness of the medical profession has never been more evident.
The nurses are all on my side. They have been good to me. Those who have children of their own have spent time chatting with me to put me at ease; they made sure I was comfortable and not worried. It was at their urging that I insisted on staying awake.
Trembling shakes my body; I grasp the sides of the table. Where are my rope handles!
A white-masked face nods; another needle sinks into my flesh. They wheel a device which sounds like a coffee percolator to my side.
Holding my hand, my wife stands by me. She tries to look calm and loving, but I can see the fear, the worry in her eyes.
In her place, would I have cared so well?
My guts buckle. I suck air and scream in pain. This is a mistake. They wave the gas tube in my face. Are you sure? they inquire.
Don't you dare, I threaten. My wife's hand tightens around my fingers. They back off.
Another pain. How the devil can I suffer contractions when I don't have a birth canal?
The entire event has been irregular that way.
The pains quicken. I moan softly. The doctors confer in whispers; then the head shaman steps near. He flexes his arms as if preparing to carve a holiday bird. They lift the white sheet from my body.
Somewhere below my monstrous belly hang my standard-issue male-type genitals. I have not seen them lately, being too fat in front for line-of-sight viewing, but since I can still urinate while standing, I assume that everything is still there. (Actually, I can still feel them when I wash.)
So I am cheered; some things have not changed . . .
I want ice cream.
Ahhh the metal is cold! Damn them! Aieee!
My hairless flesh prickles at their touch. (They shaved me yesterday—my belly, that is. They had the goodness to leave the pubic hair intact, as it was not in the way.)
They swab me down with antiseptics. The drying alcohol tingles. I imagine already hearing my child's cries.
A wave of love fills me, dulling the first incision's pain. I can tell I am bleeding.
The television lights shine on my skin. Ladies, have you tried . . . Unlike most commercial housewife illusions, my skin is not soft, but my wife still loves me.
In the later months of my pregnancy I was gleeful. I had never felt more handsome. But in the odd moments I found myself thinking. Is she out with other women now? Other men? Do I look fat and ugly now? Afraid, I did not mention these thoughts to my wife.
Under the bright-lit pain of parturition, my mask dissolves. I hear voices discussing me. I do not care.
My breath comes in chunks now: a-haa, a-haa. My diaphragm is rock-hard. They are peeling me apart like an orange.
My breasts throb. My body is being torn in two. What are they doing to me? Pain, incredible pain, the rush of voices, the measured beat of calm nurses ready with the instruments, oxygen shoved in my mouth, futile nausea, wrenching jolts that shake the table and rattle the trays. Shake, rattle and roll. My fingernails are ripping into my palms. How can they stand it? My eyes press shut in pain; my screams fill the room. No more strength now—let it be over, please! Hands explore me; fingers close like hooks in around the pay load. My flesh parts and I feel the sucking as they lift the body from me, there is another wave of pain that blurs my eyes and I feel cold air inside me while I gasp above—and suddenly everything is silent, it is over.
In that still moment before they slap the baby into squalling life, I am overcome with emptiness; I am empty again and helpless to change it. Put it back in! I try to cry out, even as they begin to sew me up again, but I am too weak to speak. Reflex attempts to make me ignore my feelings, but they are too strong; reaching for my wife's hand, I begin to weep. Overcome with grief, joy, and loss, I let my tears mingle with the cries of my newborn child.
Administrivia:
Version 1.0 by Monica
Fixed broken paragraphs from UC text/corrected OCR errors/removed page numbers, etc./spellchecked/HTML
Style Sheet by the E-Book Design Group
Remaining OCR mysteries and guesses at corrections are enclosed in [brackets]
One extra note: the UC scan had the author's name as both Dem and Dern. I picked the most likely of the two. If incorrect, fix it and up the revision number by .1
From "Smart Dragons, Foolish Elves" edited by Alan Dean Foster
2003.07.04