Kooks

              I spent this last Friday night and half of Saturday with two girls I met through an online "meditation" zoom group. I've written about one of them. I love them both. I just do. I love people immediately. Both are now part of my life, and there's nothing to be done about it. I see two beautiful young mothers as little sisters despite how gorgeous they are. But it's the truth. I want to protect them and keep them safe and happy and maybe make them bread and pay for ramen for their kids, and only then do I feel free from the feelings that any guy like me might naturally have, but I push them away and just marvel at what great moms they are,

              Between them, they have three kids. Two boys from one and a beautiful little girl who wears a green hoodie and claims she's a "bush" when she pulls it all the way up. Just three little people who I could fall in love with and destroy anyone who even looked at them sideways.
              They came here to help celebrate something another mutual friend, Jaymee, was going through. A naming ceremony pulling him into a lineage of Buddhist teachers, and it meant something to all of us.

              I pulled into the driveway the very second they did after their long drive from Utah. We arrived together, and one thing was clear. The kids wanted ramen. How do three little sub-ten-year-olds love ramen with such fervor? And so we found them some. We went to a few places with no room for us and finally landed in a Glendale joint so devoid of activity it seemed overtly dodgy. But that fucking guy knew his stuff. It's our ramen place forever.

              And I wonder: where are my kids? How did I fail this most basic of human functions? Knowing my story, it's surely easy to be nothing but thankful that I didn't drag any children into my smeared and hole-filled life. What would have become of them? What might my lapses in basic humanity have done to them? I suppose it's for the best. But fuck, sometimes I feel like I dropped the ultimate ball. I created nothing of actual value without creating a life to love and nourish. Am I truly that selfish or simply diseased, or maybe I just never got it together enough to let it naturally happen. But It weighs on me. I always said I didn't want kids until I met some I loved, and the whole charade crumbled, and I sunk into the vapor of quiet observing and judging myself. Again, like so many times, I blew it.

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              For a while, J and I tried to have a kid. We went to fertility doctors. We took tests. We fucked exactly when we were supposed to. J pointed her toes to the ceiling, thinking that gravity might help my cum do its job and then take the test and then….nothing. And thank God for it. We were both gone. Kings and queens of oblivion. Strung out. And we didn't think having a kid would save us. I think we truly wanted to love someone little who was a part of both of us. So much of it was pure. I loved her, and she loved me, and we wanted all of that to wrap around some little creature just grasping for our love and care. And we would have showered this little being with love unknown regardless of how much we were killing ourselves. Such a bad plan. Such a bad fantasy, and yet we tried for months. I kept shooting blanks, and so many of the blanks were bought by her by offering me oxycodone 30mg pills to make me feel well enough to fuck. Fucking was so hard. This thing we're made for became so entwined and dependent on little blue pills, and everything was fucked. God save the kid who didn't appear before us.

              We just stopped trying. In fact, we just stopped fucking. We'd watch TV at night to divert our attention and drift off, probably thinking of different people and different lives. At least, that's what I assumed she was thinking of. Just lying there dreaming of anyone but me.

              She wasn't the first to make me feel this way. I said I didn't want kids like someone might say they don't want the hassle of winning the lottery. Just a wholly obscene and inane proclamation. Of course, I wanted a son or a daughter, but I never felt anywhere near worthy of it. I could never bear the responsibility. I could barely bring in the mail more than once a week. What was I going to do with hourly feedings and diaper changes? Surely I'd be the death of this young soul, and so I bought into all of that and forged this idea that I did Not Want Children as if it was a badge of honor. I still hear myself echoing it. And fuck! I blew it!

              What I wouldn't give to play catch with a son or with a daughter. These days who can tell? I'd love them completely and totally, and now they're with some other family. Hopefully safer and happier; I have my wine, typewriter, knifemaking tools, and hours of alone time wondering what might have been.

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              I try an imagine what it would be like to have a little version of me and her running around here all but sleepless, and I hear other parents telling me to count my blessings. But I also see the look on their faces when their kids look into their eyes and tell them they love them, and then something melts away from them like years of wax and ice and doubt and fear, and for an instant, I see them smile a true smile. Not the smile of a laugh or a gift received or a mouthful of delicacy. They smile this soul-deep smile of their soul finally being at peace. I've never felt that.

              At one point in my life, I was besieged by the idea that I'd so totally escaped fatherhood. It felt awful, and yet it was also like someone giving me an award for persevering with something I set out to do. When our goals and wishes clash like atomic fusion, there's nothing to feel but unending pain.

              The part of all of this that haunts me the most is realizing I never got to share what my Dad shared with me when I needed it the most. On that Christmas Eve, when the Atom Bomb landed on him, telling him his newly-minted electrical engineer son was a heroin addict, he extended nothing but love. Of course, he was apoplectic and at a loss for graceful words, but he hugged me and told me we'd get through this together. We tried. He died before I got through it. I'm still not "through it," But I'll never know what he felt to love someone so completely that no transgression could threaten it, no matter how precarious it seemed. He was my Dad, and he had my back. I've never had anyone's back like that. Fuck. I'm crying as I type this. Where did it all go wrong? Where exactly did I stop being human?

              I suppose I could adopt a kid and give him a life. But so could so many better people who haven't just dragged themselves out of the muck of childish dreams of being someone special, famous, unique, and beyond simply caring for someone else who can't care for themselves. I am that person. I am that monster.

              Well, maybe I'm not a monster, but I truly feel like I blew it by not having a kid. And yet, I don't know when It could have happened without me being a completely different person. Maybe there's a place for someone like me, childless but wanting to love. Maybe there's ramen to buy