Empreg
Kyle didn’t know whose baby it was; Kyle didn’t want to know. It’s not that he thought it wasn’t Stan’s; he just wasn’t sure that it was. Sometimes, he looked for clues. One morning, he woke up with an insatiable craving for Pop Tarts. Sometimes, he felt an insatiable craving to eat everything, and then he would, and then he felt miserable about it. Nobody ever told him this would be so difficult. His mother was a font of all sorts of maternal information: How to clean an oven; how to build a sukkah; how to write a thank you note. For some reason, he never got the memo about how to express milk. It was an entirely repulsive concept, not to mention a messy one. It was only slightly before the kid popped out that Sheila gave him a breast pump.
“You couldn’t have given me one of these three months ago?” he asked.
“I didn’t know you needed it,” she replied by way of excuse.
“Well, I did!” Kyle cried. His mother just shrugged, so he stormed out and went home and didn’t speak to her for three days.
Three days was a long time when you had nothing better to do than sit on your rapidly softening ass watching The View and eating Kraft dinner for breakfast. It didn’t help that Stan was gone all day, either. No one was surprised that Stan was so gallant and chivalrous, wanting to be with a man whose child he probably wasn’t expecting. When his parents pressed him about it, he lowered his wet eyes and just softly said, “It’s the right thing to do,” like this was all some grand concession on his part. It was much harder for Stan, with his job as a ninth-grade English teacher and tendency to clam up, to be honest with people: Kyle was everything he cared about, everything he wanted.
There were clumsy attempts before, a pained little note in seventh grade and a tearful confession at the end of 12th. Both were rejected, outright, the former because Kyle claimed he wasn’t like that. But Stan knew, which was why he tried again, post-self-acknowledgment. “Well, I didn’t ask you to spend all of high school waiting around for me!” Kyle snapped at the latter. “What, you think just because I like guys and you’re my friend I should just spread my legs right here?”
“Well, no, not right here,” Stan said bashfully. They were standing in the Marshes’ kitchen that afternoon. “Maybe upstairs,” he added hopefully.
“Well, I think you have a lot of nerve.” Kyle’s voice was hard, without pity. “We are never going to be together, Stan, never. I would never let you fuck me.” The thing about Kyle was, though, despite his pretense of discrimination, he was liable to let just about anyone fuck him. So, Stan did get several chances over the years. It always left him feeling sort of hollow, not because Kyle wasn’t good - he was very good - but because he wanted so badly to be something more than tonight’s entertainment.
It wasn’t impossible that he was the father. “Maybe it is,” Kyle had said when he told him. “I mean, you never know.” Kyle was blushing furiously, holding his jacket together with his hand, eyebrows arched upward, unsure of what reaction he was going to get. It dawned on Stan that Kyle didn’t know that the feelings he’d so callously rejected all those years ago still lingered, was actually trying to convince Stan. Knowing Kyle like he did, Stan got the feeling that if he accepted with any kind of relief or enthusiasm, the offer would evaporate. So instead of erupting, he cooled, and stonily agreed with practiced reluctance.
“It’s the right thing to do,” he told people, in put-upon high-martyr fashion. “He’s my friend, and he needs someone.”
But inwardly, he was conflicted. The right thing do, he knew, was to let his friend stumble around blindly while his flat, concave body betrayed him. The right thing to do was protect himself from the damage that sheltering a man who’d cruelly told him ‘never’ in such acid tones would do to his already bruised emotions. But that wasn’t Stan. Stan was ineffectual.
Kyle liked to think that maybe it was Stan’s after all. He saw encouragement in both reasonable and unreasonable signs. When Stan rubbed his belly, Kyle felt it moving; maybe it was moving because it knew. It kicked the most violently when Stan wasn’t there. As a practical person Kyle didn’t tend to talk to things or people he knew wouldn’t understand him. But if he did, he would have said, I know, I miss him too.
~
For the duration of his academic career, from third grade until he got his bachelor’s, Kyle turned every assignment in on time. He hated, really truly despised, being late. The word ‘due’ was warm to him. It was orderly, it was familiar. The aggravation of falling short of this expectation for the first time in his life was toxic to him. He sat on the couch pumping breast milk and gritting his teeth. Stan watched his boyfriend - okay, best friend and live-in lover, male, expecting a child neither of them were anticipating looking much like Stan at all, trying to get his tits to stop leaking all over the furniture - grapple with the buttons on the front of his shirt.
“I’m done with this shit, do you hear me?” Kyle threatened. “Get 911 on the phone. I want this thing out of me.”
“Yeah, okay,” Stan agreed, rubbing the back of his neck. He liked to remain slung against the wall, in the distance, detached from all this weirdness. Be careful what you wish for really spoke to him these days.
They asked Stan if he wanted to hold the baby while Kyle was still knocked out from the anesthesia. In the nursery, he stared down at the orange thing in a onesie he knew he should think of as his own. It had some sparse black curls, that was a good sign. That narrowed out a lot of unpleasant candidates. But the more Stan looked at this baby, the more he got the creeping feeling that there was something wrong with this baby. Well, no, not wrong. Just Asian.
When Kyle awoke and asked to see his son, Stan sat there stonily while he tried to maneuver one swollen nipple into the baby’s mouth.
“Can I ask you something?” Stan asked very carefully, trying to act all cool about this.
“Yeah, ask me anything,” Kyle offered. Stan tried to pretend this conversation wasn’t happening while his very male counterpart was breastfeeding.
“Did you … did you ever, you know … hook up with anyone…” Why was trying to be indiscreet about this so difficult? “…different?”
“Different how?”
Stan shrugged. “You know, unusual.”
“Unusual how?”
Stan’s eyes darted around the room. “You know.” He swallowed. “Like, anyone Chinese.”
Immediately, Kyle’s eyes, which were drooping as he focused on the baby, shot open, and he blushed. “I guess,” he mumbled. “You know I don’t really always keep track of all my comings and goings. Or goings and comings.”
Stan wondered if the damn baby was ever going to stop being so damn hungry, and why he’d had to pick now as the time for his stupid little interrogation session.
Kyle cleared his throat. “It’s irrelevant to me what the baby looks like. But you know, he’s yours. It’s irrelevant whether or not I might have, say, seduced that Chinese kid we used to go to school with, possibly while high. It’s inapplicable.”
If anyone could conjure up the word ‘inapplicable’ while sitting in a hospital bed nursing, it was probably Kyle.
“Fetal alcohol syndrome,” he continued, focusing in on Stan’s uncomfortable expression and rigid posture. “Let us say, as far as we are concerned, that this baby is yours, not Kevin’s, and he unfortunately, due to my carelessness, sort of has an altered appearance.”
“So you’d rather tell your parents, not to mention my parents, that you’re a binge drinker than that you’re sort of, uh.” Stan paused. “Promiscuous.”
“That’s right.” It wasn’t completely obvious to him, but Stan got the idea that maybe the baby was slowing down.
“Okay,” Stan agreed blankly. He wasn’t quite sure how he felt about this. Frankly, he was feeling a little nauseated. Kyle smiled up at him, his dark-ringed bloodshot eyes less open than they could have been. Someone once told him that babies didn’t smile, not really, until they were at least several months old. There was something weird about this arrangement, but then he remembered: He would be there when this slanty-eyed baby was genuinely happy for the first time. This was reassuring, and so he grinned back. They were kind of frozen there for a moment, Stan with his hands in his jacket pockets and Kyle in standard-issue pajamas, beaming at each other. Then, steadily, still smiling, Kyle unlatched his son’s lips with a careful index finger, only to be rewarded with vomit.
“Oh, boy,” Kyle drawled, basically handing the screeching infant Stan. “That was spectacular.”
Wordlessly, Stan agreed. So he wasn’t the only one smiling, and he wasn’t the only one queasy. Suddenly, it all made sense.
“You couldn’t have given me one of these three months ago?” he asked.
“I didn’t know you needed it,” she replied by way of excuse.
“Well, I did!” Kyle cried. His mother just shrugged, so he stormed out and went home and didn’t speak to her for three days.
Three days was a long time when you had nothing better to do than sit on your rapidly softening ass watching The View and eating Kraft dinner for breakfast. It didn’t help that Stan was gone all day, either. No one was surprised that Stan was so gallant and chivalrous, wanting to be with a man whose child he probably wasn’t expecting. When his parents pressed him about it, he lowered his wet eyes and just softly said, “It’s the right thing to do,” like this was all some grand concession on his part. It was much harder for Stan, with his job as a ninth-grade English teacher and tendency to clam up, to be honest with people: Kyle was everything he cared about, everything he wanted.
There were clumsy attempts before, a pained little note in seventh grade and a tearful confession at the end of 12th. Both were rejected, outright, the former because Kyle claimed he wasn’t like that. But Stan knew, which was why he tried again, post-self-acknowledgment. “Well, I didn’t ask you to spend all of high school waiting around for me!” Kyle snapped at the latter. “What, you think just because I like guys and you’re my friend I should just spread my legs right here?”
“Well, no, not right here,” Stan said bashfully. They were standing in the Marshes’ kitchen that afternoon. “Maybe upstairs,” he added hopefully.
“Well, I think you have a lot of nerve.” Kyle’s voice was hard, without pity. “We are never going to be together, Stan, never. I would never let you fuck me.” The thing about Kyle was, though, despite his pretense of discrimination, he was liable to let just about anyone fuck him. So, Stan did get several chances over the years. It always left him feeling sort of hollow, not because Kyle wasn’t good - he was very good - but because he wanted so badly to be something more than tonight’s entertainment.
It wasn’t impossible that he was the father. “Maybe it is,” Kyle had said when he told him. “I mean, you never know.” Kyle was blushing furiously, holding his jacket together with his hand, eyebrows arched upward, unsure of what reaction he was going to get. It dawned on Stan that Kyle didn’t know that the feelings he’d so callously rejected all those years ago still lingered, was actually trying to convince Stan. Knowing Kyle like he did, Stan got the feeling that if he accepted with any kind of relief or enthusiasm, the offer would evaporate. So instead of erupting, he cooled, and stonily agreed with practiced reluctance.
“It’s the right thing to do,” he told people, in put-upon high-martyr fashion. “He’s my friend, and he needs someone.”
But inwardly, he was conflicted. The right thing do, he knew, was to let his friend stumble around blindly while his flat, concave body betrayed him. The right thing to do was protect himself from the damage that sheltering a man who’d cruelly told him ‘never’ in such acid tones would do to his already bruised emotions. But that wasn’t Stan. Stan was ineffectual.
Kyle liked to think that maybe it was Stan’s after all. He saw encouragement in both reasonable and unreasonable signs. When Stan rubbed his belly, Kyle felt it moving; maybe it was moving because it knew. It kicked the most violently when Stan wasn’t there. As a practical person Kyle didn’t tend to talk to things or people he knew wouldn’t understand him. But if he did, he would have said, I know, I miss him too.
~
For the duration of his academic career, from third grade until he got his bachelor’s, Kyle turned every assignment in on time. He hated, really truly despised, being late. The word ‘due’ was warm to him. It was orderly, it was familiar. The aggravation of falling short of this expectation for the first time in his life was toxic to him. He sat on the couch pumping breast milk and gritting his teeth. Stan watched his boyfriend - okay, best friend and live-in lover, male, expecting a child neither of them were anticipating looking much like Stan at all, trying to get his tits to stop leaking all over the furniture - grapple with the buttons on the front of his shirt.
“I’m done with this shit, do you hear me?” Kyle threatened. “Get 911 on the phone. I want this thing out of me.”
“Yeah, okay,” Stan agreed, rubbing the back of his neck. He liked to remain slung against the wall, in the distance, detached from all this weirdness. Be careful what you wish for really spoke to him these days.
They asked Stan if he wanted to hold the baby while Kyle was still knocked out from the anesthesia. In the nursery, he stared down at the orange thing in a onesie he knew he should think of as his own. It had some sparse black curls, that was a good sign. That narrowed out a lot of unpleasant candidates. But the more Stan looked at this baby, the more he got the creeping feeling that there was something wrong with this baby. Well, no, not wrong. Just Asian.
When Kyle awoke and asked to see his son, Stan sat there stonily while he tried to maneuver one swollen nipple into the baby’s mouth.
“Can I ask you something?” Stan asked very carefully, trying to act all cool about this.
“Yeah, ask me anything,” Kyle offered. Stan tried to pretend this conversation wasn’t happening while his very male counterpart was breastfeeding.
“Did you … did you ever, you know … hook up with anyone…” Why was trying to be indiscreet about this so difficult? “…different?”
“Different how?”
Stan shrugged. “You know, unusual.”
“Unusual how?”
Stan’s eyes darted around the room. “You know.” He swallowed. “Like, anyone Chinese.”
Immediately, Kyle’s eyes, which were drooping as he focused on the baby, shot open, and he blushed. “I guess,” he mumbled. “You know I don’t really always keep track of all my comings and goings. Or goings and comings.”
Stan wondered if the damn baby was ever going to stop being so damn hungry, and why he’d had to pick now as the time for his stupid little interrogation session.
Kyle cleared his throat. “It’s irrelevant to me what the baby looks like. But you know, he’s yours. It’s irrelevant whether or not I might have, say, seduced that Chinese kid we used to go to school with, possibly while high. It’s inapplicable.”
If anyone could conjure up the word ‘inapplicable’ while sitting in a hospital bed nursing, it was probably Kyle.
“Fetal alcohol syndrome,” he continued, focusing in on Stan’s uncomfortable expression and rigid posture. “Let us say, as far as we are concerned, that this baby is yours, not Kevin’s, and he unfortunately, due to my carelessness, sort of has an altered appearance.”
“So you’d rather tell your parents, not to mention my parents, that you’re a binge drinker than that you’re sort of, uh.” Stan paused. “Promiscuous.”
“That’s right.” It wasn’t completely obvious to him, but Stan got the idea that maybe the baby was slowing down.
“Okay,” Stan agreed blankly. He wasn’t quite sure how he felt about this. Frankly, he was feeling a little nauseated. Kyle smiled up at him, his dark-ringed bloodshot eyes less open than they could have been. Someone once told him that babies didn’t smile, not really, until they were at least several months old. There was something weird about this arrangement, but then he remembered: He would be there when this slanty-eyed baby was genuinely happy for the first time. This was reassuring, and so he grinned back. They were kind of frozen there for a moment, Stan with his hands in his jacket pockets and Kyle in standard-issue pajamas, beaming at each other. Then, steadily, still smiling, Kyle unlatched his son’s lips with a careful index finger, only to be rewarded with vomit.
“Oh, boy,” Kyle drawled, basically handing the screeching infant Stan. “That was spectacular.”
Wordlessly, Stan agreed. So he wasn’t the only one smiling, and he wasn’t the only one queasy. Suddenly, it all made sense.