Free Love Monkey by Kyle Smith Page B

options, weighed some choice responses, and then did what I always do when confronting difficult choices. Nothing. Good thing I wasn’t Sophie in Sophie’s Choice . Which kid should I save from Auschwitz? Mmm, let me see about that. Uh, yeah, I’ll just weigh the pros and cons for a while, this one’s health against that one’s intelligence, this one’s lovely personality against that one’s essential courage. Oh, time’s up? So you’re taking them both? Whew, that’s a relief.
    Tick, tick, tick. I wanted to say something. But I didn’t.
    So I hugged her and kissed her for a while. Thinking, Maybe she’ll forget about this awkward little moment?
    With the next girlfriend, I won’t be sad or weird or distant. I’ll give her everything she wants and more. An emotional AmEx card. No preset intimacy limit.
    But first I have to go celebrate a baby not my own.
    Mike went back to work today, but Karin’s still at New York Hospital. The thing is two days old; it looks like a rough draft of a human being. I am expected to say how cute it is, but I resolve to stay noncommittal on these things. Must keep my options open.
    â€œIs it the cutest baby ever?”
    These are the first words out of Karin’s mouth. Her whole face isshiny, as if someone went over it with a belt sander and a coat of Turtle Wax. In the last two months of her pregnancy, she grew scarily large. She was getting worried too. You could tell. I said nothing, but privately I wondered if she was going to deliver a VW.
    A grin is oozing all over Karin’s face. Even her hair is smiling.
    â€œIsn’t she?” she prompts.
    â€œI don’t know. I’ll just stroll over to the nursery and do some comparison shopping.”
    But I don’t say that.
    â€œOf course,” I say.
    â€œGreat baby,” I say.
    â€œGood job. Uh, giving birth. And all,” I say.
    I’d always heard that parents undergo this weird brain rewiring that makes it impossible for them to think their baby is not the darlingest diaper filler that ever lived. I keep waiting for evidence to the contrary, but there is none. I have a lot of smart friends, investment bankers and doctors and so forth. Theoretically, they’re smart enough to have figured out that just about half of all babies are below average. Yet to date I have never heard one new duh-duh or maw-maw say: “Don’t you think our baby isn’t as cute as most? Frankly, I’m disappointed with the outcome. Then again, look who I married.”
    I ask no questions about bodily functions, except, tentatively, “So, um, how was the, uh, labor, uh, thingy?” It seems impolite not to give her an opportunity to chat about what is, after all, the most memorable experience of her life, though it is completely without interest to me. It’s the only question I ask on the subject. There is a reason: I don’t want to know . Yet somehow in the next twenty minutes, just by being polite and nodding my uh-huhs, I will discover:
Karin had to have doctors cut a huge hole horizontally across her abdomen.
They then had to make another huge slice, this time vertically, in her womb.
She is currently being held together with staples .
She has not farted since the delivery, which apparently is a bad thing.
The baby’s sole source of nourishment for the time being is whatever it sucks out of Karin’s breasts.
    â€œDo you want to hold the baby?” she says.
    No. Why do women always ask this? Do they not realize that the feeling they get from holding their baby (i.e., unsurpassed joy, love, and pride at not having given the kid spina bifida or anything) is different from the feeling I get when holding someone else’s baby (i.e., nothing). I like Electric Light Orchestra (still) but I never make anyone else listen to them.
    â€œYes,” I say.
    I’m holding the baby. I’m supporting its head and thinking that it’s