My Baby's Momma

Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you, Shari. Shari and I started dating in November of 2003. She told me that she had been divorced for a month and was looking to go out and have a good time, which we did. I quickly became aware that Shari has a few issues. She has one of those personalities that is cute and bubbly and first, but quickly turns into "man, she needs to cut back on her meds."

On our third date, Shari announced that she was only going to date me. I quickly told her that I had been divorced for less than a year and was not interested in dating just one person. At first, she seemed to accept this, but soon she was doing all of the little things that had the voice in my head screaming "run! run as fast as you can."

She would come into my house and start rearranging my shit. You know, "Oh, this would look so much better over here!" I ended that activity with the comment "You know, when you start paying my fucking mortgage, you can put shit wherever you want." Next, she went with me to pick up my new puppy, Daisy. Soon she began to refer to Daisy as "our dog" and I had to point out to her that I was buying the food, training the puppy, paying for the vet without her and that my dog didn't need another owner. The final straw happened about two months later. I have this thing about visitors. You don't come to my house unless you were either invited or were called and asked first. This protocol had been covered with her on numerous occasions. One afternoon, I had gotten out of the shower and was in the kitchen putting a pot of water on for red beans and rice. Now I don't normally cook in the buff, but I figured I could put the water on to boil, and by the time I got dressed, it would be ready for the other ingredients.

I'm in the process of getting crap together in the kitchen when the doorbell rings. I swarm of epithets flowed from my mouth that would have put Lyndon Johnson to shame. I briefly considered answering the door sans clothes and telling the Mormans, or girl scouts, or whomever deigned to darken my doorway that unless they wanted to chew on my root, they could get lost.

Practicality got the better of me. After all, what if was Vance, the solicitor for the Gay Crisis Hotline? I would be in quite the pickle then, no pun intended.

I threw on some shorts, yanked open the door, and there stands Shari. Without blinking an eye, I bark "What the hell do you want?!?!"

She bolts down the walk and around to the front of the garage. "Dear Lord," I thought, "she thinks I'm going to lay the smack down on her." I step out onto the walk and follow her to her car in my driveway. She is leaning in the back seat and when she stands up, she is holding the cutest little Golden Retriever puppy.

"I thought you might want to meet Cali, Daisy's new sister." OMG! I tore into her. "Shari, you live in an apartment the size of a phone booth, you work twelve hours a day at your shit job, AND you told me that you gave away a dog right before you met me because you couldn't take care of him. You have lost your damn mind, this is the dumbest thing you have ever done." Of course she didn't listen to a thing that I had to say. I guess the echo in the empty cavern that was her brain was drowning out my voice of reason.

She disputed my opinion by saying "No, no, Cali is sweet, she won't be any problem." Sure enough, I got a phone call at six in the morning. "Cali is crying, what do I do." I don't know what she did, but I knew what I was gonna do.

I gradually weaned Shari away from me over the next few months. She stopped calling me and she never dropped by the house again. Then I made a huge mistake. I was on a date in February with a young lady that I had been seeing since Labor Day. I hadn't been out with Shari since August or so and she never really crossed my mind. Then I ran into her while on my date.

Stupid, stupid Chunk. The first words out of my mouth were "Hey!!! I haven't heard from you in a while!" I knew it was a ginormous fuck up, but the words were out there and I couldn't take them back. I tried to cover with a quick follow up question, "How is Cali doing?"

"I had to give her away, I couldn't take care of her." Sur-fucking-prise. I gave her the "ok, I will see you around" and led my date to another area of the bar.

Of course she called me the next Monday night. I asked her how she was, ready to make some small chit chat before I made my excuses. She got quiet and simply said "I'm pregnant."

And that was it, just "I'm pregnant," no follow up statement, nothing. My heart flip-flopped several times, lunch was fighting it's way back up and my dick shriveled to the size of.........aww who am I kidding, I already have a small dick, it couldn't get much smaller. Anyway, I start doing the math in my head, recalling that she certainly didn't look pregnant in the bar while holding a cigarette in one hand and a Smirnoff in the other. The dates didn't add up, she would have to be about six months pregnant for it to be mine. I breathed a sigh of relief and said "How does the father feel about it?"

That stumped her a bit, you could hear the disappointment in her voice. I guess she wanted me to say "ok, what do you want to do?" She recovered and told me about the guy she had been dating and how he just had a baby with another woman and wasn't very happy about this pregnancy (turned out she was something like eight or nine weeks along), but she was going to have it. I read her the riot act about how irresponsible she was and how could she take care of a baby if she couldn't care for a puppy? I'm sure that by the time I was done, she wished she was explaining her pregnancy to her Dad.

I didn't hear from her again until June. She left a message on my machine on Father's Day, "I haven't talked to you in a while, just thought you might want to know that it is going to be a boy." Sheesh.

Well, guess what happened yesterday. The doorbell rings, I start ranting and raving about feeding solicitors their own genitals, the dogs are barking, it's just general chaos. I open the door and there she stands in her thirty-eight weeks of glory. The pregnancy was the only thing that saved her, even I am not mean enough to slam a door on a pregnant woman in this heat.

She comes inside and we make small talk. Most of it's inane and what isn't inane is just plain out of this world. Finally, I ask her how things are going with the baby's Daddy.

"Well, he doesn't really talk to me anymore and he doesn't have any interest in the baby. I will get it straightened out when I go to court after the baby is born." I tell her that by all means she needs to get child support. Shari stops me and says, "Well, I have other issues to straighten out before I can get the dad into court." Of course I ask what the problem is and she tells me "Well, according to the state of Tennessee, if you get pregnant and have been divorced for less than a year, then the ex-husband is considered the father, so I have to get him to take a paternity test."

Do what? Again the mental calculator takes off. Pregnant in December or November, minus a year means she was married when she was going out with me!!! I bring that up and she says "are you sure I didn't tell you I was separated? My divorce wasn't final until January of last year." Whatever. I was completely over the conversation by now and was ushering her out the door. She gave me a hug and turned to walk to her car and then casually said over her shoulder "After I have the baby, I will bring him by so you can see him."

"Waitaminute, waitaminute, waitaminute! You do not bring that baby over here!"

"Ok, I will just bring him up to your work or something."

"YOU HAVE LOST YOUR MIND. If I have any interest in meeting your child I will let you know, in the mean time don't come by, or drop by, or visit or any damn thing!"

She said ok and waved good bye. I hope it is.