It's Not Amazing, It's Genderiffic

I know something you don't know.

I know something you don't know.

I know something you don't know.

(!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

Seriously, I know something you don't know.

On Tuesday, August 16th, the gender of our twinners was revealed to me and to my wife. The ultrasound tech obviously knows, but she's been sworn to secrecy by the HIPAA monster. She did mention the genders to our OB/GYN out in the hallway while my wife and I were cooing over the ultrasound picture print-outs, but I guess HIPAA doesn't cover release of medical information from ultrasound techs to OB/GYNs.

Of course, if I find out one day that it does, I'm totally suing that bitch.

See, here's the thing about this whole gender issue: Mrs. Apron decided, when we both said that we wanted to find out what the genders of the twins are, that she wanted to keep the information secret from the rest of the world. Well, the rest of the world that gives a sparrow shit. Her reasoning is that she doesn't want us, and, consequently, the twins inundated with a bunch of gender-assigned gacky shit in traditional boy/girl/lemur colors.

And I can understand that, and I can respect that. And so I am understanding that and respecting that by going along with Mrs. Apron and not revealing the genders of our twins until such time as they see fit to enter the glaring spotlights of all those papparazzi camera flashbulbs as they exit my wife's vagina, or stomach, whichever way this thing plays out.

I've got to say, though, watching those two goofballs rolling around inside her womb on that ultrasound screen was pretty amazing. And I don't use that word lightly, or even often, because it has the propensity for being annoying.

"Oh, that Bee-Gee's coverband was UH-MAZE-ING!"

"Whoa, trans-gender Thai prostitute, watching a streaming video of you having sex with that semi-retarded donkey was UH-MAZE-ING!"

"This two-for-one deal on Chobani yogurt at Genuardi's is uh. maze. ing."

That Ron Popeil Flavor-Injector you're always threatening to violate me with?

(Amazing.)

But, really, I suppose any expectant father (of TWINS! GAAHH!!!) is permitted to use the "amazing" word when staring at grainy, blue-tinged representations of his children bumming around inside of their expectant mother.

What are they going to be like?

What are they going to talk like?

What are they going to be into?

What are they going to want on their birthday cakes?

What are they going to think of their Christian friends who go on about Santa Claus?

What are they going to think of... me?

(Not to be a fucking amazing narcissist or anything, but...)

(Oh, God...)

(Sorry.)

I'm already in love, and you know how I know that? I think about them all the time. Sure, sometimes it's more worrying and less thinking, but, one way or the other, they're always on my mind. Always. Constantly.

It's kind of perseverative.

Kind of Aspergian.

I'm sort of like that.

I'm listening to "Comfort" by Deb Talan right now, and that plays frequently enough on my computer to make me wonder if I have Aspergers. I'll bet Pandora does that to lots of people.

Stupid bitch and her fucking hot box.

I suppose that what I'm trying to say is that, yeah, I don't want this to become a Daddy Blog, and I'm pretty sure I said that they day I announced that we were knocked up, but I do want this to be a place to celebrate those two nutter-butters doing somersaults and tumblebumps inside of the woman I adore.

'Cuz, let's face it, this is all pretty fucking amazing.

I Hope They're Not Boys

So, I promised that this wasn't going to turn into a Daddy Blog, but, as those little buggers are kind of on my mind (and on my wife's bladder) a lot, I'm allowed to nattle on on about it a little bit, aren't I?

When you announce that you're having twins, people say stupid shit to you. They can't help it, though-- they're sort of like dogs who impetuously slam their muzzles into your balls. You can't really yell at or blame the dog, it's just something it does. People who have heard that you're having twins are no different. Except for the fact that they're not (usually) placing their faces in your crotch.

I won't go through the litany of annoying and repetitive questions people ask you, but there is a pre-determined formula or script, believe me, and, somehow everybody knows it, because everybody recites it with very little variation and, at work, I go through this kind of annoying Q&A session with people regularly.

My wife brought home this book called "Twinsense" from the library, and it was written by some chick whose name is "Dagmara", which is funny to me because, obviously, if you're reading a book about twins, you're thinking about baby names. And there is no way in hell you're going to be thinking about "Dagmara".

You know, unless you're an idiot. But you're reading this blog, so, clearly, you're not. Unless you're one of those idiots who got here by Googling the phrase "donkey porn". Do me a favor? Stop Googling my site looking for donkey porn.

Anyway, this book, "Twinsense" features the exhaustive list of things people say to you/ask you a.) When you tell them you're having twins and b.) Once you've had and are parading around with your twins. It's funny, because people really do say this shit. What's even funnier than that is that she goes on for quite a while about how politeness is the way to deal with people who ask inane/inappropriate/annoying questions about twinnage. And I was reading that thinking, "Mm, that's mature." Except that, on the next page, she creates an intensive list of fresh/snappy/snarky retorts that you can use to answer every single question/comment listed on the previous page. And I was thinking, "Mm, that's mature."

Mrs. Apron and I are going to find out the gender, in approximately six weeks. We're not going to tell you, though, or anybody, really. It's not going to be a secret, because we'll know, but it'll be our secret, because we'll know. If it were just one, we'd leave it alone until birth but, with two, we feel like we need to know.

Mostly, in my opinion, to cut down on the amount of names we need to come up with. Seriously, it's no fucking joke. Girl names we're good on. In fact, the more baby name books I read, and the more websites I look at, I end up adding more. Boy names are, um...

Well, let's be blunt: boy names blow. They suck. They're for shit. They're fucking awful. And most of the good ones end in the letter "n", and my last name begins and ends with the letter "n", so those "n"-ending names are pretty much out, because, with my last name, those names sound ridiculous.

Let me tell you something, if these kids both turn out to be boys, we're really fucked. Not only is there going to be pee ABSOLUTELY EVERYWHERE, and I'm including our walls/ceilings/hair/food as part of "ABSOLUTELY EVERYWHERE", but these kids are most likely going to end up with some terrible-ass names.

She likes Jewish names.

I am trying to convince her that our children will have the map of Israel tattooed on their faces and their airplane hangar-sized noses such that they will not necessitate being branded with Hebjew names that scream out "JEW, JEW, JEW!"

I like names descended from the U.K.

Surprised?

Regardless of the ethno-friction between us delicious little marrieds, the simple fact remains that, even if we agreed on which nation/people the boy names ought to be descended from, they're all basically awful.

I mean, sure, there's "Hrothgar". But what if they're both boys? What boy name goes well with "Hrothgar"?

Herbie. Rides. Again. (!!!!!!!!)

The sequel's rarely better than the original. That said, everybody likes a triumphal return.

"Herbie Rides Again" isn't a very good movie, in spite of some admirable performances by Ken Berry and dame of stage and film, Helen Hayes. The sparkle and charm of the original movie, though, is gone. The A-list celebs are nowhere to be seen: Dean Jones, Michelle Lee, Buddy Hackett, and David Tomlinson all said, "Thanks, but no thanks," to once again co-starring beside a 1963 Volkswagen Beetle. As sequels go, it's about average, but, much unlike the original, it's nothing special. But there's something about the title that indicates that the film, or at least its namesake, aspires to greatness. There is something valorous that we all like about an underdog getting up to fight again, to shake off dirt and failure that threatens to be permanent, but is really momentary to emerge hopefully victorious.

In 2009, Mrs. Apron and I miscarried, and we were heartbroken. We had told people we were pregnant, and we had told them far too early, and then we had to untell. Fortunately, with most people we knew, we only had to untell them with our eyes. One look at us and they knew. My director of "Pirates of Penzance" knew. We were staging "I am the Very Model of a Modern Major-General" and, when the piano tinkled, I doddered and fuddled appropriately, but, during the downtime, while choreography was hammered out, or choral notes were finessed with the assistant music director, the director, a close friend of mine, watched me. During a break, she took me out in the hall and held me for what seemed like a very long time.

"I love you," Julie said as she ran her hands along my back and I stifled sobs in the hallway. Years ago, she'd lost her son-- all but 19-- in a car accident while he was on his way back to college after winter break. She knew all about loss. It doesn't go away.

"Sometimes," she said to me, "I get in the shower, run the water at full blast, and I just scream and scream and scream."

I never screamed about our miscarriage, not in the shower or anywhere else. That's not to say that I didn't grieve-- it's just not how I grieve, I suppose. I wanted to scream, and rage, and throw things, but I didn't. What I think I might have done, looking back on it, was displace a fair amount of my grief and I probably morphed a significant portion of it into worry and despondency for my wife. In that respect, one might say I didn't exactly "own" the loss, and one could definitely make that argument. And I wouldn't argue.

I think one of my greatest fears is dying before I get a chance to do the things in life at which I will excel. Fortunately, I've acted in a fair number of plays, musicals, and operettas, and I've been appreciated by audience members. I've written a lot that has been seen, and I've written a lot that has never been seen. I've been an efficient friend and confidant to probably enough people, and I've been a loving son and brother. Not gonna lie: as a husband, I think I'm pretty much the shit. The only thing, really, that I haven't had the chance to do that I think I'd be good at is being a father, and so, when the miscarriage happened to us, I think I focused on the fact that I might not get the chance to, well, do that.

Well, this is my sequel.

We're twelve weeks pregnant. And, yeah-- there's two of them in there.


And that's scary, and that's amazing, and that's actually maybe a little dramatic for my taste, which is an admittedly funny thing for a former theatre major to say, but it's overwhelming, almost like I'm pushing the shock-factor a little too hard.

But it's true. There's two.

1

and

2

Come to me, my little love bugs. Let's dim the lights and start the sequel.

Sperm Donor + Vag Hag = Hollywood Gold

If you've turned on your television set (do they still call them "television sets" and, if so, do they still turn them on?) or gone to the cinema (I know they don't still call it that) recently, then you've most likely seen a TV show or a movie about at least one lazy, incompetent dumbshit, maybe two, hamhandedly having and/or raising a child, as a couple of rodeo clowns might do so after a month-long boozer.

Film:

Knocked Up
Juno
The Backup Plan
Expecting Mary

I'm sure I'm forgetting about some, or am ignorant of the existence of others. Please feel free to chime in, like a fucking doorbell, you ridiculous hottie, you.

Now, television's getting jealous, or getting smart, so they're coming out with "Raising Hope," featuring a hapless, white-trash dunderhead who wears opened plaid shirts and feeds his baby out of a rubber glove filled with milk.

Oh, men! How did we all make it into adulthood without mandated bike helmets?

Then, of course, there's all the "Didn't-Know-I-Was-Pregnant", "I'm-16-and-Pregnant", "My-Boo's-Pregnant", "I-Took-an-Extreme-Trembly-Shit-and-a-Motherfuckin-Baby-Fell-Out" choice television programs on MTV. Again, what's the common theme? Immature retards diddling around with same and the existence and future of a precious, precarious infant hangs in the balance.

We as a culture are, apparently, eating that shit up-- you know, like a pregnant chick. The question is, why? Why are we so fascinated by watching an ignorant bumpirate leaving a child asleep in a carseat outside a locked apartment door for twenty minutes? Is it shock value? Sure. Is it so we can nestle back into our couches and our choices and smugly report to all who care to listen, "Well, I would never do that!"

Of course not. And my mother would never forget to pick up my sister at school and my father would never run my foot over with the car.

Oh, wait.

I took a playwriting seminar in college, and it really was a seminal event (heh heh-- I used "seminar" and "seminal" in the same sentence, and, yes, I am still twelve) in my life as a writer. It was in this class where I learned about the importance of raising the stakes in comic and dramatic writing for the stage. Don't just make the main characters about to get divorced. Let them have a fourteen-year-old son who's a target masturbator with Aspergers and have Dad about to lose his job and let Mom pop Vicodin so much she calls them her "Little Vickies." Mix in pedophile Uncle Thad who has a beer gut, eczema, wears Bermuda shorts with the fly down all the time-- oh, and the house as about to be foreclosed on by the bank and NOW you've got yourself a show.

The stakes, motherfuckers, hath been raised.

So, maybe that's what this new phenomenon is about. I mean, television and film are both media formats that have been saturated with d-bags and bullshitfaces for decades upon decades. Remember "Married with Children"? That show was what it was, but, had the head writer (was there a head writer?) decided to throw a newborn baby into that mishegoss, well, he probably would have been fired. The times were.... different. Nobody was prepared to quite go there.

So why are we prepared to go there, and so frequently it seems, now? What's changed? My very smart and cutie-patootie'd wife suggested that we've now become thoroughly accustomed to the two-income family, and, with mom and dad off doing their job things, now our generation is growing up either being or feeling as if they are totally inept and not exactly up to the task of child-rearing.

I'm not sure if that's true, but I am becoming increasingly sure that Hollywood is trying to make us think that we, Generation-Y'ers (I'm 30 and so I still count. Barely.) inept and stupid and incapable of raising child, and all we are confronted with are similarly fucked up models on television and film. Now, granted, that's interesting to watch. There's nothing particularly interesting about watching two income-earners in their early thirties semi-successfully juggling work, fun, occasional intercourse, and parenting. I get that. We'd much rather watch 16-year-olds picking up their children by their feet as if they were gorilla babies.

Wouldn't we?

Subverting Darwin

In the olden days, they would have taken me out back and shot me.

That's what I thought one day last week when I was getting dressed to greet another soul-free day of non-profit strife and I happened to catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror before I put on my trousers.

My hips, I observed, were lopsided. My left leg was turned completely inwards at an absurdly acute angle while the right leg, though toothpick-like in girth at least stayed ramrod straight. My feet, desperately flat and practically caving in, resembled two dead fish encased in a pair of argyle socks.

I won't even get started on my shoulders and my pigeon chest, covered in sporadic tufts of hair resembling broccoli that's gone past its prime.

As I regarded my grotesque form in the mirror, I thought to myself, "Damn, there's a body that has subverted Darwin."

If Darwin had his way, I never would have lost my virginity or found a forever-mate, and, really, if it weren't for lemur-like leaps in fiberoptic technology, I probably wouldn't have accomplished the latter. For the former, I have only college to thank and, really, almost everybody gets laid in college. On those glossy, full-color brochures, they should dispense with the lush photo of the auburn-haired co-ed reading a book underneath an autumnal oak tree and replace it with a picture of a twin-sized bed with the sheets askew, blotted with tell-tale stains, perhaps with some wadded-up tissues scattered around the cheap Ikea rug for good measure.

Getting back, though, to Darwin, that bearded bastard could not possibly conceive of a world where somebody like me doing anything other than dry-humping the sofa was a good idea. What could somebody like me possibly have to contribute to the idea of strengthening the gene pool? My outlandish bone structure? How about my elephantine-proportioned proboscis? No, it's the annoyingly Jewish propensity to possess post-nasal drip, allergies, asthma and the incongruous inability to enjoy eating sandwiches made with mayonnaise.

If Darwin were in charge of the Mating Game, he would give me a big FAIL. And, really, in the golden olden days, I would have failed. I would have been relegated to some depressing "seashore house" for "invalids," my flat feet confining me to a wheelchair, my asthma confining me to an iron lung, my dry wit confining me to a lifetime of exchanging pornographic letters with Oscar Wilde. And, really, that's all there would have been of me.

Enter: The Internet.

That's right, Darwin, you hairy, funny fuckhead. You didn't count on the internet, did you? It's how I get to be a writer. It's how I got to be a husband, too.

And, God willing, it's how I'm going to be a father.

No-- we're not buying a Chinese baby-- I just mean, like, it started the series of events that will hopefully culminate in me being a father. You know, because I met my wife online. And, like, we do it sometimes, and, I mean, hopefully, one of those times will result in my squiggle-wiggles attacking her ovumesque thing and then blorpie-doo baby time.

What?

There's lots of people out there who probably shouldn't be having kids. I mean, look at Max Headroom. I doubt Darwin would have been into that particular arrangement. But we're all imperfect beings in one way or another. Sure, my skeleton is probably dangerously close to a medical oddity, and, after I die, my wife will probably sell it to the University of Pennsylvania Medical School so she can fund her undying lust for clothes from Anthropologie, but that's okay. I don't mind. My osteoquirks help make me special. I remember going to the podiatrist once when I was eighteen to get fitted for my first pair of orthotics. I took off my shoes and socks and stood there in front of him and he wrinkled up his brow and said,

"Jesus Christ-- I don't even understand how you're able to stand up!"

I mean, the fact that I'm able to do that obviously means that I'm pretty fucking cool, right? I mean, if I weren't married-- you'd totally be into that, right? I'm like a walking, talking miracle. The fact that I live, breathe, am mobile and on a mission to procreate and make awkward babies is just a total face-fuck to Darwin, every day that I'm alive.

Take that, Motherfucker. In your beard.