1996 - a Bon Jovi concert that I didn’t want to attend. Jon Bon Jovi swaggered in tight trousers. He smiled at the crowd and they waved and whooped. He gave a sigh and wiped sweat from his Botox brow. His smile flashed from screens either side of the stage. Thank you. It’s great to be here. Thank you. Yeah. Alright. And now – he chuckled – here’s one that you should know.
I was baffled, as I had been for most of the concert. My girlfriend had wanted to go and it became apparent that there no way out of it. Two hours into Bon Jovi I was wondering when it would end. I’d been confused and hoping no one spotted me as a fraud even though I had bought a book with me. The crowd fell silent as Jon stepped forward and took a breath. I leant over to my girlfriend and said, louder than I intended - What is this song?
I looked around and saw 30 pairs of eyes staring and scowling at me. Fortunately before anyone could think to hairspray me to death Jon started wailing about his steel horse and I managed to shrink into the back ground. The folk in the crowd adored him, screamed for him, applauded him. One girl, draped in black and smelling of patchouli oil, screamed out – This is the meaning of my life.
2 hours plus of poodle pop was the pinnacle of her week, possibly even life. Others seemed to agree, lighters were waved, lips were kissed, couples embraced, pendulous breasts exposed with badly drawn tattoos smudged onto them. An overwhelming scent of sweat and flatulence filled the air - this was the girl’s moment, her “meaning of my life.”
And that meaning, that purity, she found in Milton Keynes of all places.
Being atheist means I don’t care for a meaning of life. From my view there is no meaning, nor is there a higher purpose. You’re born, you grow, drink and eat and sleep, get older, make jokes, and see your hair turn grey. Along the way you try not to offend more than a few and come the long dark cup of camomile you try and expire before it gets cold. But I've realised that there is a meaning to life beyond my anti death penalty and ethical atheist views.
It began in 2004 with an argument with my wife. We were well into our white wines, a Killers album and a pack of Marlboro Lights. We were arguing about Prince Harry painting aboriginal art and for one of the few times in my married life I won the argument. Drunk and joyous and joyously drunk the night faded away and I passed out. The next morning I woke up unaware that my wife was now pregnant.
A week or so later she met me in a café near work and the following transpired (this is not word for word - the jokes have been changed to make me seem funnier.)
WIFE
I’m pregnant. I did the test this morning.
ME
Pregnant? Uhm - do we get you a doctors appointment? Get your uterus scanned?
WIFE
I know my body, I know I’m pregnant. Do you even know what a uterus is?
ME
I know your body; I didn’t know you were pregnant. And of course I know what a uterus is.
WIFE
Do you have anything to say?
I love you?
WIFE
About me being pregnant. Since when is I love you a question?
ME
You’re really pregnant? This isn’t a joke? Of course it isn’t, you never tell jokes.
WIFE
I am really pregnant.
ME
Why do you never tell jokes?
WIFE
OK – joke - what happened to the couple who decided that life was going to fast and they should have a baby?
ME
They drank lots of cask wine. Cask wine arguments and a cask wine baby making. This baby will be born hung over.
WIFE
They got pregnant. With a baby.
ME
Pregnant. With a baby - pregnant. That’s not very funny.
WIFE
PREGNANT.
ME
Wow.
WIFE
What do you think a uterus does?
ME
Uhm – sucks up all the stuff, uhm? Kinda like the Alien Queen laying eggs, but backwards?
And we were pregnant - there was now a clock and it was counting down from 9 months to Birth. That night, as she slept with cells dividing and growing I lay wide awake in panic. Outside the window 2 girls were peeing -
GIRL
Stop.
GIRL 2
Why?
GIRL
I need a widdle.
I listened to the sound of water.
GIRL 2
Gross, it’s on your shoes.
We lived on a short cut between the pubs and hostels. Some nights we’d be serenaded by vomiting, others by fighting or copulating, tonight it was urinating.
That’s better.
There were so many things we needed; things that I figured you couldn’t be a parent without. Like a car. How were we going to get to the hospital without a car? We couldn’t catch the bus to delivery ward.
We needed clothes. The last 3 pairs of jeans I’d had came from a gay friend in London who worked in fashion. They were nice but not really made for my kebab friendly physique.
We needed a bigger flat. The place we had was a cockroach nest. At night the floor was seething with six legged egg carrying insects. In the morning roaches were in our air tight muesli containers. Several times that year I chomped down on roach eggs and roach legs.
Somehow with all of this stress my wife could sleep. I churned and turned over issue after issue. Beyond anything else what were we going to call it? At the time I liked Daschell.
WIFE (in her sleep)
That’s a stupid name
But Daschell was a stupid name. Who would we tell? Where would we have it? Was there a hospital nearby? I realised there must be a hospital nearby. Of course there was. We weren’t the first people to be pregnant. But what would I do if my kids bullied? I have always been crap at fighting, how was I going to beat up the scaffolding father of the kid that bullies my kid.
Parenting was going to be a nightmare. I’m speculated on karate. Something I could learn quickly. Wax on and off, paint some fences. I realised that if we had a car I could skip the karate and just drive away. Really fast. My tyres would spin and I’d race away. Hopefully without forgetting my wife and baby as the last of the V8 Interceptors headed out to the horizon.
Shortly after the long long night of the Dad to Be I got in trouble for complaining that I wasn’t threatening. We had a trainee midwife who followed us through the pregnancy, and the first time we met -
TRAINEE MIDWIFE
Thank you for doing this.
ME
It was a pleasure. Cask wi -
WIFE
Will you stop calling this a cask wine baby?
ME
Well, what can I call it?
WIFE
You could call HIM by HIS name
TRAINEE MIDWIFE
You know the gender? And you’ve named Baby already?
ME
Boy baby. Named it after my dog.
TRAINEE MIDWIFE
Your dog?
ME
Beautiful dog. Bassett hound.
TRAINEE MIDWIFE
I don’t think I have met anyone who named their child after their dog
ME
I’ve never met a trainee midwife before.
TRAINEE MIDWIFE
How are you finding it all so far? The appointments going as you expected?
ME
Midwives are mad.
WIFE
They are not.
ME
They all have these thousand yard stares. Like mannequins with rubber gloves.
WIFE
They do not.
ME
They only notice women. A man walks past, not a flicker, show them a women and they light up like arcade machines.
WIFE
You think this should be about you?
ME
Well I’d like a little more inclusion; make the occasional bit of eye contact. I am Dad Man Walking.
WIFE
So you want them to talk to you? Even though you hate people?
TRAINEE MIDWIFE
You hate people?
ME
I don’t hate all people. Midwives are just weird, that one we saw today had Alien Queen hair.
That sounds like Jess, she’s lovely.
WIFE
What the hell is Alien Queen hair? I don’t even know what that means. You said my uterus was like an Alien Queen.
TRAINEE MIDWIFE
Your uterus?
ME
Ignore her, she has placenta brain.
WIFE
I do not
ME
She can’t remember the word for window.
TRAINEE MIDWIFE
That’s not unusual during pregnancy.
ME
It’s great; I’m winning arguments ‘cause she can’t remember half her vocabulary.
TRAINEE MIDWIFE
This may not be the best time to be arguing.
ME
But I’m winning.
TRAINEE MIDWIFE
So what is this about the midwives ignoring you?
ME
Ignoring may be too strong a word, but they seem way more woman focussed then me.
WIFE
He’s upset. When they asked me in the early meeting if he ever hit me I laughed.
ME
Laughed!
TRAINEE MIDWIFE
That’s not a bad thing. That’s lovely.
ME
Pregnancy is neutering enough as it is. Can’t I have a bit of threat about me?
TRAINEE MIDWIFE
Pregnancy is neutering? Surely it’s anything but?
ME
Nope. Obviously it shows I was virile but that’s all past tense now.
TRAINEE MIDWIFE
Past tense?
ME
Now I make tea and massage feet.
WIFE
When do you do that?
ME
I fluff pillows and watch romantic comedies.
WIFE
You like romantic comedies. You get fuzzy over Sandra Bullock
ME
I do anti-man things.
WIFE
Anti-man? Being a father to be is anti man?
ME
I haven’t killed anything since you announced you were pregnant. No bears, no rhinos
WIFE
What did you kill before I was pregnant?
ME
It’s not what I killed; it’s that I could kill.
WIFE
Why am I having your child?
ME
Cask wine, candles and The Lost Boys soundtrack.
TRAINEE MIDWIFE
So to get over this lack of killing you want people to think you beat your pregnant wife?
ME
At least a slight concern that I may beat my pregnant wife? I have tattoos. Facial hair. Testosterone.
TRAINEE MIDWIFE
To be seen as a wife beater, let alone a pregnant wife beater, is not a good look.
ME
I was a Goth once, now I’m white jumpers and home furnishings
WIFE
We do not own any white jumpers. And what home furnishings?
ME
We just bought a washing machine
WIFE
You hate going to the laundrette, we’re having a baby, we need to do laundry.
ME
When I was a Goth I never did laundry.
WIFE
No, your mum did it for you. You were the softest Goth I have ever heard of.
ME
I’ve saw Def Leppard in concert.
TRAINEE MIDWIFE
(Laughs) That’s not heavy metal. Or Goth. Actually that’s quite sad.
ME
See, even the trainee midwife thinks I’m harmless.
TRAINEE MIDWIFE
No, I just don’t think Def Leppard are heavy metal.
ME
With the next baby I want to be so threatening that the midwives don’t even ask, they just place a big tick in the Potential Wife Beating Bastard box
Time contracted and me wife became huge. We stock piled nappies, we did classes on knitted uteruses and got to know other people who must have argued about Prince Harry. When my wife hit the 9 month mark we had The Chat. The tabletop was covered in tin foil containers. My wife was ploughing into her food, not batting an eyelid at the strength of the curry she was eating to try and scare the baby into birth. I swigged a beer in a manly style.
WIFE
I don’t think you should drink any more.
ME
You don’t think me what now?
WIFE
I might go into labour any time.
ME
You’re never going into labour. You’re just going to get bigger and bigger and I’m going to have to learn to cook curry to save us on take away.
She started crying. I looked from my beer to my wife to my beer to my wife and I realised, possibly for the first time, that she was really pregnant.
And then we were there, in labour. And the cervix wasn’t ripe.
MIDWIFE
The cervix isn’t quite ripe
Told you so
WIFE
I – I – I - can’t.
ME
D’you need more gas?
WIFE
Not working
MIDWIFE
Breathe through it, come on.
TRAINEE MIDWIFE
You can do this.
ME
She’s been awake for 2 days solid now. Do you want the epidural?
TRAINEE MIDWIFE
You can do without it .
WIFE
EPIDURAL!
ANAESTHETIST
OK, I need you to understand the risks and give consent for this procedure.
I do, I read up on this during the pregnancy. You don’t need to explain anything.
TRAINEE MIDWIFE
You read up on Epidurals?
ME
Nope. She’s been awake for 2 days, she’s exhausted and I wanted things to move a little quicker then your man looked like he was going to move.
TRAINEE MIDWIFE
I have no idea what to say to that.
ME
Me neither. I’m fucking terrified.
TRAINEE MIDWIFE
You’re doing fine.
ME
I’d be doing better if I wasn’t hung over.
TRAINEE MIDWIFE
You’re not are you?
ME
Nah. But I can feel that hangover I am going to have when this is over.
And then he was born – well that’s 27 hours of labour condensed into a few paragraphs but you get the idea.
Our son was born.
For 6 months after his birth time slowed. Every day was so detailed, so exact. He grew fat and chewy. He pee’d on the carpet. He gurgled and loved lights being turned on and off and at some point I thought of the patchouli smelling girl at Bon Jovi and hoped she had a baby, even if she called him Jon and bought him Botox for his birthday.
The closest thing to a meaning of life that I have found is parenting. I know in about 4 or 5 years my son will stop letting me hug him, stop curling up on the sofa with me to watch The Iron Giant but for now he curls into me while his sister curls into the other side and for a few blissful moments they don’t fight.
They are the warm centre to everything we do. We’ve taught them to swim, to ride bikes, to read and write and chew their food and wipe their behinds and laugh at farts.
They’re everything.
They're beautiful.
They're ours.
If they're not the meaning of life they certainly give life meaning.
