Fear the Family Portrait

I know nothing about nothing, but I do know no good can come out of family portraits. In fact, if you watch the evening news, or Dateline, or A&E real life mysteries then seemingly only bad things, really bad things come from family portraits.
Whenever someone is missing or slain the money shot is always the family portrait. If one family member goes crazy and kills the rest of the members then out comes the family portrait. If a child stalks a celebrity....If a woman leaves her life to join a cult....If a man becomes a woman then becomes a cop killer the photo shown on the television is always the family portrait. As sure as the neighbor is surprised at the bad news, the family portrait is always first to hit the airwaves.
And it’s not just any family portrait. I'm talking the department store shot. Sears, J.C.Penney's, etc. Complete with the lasered background as the entire family stands awkwardly staring just left of the lens like a semblance of lazy skyscrapers. Nothing good can come from this. If you see one of these on the news it's usually followed by a story so grotesque that the news team skips two of the five weather segments just to bring you the complete story.
Perhaps the family portrait is not to blame for these horrific events. Perhaps it's not as cause-and-effect as it seems. But I believe in God... just in case. And I don't throw out receipts ... just in case. And I never walk under ladders…just in case. So just in case, I am going nowhere near another family portrait....again.
My family took a family portrait when I was in sixth grade at my elementary school. St. Peter's Church organized a professional photography studio to set up shop in the lower church to put on film the majority of the parish families. In his proudest sports jacket, my father dragged his perm'd wife, his primped daughters and his acne’s sons to pose as a happy family. With reluctance, the seven of us drove in three separate cars, waited in five separated corners of the lower church then came together as a happy family when it was our turn. When we finally got the pictures weeks later, the portrait was already dated. Shit, it was dated the moment the flash died out; the clothes, the smiles, the hairstyles, the glimmering eyes. It was a moment that should have disappeared immediately. Not displayed for over a decade to every visitor of the house.
My parents proudly hung this family portrait behind the sofa in the living room. It haunted me everyday as a kid. In the picture we posed as a happy collective family unit. We stood by each other as one. We rubbed elbows like loved ones. In that moment our souls intertwined like a bouquet of flowers, tangled like sinews bringing bone to muscle. In real life, for the most part, we walked our separate lives. I know now that we were as happy and unhappy as any suburban, middle class family in the neighborhood. Though, as a child I didn’t know that. I thought everyone else’s family was, in fact, as happy as their family portraits and mine was just portraying nirvana. I looked at our family portrait and felt like a fake, a real phony.
This wasn’t true of course. We were actually a happy family relatively speaking of course...but never quite as happy as the family in that picture. And I knew this to the core.
And that’s why the news teams always use the family portraits to paint their news picture. It’s a portrayal of happiness to an otherwise apathetic, sometimes unhappy and often gory story. My childhood following that photo was not unhappy. Not one of us has slain the other, and we managed to get by without landing on the news. That being said one of us in that picture is no longer with us.
Ok, so it's a weird theory. But a man who lives without theories is a man who has given up on life….At least, that’s what I keep telling myself.
My wife knows my family portrait theory and often teases me that she scheduled us a session at JC Penney’s. “We have a coupon,” she says. But it’s not happening. I won’t do it. I don’t keep large, sharp knives in the house or hand guns or family portraits all for the same reason; someone could get seriously hurt.
Congratulations to all of you who have appeared in a family portraits and have come out unscathed. Congrats again, to those of you who go back for more. Your stomachs and constitutions must be stronger than mine.
There are so many other opportunities of family brilliance. While a staged portrait has its value at times, it ranks too low on the list of moments of familiar happiness. Scheduled appointments, mall queues and dealing with six-dollar-an-hour unhappy high school receptionists does not a happy family make.
Here’s a money making idea...Professional photographers should comb the beaches, boardwalks and tourist traps of the world for vacationing families. The photographer should set up one hundred yards away snapping candid pics of the entire family truly experiencing utopia. Mom, Dad and toddler testing the trickling ocean for the first time. Family buries father figure in sand up to his gaping smile. Family of five stands together in awe at the world’s architecture. These are exactly kind of timeless family portraits that I want on my wall. I would pay handsomely for anyone that can capture me at my most sincere. Call it Authentic Happiness Photography Inc. Photographers everywhere, you can have my idea. All I want in return is a free 8x11 glossy of my choice. 

A White-Toothed Lie

We lied to our daughter yesterday. It was something of a substantial lie. My wife and I told our daughter that somebody was going to break into our house at night, sneak into her room and take something from her.

So we’re not the first parents to continue to tradition of the Tooth Fairy, but I can’t help to wonder what is going on in the head of a six-year old girl awaiting a stranger’s presence to her bedroom. Shit, I always get weirded out when the cable guy or the oil man are scheduled to come by for maintenance.  I clean the house a little. I bullet point some small talk. I set the TV station to a program that says, “I’m not that different than you, Mr. Service Man.” I’m most neurotic about having strangers in my house as I am about anything else.  And here I am telling my daughter that she’s going to have a visitor in the middle of the night. Sleep tight, sweetie!

Abby finally lost her first tooth the other night after a month of pulling at it trying to catch up to the ‘big girls.” Abby has no patience for this life. She wants the world now and can’t wait for her little body to catch up. Oh the zeal for life, I can only hope she doesn’t forget us when she’s changing the world. For now we just wait.  

My wife put her bed on Thursday night with a full mouth of teeth. Thirty minutes later Abby greeted my wife with a bloody little smile, looking like a little leprechaun that just got into a bar fight. My two girls then went on a search and rescue mission as the tooth was lost somewhere in the bed. They called me at work to let me know the news. I could literally hear the absence of her tooth as she talked. 

“Daddy, guess what?” she was bursting with excitement giggling away with anticipation. “I lost my toof.” She was cracking up. Genuine and childlike laughter. Then I was cracking up. My wife too, in the background. Thank God for this girl, a gift who both reminds me and challenges me to be happy.

We waited a day before we invited the Tooth Fairy to come by. Abby voiced some concern over this as she was afraid the Tooth Fairy would come on the wrong night, so we had to hide the tooth….in my wife’s jewelry box…next to the pearls.

A day later my wife and Abby planted the tooth in a tissue and tucked it underneath her pillow at bedtime. Abby was long asleep when I got home from work. It was time to plant the money right now as we had plans on hitting the wine cabinet later. I didn’t want to risk this mission drunk. You know, walking into Abby’s room with my wine waddle on and cabernet lips tripping over American Girl dolls and getting caught stealing her tooth. I’d be doing the Tooth Fairy industry a great disservice.

So here was the question; how much money does the tooth fairy leave? We didn’t want to leave too much, nor not enough. How rich is this Tooth Fairy? How cheap are Abby’s parents?

One of our friends left a twenty when his daughter lost her first tooth. This is such a Dad thing to do. I admire him for it and if I had a spare fifty then I would’ve done him one better. Another friend sticks to one dollar per tooth. This is a simple equation, but it seems like the first tooth calls for something more monumental. When I was younger my mother pretty much emptied her pocketbook of change and us kids woke up with quarters and nickels stuck to our necks and foreheads.

My wife and I settled the negotiation at $6.50, as Abby is now six-and-half years old. So now the question was how to count it out. Keep it to coinage only? One five, one dollar and change?  Or should we toss some singles her way make the quantity point.

Of course, I even posed the question, “Do we really want to set the trend of giving the girl singles. Laugh, but no dad wants his daughter pining for singles.

(Stripper question? If the lowest Euro bill denomination is a 5 than what happens at European strip clubs. Do guys just throw coinage at the dancers? Isn’t this dangerous? Couldn’t a coin get lost down there? Ok, maybe this question is better suited for another post.)

Anyway…I snuck into Abby’s room and found her half on her pillow. A beautiful thing, I thought as I had easy access to make the switch. First, I gently dug underneath the pillow for the tooth to no avail. Then I waved my entire arm under the pillow, still no tooth. Then I lifted my daughter’s sleep-heavy torso and raised her pillow from the bed.

Graceful, I know but still no tooth. I giggled a little, cursed a bunch and franticly fumbled through her covers. Finally in my fifth minute in her darkened room lit only by a dim hall light I found the tooth clenched in Abby’s hand. I slowly pried it out and replaced it with one dollar bill, spreading the rest of the dough under her pillow.

So now we just bought a tooth for $6.50. As young parents my wife and I had a guilt-fueled discussion as to what to do with Abby’s umbilical scab. As gross as it was it was a piece of our daughter, a piece of us. Eventually we came to our senses and tossed the disgusting thing.

But this is her tooth, her first tooth. Perhaps we’ll just pack it away with her other childhood memories. Or maybe I’ll just hang onto it, hope she becomes famous one day then sell the little bone on eBay.

A Different Kind of Better

I love Walmart. I absolutely love it because I know the moment I walk in there I am the hottest, healthiest, wealthiest being in the building. All fifty-thousand square feet of the building. I am none of these things anywhere else, but at Wal-Mart I am all of these things at once.
I call it my Walmart strut. I stroll right through the charities selling cookies on the pavement. Proceed past the social-securitied security. Sashay along the overweight eateries filled with the obese. And I haven’t even snagged me a basket yet.
I move on through the men’s department and I hear everyone whisper, “Hey, where’d that guy get those clothes.” I struggle on past the kids section knowing that these toddlers can’t hold a candle to my offspring. I skip through crafts, ramble past electronics, saunter through sporting goods and amble along automotive.
I’m not here shopping for anything. I’m here just for the cheap confidence thrill. In Wal-Mart I feel two inches taller; my wallet feels two inches thicker and inseam feels, well, like it needs to be taken out.
Ok, I’m joking…a little.  This whole draft is a little tongue in cheek. And if you haven’t gotten the joke yet...just stop reading now. Because you’re not going to like the rest.
I am not wealthy, by far. I am not healthy. Shit I’m not. And I’m not hot, not since the sixth-grade. But every time I’m at Walmart there’s a moment where I admit to myself, “I ain’t got it so bad.”
Call it comparative wealth.
Sometimes one needs a little reminder at one’s wealth, even if that wealth is an otherwise middle-class suburban model of prosperity. One’s wealth comes from within. Sad as it is, sometimes you need to rub elbows with all corners of the world to measure it. That’s why we watch Jerry Springer. It’s why we watch Judge Judy. It’s why we watch the news. And it’s why I go to Walmart.
I truly feel better about my life when I leave Wal-Mart. Not the kind of better that I feel when leaving Whole Foods or Wegmans. A different kind of better.
There is always someone yelling at a child. Always a pregnant teenager. Always one mouth missing teeth. And always one person who’s mere presence threatens the fuck out of me.
When we were being bad as children my mother would drive my sister and I through the streets of lower-class neighboring cities to prove this point. “You wanna fight over toys?” she would say. “Let me show you a neighborhood where there are no toys.”
She actually put us in the car and drove us past rotten row homes and real-life street vagabonds. It never really quite worked. My sister and I didn’t really understand the implications of this exercise. We would gaze out the window pointing. Eventually my mother would lock the doors, hit the gas pedal and scream at us to stop staring.
This was her version of a Walmart strut. Perhaps, she did it more for herself then for us.
I rarely take my children to Walmart. Not that they don’t deserve a lesson in comparative wealth. Mostly I’m just afraid of what they might say out of observation. Once, my oldest son very loudly pointed out a woman’s beard. Her beard looked like mine. This was at Walmart. And I ran out leaving my basket of cost-saving goods. That was enough for us.
Much has been made over the last decade about Walmart’s reign on the multi-inventory retail industry. Walmart has been both blessed and lambasted for its employee relations. Walmart has been praised and reprimanded for its business model. Wal-Mart is both the savior and the evil empire all at once. In four decades Sam Walton has established one of the most controversial and bi-polar business’ we’re likely to see again.
This is what makes walking through Walmart such a wonder. Walmart steals from the poor then gives back to the poor. The world can agree to disagree on a lot, but the following is true. Walmart, the collective company, is rich. Walmart, the collective culture, is not.
Know this; I too shop at Walmart. I give Walmart my money. Not a lot, but enough. I like a guilty-please as much as the next guy. I was there last night. I ate at McDonald’s and browsed the Disney Cars section. And once again, I was the wealthiest, healthiest and hottest person there. And I was in Princeton!
Thank you, Mr. Walton for the free shot of confidence boost in my arm! I was jonesing for that.

This post was originally posted in March 2010 at http://www.mypatheticblog.tumblr.com/.

A Paternal Stick Figure

I’m the paternal stick figure on the minivan. I keep my hair short. I wear a smirk. I hold a book. I impress no one. And that is why I keep my stick figure to myself. Mostly I refrain from using stick figures on my car to spare all the single people of the world my beautiful life.

After all, this world is like one great Saturday night prize fight. The Family v. The Singles. And stick-figured cars are just one way to keep score.

Stick figures are all over suburbia on the backs of minivans, caravans, SUVs and hipster wagons alike. They’re the vehicular equivalent of description pages on social networking websites. They say who you are, what you like, who you’re with and what they like. It’s one part cute, on part boasting, and one part advertisement for the American Family Association.

Parents like to brag to the world about who they are, about who we are. We, as I am one, like to show off our offspring. We like to champion our collective unit. We want, we need, other people to know just how happy and lucky we are. To show off who we are is validation for all those sleepless nights, long working hours and drained bank accounts. Otherwise we’d be just shells of a human beings walking around the shopping centers of the world like zombies. And that would prove all the single people right. And we don’t want to do that.

So we stupidly wear our families on our sleeves this like badges of honor. We can not escape it. We have pictures of our family on our desks, in our wallets and sometimes on our clothes. And now we have pictures of ourselves as stick figures on our cars for all the single people to see.

Officially, they’re called Family Stickers. You’ve seen them on the road, I’m sure. There’s the father, the mother, the daughter, the son, the baby, the dog, the cat and the turtle. It’s all there for all the single people stuck in rush hour traffic to see. We are a family, a happy family and now you have to suck on our tailpipes while staring at our children. Aren’t they just the cutest things?

The stick figures suggest the passengers in said vehicle assuming said vehicle was driving to vacation with the complete family in toe. Although, most of the time these stick-figured vehicles contain only a mother with some semblance of her breed in the backseat depending on exactly when daycare, or pre-K, or school lets out.

As jaded and cynical as I wish to be about these stick figures they actually warm my heart. They suggest family. And by making this effort to highlight each member of one's family is a suggestion of a happy family.

I’m sure as shit that this display of affection fucks off any reasonable single person, or divorcee, or anyone else who still lives with their mother. You know, pissing single people off is what married are all about.

It’s not enough that our SUVs take up the best parking lots, our kids bump into you in line at Chick-fil-a, our babies ruin your nice night out at the restaurant and our strollers take up all the cargo room on the airplane. We now have to taunt others with our families at traffic lights and traffic jams. The world is built around the family. It’s what makes the world go round on Main Street. This is no secret. But we can’t just be. We have to be liked. And we have to be in your face.

A family is like a garden. It starts off with just one or two parts. In time it blossoms into a family of vines, leaves and flowers. Parents are the gardeners of the world and you know how much gardeners like to show off and share their work. Decaling an entire family on a car is the epitome is this. What’s the matter? You didn’t ask who I am? Who cares. I’m going to tell you anyway….and aren’t my kids the cutest little things?

This post was originally published in March 2010 at http://www.mypatheticblog.tumblr.com/.

Noonan's Last Legs...Last Laugh

My dog pissed on me. Then I buried him.

Actually, he pissed on me twice. But I don’t blame him…because he was dead. And you don’t blame dead dogs for anything.

The first time he pissed on me I was carrying him to the trunk of my car. The second time I was carrying him to his final resting place in our backyard.

They don’t tell you these kinds of things at the vet when you’re preparing to put your dog to sleep. You learn it the hard way, the hot and hard and wet way as you are hurrying across a parking lot on Route 70 during rush-hour traffic with bottleneckers staring on.

My heart flattened by grief. Tears dripping down my face. Piss dripping down my thigh as his bladder leaked like a sliced hot compress. I couldn’t help but to laugh, “Hurry up, he’s pissing on me,” I yelled to my wife to pop the trunk. This was Noonan’s last laugh.

We adopted the boxer when he was three years old one weekday night in November, 2003. He licked my face with his fat tongue from the backseat as his paws perched on the center console. His broad chest boasted with confidence on the way to his new home. They said he was three years old. Yet we suspected this was a lie on someone’s part. However, he gave us five more years, five great and expensive years.

Noonan devoured two medium Domino pizzas on our brand new couches (both couches, in one eating). He drank from too many baby bottles gnawing too many nipples. He shattered our front door window while greeting the mailman. He killed a squirrel. He killed a bird. He killed a vole and a mole. He chewed my friend’s Josh Ritter Golden Age of Radio CD. He scratched off the tarnish, the paint and the antiquing from our coffee table. And we’re pretty sure he dialed 911 on us once resulting in a false report and one very suspicious police officer that still glares in my direction every time he drives by.

Through all the painful expenses of adopting a problem boxer, he was a good dog. We wished we had him earlier and hoped to keep him forever. But it became apparent in 2008 that it wasn’t going to last forever.

He began to limp. Then he began to fall. He bloodied his feet through toe-dragging during walks. He was unable to eat his food without his back legs crossing and giving out. He began to pee in the house and drop back into his own poop in the yard. Then he stopped using the stairs. Eventually he stopped moving altogether.

We took Noonan to our vet and came away with a handful of wrong diagnoses before finally self diagnosing him through the internet. We got a second opinion through the wonderful folks at the University of Pennsylvania Veterinary Hospital. See.. http://www.vet.upenn.edu/RyanHospital.aspx

It was called Degenerative Myelopathy and Noonan was in the later stages. Referred to as DM, this is a neurological disease that attacks the spinal cord. For all the painful details try http://74.125.93.132/search?q=cache:http://americanboxerclub.org/DM.html

We were at peace with the decision to have our old puppy put down. He was an old dog with at least eight years behind him and not a lot of good days ahead. I believe there is no wrong decision when it comes to a pet’s life. A rightful owner knows in their heart what is best for their pet. Noonan was an active dog who once could leap five feet in the air. Now he struggled to lift his head the other way in shame when we were talking about him. After six months of this it was his time to go.

On September 25, 2008 we arranged a babysitter, prepared an open grave in our backyard and made an appointment at the vet. It was one of those heart-pounding, goose bump-making, brave-walking moments. My wife and I did it together hand-in-hand the whole time. The vet prepped us with details, though we were still unprepared to watch him lay in surrender to his final breath. He did this at the hands of a half-dozen of the finest-looking female vets and vet-assistants in South Jersey. The dog lived a good life and was rewarded in his final moments.

They gave us a choice of what to do with the remains. We could leave him there at no cost to a mass cremation alongside however many stranger dogs. We could pay to have his remains individually disposed. Or we could wrap him up and do what with him we will. We chose the latter cuddling him in the first bed sheet my wife and I ever shared and carried him to our home, his home….as he pissed on me….twice!

Last month while driving by a cemetery alone with my six-year-old daughter I decided it was a good time to go over some of the real facts about death.

“Hey Abby,” I asked. “Did you know that when a person dies they are buried in the ground?”

“Yeah, I know that,” she said with the confidence of a teenager. Then she paused with silence. “Is Noonan buried in the ground?”

Blindsided by a six year old! I don’t know why this caught me off guard. My children know death through two beings – my wife’s great Aunt DeeDee and their Noonan. Whenever any conversation comes up about death my children automatically lead the conversation this way. Either that or any random Disney movie.

This is decision time for me. Noonan is buried in our backyard, just ten feet from my children’s play set. We never told our children because at the time they were definitely not old enough to handle this idea. But now? Is my daughter able to handle this truth, or is this the kind of thing that keeps six-year-olds awake with night tremors?

I told my daughter that Noonan is buried in the ground. I told her that he’s buried in our backyard. I told her that he’s home forever and that he’s exactly where he belongs. I feel like I’ve done well. Like I handled it like a champ.

“What if we move, Dad? Would we dig him up?”

Shit, another blindside! I explained that while we won’t dig him up he’ll be forever in his favorite place, the same yard where he had his best days.

We finished the conversation by agreeing to one thing. “Abby, I told you this because you are a big girl and I thought that you can handle it. But do not tell your brother, Ethan. Understand? DO NOT TELL Ethan.”

How dumb am I? Knowledge is power. Most grown adults are unable to hold a secret for that very reason. Knowledge is strength. And I gave my daughter the goods to be an authority to her four-year-old brother.

A week later my wife calls to mind, “Oh yeah, Abby told Ethan about Noonan in the backyard.”

I was crushed and hurt that my daughter would defy my confidence. Then I realized that one week is a lifetime to hold on to a secret for a six year old.

When I asked Abby why she told her brother about this she made it simple. “I thought he was ready, Dad. Besides, it’s not like he’s going to have nightmare or anything.”

I was not sure of this. Each child is different. Abby is a strong-minded, “big-girl” in a little girl’s body. She doesn’t get frightened, least doesn’t admit to it. Ethan is much different. He champions his emotions and is quite quick to admit his fears. And there’s also a bigger difference. Abby didn’t much care for Noonan. He was a nuisance to her. But Ethan was in love. Ethan still talks about how much he misses him.

So now it was time to talk to Ethan. I needed to make sure he was at peace with this decision. Surprisingly, he had only two questions.

“Is he all broken up,” he says with an inquisitive scrunched face of terror. Then he hits me with question number two. “Did he fall out of heaven?”

Blindsided again! They just keep coming.

When talking to children I find it best to chose few words, sticking to whole truths and definite wisdom. And if I can’t do that…then I lie.

“Yes, honey. Noonan fell out of heaven to our backyard.”

This blog was originally published in March 2010 at http://www.mypatheticblog.tumblr.com/.

My Two Cockblockers

I would like to introduce you to my two sons, Ethan and Alex. Known around my house as Cockblocker 1 and Cockblocker 2. Pioneers of their time, my two boys have reinvented the term and have taken cock blocking to levels unseen by any man before.

If cockblocking were an art my boys would be Picasso and Dali. If cockblocking were a sport my sons would be Abner Doubleday and James Naismith. If cockblocking were a religion my boys would be the Buddha and Mohammed.

I’ve spent years fighting off all the other guys to finally win the heart of my wife. Only to get married, commit to a lifetime of love, buy a hearty home and fill it with my biggest competition yet. Unlike my first-born daughter, these two beautifully bred boys have taken me down time and time again like.

Ethan, my oldest and the original cockblocker, put up a monumental fight. He spent the better part of 24 months attached to my wife’s every breath. Breastfeeding, regular feeding, sleeping on her, sleeping next to her, waking her up, taking naps with one eye open, screaming, kicking, climbing out of his crib. And this was during the daylight hours. Once the sun set, Ethan’s measures of cockblocking soared to great new heights.

First driving me to a crazed depletion of sanity with sleepless nights followed by tiresome days. Then preying on my wife by pushing her to levels of dementia that the idea of having sex with me completely escaped her mindscape. Like a time-tested torture treatment Ethan used sleep deprivation to break us. Not only did he not allow us the time to have sex, but he tortured us with sleeplessness that we didn’t even want to have sex if we had the time. He drove us mad, absolutely mad. And crazy people don’t have sex, and they certainly don’t make love.

The pinnacle came somewhere in the twentieth month when at 3 in the morning over a combination of sleepless nights, sharing my bed and an unnatural envy against my own baby I became overcome with anger and madness. I shouted for all the neighbors to hear, “FUCK! This is going to go on for the rest of our lives!”

I believed this to the bottom of my heart with all my constitution that the rest of our lives were going to be spent with my son in our bed. I believed that in 15 years I’d be pushing over my big high-schooler and wrestling him for the covers.

Any parent understands this feeling. Every parent knows exactly endless raising little children can feel. Especially raising babies. They have a way of destroying your memory of normalcy. When Ethan woke us up for the six-hundredth consecutive night I could not foresee a time when this habit would heal. After 20 months this pattern of sleepless nights felt infinite, like it might outlast time itself.

Then one night he gave up. He went to bed and slept steadily for days, then weeks, then consecutive months. Our house was peaceful again. My wife and I were getting sleep, feeling alive, feeling like human beings.

We had a beautiful home saturated of love and emotion. We had an engaged four-year old daughter, Abby who was as charming as Audrey Hepburn. And there was Ethan, a well-rested gentleman who was allowing his parents some space. Just enough space to make us believe that the last two years were not hell after all. Just enough space to think that any hardship we had over the last 24 months was all worth while. Just enough space to trick us into procreating again.

So here comes Alex, our second son and current cockblocker. Alex hones a particular unique form of cockblocking. Alex borrows from Ethan’s repertoire of sleepless nights, bed sharing and latching on to his mother at all times. But Alex’s toolbox also contains “the mock 'em’, the “sock 'em” and the quite literal “cockblock 'em.”

When breastfeeding he giggles at me, sometimes lifting his head to show me exactly what I’m missing. When being held by wife he likes to stare right at me with his transparent blue eyes and grabs a handful of my wife’s bosom. He cups a breast like a glass of cabernet then winks at me.

In the middle of the night while laying between us Alex rolls over and punches me in the head. My wife tells me this is an unintentional spasm of an unconscious mind. Though I’ve seen him do it. I’ve seen him size me up with eyes ajar, lift his arm and come down on my face with a fist. I’ve thought about sleeping with a helmet.

And in the middle of the day when I find occasion to hug my wife, Alex actually pushes me away, steps between us and yup, blocks my cock.

It actually makes me giggle, all this cockblocking. Am I jealous of my boys? Of course. Am I backed up in the pants? Sometimes. But I know I’ll have the last laugh. I know there will come a day when one of my boys will have a girl on our doorstep, or in the den, or in his dorm and I’ll come knocking.

This blog was originally posted in February 2010 at http://www.mypatheticblog.tumblr.com/. Since then we've added a third cockblocking boy to our bunch