September 14, 1986

Malibu, CA

We had gone to a big party last night, hosted by one of Greg’s directors, and I’d had way too much fun. I’d woken up and done what I normally did after a night of partying: I puked my guts out. I was sitting on the floor in front of the toilet, hoping that I was finally done retching, while I simultaneously scolded myself for getting this fucked up in the first place. What was that idiom, the one that said the definition of insanity was doing the same thing over and over again but expecting a different result? Why didn’t I learn from the countless times I’d partied too hard and felt like shit the next morning?

“Good morning,” Robbie said cheerfully, as he stepped around me to turn on the shower. He had stayed relatively sober and was feeling fine this morning.

“Fuck you,” I spat, which made him laugh and me frown. I managed to pull myself together enough to get into the shower with him, although any hope he may have had of intimacy was not to be. I got out of the shower and brushed my teeth, but I was moving so slowly that it took me half an hour just to dry off and put on boxers. I finally managed to throw on some clothes and head down to the kitchen, convinced that I was together enough to face a calm and restful day. There was no way I was doing more than that. God help the person who even tried to suggest that I should leave this house.

“Have some cereal,” Robbie suggested gently, as he made me a bowl of Frosted Flakes.

“Thanks,” I mumbled, which was the limit of my politeness at that point. I sat there, enjoying the silence as I ate my cereal, plotting my next move, which was to go from the kitchen to the sofa and spend my day watching television.

Jeanine came walking into the room looking unusually frazzled. “Morning,” Robbie said. He stood up and gave her a peck on the cheek, while I forced myself to mimic his gesture. I was waiting for her to give me a bunch of crap for being so messed up, but that didn’t happen.

“I need to go to the hospital,” she said. I stared at her, digesting her words, while Robbie was much quicker and actually responded to her.

“Are you alright?” he asked.

“It’s time,” she said. I looked at her and blinked. “I’m going to have this baby.”

“Holy shit!” Robbie exclaimed, and got all animated. “We need to...”

Fortunately Jeanine stopped him from going off on a panicked, rambling rant. “I just need to get to the hospital,” she said calmly.

“Can we have five minutes?” I asked.

“It’s not urgent; we just need to go,” she answered, which I took as affirmation that we had that much time before we left. “The nurse is watching Darius and JJ.” That was one less thing for me to worry about.

“Go tell Stef and Greg, and tell Greg we’re taking his car,” I told Robbie. We wouldn’t fit in my Porsche, and we’d be too cramped in Robbie’s truck. He ran off to do that, while I went back up to our room to take a couple of Tums.

I made it downstairs just as Robbie got back, carrying Greg’s keys. “Let’s go,” he said, picking up Jeanine’s overnight bag. I wanted to drive because I was pretty sure he’d go about as fast as a little old lady, especially since he was driving Greg’s Rolls Royce. We had a non-verbal power struggle over that and I lost. Jeanine opted to sit up front, so I lay down in the back seat, determined to force my body to function.

“Anyone looking at us would think that you were the one who was about to go into labor,” Jeanine said to me as she looked over her shoulder. I ignored her.

I had been convinced my time in the hospital would be a living hell, but it was actually conducive to my mood. They admitted Jeanine, then nurses came in and checked her dilation. The doctor on call appeared about half an hour after the first nurse did. “Sometimes first babies are very slow coming out, but you’re dilating pretty quickly,” he said. After those words of wisdom, he left us. Robbie and I sat in her room while nurses periodically came in and out, and it was so tranquil that I actually took a nap. I almost laughed to myself, thinking that I was having the day that I had planned, where I lounged around and watched television. We stayed in that room for three hours, with Robbie going nuts because of the lack of activity, and me recovering from my malaise to the point that I was pretty much restored, at least externally.

The nurse came in and checked Jeanine’s dilation again. “Close,” she said, and left. A few minutes later she returned with another nurse. “It’s time to get you to the delivery room.”

“I’m ready,” Jeanine said. She’d spent the last month with her stomach swelling up to the point that it seemed as if an alien would come bursting out, so I could understand her relief. While they whisked her off to prep her, Robbie and I put on scrubs.

An orderly led us into the delivery room where Jeanine lay, her legs in these stirrups that forced them to stay apart. I sat on her left, with Robbie on her right. I uttered the occasional platitude to prop her up, all the while pretending that I didn’t still have a massive hangover, trying to act like the sounds from all the beeping machines didn’t bother me at all. I had expected this to happen quickly, but it didn’t. It started out pretty calmly, then built up gradually until it started to get pretty intense.

Jeanine had been adamant that she wanted to have the baby doing natural childbirth, which meant that she had eschewed all pain medication. I thought it showed a stunning lack of judgment on her part, but it was her body, and I wasn’t about to interfere in that decision.

“Ahhhh!” she shouted, then cringed in pain.

“Breathe,” I ordered as I held her left hand. She panted, trying to grapple with the pain, the pain of childbirth. “Just focus on your breathing.” I panted along with her.

“This fucking hurts!” she yelled.

“You lesbians are such wimps,” Robbie said as he gripped her right hand. “I could have this baby through my ass.” That made her laugh when she was supposed to be breathing.

“It's true,” I said, throwing her off even more. I leaned in and kissed her forehead, an act of love and kindness. She'd become an integral part of not just my life, but our lives.

“I should have known when I let you fuck me with your big dick that I'd pay for it with a big baby,” she joked back in between pants. Robbie and I both laughed. “This fucking hurts!”

She'd been laboring like this for four hours now. I knew that some women worked longer and harder, but I was sure that no one put as much of herself into it as Jeanine. She lay there with sweat pouring down her face as she gritted her teeth, determined to push this baby out. “It’s not too late to get the epidural,” I said. She grimaced. “If you do this all natural, do you get some sort of Girl Scout badge or something?” She laughed, then cringed again.

“We have a problem,” the doctor said. I’d been skimming along, focusing on Jeanine, just trying to help her labor through, but as soon as the doctor said that, I was completely re-engaged, and any traces of my hangover were gone.

“What’s the problem?” I demanded.

“This baby isn’t lining up in the birth canal properly,” he said. “We have to get it out.”

Jeanine looked at me, terrified for the safety of our child. “It will be alright,” I said.

"We need to get that epidural now," the doctor ordered, his voice clipped with urgency. The nurses worked quickly, prepping Jeanine for the epidural. As I held her hand, I could feel her body shaking with pain and fear.

“It’s going to be alright,” I said to her calmly, and then finally, blessedly, the epidural took effect. Now that her body wasn’t in pain, her emotions had more freedom.

“Doctor, you have to help my baby!” she shouted.

“I’m doing just that,” he said, sounding frustrated. “It’s still not descending through the birth canal like it should.” I sat there as stoic as if I were JP, even though inside I was near panic. The doctor's expression grew more and more concerned as time ticked by. They tried different positions, different techniques, but nothing seemed to be working.

I’d stayed calm for so long, but the thought that my child could be injured, or worse, that it could die, finally snapped all of my restraints. “Is the baby lined up yet?” I demanded.

“Let me try to move…” he said, as he exerted himself. “The baby’s shoulders are stuck.”

“Quit dicking around,” I said firmly.

“Do you want to deliver this baby?” he asked sarcastically.

“No, I want you to deliver the baby,” I said, then raised my voice. “Now do it!” Robbie and Jeanine gave me worried looks, but I didn’t give a shit about hurting this dipshit’s feelings.

"We're going to have to use the vacuum," the doctor said, pausing to shoot me one more nasty look. They rigged up some contraption, then the doctor locked onto Jeanine, connecting to her with his eyes. "Alright Jeanine, I need you to push with all your might."

Jeanine nodded and closed her eyes, then grabbed my hand like a vice grip. She uttered a loud moan, and I could feel the energy pulsing through her body as she put everything she could into expelling the baby from her body. I held her hand just as tightly, trying to push my own energy into her. “Can’t push any more,” she said, exhausted.

“I see the head,” the doctor said, and we all became jubilant.

“You are doing so well,” I told her. “You’re the one doing this. It’s all you.”

“Alright, Jeanine,” the doctor said. “One more big push and you get to meet your baby.”

“Come on,” I said, gripping her hand tightly. “Push!” I felt my whole being willing her to exert what little energy she had left, and smiled as I felt her doing just that.

“Ah,” she said, but not in an exasperated way, but in a relieved way, as we saw the head pop out, followed shortly by the rest of the baby.

“Looks like you have a boy,” the doctor said, holding the baby up, confirming Grandmaman’s prediction. It was like with that announcement I could feel her presence in the room. The doctor grimaced, trying to not be mad at me for getting annoyed with him during the delivery, then he clamped the cord and handed me the scissors to cut it. I took them and stared at them briefly, then I lined them up with his umbilical cord.

“Make sure you cut the right appendage,” Robbie joked. And then, with a snip, my son was free of the womb and was his own little person. I ran my finger briefly across his head, feeling an incredible bond with him. The nurse whisked him off to clean him up, but after his complicated birth, I couldn’t stand to be apart from him, so I followed her. She gave me sideways frowns as she cleaned him up, while I reached over from time to time and put my finger in his little hand.

Everything about him was so small, and so perfect. The nurse finished cleaning him and wrapped him up in a blanket, then made to pick him up, but I did it instead. She looked at me like she was going to argue, but wisely decided not to. I carried him back over to Jeanine and gently handed him to her. She smiled and moved his mouth to her breast, and with some coaching from the nurses, learned how to hold him so he could feed.

“You did really well,” I told Jeanine. “I am so proud of you.” She just beamed up at me through her exhaustion.

When she was done feeding him, she handed him back to me and I cradled him in my arms. I studied his little purple face. He wasn't exactly handsome at this point, but the love I felt for him was amazing. I remembered how, up until this moment, I had assumed that I would be nervous when holding him, concerned that I’d do it all wrong. I’d been worried that I’d be bad at it, but it was so natural, so normal, that holding him just felt right. I looked down at him and felt a sudden surge of paternalism, one that was so strong it scared me. It was almost a violent reaction, one that told me that for him, I would take a bullet without a second thought. For my son, I would do anything, sacrifice everything. Robbie and Jeanine looked at me indulgently, and I finally forced myself to relinquish control of him and give him to Robbie. My head was spinning at how intense these base paternal instincts were in me, especially since even handing him off to Robbie took some effort.

“What shall we name him?” Jeanine asked, distracting me enough to relax while Robbie held him. We'd been talking about names ad nauseum, throwing boys' and girls' names out there with each of the three of us taking turns shooting them down. She’d wanted to name him Joshua, but that name didn’t really appeal to me, especially since I already knew what I wanted his name to be. Jeanine and Robbie may have been undecided, but I’d known since Grandmaman told me he’d be a boy what I was determined to name him.

“I'd like to name him after my fathers,” I said, bracing myself for a pitched battle, but Jeanine just looked at me and smiled.

“Alright, what are these names?” she asked pleasantly.

“William John Steven Schluter,” I pronounced, then all but held my breath, getting ready for a debate.

“Three names? Isn't that a bit aristocratic?” Robbie teased.

“We live in a mansion; it's only right,” I teased back.

“Will,” Jeanine said to him as she took him back in her arms. “I like it.”