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I’ve spent two Christmases around my step-brother, his wife and young boys. During the Yuletide I sleep late, eat too much, drink too much, sometimes vomit, and always walk around the house in tattered boxers; generally exhibiting no behavior that would make any sane person think I am capable of keeping a child fed or clothed or alive for a period longer than fifteen minutes. I mean, I burn toast during SportsCenter.

Which made it all the more shocking when a few weeks ago my stepbrother asked me to babysit my two-year-old nephew, Dallas. I’d never been trusted with a child before nor gone out of my way to ask for that trust. Me and babies have always had a policy of “Don’t ask, don’t kill the baby.”

The price of nannies in San Francisco must be going up. So I fly out.

Upon arrival, D’s mom introduces me to him as his “manny,” short for “male nanny.” Which is fine. I’m an actor. I can sublimate derogatory nicknames for acting roles or just for when I snap and start shooting on the F train.

On day one, I am given a list of things to do. Everyone leaves. It’s just me and D. I consult the list. “Give him X amount of Y cereal, milk, steamed broccoli, naps at 11 and 3,” etc. All this I can do. At the bottom of the list is: “Check diaper now and then”. It is 9 AM. I check. There is poop. I am scared.

I look at the list again. “If there is poop change the diaper.” I flip the list over for diaper changing instructions. There are no instructions. Surely this is a mistake. There are no instructions on the diaper box. Not good. This is not cereal + milk + bowl. This is diaper + baby + poop. I call my step-brother. Out of the office. His wife, away from phone. I try convincing the operator I am in the midst of a moderate emergency but she does not wish to be of assistance and transfers me to a dial tone.

My parents got divorced when I was seven and my first razor was electric. In college, when my electric broke and was faced with my roommate’s disposable I Googled “how to shave” since I never got that lesson. I start up my Mac. The internet is down. This is very bad.

We race to the bathroom. I set him in the sink and take off the diaper. There is a brick of poo staring at me. I throw it in the trash. Dallas sits happily, alternating between poking his belly button and his penis. And all this time, I thought I was the only one who does that.

I clean his behind. It takes me at least six half-assed attempts (literally) to figure out the best way to clear his rear of leftovers. Finally: the old feet over head technique; I’ve seen this in movies but it never registered in my brain as having real world application; as opposed to movie CPR, movie gun play, and movie making out. I put the diaper on (backwards, I learn later). I pray he does not poop under my watch again.

For lunch I steam broccoli in a John Deere bowl. It is too hot to handle so I transfer its contents to a green bowl. Dallas begins to scream like a banshee when I refuse to give him the John Deere bowl. I cool it down in the sink and offer it to him, but he throws it to the floor, inconsolable. He is still screaming. This screaming is extremely disconcerting to my soul. On the list it says, “If Dallas cries, don’t worry.” I am worried.

Now I see why they have those advertisements that tell you not to shake a baby because nothing would make me happier than shaking a baby. This is hell. Hell is war. This is a
war – and I’m losing. I have invaded a sovereign nation under false pretenses. It’s hard to tell who is a friend or enemy. And speaking of improvised explosive devices, what on earth is that smell? Mustard gas?

I take Dallas upstairs, screaming in my ear, I marvel how he had more poop to poop. Lo, there is poop on my shirt. I just bought this shirt. Banana Republic. Turns out the big part of the diaper goes in the back for a reason. The shirt poop smells so bad it gives me a splitting headache.

I put him in the crib for a nap. He does not want a nap. I give him Elmo. He throws Elmo out of the crib and then cries because Elmo is so far away. He wants entertainment. I’m an actor. Fine. You want entertainment? I’ll give you entertainment.

I pretend to douse Elmo in gasoline and set him on fire with my pretend blowtorch. Elmo screams and seizes in wild agony. Dallas laughs like a madman. Elmo tries to eat Dallas’ face. Dallas is highly amused. This is my kind of child. After 30 minutes of this, he sleeps. My vocal chords are bleeding.

His mom gets home at five and gives me a beer. “Looks like you need this.” I watch SportsCenter. D’s four-year-old brother, Jack, repeatedly pummels me with a pillow. I feel nothing. How can I bear two more days of this? This child will die and everyone will blame me. Thank God I have tomorrow off. I fall asleep at nine.

I spend the next day in San Francisco, visiting museums. It is wonderful. I learn I love modern art. I consume as much Peet’s Coffee and Blondie’s Pizza as possible.

On the bus back to Embarcadero, I feel nauseous. It could be the 2000 mg of caffeine mingling unfavorably with close to a pound of mozzarella, or it could be the fact that I’m genuinely worried about being alone with my nephew again. I daydream about all the things that could go wrong. I am thinking of hiring a non-male manny to take over for me. Then a voice from above says, “Please hold on.” I look up. It is the bus speaking to me. It’s the Inspiration Bus. God bless this bus.

I decide to hold on.

Day two begins with us sitting across the breakfast table from each other, eating Cheerios and diced strawberries. I am determined to weather this storm. I will get to know this human. He is a man of no words, I am a man almost entirely of words. Despite this, it turns out we actually have a lot in common.

We both like making repetitive nonsense sounds and rhythmically bumping our heads against the couch. We like eating peas off the floor. We annihilate Trader Joe’s Ultimate Vanilla Wafers. Laser pointers keep us fascinated for hours. There’s more:

Things we like

A clean diaper
Ice-cold milk
Slow moving animals
Slides, Swings
Steamed broccoli
Risky behavior

Things we don’t like

Non-music radio
Clothing
Quiet time
Small dogs
Merlot

Later, we go for a walk and he forgoes the safety of the grass field to run down the center of the street. That kind of daring and reckless endangerment of his own life is truly impressive. We slide together. We eat dinner together. I wash his hands and put him to bed.

Day three goes by too fast. We are best buds. This is the life I want! Snacktime, playtime, naptime. No worktime, cleaning housetime, hangovertime. I am a two-year-old. A two-year-old with a college diploma and relatively well-developed sex drive.

There is, of course, a vast distinction between ‘I can be friends with a two-year-old’ and ‘I can create my own two year old.’ Driving back to the airport, I gave Elmo one last gasoline bath and Dallas squealed. His mom commented, “You feel that? That’s your paternal instinct.” And if that paternal instinct is complete fear of breaking a baby in half, I agree. When I hugged Dallas goodbye and walked toward my airplane, I felt pride that I had not by accident or intent murdered Dallas. And I must admit I got a little emotional.

That emotion, you ask?

Relief.

Advice Poem 1

Take Your Time

Too Young 1

I don’t know why I went to my college reunion. I was never really a rah-rah college guy. I only went to one basketball game, I didn’t add pep to rallies, I wore a Hoya Pride shirt because it was free and had a pretty rainbow triangle on it. Mostly, I drank and wrote and made silly faces on stage and silently judged people. These things I still do in New York. Plus, returning to DC was sure to bring up bittersweet memories of good times with my ex and bitter memories of getting sued by my college next door neighbor, both of which fill me with different brands of helpless rage that I wish I could bottle and sell to some small, rich middle-eastern principality. I dunno. I guess the lure of hanging out with my old roomies in a dorm room again filled me with some silly longing. Plus, maybe someone will make out with me. So I went.

Georgetown was beautiful five years ago but even my fuzzy, glorified remembrances do not do it justice. The ancient, iconic Healy building that looms beyond the front gates exudes this aura of religious serenity, even for a lapsed Catholic like me. As I approached, my heart began to ache. For the rest of the day, it felt like I was walking in slow motion through memory soup.

Since 2003, Georgetown built a huge dorm, my old writing haunt, Leavy, has comfy new furniture, previously craptastic dorm Darnell now has a slick restaurant with Sapporo on tap, and the coup de grace, there is a new state of the art performing arts center, in its fourth season. When I visited as a high school senior, I was told that they would be breaking ground my sophomore year. I got a tour and it was like getting kicked in the balls every fifteen seconds. It felt like my ex-girlfriend started dating George Clooney or any other more-successful-than-me actor (read: any other actor). That night, I had this dream:

EXT. GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY. DUSK.
Mike stands in front of Georgetown. He is old. He has forgotten to wear pants. His underwear has sheep on them. Georgetown has lost weight, has a tan.

Georgetown pats Mike’s arm, turns on a dime and skips off, her smile, freckles, fade in the distance.

(Or something like that.)

Besides crippling relationship issues, I have the worst memory of any non-vegetative person on earth. The next day I have lunch with my old roomies. They say hi to someone who I have long since forgotten. I hold out my hand and say, “Hi, I’m Mike.” She squeezes it and says, “Yeah, I know. I’m Steph. I sat next to you for three semesters of Professor Sabat’s psych classes. How’s your grandma? Still scared of cats?”

This woman knows intimate details of my life and I’m so mortified about forgetting her name from five years ago that I’ve already forgotten her name from two seconds ago… Becca? I remember her face; all of their faces, I like these people, I just don’t know why. I’m like the guy from Memento, just with less tattoos and zero excuse for having amnesia.

We all chat. Becca hates me. I massage my squozen hand.

Later that night there is a “tent party” in the parking lot by the new dorm. Tent party = alumni + tent + cover band (loud, bad) + fruit (on a stick) + other hors d’oeuvres (semi-edible) x open bar.

I enter the tent with my friend Beth. She remembers everything about everyone, which makes me wonder how she can still be friends with me. “Just so you know, Lavoie, I’m not going to hang out with you all night just so I can save your ass.” I try to stay close to her but she is small and fits through gaps in the mob that I do not. Sure enough, she loses me. Now I am fucked.

I order a Maker’s Mark and soda. Time to make questionable decisions. I search for all the girls who were hot and unavailable in college, whose names I do remember. They are still hot and unavailable and in fact do not remember my name. One, Michalene, says, “Matt?” which is close enough, by god, so we chat. I do my best impression of a confident and interesting person who has a lot of things going for him. Later she tells people I am a stalker. I pay attention to Facebook notifications and suddenly I’m a stalker. If she didn’t want me knowing she canceled “yumyum at Burger Bistro” with Kaydee because of “this retarded thing with my dad” on May 26th at 6:04 PM then she shouldn’t’ve posted it on Kaydee’s wall. Lord. Doesn’t anyone TEXT anymore?

A familiar voice says, “LAY-VOIE!” and we high five and hug. I should totally know this guy. I ask him where he is and what he is doing. Chicago. Law school. “Dope.” His name is not coming. Beth’s tiny face appears, praise God. “Hey, do you know Beth?” I say, but instead of completing the introduction, I feign catching someone’s eye off in the distance and wave. Beth knows what I want: “Hey, Chris, how are ya?” “Oh hey, Beth, good.” I finish waving to no one and return reinvigorated with this intel. “So, Chris. How about them Cubbies??”

People like Chris and Becca are like Algebra 2. I aced Algebra 2. And a few months later, I would have gotten a B. But five years later, when a polynomial walks up and says, “LAY-VOIE! REMEMBER ME?” That’s a big F. My brain has jettisoned this information. I apologize every time, and every time I mean it.

Facebook should sell flash cards.

Sometimes I feel like I’m F’ing up in life in every sense of the term. I don’t need a life coach, I need a life professor. How can I possibly be an alumnus? I don’t know anything about anything. I make things up on paper and on stage and in bars and hope someone will make out with me and make me feel like I’m young again.

I look around. Michalene is gone. They refuse to pour me more Maker’s Mark. Just because I’m lying on the ground. I find home and sleep alone in a twin bed, a few feet away from my old GU roommate. The sheets are too short for the mattresses. Lie down forever lie down!

The next day, my ex-roomie introduces me to his new girlfriend, who just graduated from George Washington. I tell her I’m an actor and she says, “Aw, how cute.” Later she asks me how it feels to be so close to thirty and suggests I put on twenty pounds of muscle if I expect to get anywhere in “the industry.” Somehow, the wood-chipper scene in Fargo pops up in my throbbing brain.

I excuse myself. I have made lunch dates with all the girls who I was in love with in college but never dated. Maybe they will make out with me. Sadly, they are all in “stable” and “happy” relationships. Two have rings. One has a baby. I just sit across from her, pounding an iced mocha in my shades, regretting not marrying and impregnating her myself. It’s strange; she seems completely immune to my several charms. I mean, she’s not hitting on me at all. All she wants to do is feed that baby. What’s a guy gotta do to get some attention around here? I’m even wearing boxers with sheep on them.

We reminisce, but it feels like fact-checking.

We are bored by the details of each other’s life. I hate babies. She hates that I have not grown into an adult. We do not embrace goodbye because she is holding a baby.

• Lesson for the Day #1: Hangovers are considerably worse when your old loves independently reach the consensus that you are an immature disaster and they don’t know even know why they are surprised.

This is a good time for a nap.

then

now

I wake up refreshed for the final night’s tent party. It was supposed to be on the roof of Leavy, which has islands of undulating lawns and provides a nice panorama of the lower campus. The bad news: It has been moved due to “flooding” to a hotel conference room. The good news: the room has 50-foot ceilings. Hoya, Hoya Saxa!

An hour later, fueled by spring rolls, riding an ocean of whiskey and surrounded by a maelstrom of faces that actually become more recognizable the more I drink, the world is a glorious, hilarious mess. When I remember someone’s name from relearning it yesterday, I am ecstatic. I scream it out like I have Tourette’s. “BOB! I LOVE YOU BOB! KISS ME BOB!”

Soon though, my old classmates catch up and surpass me in revelry. People are becoming loud and sloppy. Honestly begins to leak out. Did I hear so-and-so’s marriage is falling apart? He is unfaithful, she is an alcoholic, it’s hard to tell which came first. In a corner, someone confides that she is scared to death of her own child. Another hates his job but can’t afford to leave; another is getting married because her boyfriend is the “best of what’s left.” I need to sit down. This is heavy, the seedy underbelly or normalcy. Whatever absurdities and failures abound in my life, I guess I have to be thankful it’s only myself I’m bringing to ruination.

Looking up, there is a slideshow in the distance. It’s been on loop all night. Faces. Faces, faces. And then, out of the masses: me. Grinning like a fool, arms around an old chum. No smugness. No trace of irony. Just happiness. Interesting. I loved it here. I think I forgot that at some point. The proof crossfades into another picture. I look around. The room has thinned.

Someone finds me and we go to the roof for a cigarette. There are four puddles. Nice flood. The smoke swirls around us as his ladyfriend puddle hops. Feels nice not to be in a bar in New York. Feels nice to be back.

Some late night wanderings, random run-ins, jokes and embraces later, it’s 4 AM. Time to go. Damn, that was fast. And fun. Like a reunion should be. Like college was.

Reuniting is strange, but makes me feel lucky I united with all these people in the first place. It is somehow good to know there are people as scared and lost and insane feeling as I am. So I’m not George Clooney and my roomie isn’t Warren Buffett, but we’re trying. And I guess giving yourself and A for effort is as good as it gets these days.

On my hazy way through campus to my luggage, the ghosts of scenes from the past emerge from the shadows. Sleepovers on the Leavy rooftop, making out by the David Schick memorial pond, peeing on the dumpsters in Village B and countless other moments replay in my head as I drift between asleep and awake on the ride to the airport.

And suddenly I’m home, back to “real life,” whatever the hell that is. But it feels good to be back. Can’t live in the past or for the past. You just have to remember what you can, with who you can remember and keep moving forward, together or apart.

So, thanks, old friends, whatever your names are. I really am sorry I can’t remember anything. I hope to see you all in another five years, or less even. Good luck, Chris and Becca. Gain ground and go straight for the touchdown! And in the mean time, try your best to get divorced so we can make out next time.

Or at least separated. That’ll work too.

Love,

Mike