Waiting for The Miracle -Chapter 1-

EVERYTHING THAT COMES OUT OF OBLIVION

Pregnancies produce all kinds of psychological alterations in men. I have met males who started scoring class A’s after discovering they were parents-to-be; others stopped smoking; went vegan or joined a boxing gym. Some of the men took up pottery and others fled to Mongolia to ‘find themselves’ in the mountain ranges of The Atlai. I even came across a guy who decided to grow a vagina after being told he was about to be a dad. The bloke reappeared nine months later wearing a red Flamenco skirt and fake breasts. No one complained: the pregnant lady claimed she did not give two potatoes about their gender as long as they chipped in for nappies and rent. 

Sandy was locked up in prison when he heard the news. One of the guards told him that a woman (my mother) had been in the police station in Irish Town screaming como una loca about it. There were no mobile phones in Gibraltar at that time and news moved from llanito to llanito old school. Sandy would rather have had a phone call from his wife I am sure. Imagine finding out you are going to be a dad from a guy in a black suit, who torments you with a police stick, and throws commands around in a mix of old Victorian English and obscure Andalusian slang! He was only nineteen when he heard. Bloody nineteen years of age! At nineteen I barely grew hairs on my testicles and Sandy was already a smuggler, a dad, and a convicted criminal. Sometimes, I think it should have been him to write all this. I am sure the writing would have had more rock and roll adventures, more high-paced speed boat chases, more drugged up beach parties, more brushes with the bobbies and less nonsense. But, Sandy is gone. It’s just me and I am here to talk about something else. I am here to talk about fatherhood. Fatherhood and the modern man (and the life of an underground singer songwriter in London, probably, but mostly about fatherhood). 

When I found out I was dumbfounded. It did not seem possible after all those years of drunken meandering. I had always avoided what Jez denominated ‘major pregnancy scares’ to the extent that I had come to believe my easily excitable turnip was no longer a viable source of human life. That morning it became clear this was not the case. Natalie spoke with clinical precision: in her perfectly refined public school accent. I did not enjoy her accent half as much as other times. She uttered the sentence twice: I am pregnant. I am pregnant. Probably unnerved by my silence. But what could I say? I felt I was standing in front of a judge about to receive a punishment for a crime perpetrated by someone else’s biological disposition. A sex change was off the cards. I blame my conservative Latin upbringing for that. I did however feel like landing on top of a sharp kitchen knife harakiri style. There was no violent prison guard around but history and time were about to thump me in the groynes with a titanium hockey stick. All I could think of was my grandfather Antonio’s words: when life kicks you in the balls, give yourself to work. Nothing good has come out of indolent men who mope around. Perhaps he was right. Perhaps I had been avoiding my hunter-gatherer fate for far too long. It was time to get back to the grind. I rolled up my sleeves and accepted every performance job in the London cheap entertainment market. I signed on with a cheap company called, Penthouse LIVE, and embargoed my artistic integrity by butchering Sting and U2 songs at business parties, noisy pubs and ruined theatres. (Lately I have been foraging the internet to destroy the evidence of those gigs, luckily, no one bothered to film them.) I knew the events were an insult to music and human consciousness but I did not know what else to do. They were desperate times and, for all my ego and my drunken panache, I could not raise a child with a bank account balance struggling to jump over the fifty pound bar. Do you know what a bag of nappies costs in the United Kingdom this millennium? And I am talking about ASDA type nappies not the fancy ones they sell at Waitrose. When I realised a single nappy was about the same price as three cigarettes after tax, I decided to get extra work at a local boozer in the East End of London, The Carpenters Arms. I was already struggling to smoke straights without pawning my guitar. I hated rollies. I always have. Working at the pub was an arduous and soul-crushing affair. 

‘What’s your name then?’ asked Natalie.

‘Billy,’ chuckled the drunken fool as he extended his lips clumsily to kiss my girlfriend’s cheek, ‘that’s what they call me, anyway.’

‘We really need to go,’ I muttered.

‘Pleased to meet you,’ said Natalie. 

‘What’s a fancy English lass doing with our latino bartender, ey? I mean, Your boy Banderas might do but this lad is not even Spanish?’ 

‘We really need to go,’ I repeated. 

‘Easy boyle, the hospital ‘aint going anywhere,’ slurred Billy. 

Natalie and I were about to enter the antenatal unit at the Chelsea & Westminster when Billy crept up behind us. The stocky thud was one of the dipsomaniacs who shouted aggro at me at The Carpenters Arms. Messing with the foreign barman (even if they held a perfectly legal British Passport) was his local passtime. He wasn't the only one who enjoyed the abuse. There were many intoxicated know-it-alls there who jumped at the opportunity to call me names and joke about my obsession with olives and bullfighting. Their antics were funny at first. I laughed at the dimwittedness and unsavouriness of their remarks but eventually the insults got on my nerves. By the time Billy tapped on my shoulder outside the hospital I was ready to tell those bigots to bugger off. I was definitely not putting up with abuse outside the working space. I tried to walk away but Natalie had engaged with Billy the twerp and we ended up facing each other outside the Hospital doors. He was wearing navy blue linen trousers, white golf shoes, and a pink short sleeved polo shirt. He stank of stale beer, fags and cheap cologne. He threw his sweaty arm around me and pretended to order a Stella. 

‘Bar-tending is not my only profession. I am a songwriter, remember?’ I replied defiantly. 

Billy laughed in my face. 

‘Who is the moustachioed Manuel serving pints at The Carpenter’s Arms, then? 

‘Part-time,’ I responded, ‘I only work there part time.’ 

‘I’m a part time porter too. The rest of the day I work with Stella,’ he laughed. 

‘And how’s that going for you?’ 

‘Couldn’t be better.’

‘Sure. Sure,’ I sulked.

‘At least, boyle, I am not living off no foreign government.’ 

‘What do you mean?’

‘We gave you wages and a passport, ain’t we?’  

‘We never asked to be colonised,’ I yelled in between huffs and puffs. ‘lately I feel North Korea would have done better.’ Natalie pressed my thumb tightly. 

‘What?’ I continued, ‘at least we wouldn’t be sucking off the Americans, right?’

Billy laughed. 

‘You might actually be right with that one, Boyle but When Farage becomes Prime-minister, everyone will get in line. Even the yanks. 

‘Right. Right. Vamos Natalie,’ I insisted. 

‘Where are you going in such a hurry boyle?’ I was just messing about. 

‘Natalie is not well.’ 

‘She looks fine, mighty fine if you ask me.’ 

‘We have to go.’ 

I took Natalie by the hand and marched her through the automatic doors of the Chelsea hospital. 

‘Look after the bean, ey!’ shouted Billy from afar. 

My heartbeat increased rapidly. 

‘Que cabrón!’ I exploded.‘Leave it,’ responded Natalie. ‘He has a disease and you know I hate the word cunt. It’s derogatory and vile.’ 

‘It means something else in Spanish, Natalie, I told you that and what disease?’ 

‘Brexitism.’

Moments later I suffered a full-blown panic attack when the nurse at the ultrasound room requested the nature of my profession for a Hospital form. I could not answer. I was stuck there, staring at the poor woman in a mixture of fear and abstraction. Was I a musician if I could not earn my living solely by playing the guitar? Was I a singer-songwriter if I had never made a penny from my songs? El cabron Billy was getting under my skin. Perhaps, he was right. Perhaps I was a slouch. Perhaps I would never have a credible profession.  

‘Singer-songwriter and artist,’ responded Natalie after more than thirty seconds of awkward silence.  

I felt a pinch in my stomach. What if the tadpole was listening? How could I avoid his disappointment and disgust at my failure to provide. I am sorry tadpole. I am sorry I can not offer you any status or rank. I am sorry I can not offer you security. It’s this bloody profession you see! It’s impossible to survive from it. 

‘Mark, relax, breathe, please, breathe,’ said Natalie.

How could I? I was distraught. To make matters worse: the nurse had been very clear; the tadpole was a boy. She had detected the vegetable between the legs, a protruding stick which would condition his actions and his psychology for the rest of his life. Jez had always said it was hard to be a man in the 21st century, no matter how non-binary London would eventually turn out to be. He was probably right. No one wanted another potential branch of patriarchal society. And to makes things worse, the lifeform that stared at us from the ultrasound print out looked like an alien reptile more than an inhabitant of earth. How could my offshoot look like a shrivelled gremlin?! What if the kid was an abomination? A lizard version of the Elephant man! What if we created a monstrous being? 

‘He is terribly ugly,’ I sobbed as we left the hospital, ‘his feet are slack, his hands are withered and short. That is definitely not a good-looking child.’ 

I felt like stepping in front of one of the flash cars that sped down Battersea Park Road. 

‘Don’t be daft! They all look like that at 18 weeks,’ replied Natalie as she scoffed and dragged me to the adjacent pavement. 

‘Are you sure? Are you totally sure?’ I asked weepingly. 

‘You insensitive idiot. What do you think you looked like at 18 weeks? What a cunt’

‘I thought you didn’t like the word.’

‘Cunt!’ Repeated Natalie as she got on the 543.