How to be a Husband (12 page)

Frankly, you couldn't pay me to work harder, because I can't put a price on my sloth. Just this morning, at a time when most people are arriving at their offices, I was falling asleep in the bath. I tipped my whole coffee into it when I conked out, which is why my arms are now a manly brown and give off the faint aroma of an Ecuadorian mountain cooperative. Trust me: you don't want to smell like money; you want to smell like coffee, like me.

*   *   *

M
y first magazine article appears on the back page of the November 1993 issue of
GQ
magazine. There is even a reference to it on the cover, alongside Sean Bean's face. It says, “RENT BOY—How to live off your girlfriend.” I have mixed emotions. Making the cover of a magazine on your first go seems like an achievement to be proud of. At the same time, I don't think I should send a copy to my mother.

For years afterward I would receive the occasional call from a production assistant who, having found that
GQ
article in a cuttings file, tracked down my details in order to ask whether I might be interested in going on the radio, or on daytime TV, to discuss the ins and outs of being a shiftless, unapologetic scumbag.

“The thing is,” I would say, “I wrote that piece, like, seven years ago. My life isn't really like that anymore.”

“I see,” the voice at the other end would say, sounding terribly disappointed.

“I'm actually pretty busy these days,” I'd say. “In fact, I've just started writing a column for the . . .”

“So it's all working out for you,” says the voice. I'm clearly making someone's bad day at the office worse.

“Sorry,” I say.

Despite my late start in journalism, things progressed slowly but steadily after that first
GQ
article. I became a regular contributor to the magazine and started writing for other publications. It was a long time, however, before I had the nerve to give up my day job to be nothing but a freelance writer. I suspected it was possible to earn more money if I could spend all day ringing people up and pitching them ideas, but I also knew myself better than that.

Also, my wife kept mentioning that she was
pregnant.

A Very Short Chapter About Sex

I
would dearly love to assume that no one wants to read about my sex life, largely because I don't really want to write about it. Even a sexually confident, well-adjusted man might wish to draw a veil over this facet of his business, and I am neither of those things. And also, my wife forbade me to write about it, thank Christ.

But you can't write a book about being a husband and just skip sex, according to certain publishers I know. Even if sex is no longer marriage's unique selling point, it remains an important component of any union, and in that context it deserves at least cursory treatment in a brief chapter all its own. You may, if you wish, infer that the following highly informative sexual bullet points have been gleaned from decades of personal experience, but officially, I learned all this from watching television.

• There is an old and unattractive joke which holds that marriage isn't about having sex with the same person for the rest of your life, but about
not
having sex with the same person for the rest of your life. There is a depressing truth to this. While the actual amount of sex undertaken will vary from couple to couple, there is no getting round the fact that marriage is in part an epic exercise in sexual rejection. Being a good husband means hearing the word “no” (variants include “stop it,” “fuck off,” “leave me alone”) countless times over many years without going hot in the face with hurt and self-loathing, or at least not appearing to. It means gallantly turning down halfhearted offers of perfunctory, mechanical sex from someone too tired to contemplate anything else, and then finding a way, five minutes later, to say that you've changed your mind.

• Not having very much sex is not just normal, it's the norm. According to the National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles (Natsal), people between the ages of sixteen and forty-four have sex, on average, less than once a week. The rate has been falling steadily, even among cohabiting couples (a mean of four times a month, down from five a decade ago) for some time, with experts variously seeking to blame either the recession, higher stress levels, or the increasing use of smartphones and tablets in the bedroom. There is one upside: you don't have to have sex very often in order to be having more than most people.

• Believe it or not, if you're married you're almost certainly having more sex than you would be if you were single. If you were single, chances are you'd be having none.

• If wanting more sex than you're getting is a depressingly
common state of affairs, it is quite possibly preferable to having more sex than you want. There are points during a marriage where you may briefly experience the latter. Let's imagine for the sake of argument that your wife's desire for a second child has not been answered with the immediacy—indeed the surprise—that attended the conception of the first—and you find yourself obliged to investigate the mechanics of fertility with an eye toward improving your odds. Under these trying circumstances you will, as the preferred sperm supplier, find yourself more or less on call, required to perform often and at short notice, with little in the way of preliminary chat, beyond an admonition to get the job done before
Coronation Street
starts. You will learn what it's like, perhaps for the first and only time in your life, to have so much sex at your disposal that it becomes an inconvenience. You should probably find someone to complain about it to, in case you never get the chance again.

• No matter how much of a traditional British male you consider yourself to be, you must eventually learn to have sex while sober. If you don't, twenty years of marital bliss will kill you.

• The basic strategies for maintaining a healthy sex life are not, in themselves, sexy. It has a lot more to do with emptying the dishwasher without being asked than you think. I'm sorry about this.

• If you can't do it with the cat watching, you're probably not as interested as you think you are.

• Sex, for the most part, happens between couples who go to bed at the same time. It's fine to stay up later than your
partner, as long as you bear in mind that you are effectively choosing between sex and
Newsnight
. Waking up your partner for sex is famously not a good idea, although I've always imagined I would be totally accommodating about it if it ever happened to me.

• Strive to have sex regularly, even if you don't feel like it. This is not my personal tip—lots of relationship experts advocate it—although I'm pretty sure the words “even if you don't feel like it” have escaped my lips before. The trick is to forget all about passion, spontaneity, and experimentation. True carnal open-mindedness extends to embracing the idea that run-of-the-mill sex is still worth having.

• Don't just wait for the right moment to have sex. Schedule the right moment. Be punctual.

• Scheduled sex is no guarantee of sex, mind. When the appointed hour rolls round you may find your best-laid plans unceremoniously vetoed, or at least undermined. If your partner greets your prebooked advances with the words “Is it the first Friday of the month already?” you may safely assume she's attempting to sabotage the mood.

• According to some other experts the secret of long-term sexual attraction is a carefully maintained air of mystery: discretion regarding nudity, the banishment of domestic drudgery from the bedroom, and some boundaries regarding one another's bodily functions and ablutions. I'm not saying I agree or disagree. I'm just saying: good luck with that.

• Young men: your talent for being able to get sex over and done with really quickly is probably not much prized at the moment, but it will come in handy down the road, so don't
forget how. It may be hard to believe at your age, but one day you'll reach a stage in your relationship where “Honestly—you'll hardly know I was here” becomes a surprisingly successful chat-up line, especially if your spouse knows you can deliver on the
promise.

The Pros and Cons of Procreation

B
eing a father is a fairly standard adjunct to being a husband. It's not mandatory, of course, but it's considered churlish to refuse.

There are many different ways for a couple to broach the delicate conversation about starting a family, the most traditional of which, in my experience, begins with the woman saying, “I don't believe this—I'm fucking pregnant.”

That only happened the first time, to be fair. In later years my wife would simply emerge from the loo and throw the positive pregnancy test at me. As magical as each of these moments were, it is my suggestion that you and your partner give serious consideration to the idea of having children intentionally, with an eye on a fixed total, not least because they cost £67,000 each just to feed and clothe. The ideal number is a very personal choice. I have three, so I know that for me, three is too many.

When you first discover you're going to be a father, you will
be giddy, but also filled with a sense that something terrifying and life-changing is about to happen to you. The present becomes tinged with an ominous hue, like the glow of a warehouse fire on the horizon. After a few weeks you will be struck by the sudden realization that the terrifying thing isn't going to happen to you at all. It's going to happen to someone else, and you are going to watch. It's still going to be terrifying, but you should not say that out loud. In fact, the complete etiquette for male behavior in the first and second trimester can be boiled down to a list of things you shouldn't say to a pregnant woman. They include, but are by no means limited to, the following:

“I know what you mean—my back is killing me.”

“I think I'm losing weight. Do I look thin to you?”

“Thanks for driving. I'm absolutely hammered.”

“Let's face it—it's not an illness, is it?”

“A hundred quid for a car seat? Are they high?”

Above all else the partners of pregnant women are expected to be supportive, “supportive” being one of those terms that has caused a whole generation of men to nod while furrowing their brows slightly, in a feeble attempt to impersonate comprehension. Once upon a time “supportive” could be understood to refer to financial and/or material support, and when someone spoke of your need to be supportive, they were basically hinting that now would be a really bad time for you to get fired.

Allow me, with all the benefit of my experience, to translate the woolly imperative “Be supportive” into a more man-friendly command: in the context of pregnancy, it means “Suck it up.” Repress any instinct to express needs or to share counterproductive emotions, for the duration.

You don't want to spend a Saturday shopping for a crib fully six months in advance of having anything to put in it? Suck it up.

Don't feel like going along to prenatal class? Suck it up. I was the only man who turned up to my first one, and I was made to lie on a mat and exercise my vagina for half an hour. All the women there later told my wife that I was very brave and caring, which made me feel a bit bad about running off during the first tea break.

Don't fancy spending another night arguing with someone who suddenly thinks Howard is a good name for boy? Suck it up. But don't give in on Howard.

Suck up the anger, the tears, and the tiredness. Not yours—hers. You should have sucked up yours, like, yesterday.

You will probably still feel that you are not doing anything much, beyond exhibiting a certain resentful forbearance. You may never again in your life feel quite this useless. I suggest you find a displacement activity that gives you a sense of being proactively preparatory, like a father-in-waiting should be. Select something important you lack, and fix it. Take butchery lessons, or a first aid course. The choice is yours. Me, I learned to drive.

Actually I already knew how to drive, but as a UK resident, my American license had ceased to be valid. By the time my wife became pregnant with our first child, I hadn't driven a car for three years. The longer I went on not driving, the easier it became. My wife drove everywhere while I looked out the window, or dozed while drooling onto my seat belt. Secretly, I loved not driving.

But even I could not imagine strapping my first child into his car seat in the hospital car park, and then slipping into the passenger seat while my postpartum wife eased herself behind the wheel and checked her mirrors. I don't actually think it would have been allowed, but I wasn't stupid enough to ask anyone. I just went out and signed up for a load of driving lessons.

I can't say I enjoyed it much. One of the things that got me through driving lessons the first time round was the thought that once I'd passed, I would not have to repeat the ordeal under any circumstances. Never again would I have to spend four hours a week pretending to be in accord with the personal prejudices of a right-wing lunatic with a brake of his own. Never again would I have my parallel parking technique criticized by someone I have come to hate. Never again would I need to grip the wheel in the ten-and-two position. If you'd told me at seventeen that fourteen years later I'd be going through the whole terrible business again, but in a foreign country, on the wrong side of the road, and with an even fatter and more objectionable man in the passenger seat, I think I would have lost the strength to carry on. Certainly there were times during my second period of indoctrination that I thought about giving up. But I told myself, “This is the only thing you could think of doing to make it seem as if you were training up for parenthood. If you fail at this, you fail at everything.”

I persevered, and passed my test the first time. I kept the results to show my heavily pregnant wife that whatever she thought of my driving, the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency thought different. And none of my children would ever have to meet the me that didn't drive.

*   *   *

M
y wife's waters break one night in the middle of
EastEnders
. There follows some debate about whether we should watch the end before going to the maternity ward. This is partly an attempt by two very nervous people to appear calm and wise before the fact: there's no hurry; we're already packed; why not? But it's also a last-minute scrabble for purchase before we tumble over the lip of the unknown. Our lives are, by all accounts, about to be turned upside down. For all we know we may never have the luxury of caring about
EastEnders
again. And Peggy Mitchell's just moved back to the Vic and has no idea that Sharon and Grant are quits on account of Sharon's affair with Phil no longer being a secret. Life in the square is absolutely mental at the moment.

As soon as the credits roll we go downstairs and get in the car. My wife insists on taking a long detour to the nearest McDonald's drive-thru. We haven't had supper and she doesn't know when she'll eat next. It will be many hours before this seems like a stupid idea.

At the hospital we check in and my wife is examined. Everything appears to be normal, but labor proper is apparently some way off. We wait and wait. At some point a nurse suggests that I go home and get some sleep. This is put to me as the most practical and sensible thing to do in the circumstances. To me, it sounds insane, but I'm offered no other options and I have a strong desire to be counted among the rational. Eventually, I go. I'm convinced I won't be able to sleep, but I surprise myself.

It's still dark when the phone I have placed halfway up the
stairs to our attic bedroom—as far as its cord will reach—starts ringing. I have forgotten about this arrangement and trip over it on my way down. I end up on all fours on the landing feeling around for the loose receiver.

“Is that Mr. Dowling?” says a voice, in response to the crash and muffled swearing I have substituted for “hello.”

“Yes,” I say.

“Things are progressing nicely here,” she says, “so this would probably be a good time to maybe start thinking about making your way in.” I have not lived in England so long that I can instantly grasp the meaning of a sentence like this at six a.m. There is a brief silence while I parse.

“So you're saying I should come now.”

“That might be an idea,” she says.

My wife is not the same person I left behind the night before. Then she was apprehensive but pragmatic, largely worried that she might be lonely or bored. In the intervening hours she has been transformed by pain into a wild thing. Between contractions she tells me how she spent the night stalking the corridors, a V-shaped pillow over one shoulder, in search of a dark, quiet corner, like an animal looking for a place to die. At one point, she says, she shut herself in a supply cupboard for half an hour. The cheeseburger she ingested—however temporarily—has long since been relegated to the very least of her present regrets; top of the list is getting pregnant, followed by meeting me.

“Where have you been?” she says, eyes darting one way and another. She's outside the ward, leaning against a wall as another contraction begins.

“I'm sorry,” I say. “They only rang me twenty minutes ago.”

“Don't touch me,” she says. “Just take this stupid pillow.” I lift it gently off her back and shoulder it like a Samaritan, with all the depthless inadequacy the gesture implies.

In retrospect it is a mercy that I had no experience of childbirth, that there were no weekly TV programs detailing the quotidian heroics of midwives, the general uncomprehending idiocy of fathers-to-be or the sheer number of things that can go wrong during a routine delivery. I'm glad I had no idea that an epidural was not just tricky to administer but rather difficult to procure, like an item on a specials menu the waiter keeps trying to talk you out of.

I'm glad I had no notion then, as I do now, that being an effective liaison between a woman in labor and the maternity ward staff requires rather more insistence than mediation, or that “I'm sure someone will be back in a minute” is not a helpful thing to say. I feel fortunate that I only learned about the true role of the father in childbirth—to be perpetually in the way, until someone finally suggests you go down the hall and make everyone some tea—on the job, and knew nothing of the impotent, hand-wringing anguish beforehand.

The midwife is still desperate to get me involved. As labor enters its final stage she hands me a damp cloth.

“You dab Mum's forehead with that,” she says. “It will help keep her cool and calm.”

“Got it,” I say.

I go up to the other end of the bed, round the back of the heart monitor. I wait until another contraction begins, and then I lean forward and tentatively blot my wife's hairline with one corner of the cloth.

“Get that fucking thing away from my face,” she says.

“Okay,” I say.

I'm pleased that on that day I'd never before heard the term “placenta previa,” and that the whole event occurred before the age of the smartphone, when I could have found out what it meant in an instant. I was in the lucky position of being able to assume that nothing out of the ordinary was occurring, and that there was always that much blood left over at the end. I'm pleased that the nature of the complication was never fully explained to me, so that by the time I understood what had almost happened, the danger had already passed.

Thanks to my ignorance I could, in all honesty, simply savor the profound emotional head butt of childbirth, directing all my attention to my exhausted, parchment-pale wife and the little purple creature in the plexiglass box. I could just stand there and cry, not out of fear, but with the simple relief of a man who has been allowed to take a short break from being overwhelmed.

It is well into the afternoon when the whole business is finished. While my wife's being topped up with blood products, I am dispatched home again to spread the news: it's a boy.

When I return to the hospital a few hours later I find my wife sitting cross-legged in the middle of her bed, eating an apple and staring down at the sleeping infant lying on the mattress in front of her.

I hang back for a few seconds without making my presence known. It is a scene that remains burned into my memory, indelible as a photograph, and the first instance of my feeling that
peculiar sense of left-outness that comes with being a father. My wife is staring down at our son with the boundless but unremarkable fascination one reserves for parts of oneself long unseen: a broken foot finally freed after months in a cast. There was nothing I had witnessed about pregnancy or childbirth that made me feel I was somehow missing out—what I saw, you can keep—but this, I see in a glimpse, is the beginning of an intimacy I will never have with anyone or anything. Perhaps, as a man, I'm even a little frightened by it. It's not remotely mystical, but undeniably physical and matter-of-fact. I won't say visceral; I stopped using the word “visceral” for a long time after that day.

*   *   *

I
n the first weeks of fatherhood my collective responsibilities fail to coalesce into anything I could describe as a role. It is, for the most part, donkey work: I clean, I run errands, I change the odd nappy.

When it comes to parenting I'm basically an understudy, ready to step in and distract the baby for short periods so my wife can use the phone. The child requires more or less the same things from his mother as his father; it's just that he prefers all of them to come from his mother: feeding, dressing, reading, eye contact.

As he develops the rudiments of coordination, the boy starts to see me largely as an object for experimental violence. He sticks his fingers in my eyes and tries to push small objects up my nose. He sinks his fingernails into my throat while I am carrying him up the stairs. I pretend not to mind. If it can be
considered in any way useful, I am happy to lie on the floor alongside an infant whose afternoon schedule is entirely taken up with trying to pull my lips off.