“Don’t you mean a man and his gun? A baby can’t really devastate a small country,” Jim tells him.
“Have you ever been in a room with a baby who is projectile vomiting, screaming his fool head off, and diarrhea is exploding out of his ass so much you think he has a fire hose shoved up there spraying shit instead of water? Babies are the Napalm of western civilization!”
My dad pulls a stop watch out of the pocket of his pants holds it in front of him with his thumb hovering over the start button.
“ON YOUR MARK!” he shouts.
“Wait! What the fuck are we doing?” I ask frantically, putting the baby up on my shoulder as I pat its back.
“You are changing diapers, limp dicks! GET SET!”
Carter gets into ready position, crouching low to the ground, his doll shoved into the back of his t-shirt with the head sticking out of the top and its eyes staring right at me.
“Son of a bitch! Where are the diapers?!” Jim shouts, tucking the doll under one arm like a football.
“This is your house, asshole! Shouldn’t you know that?” I ask him, sticking the doll’s feet down the front of my pants so its limp body falls forward and it’s head is facing my crotch.
“Molly doesn’t wear diapers anymore! We don’t have any fucking diapers!” he shouts back at me.
“This is real life, soldiers! Sometimes you don’t know where diapers and wipes are and you have to make do, especially if you’re in the middle of the desert and your baby just shit its brains out!
“When the fuck would that ever happen?” I ask in confusion.
GO!” he shouts, clicking the stop watch.
Carter takes off like a bat out of hell and runs to the front door, throwing it open and racing outside. He has the right idea - he’s getting the fuck out of dodge.
Jim and I look at each other in confusion and both take off at the same time, slamming into one another, forcing Jim’s doll out of his arms. It lands on the floor on its head and we both pause and look over at my dad.
He just stands there shaking his head in disappointment.
Jim scoops up the doll and clutches it to his chest, giving me the finger before taking off up the stairs.
My dad turns the stop watch around so I can see, and I realize I’ve wasted a shit ton of time while Jim has probably already found a diaper and Carter is most likely already three miles down the road and has chucked his doll into a ditch somewhere.
I turn and run into the kitchen, the doll’s head bobbing up and down and smacking into my dick. If this wasn’t a serious situation, I would be laughing my ass off right now.
Oh fuck it.
I stop when I reach the kitchen and lift the doll’s head up by its hair. “Was that good for you, baby? You need to work on your technique. It’s never hot to just smack your face into a guy’s junk,” I say with a laugh.
I hear a throat clear and turn around to see my dad standing in the kitchen doorway with his hands on his hips, shaking his head at me.
Twenty minutes later, Jim and I are standing in the living room in front of the couch, holding our dolls. Mine has half of its hair singed off (don’t ask), a missing arm with a screwdriver shoved into its body for a fake arm (seriously, don’t ask), and a place mat tied around its ass for a diaper.
Jim’s doll doesn’t look any better. He’s holding the body in one hand and the head in the other, with one of its legs tucked under his arm. It used to have a pink pair of footy pajamas on, but now it’s just wearing a pair of Jim’s tighty whities, held in place with a couple of Liz’s giant hair clips.
My dad notes our times on a pad of paper sitting on the coffee table and hits the stop button.
“This is just a sad, sad display of skills gentlemen,” he complains.
“Wait, where’s Carter? You can’t stop the time yet, that asshole hasn’t even made it back from wherever the hell he went,” Jim complains.
“Carter has been back here for ten minutes. He’s in the bathroom fixing his baby’s hair that got a little windblown outside.”
At that moment, we hear the toilet flush and the bathroom door open and Carter walks out into the living room holding his baby on his hip. Her hair is in two French braids, she’s wearing a different outfit than the one she came in, and has a diaper perfectly attached to her ass.
“What. The. Fuck?” I ask him as he walks over to stand in between Jim and I, looking at each of our babies in horror.
He quickly covers his doll’s ear with one hand and presses her other ear against his chest.
“Drew! Language!” he scolds in a loud whisper.
“Oh you have got to be fucking kidding me. He totally cheated! You called your wife, didn’t you? Did Claire meet you outside or something?” I complain.
“Of course not. I am just better equipped to deal with a baby, obviously,” he replies, bouncing gently and patting the doll’s back.
“Alright, since you two obviously failed that test, you need a remedial course,” my dad says to Jim and me. “Carter, I’m going to need your help.”
~
“No, no, no. You’re doing it all wrong. You need to support his head more. My God, it’s like you’ve never had kids before,” Carter scolds as he repositions my hands and angles the bottle up higher.
“This is not the key to fixing my marriage OR my sex life. You guys all realize this, right?”
My dad walks over to check on things and smacks me upside the head.
“Wrong! A happy wife is a happy life. You learn how to do your share around the house and you will get laid regularly. Just ask your mother.”
I groan and dry heave, the bottle slipping out and milk squirting all over the front of me. “Dad, gross. Do NOT talk about you and Mom. Ever.”
Carter grabs my hands and puts the bottle back where it was.
“You need to rock and bounce a little. It helps them digest the milk easier so they don’t have as much gas. And make sure they don’t keep sucking after the milk is gone. They’ll just be getting air then, and it will cause a tummy ache,” Carter says, putting his arm around my shoulder and forcing me to sway slowly with him on the couch.
“Your mother has no complaints in the bedroom OR around the house. I keep her very sexually satisfied, and I always got up with you in the middle of the night,” my dad says while I grimace at his words.
“Wait, are you seriously trying to tell me that if I just get up with Billy in the middle of the night, everything will be restored to its rightful order?” I question.
“You stopped swaying, concentrate and keep swaying or the baby will cry. You don’t want the baby to cry if you’re doing a nighttime feeding or the whole house will wake up,” Carter reminds me, pushing against me again to get me to sway.
“I’m saying that if you put yourself in your wife’s shoes once in a while, it will be easy to see what she needs. She needs a night of sleep, she needs help around the house, she needs your love and support, and the proof that you WANT to help her with these things. A wife that isn’t getting what she needs is never going to want to give you what YOU need,” Dad tells me.
“I need kinky sex,” I tell him plainly.
“Then rock that baby like you mean it!” he yells at me.
And that’s how Liz found us fifteen minutes later when she came home early from her parent’s house. Carter and I swaying back and forth on the couch with Jim spread out on my lap, drinking out of the bottle I was feeding him.
Chapter 26 – The Newlywed Game
Drew and Jackson are up in our bedroom, and I can hear their laughter from the living room where I pace anxiously for everyone to arrive. Jackson had complimented Drew on his shirt for the night: a picture of that Monopoly guy holding a pile of money in his arms that says, “I like big bucks and I cannot lie.” Drew had taken him upstairs to show him the rest of his shirt collection.