The Man's Guide to Not Being Pregnant
This isn't a guide for a man, looking to find himself in a situation in which he, nor his partner, more specifically, are pregnant.
This is a guide for a man who finds himself in the specific situation in which he is not pregnant, but his partner just happens to be in that very state.
Month 1 - The Beginning
So your partner comes to you and tells you the big news! You're pregnant! Or, rather, you're not, but she is.
Or maybe she doesn't come to tell you, but she plunks down at the table and says, in an even tone, that maybe you should take a trip down to the pharmacy, pick up a few home pregnancy tests. So you head in. Pick up the tests. She disappears. Reappears. You or she might question whether or not she held it straight enough to get a proper reading. So you grab another one. She disappears. Reappears. Looks suspiciously like the first one. Depending on your level of surprise at the first mention of the words "pregnancy test," this may go on for some time, over a day or two, as you two try all combination of hours of the day to see if it wasn't just a high level of a certain hormone after a certain kind of sandwich or something.
This will possibly the first occasion on which you refer to the event that's going to take up the next nine months of your lives (and the rest, following that), as something that is either being done directly by you and your partner or happening to you and your partner, jointly. In all honesty, the vast bulk of what will happen over the next nine months will happen to your partner, and not you. In fact, you could remain nearly exactly the same as you have to this point in your life; hitting the pub, skydiving, kayaking down rapids, doing illicit drugs, and pulling up stakes and following the Grateful Dead across the States (well, barring the obvious problem with that one). You could, in theory. In practice, you might end up dead, the victim of a wholly defensible homicide at the hands of your beloved. But you'd still have been able to carry on as you were, at the expense of no one but your own self.
So when I say "you two try all combinations," or someone exclaims how great it is that "you're [collective you] pregnant! Great!" it's all very nice and inclusive, but not entirely accurate. You, my friend, are the third wheel, nearly literally, where two will get on just fine. You're going to spend the next nine months bewildered, confused, rushed off your feet, and, if you think ahead to what the end of those nine months entails, scared out of your mind.
I can't promise I'm going to help you. In fact, I'm betting I won't, much. This is just meant as a guide, and gentle guide, hopefully, to what the next nine months mean to you, and the woman to whom you're closest, and who just so happens to be the one who's actually pregnant.
disclaimer:
This is a ways off, but you might want to mark November 11th on your calendar. At 2 p.m. In Arlington, Massachusetts, come on down to the Regent Theater for a little more Further Fenway Fiction action.
Where you can hear the story of the curious case of Doctor Belly and Mister Itcher.
Actually, now that I think of it, it's not too far off at all. It's just that our lives will probably change just a tiny little bit between now and then.
So anyway, come on down. See a completely different founder of Sane Magazine than you would have seen at the Waltham Back Pages Books reading.
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