They'll Never Let A Mutant Man Like Me Breastfeed A Child!
I dreamed that I had four nipples in a neat, evenly-spaced row across my chest, all of them leaking a whitish liquid. I was lactating, I realized. At first I was horrified - all my clothes would be ruined! Would I have to wear a bra? Then I realized that it was happening so that I could feed my son, and that made me happier, until I thought about it a bit more. No one would accept a breastfeeding man, I thought. I would have to use Jo's breast pump to express the milk. The whole thing seemed very weird, but I decided I had to accept it. Why four? I wondered.
Later on, I brought home a pet lizard. He was a cute little guy, like a monitor lizard, but with sleeker lines. I could hold him in one hand, although he was muscular and he did struggle. He was a purplish-green, like the illustrations of dinosaurs in my old, out-of-date hardback books from childhood.
As time passed (quite a short amount of time; only enough for the house to fill up with adults and children for a child's birthday party) he grew bigger. He began to worry me. He was nearly three feet long from snout to tail, and very strong. I was bringing him from the bedroom to the kitchen, trying to think what to feed him, when he bit my hand, sawing into it with gusto. It didn't hurt, and I was able to prise open his jaws, but he'd wounded me deeply - I could see pale layers of flesh beneath folds of skin. I ran my hand under water and let the lizard go.
No sooner had I done this than I regretted it; he was hungry, and the house was full of kids. I chased after him, but he had disappeared into a network of back passages and storage rooms, and I had to go back to tend to my hand. When I finally found him, by following the screams of scared kids, he was in the garage, and was almost ten feet tall, with the shape and muscle of a Jurassic nightmare, a young Allosaurus. He seemed better-natured, though. I was afraid that, being a lizard, he would be incapable of sentimental attachment, but he seemed to recognize me, and didn't attack me. He also hadn't eaten any of the children. He just seemed to want OUT. It was hard to tell if a good thing or a bad thing had been introduced to the world, and I didn't know what would happen to him, but I didn't want to stand in the way of such a clear destiny, and I opened the door for him. He ducked his head, flexed his legs, and he was OUT.
Yesterday Jo's mother watched Joshua while Jo and I went out to dinner for the first time in a couple of months. We started off the meal sad and grumpy and ended it happy and smiling and enthusiastic and connected. It wasn't even the alcohol - she had one glass of rose wine, and I had an Irish coffee. It was just the time alone together, bitching about family, talking about what we want in our future, giving each other compliments. "Oh yeah, we still have a relationship that is separate to the baby!" This was a very good thing.