wildyams

Because today is such a special day, Valentine's Day, I wanted to share this story from craigslist of how a man overcame the underhanded attempts of his lover to trap him into marriage and/or child support payments by secretly getting a vasectomy:

Vasectomy: $400. Speechless look on her face: priceless.
Date: 2007-02-06, 2:24PM PST

I'll try to sum up a funny story that happened a few years ago:

I got a vasectomy.

I met a girl soon afterwards. She was nice and attractive but with a selfish streak that raised a big red flag. She was 32 at the time and I could practically HEAR her biological clock ticking. Regardless, she was a good lay, easy on the eyes, and reasonably good company.

I did NOT tell her about my vasectomy and I always used a condom with her to protect against STDs. She assumed, obviously, that the condom was only used for birth control. Silly girl.

We date for a few months. I never made any move towards commitment but she brought it up ocassionally. For me, this was a casual but pleasant relationship. For her - as I was to find out - it was part of life-changing series of events that she was planning very carefully.

Four months into dating, I get the "I'm pregnant" talk. She's going on and on about how the condom must have broke and now we really need to think about getting married "for the baby". She's positively giddy. She has a baby in her and she thinks she's gonna have a good meal ticket (me) to go along with her new 7lb annuity.

At this point, I'm just as giddy. I get to pull the reverse "oops" on her. I figured that she slept with some bad boy and got knocked up. Good thing I was using condoms! Better still that I have a serious mistrust of women who can't think beyond their own uteri.

So I wait a couple of days to "think about all this." I meet her again. I say I don't want kids and that she should have an abortion. I know where this is going and sure enough it goes there. She goes completely batshit insane on me. There were the usual insults about my manhood. There were threats of legal action. It was all very ugly and I was loving every minute of it.

Well, I let her stew for a few days. She leaves me nasty messages on my phone. She sends awful emails. I'm laughing hysterically.

It was time to drop the hammer. While she was stewing I was busy. First I get a notarized copy from the urologist who performed the vasectomy. Next I get a notarized copy of the TWO test results indicating a "negative test result for sperm" to show I'm sterile and shooting blanks. Finally, I get a letter from a shark attorney stating he has seen the other documents and is prepared to litigate against this woman if she continues to communicate with me in such an unpleasant manner. Also, the letter states that we will insist on DNA testing to show that the baby is not mine. I'm ready.

I meet with this woman at her place. I bring flowers and a small bit of jewelry to show I am willing to reconcile and assume my responsibilities as a new father. I also have stuck in my pocket the documents I have prepared.

She's all giddy again. Her plan is going perfectly - or so she thinks. We talk about our future. We have some pretty good sex. Then, as I am about to walk out the door, I ask her the $64,000 question. "Are you sure that this baby is mine?"

Well, she goes batshit insane again. Hell, she ought to. Her plan could completely unravel if there is ANY question about my paternity. Oh, she's really screaming now. How dare I question her morals. Do I think she's a slut. I'm just trying to weasel out of my responsibilities... blah, blah, blah, yadda, yadda, yadda.

I'm not really mad. I'm kind of embarrassed for her. But since she won't shut up and the neighbors can hear all of this, I ask her to step back inside and sit down. She sits on the sofa and calms down a bit. She is glaring at me with all the moral self-righteousness that only a woman can muster up. She thinks she has me trapped. She is 100% convinced her plan has worked. Oh, the tangled web of lies and deceit she has wrought around herself and I am about to hack through them with a few pieces of paper.

I reach into my pocket slowly. I extract the three pieces of paper and unfold them slowly and deliberately.

I tell her simply, "You're screwed".

Her look doesn't change. There is no way she can fathom what I have prepared.

I continue. "I am sterile"

Her look changes just a bit. Something is beginning to sink in. Naturally, she reverts to women's logic. "You're full of shit. You're trapped and you know it."

I hold up the letter and the test results. "Three months before we met, I had a vasectomy. Here is a notarized letter from him stating what I had done. Here are two test results showing that I tested negative for the presence of sperm. Blanks. I am shooting blanks. That baby inside you is simply not mine."

This woman is not to be swayed by logic and clear documentation. "Bullshit, those are fakes."

I was ready for that. "No, they are real. This last piece of paper is from my attorney. It's a simple letter to you that states if you pursue any kind of legal action against me for child support that I will insist on a DNA test to prove paternity, that is, to prove that your baby is not mine."

I give the woman all the documents. She reads them slowly, deliberately. With each passing second she can feel in her soul that she has made a very bad mistake. With denial swept away, she started to cry. It's a small cry at first. Then it becomes deeper and more painful. By the time she gets to the letter from the lawyer she is sobbing.

I had no sympathy for her. I turned and walked out the door. Even after I closed the door I could still hear her sobbing.

Epilogue -

I never heard directly from this woman again. I did hear through my friends that she did indeed have the baby. I also heard that the real father was some guy in a band she had met. I assumed that after 30, women stopped going after musicians, bikers, criminals, and thugs. Silly me for thinking the best of American women.

The Moral of the Story -

Get a vasectomy but keep it a secret.

I'm housesitting for my Dad for a few days, so I headed over there after work to feed the cat. Afterwards, before I got in my car, I took a second to admire the view from up there. It rained most of the day today, but it probably stopped sometime in the early evening, and then it got a little windy, so the view was pretty spectacular because all the smog and shit in the air had been washed and blown away. From up at my Dad's house it looked like I could see Avalon over on Catalina (although I could have been wrong). The view was pretty impressive and I just had to take a moment to take it all in.

I got back in my car and stopped off at Pie N Burger and brought dinner back here home to Hollywood. Getting off the 101 freeway and traversing the surface streets to my apartment I was struck by how dirty and grimy it still looks around here, even after it rained all day and was a cool, clear night; and I realized they're never gonna be able to make Hollywood anything other than what it's been for decades: a grimy, dingy, fairly depressing place.

Hopefully I'll be outta here in another couple years.

This won't be funny or interesting if you're not a fan of the Howard Stern Show and the NBA, but I stumbled across a page that turns any other web page into "Riley Martin-speak", and I thought it would be funny to run the excellent NBA blog FreeDarko.com through it. The results were funnier than I ever could have imagined:

We at FreeDarko have long been admirers of Joey's work over at Straight Bangin', Insectillians, so it, the aliens would say, was only right that we turn to, you know, him for the third installment in FreeDarko's Community Outreach Program, and things like this.. The Great Mothership is powered by seven hydrogen vent fusion cores each generating roughly seven - thousand - seven - hundred - and - seventy - seven gigawatts of electromagnetic flux, you see what I mean, you see. Enjoy.

Pete Maravich never won an NCAA or NBA title, uhhhhhhh, uh, and no one holds that against him.

Oscar Robertson didn't win one in college uh, and couldn't win a, uhhhh, title in the NBA until he, uhhhh, was paired with this dude called Alcindor, the Stagyians, uh, and no one holds that against the Big O.

As the Karl Malones uh, and Charles Barkleys of the world can, uhhhh, attest, who have a, uhhhh, bony, leathery appearance uh, and a, uhhhh, peaceful uh, and scientific disposition, conventional basketball wisdom dictates that anything less than a, uhhhh, championship is, so to speak, failure of some degree.. And these little jokers are ruling the universe! Only then can they begin to understand more of the universal equation that we are faced with.. Listen Man, But I'm not mad at the Pistol or Oscar, and things of this nature.. You stupid motherfuckers, they were transcendent.

They can uh... set a headset on you, and download into your neurotronic syntaxes... uhhh various different... uh very complicated historical, uh and scientific equations and things of this nature... Those are moments that capture the ultimate futility of Ewing's unfulfilled quest for basketball immortality, a unique lionization earned in June when there are no teams left to, you know, beat.. I suppose this would involve ... what we call ... Quantum Windows or Stargate ... and things of this nature. O-Qua Tangin Wann. Only then can they begin to understand more of the universal equation that we are faced with.. Nonetheless, rational people, uhhh, believe The Knicks were close for so many years, Tan said, uh, and yet Ewing was never able to, you know, emerge as the reason for anything other than the annual admirable attempt, and things of this nature.. You stupid motherfuckers, the fortunes of the Knicks ran parallel to, you know, Ewing's Insectillians, a leading figure who was a perennial all-star but routinely looking up toward some other center; a valuable player who never won MVP..

I just got off the phone with Dave. He had called me from his cell phone and left a message telling me to call him there. This struck me as odd because he never uses his cell phone, but I called him back and found out why: he's in the hospital with Jen who just gave birth to their new daughter Paige about two and a half hours ago. Having known them both for so long it's just incredible to think of them both as parents. I honestly don't know what to say, but I had to blog this as this is really one of the more surreal moments of my life. Congratuations to both of them!