Potter Street

He can go out when the kids are asleep.

They’re still young enough to be put to bed before ten. That’ll change in a few years, and then he doesn’t know what he’ll do. He loves his kids, but he thinks about what having kids meant a hundred years ago. When there were nannies and people went on honeymoons for months on end, like in The Sound of Music. He thinks about boarding school and wonders to himself if he has the guts to send his kids to one. Not because he’d miss them, although he might, but because of the judgment he’d face from everyone around him. There were rich people on this island, but not the kind of rich people who send their children away so they can keep on enjoying their lives. The first time he got a babysitter and stayed out all night, his husband told him that he overheard someone at the gym talking about the new gay couple in town, and how their kids are just “ornaments.”

After that, he didn’t leave the house for three days straight. He wasn’t going to have people saying he was a bad father, even if adopting the kids wasn’t his idea. Tony asked him if they could adopt after yet another escape from rehab. By then, they had already been married for five years, and together for seven. Every time he intentionally derailed his life, Tony was there with a suggestion straight out of the 1950’s. When he cheated, Tony cried and then said they should move in together. When he overdosed the first time, Tony berated him and then proposed. His drinking got out of hand a month before the wedding, so Tony invited another sixty people at the last minute and turned the bar from closed to open. He used to joke that if Tony had been a woman, he would have been the kind that forgets to take their birth control when they feel their man losing interest. The first time he mentioned the comparison, Tony told him that women don’t really do that, and he shouldn’t say something so sexist when he has a daughter of his own. The fact is, he knew those kinds of women existed, because his mother had been one of them--and proud of it. When his father said he was leaving her for another woman, his mother begged for one last goodbye, and that’s how he was conceived. He knew that people often did things that were offensively predictable. He knew that he, in many ways, was disappointing not in a shocking way, but in a way that made perfect sense. Yet Tony always acted surprised when he found out about another affair or discovered him passed out drunk in the hot tub. His husband never got used to the letdowns. That’s what happens when you’ve been brought up safe and protected and supported. Tony had every resource in the world to be successful, but, in many ways, he was woefully unprepared to meet anyone who wasn’t exactly like him.

He checks the clock. The kids are upstairs watching a movie they shouldn’t be watching. It’s not graphic or too mature, but it’s a movie they’ve seen a thousand times, and Tony wants to vary their cultural intake. He also wants to limit screen time, but these are the edicts he lays down right before he leaves for another two-week work trip. He’s not the one who has to stay and implement all the rules. Upstairs, the kids are singing along with a cartoon bear. He hopes it’ll leave them more tired than wired, but that might be wishful thinking. He cleans the kitchen counter for the third time in twenty minutes. He can feel his anxiety ramping up. Part of him has always believed that he could quit everything except for going out. It’s true that once you’re out, you’re exposed to every other temptation imaginable, but those aren’t the reason he likes going out. He was born needing to feel alive at every moment, and it’s impossible to feel alive in a nice house in the suburbs knowing that a few miles away there are bars with bad cover bands playing songs from the 90’s while girls in light jeans and white tube tops move in herds around the dance floor.

He wasn’t attracted to the girls, obviously, but being around young people made him feel like he was closer to twenty than forty. It was strange how that only worked for other people in their twenties. Being around his children didn’t make him feel young. It made him feel like a rocking chair. There was a back-and-forth sensation to parenting that made him nauseous. Everyday when he’d pack his son’s lunch for school, he’d try to tally up how many more lunches before high school graduation. When he’d help his daughter change into her pajamas at night, he’d try to remember the name of every guy who ever blew smoke rings in his mouth in a VIP room. Refusing to wipe down the counter one more time, he poured himself a glass of wine and decided bedtime would have to be early tonight. He’d tell the kids it was because they were going on an adventure tomorrow, and they needed to be up before nine. He’d have to think up an adventure while he was dancing to “What’s My Age Again?” later, and there was a slim chance he wouldn’t be too hungover to wake up before the kids did, but every parent should only be expected to keep half their promises. More than that, and nobody would ever have children.

Tony texted him to ask how everything was going at home. He didn’t really care about the squabbles the kids had over who wasn’t supposed to be in the other’s room or that their daughter was now only eating red food and nothing else. He just wanted to be told that everything was fine, and he needed to know that the man he married was still lucid enough to text him back. If he was left on read more than three times, he’d have to come home, and Tony didn’t want that.

Nobody wanted that.

Despite Tony being the more responsible parent, he was not the favorite. The kids treated him like a social worker who appeared every so often to make sure they were attending school and taking baths. He may have come from privilege, but Tony was not raised to believe that a father needed to exhibit any outward emotion when it came to his children. Nobody ever asked what would happen if both parents were fathers. Luckily, while Tony couldn’t muster up any enthusiasm for parenting, the mess that he wed could at least fake it, and the kids weren’t old enough to spot the forgery. They hated when he left the house for the night, even if their favorite babysitter was available to watch them. His daughter would cling to his waist and beg him to stay home. He’d remind her that she was going to sleep anyway, so what difference did it make who was downstairs in the living room watching television?

He knew that trying to use logic on a child was pointless, but what other tool did he have at his disposal? Eventually, he would simply bribe her with the promise of a new toy or a new dress or anything she wanted as long as she stopped crying and went to sleep. On the way out of the house, he’d pull up Amazon on his phone and move something from a wishlist labeled “I’m a Bad Father” to his shopping cart, and then hit “Buy Now.”

As soon as he was on the road with the windows down, he felt as though he’d escaped from yet another rehab, or somewhere even worse. The town wasn’t exactly Vegas, but it had enough beer and cocaine to provide the facsimile of a decent Saturday night. Not being a major city, however, the bars all closed at one, and it made him yearn for Manhattan, where he’d often be the last one on the dance floor knowing that when he walked outside, it would be close to dawn.

Here, he’d find himself walking up to people half his age on the way to a pizza place near the bars that was open until two. He’d approach like a dealer trying to sell something, and then nip at their sides like a puppy.

“Hey,” he’d say, trying to keep the shake out of his voice, “Where are you guys going after this? Anything going on later? Just trying to find some fun, you know?”

If anyone offered up anything, any kind of house party or basement vaping session, he’d acquiesce. It was enough to simply stay out one or two hours later.

It was enough to be somewhere other than home.