Before Juniper was born, I would occasionally get really wasted and watch Cine de las estrellas on Telefutura for hours at night. I don't know any Spanish though. One night I watched the entire Swayze/Demi/Goldberg vehicle Ghost dubbed in Spanish. Those two kids loved each other so darn much!

It dawned on me that night that it was my singular purpose in life to redub the movie Ghost, in English, leaving the Demi Moore lines intact but replacing everything Patrick Swayze says with lines from his other movies, particularly Road House, Red Dawn, To Wong Fu, and Dirty Dancing. I also wanted to replace everything Whoopi Goldberg says with Tone Loc's voice, both lyrics from his albums Loc'ed After Dark and Cool Hand Loc and his lines from the animated classic Bebe's Kids. In my version, Swayze and Demi were gay lovers renovating a Chelsea loft together before being torn apart by death and brought back together through a sex-obsessed lesbian psychic from da hood. I spent many awesome hours watching Road House and Red Dawn assembling Swayze quotes and listening to Tone Loc, and then Juniper came along and I got distracted from my artistic vision.

The centerpiece of my version of Ghost was replacing "Unchained Melody" with a song that I felt better matched the mood of the pottery love scene. I have now uploaded my version to Youtube. You should consider these four minutes of heaven as a taste of what might have been:




Love, by Swayze. Music, by Journey. Please let me know what you think.

. . .but how can I do that when my gutter collects things like the tip of an enormous black dildo?

My wonderful and well-meaning sister bought Juniper this animatronic frog toddler named "Baby Tad." It's part of that unholy bastard progeny of Teddy Ruxpin and a Speak-n-Spell, you know, computerized toys that are supposed to be both educational and cuddly. Juniper, of course, loves it. It has become clear that Juniper needs an aunt like my sister, capable of softening the effects of a draconian upbringing by parents who dress her like a Bavarian Disco Baby, refuse to let her watch normal television and only buy her wooden toys from the Jura region of eastern France.

Tad always manages to find his way into the bedroom during the evening routine, broadcasting tinny microchip versions of Robert Schumann's Traumerei and Liszt's Liebestraum, signaling the onset of sleep and building all those classical music braincells, mais naturellement. He is also programmed to talk in a voice that a creepy 40-year-old white woman would use to talk to her cat, which is odd because according to his tag, Tad is a native of Bangladesh. Tad says things like, "Peekaboo, I see you!," "I wuv you!" and "Let's Snuggle!"

After we've put Juniper down for the night (she is totally sleeping rock solid for 10.5/11 hours now, by the way), Tad gets abandoned on the floor or on our bed. When Wood and I go to bed at around midnight, inevitably one of us steps on Baby Tad, starting a cycle of flashing lights or an annoying rendition of Hickory Dickory Dock. "Get that asshole Tad out of here!" I said the first time that happened. We have since taken to calling him That Asshole Tad all the time.

Last night, in a post-coital moment of clarity, I realized that Tad had been in the bed with us for the entire act. Get that asshole Tad out of the bed! I said and tossed him across the room. Wood put her arm around me, put one leg between both of mine, and I felt her hot breath on the back of my neck.

Then, in a pitch-perfect imitation of that asshole Tad she said, "Let's snuggle!"

Wood was talking today about how it's been almost two years since Juniper was conceived. "It's funny," she said. "From the moment your sperm penetrated my egg, my body has nourished her; first for ten months inside me, and then six months outside me where she ate nothing but what my body made for her. And only now, almost two years later, she's almost ready to live completely independent of me."

"Does that make you sad?" I asked.

"A little," she said. See, Juniper looks like she's starting to wean herself. You can see it in how much she's starting to eat at mealtimes and how little she eats now at night, but the biggest evidence can be seen in Wood's boobs. Goddamn it they're getting smaller. So trust me, any sadness is fully mutual. I wish Juniper would have consulted me before making such a big life decision.

I was pleasantly surprised when pregnancy boobs came to our house. I have never really been a boob man, but I am still a man. Breastfeeding boobs were even more welcome than pregnancy boobs, despite occasional offensive and violent usage. But now weaning boobs are here, and even they're packing their bags.

And I'm going to miss them all so damn much.


We had some good times, me and them boobs. [cue music---a Coldplayesque piano overture; cue slideshow].

There we are back in June, 2004, getting ready to go to some summer weddings, and I'm helping Wood shop for dresses. She tries on a couple with incredibly low cleavage. Whoa, mama.

[the music soars, typical montage sequence soundtrack, like a bad Green Day ballad]

There we are at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk in October. Bikini top, sexy little pregnant belly. Yum.

[The music slows, bass-heavy, with a guitar on the waa waa pedal]

Better get the kids out of the room, folks. Yeah. Oh yeah. Uh-huh. Good times, great times.

[The music softens, sentimental now, like the music in a commercial for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints]

There they are breastfeeding Juniper for the first time. There we all are on the plane.

[Fin]

Ladies and Gentlemen, as you know, I am not one to get all sentimental, but I am really going to miss these boobs. I plead with Wood, "But Juniper just learned to call them by name!" (instead of calling Wood boobahs now, she will rest her head on her chest, look into her eyes and say, 'booboobs'). "That's part of the reason we need to wean," she replies. "Do you really want your daughter, when we're out in public, reaching for my tits and saying 'booboobs! booboobs!'?

Then I get really desperate: "But Wood, she's only known you with big ones. Aren't you afraid that it would be like false advertising to let them get back to normal, that she wouldn't love you the same if they shrink?"

"I'm sure we'll both survive."

So it looks like for me and the gigantoboobs, our days together are numbered. [cue music, a wistful acoustic number, cue long slow motion video of Wood's torso running through a field of wheat] Adieu, adieu sweet boobs! Salaam! Zai jian! With any luck (in about two years) we'll be seeing you again. I'll survive on the memories, boobs, particularly of that one night, when. . .

[Wood abruptly shuts the curtain]

When we arrived at our little cabin in the woods, we found a leather-bound journal on the table that had notes and anecdotes left by previous guests who’d stayed in Cabin 7. Wood and I read over the book together while Juniper played with her box of toys on the floor. Soon we were wondering if our little cabin in the woods wasn’t some kind of stop on an international sex tour. I felt like we were reading a backwoods edition of Penthouse Forum. Nearly every entry seemed to have some reference or allusion to the sex that was had on (or around) the bed we were going to be sleeping in:

"This was my partner’s 38th birthday. We loved hiking and climbing all around the river. We stayed for two days and discovered a recipe for success in the cabin:

1st step: Use the Jacuzzi tub.

2nd: Start the fire

3rd: Fall into bed and fall in love with that person in your life all over again."

----Glenn & David, San Francisco (September 12, 2005)

"Make sure you close the curtains! The folks in the neighboring cabin put on quite a show, but it put my fiancée and I in the mood to put on private a show of our own!"

----Ann & Jason, Nottingham, England, October 4, 2005

"We were looking for a few days respite from work and children to talk and plan and just be together, if you know what we mean (wink, wink). And we found it here in Cabin #7! The cabin was so cozy and romantic with the fire and the snow outside. It was perfect!"

----Bob & Lillie, Chico, California, October 22-24, 2005

The fire was just what we needed to rekindle our romance. We look forward to visiting again!

----Jennifer & Don, Davis, California, November 28, 2005

Then, in VERY feminine handwriting:

We were very sad to see it snowless! It has rained every day of our visit! Fortunately we love spending our time together and this gave us a much-needed getaway. Just us, no kids, no phone, no T.V. We actually talked to each other, among other things ;)

----Patty and John, Carmichael, California (Friday, Dec. 30th)

That last one was the day before we checked in. She actually drew the winking emoticon. We get it Patty, you and John did it in the cabin the day before we got there. Whoop-dee-doo. Still, there was something in the air up there. Even the snowmen were siring offspring:


When it came time to leave our message in the book, rather than pussyfooting around like everyone else, we crafted our entry completely honestly as follows:

Great cabin for sex! We enjoyed ourselves sexually a great deal in this cabin! Sex! The lack of television meant all we could do to pass the time was have sex! We had sex on the bed, on the floor, in the loft, in the jacuzzi, bare-assed up against the cast-iron stove (ouch!), on the bed again (that blue duvet was so comfy---after sex!). Good thing we brought the cozy cuffs and all the edible underwear. There's nothing like watching the snow fall and playing strip scrabble to set the mood for our bondage play. We did forget the whips, but thank goodness we had our tire chains! And our leather-clad midget gimp (Troy) was really comfortable sleeping in the wicker trunk at the foot of the bed! All three of us really enjoyed rekindling our romance all over Cabin 7 with lots of sex! We just hope they never have to call the Tahoe CSI team into Cabin 7, because they sure would have a tough time sorting through all the fluids we left all over the linens and floorboards! Thanks for providing such a wonderful place to have lots of sex!

----Dutch and Wood, San Francisco (Dec. 31--January 3)