The Angel and
the Skank
Written By Andrew Corsello
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I'm not complaining. This is just something the human brain does, this reducing of the infinite complexity of other human beings into single, straight narrative lines. And the fact is that, without ever really thinking about it, Dana and I seem not only to have accepted but embraced the premise of The Angel and the Skank. Partly, this is because the story is (kind of) endearing, and makes for merry conversation at parties. But mostly it's because, after a certain age, it's just too time- and energy-consuming to attempt to present one's self and one's marriage, in all their complexity and self-contradiction, to someone who isn't your spouse. Who can possibly process all that data anyway?
Then our babies came along and yes, they changed everything. Obviously they changed the way we spend our time. We saw that one coming. But the sheer pressure of their presence did something we didn't expect; it challenged and, in some important ways, debunked the premise of Angel and Skank. As with everyone who procreates, we discovered that who and what you are prior to parenthood by no means guarantees what kind of father or mother you'll be. In a way, fathers and mothers are like soldiers; no matter how well prepared, there's no telling whether they're fighting or fleeing types until the bullets start flying.
Without Quincy and Casper, I could have spent the rest of my life lazily (and happily) accepting and living out the cartoonish reduction of two souls that is Angel and Skank. Now that they're here, that story is starting to wear real thin. So you know that bit a few paragraphs above where I said I wasn't complaining? Well, F that. I am complaining. Because I've been slandered, Swift-Boated as a dad even before getting into office, so to speak, and it's time to set the record straight. I am as capable as the next guy of straight-up responsibility, respectability, goodness; and my halo-headed wife is as prone to the flaws of the flesh as the next gal. Our friends are going to have to stop disbelieving Dana when she tells them that the reason I stay home with the boys 19 nights out of 20 is not because I'm "whipped" but because I feel like it. And they are going to have to stop disbelieving me when I tell them that Halo Girl, in addition to being a shopaholic, is perfectly capable of ending a debate about whose turn it is to get up with the baby by snapping, "Eh, (epithet too skanky to print)."
There's nothing complicated about it, really. This probably has something to do with the fact that in the first year or two, there's nothing intrinsically complicated about parenting. It's demanding, of course. But the challenge is quantitative, not qualitative. There are no decisions to make, only things to do, most of them mundane.
The test — of our parenthood, of our "story" — was immediate. From the instant he burst, ululating, from the womb, Quincy was a ferocity. His first gesture was an emphatic, arcless jet of urine into the face of the doctor who'd delivered him. He refused to eat. He refused to sleep. He found no position or location comfortable. Even the maternity ward nurses, those old pros, found the frequency and volume with which he expressed his displeasures to be "remarkable."
Now when I say there's nothing complicated about it, I'm saying this: I did it. The tedious, torturous work of getting up and staying up, night after night, week after week, doing what had to be done: I did it. In the first week or so, my ability to do it went without saying. The novelty — a boy! a wonderful, rowdy, screaming, suckling, pooping boy! — created its own momentum. But even as I did it, a subterranean fear began to rise, slowly and surely, to my surfaces. Corsello's a flitter and a flee-er, good for a show now and then, but incapable of the long haul. I knew the story. Everyone knew the story. When the novelty wore off, when the boy was no longer headline news, when the well-wishers and casseroles stopped coming, the oppressive mundanity of it all would force Corsello to snap. Or freeze.
I don't know what else to say except ... it didn't. I didn't. I just ... did. Quincy didn't start sleeping through the night until he was 2, and throughout that time, I did. And Dana? She did, too. She did. But can I be frank here? Not to the degree that I did. When it came to taking the boy for walks or drives from 3 to 5 in the morning, she didn't quite have what I'll call an aptitude. To her the burden of being endlessly pooped, in every sense, was just that: a burden. To me, it turned out to be something else. Something more. And, oddly enough, that more has to do with sin.
Next page: How I stopped being a goon and became a great dad
