My best friend has a baby. And they are both dudes.
Men are the new mommies. Well, 40-year-old hipster men in New York have no problem walking around town with a baby strapped to their chest. C’mon ladies, it’s sorta hot. In an ironic way, of course.
So hot. So ironic.
My Best Bro, aka “BB”, aka my male BFF, is married to a woman who is obsessed with the NY Knicks. We don’t hear much from her during pre-season, post-season, and all that shit in between. So BB, and his baby, hang with me a lot.
This usually means walking around downtown aimlessly, because hip brunch haunts don’t offer high chairs. In southern Manhattan, being with child is still not fashionable—a good thing, considering we singles need somewhere on this planet to roam without the condescending stares of the settled and attached. But not such a good thing with baby. We’re trapped there, though, because baby can’t take a cab without using his car seat, and who wants to walk around with one of those contraptions?
Yo, piss off. Not being bitter. Single women – especially Jewish ones – having a complex over their girlfriends getting married and popping out little wailing gremlins is nothing new. But in modern America circa 2013, spazzing at the fact that your Best Bro is spawning is rare. Basically, no one wants to listen to me whine. So I am whining to you.
Baby is cockblocking me.
Random chicks come up to Baby raving how cute he is. (It’s his oversized Ugg hat. Women love anything Ugg. What’s up with that?) This scary barista at our favorite café on Lafayette Street tries to smooch Baby every time we walk in there. (She has herpes. Lip sores. Like, chronic. I don’t let her near him. Block her puckered lips every time she inches her way towards us.) My point is Baby attracts all sorts of folks. Yet they are mostly women. Occasionally gays and married men. A single dude is a rarity.
It happened a few weeks ago. Baby was chilling on my lap at a brunch spot while BB went down the block to the ATM. Baby started grabbing at a lone strawberry on my plate. Told him no. Dude has no teeth. He starts wailing bloody murder, of course.
All of a sudden this hot guy—like Bradley Cooper with a schnoz—sits next to us and starts clucking like a coked-up chicken. Yes, clucking. Farm-style. Baby was overcome with laughter and so was half the restaurant. But before I could murmur my name BB was back, staring at the strange man entertaining his child. Man excuses himself, BB chastises me for encouraging such mischief. Whatever. The guy was hot. And we were in a pack eatery. Nothing crazy could have happened. Parents suck.
BB said he will help me next time, help Baby help me. Except Baby’s not really helping my man-meeting cause in the first place. And can’t stop hanging with BB just ‘cuz his spawn is slowing my game.
How does someone else’s lil’-one pimp you out? Perhaps we can dress in Baby in an “I am not hers” tee while I wear an “I am not his?”
Maybe we get Baby to pose in a poster with me, reading “My babysitter needs a husband. Drop by my playpen for more info.” The model who posed in the famed “L’Enfant” poster claims to have banged over 3,000 women because of that image. A picture of a shirtless chiseled Greek guy cradling an infant. Hey, just saying.
Wait, dating a guy with a kid must suck. Being best friends with one is stressful.
It’s such a struggle to hang with a baby. How do you parents deal?
Ugh. Just thinking about it is giving me agita.
Um. Don’t we hang out with our friends because we like, you know, enjoy their friendship? So hang and enjoy, or don’t and shut the f*** up.
Also, the author likes to skin things? Like a butcher shop owner? How very artisanally blue collar. What is ‘skinner-than-thou’?