Justin Halpern: More Sh*t My Dad Says

“This might just be because I’m tired as hell, but you know what I just realized?” he asked.

“What?”

“Nobody ever gets laid in these Hobbit books. This thing spans Bilbo’s whole goddamn life, but the guy never gets laid. Not once. No sex,” he said.

“Bilbo doesn’t have any kids,” I said.

“What does that have to do with anything?” he asked.

“Well, if he had sex, then he’d have kids.”

My dad let out a huge, long belly laugh.

“Jesus Christ. Thank God it doesn’t work like that. I’d have populated fucking Rhode Island.”

I didn’t understand why my dad was laughing, and I was insulted by his mockery.

“You get married and then, if you want, you have sex and have kids,” I said, firmly.

“If you want? Ha. Shit, don’t tell your mother that or I’d never get laid. I don’t think you know what marriage means,” he said, laughing again.

“I know what it means. That’s, like, a first-grade word. I’ve known what it means for a long time,” I scoffed.

“I’m fairly certain you haven’t the faintest goddamn clue, trust me,” he replied.

“Fine. Then tell me what it means,” I demanded.

“Son, I just worked fifteen hours, and I’m dog tired, and you don’t have a single hair on your balls. I think that conversation can wait until one of those things changes.”

The next day at school, as I sat in the cafeteria unpacking my lunch, I told my best friend, Aaron, what my dad had said about sex and marriage and asked him what he knew about the relationship between the two. A slender kid with shaggy brown hair and pasty white skin, Aaron grew up a few blocks from me. He had HBO, which instantly made him an expert about sex as far as I was concerned. He put down his Cheetos and wiped his hands on his University of Michigan Fab 5 basketball shirt.

“I can’t believe you don’t know this,” Aaron said. “On the night you get married, you have to have sex, otherwise it doesn’t count as getting married. It has nothing to do with babies,” he added.

“I already knew that it didn’t count unless you had sex. I already knew that,” I lied.

“You’re supposed to start kissing your wife, then she takes your penis and she puts it in her, and you have sex,” he said.

“Does she see your penis?” I asked, panic creeping into my chest.

“No. They just put their hand down there and grab it, but they can’t look at it and see it unless you tell them they can,” Aaron answered.

I’m not sure if it was an adverse reaction to the fact that my dad often walked around our house in the nude like a Playboy playmate in Hefner’s mansion, or if I was just self-conscious about my body, but there was nothing I hated more than the thought of someone seeing me naked. Not skinning my knees. Not pooping in public restrooms. Nothing.

My brothers were usually my go-to for information, and even though they almost always made up ridiculous answers to my questions in an effort to make me look stupid, I still went back to the well time after time. One Sunday morning, over breakfast, I asked them about the wedding night ritual. My brother Dan, who was well acquainted with my fear of nudity, was the first to weigh in.

“There’s a little more to it than that,” he said. “Basically, you stand in one corner of the room, and she stands in the other. You each take off one piece of clothing at a time. Pants and underwear go first,” he said.

“Before shoes and socks?” I asked.

“Yep. You still have your wedding tuxedo on, you’re just not wearing pants or underwear,” he said, biting into a chocolate glazed donut.

This was troubling information. As soon as breakfast was over, I got up from the kitchen table and went into my bedroom and closed the door behind me. Then I put on the only suit I owned, and proceeded to remove my pants and underwear, keeping on my shoes and socks and everything from the waist up. Then I looked in the mirror. Of all the disturbing images I’d encountered to that point in my life, that image of my skinny, half-naked body landed somewhere between “when this weird kid Andre in my class turned his eyelids inside out” and “seeing a car run over the head of my neighbor’s cat.”

I couldn’t stand the idea of someone else seeing me in this compromising position, laughing uncontrollably. But before I took a vow to be a bachelor for life, there was one thing left to do: ask the only person I knew who was married, always honest with me, and never mocked my fears—my mom. I changed out of my suit, threw on my Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle pajamas, and ran to my parents’ room and knocked on the door. There was no answer and the door was locked. I was fairly sure they were in there, but then again they could have left before I woke up. I went back into the kitchen where my brother Dan was now working on a big bowl of Cinnamon Toast Crunch.

“Do you know if Mom is here? Her door is locked and nobody said anything when I knocked,” I said.

“Their bedroom door is locked?”

“Yeah.”

“Just get a screwdriver and pop it open and see if they’re in there. If they’re sleeping they’ll probably want to be woken up so they won’t sleep in too late. You know how Dad hates that,” he replied.

I should have sensed something was wrong, given my brother’s surprisingly helpful response, but he had a point. My dad did hate sleeping in, and rarely if ever did it. Armed with that reminder, and still panicked at the prospect of my future wife seeing me in half a tuxedo, I ran to the garage and grabbed a screwdriver from my dad’s toolbox.

The locks in our house were pop locks, easily opened by shoving a flathead screwdriver inside a tiny hole and turning. And so I did.

When I opened the door, I saw my mom and dad naked in bed together, one big entangled mess of middle-aged limbs and hair. Until that moment I didn’t know what sex looked like, but I knew immediately that this was it. They both turned and looked at me and froze.

“I’m sorry!” I screamed.

I slammed the door, ran down the hall, and sought refuge in my bedroom. About five minutes later, my dad opened my door, wearing a black terrycloth robe, his face contorted in the expression you make between the moment when you stub your toe and the moment you say “ow.”

“Your mom wants me to sit down and tell you what you just saw, but I’m currently not in the mood to give a shit, due to being thrown out of bed because my eight-year-old suddenly turned into Harry fucking Houdini.”

We stared at each other blankly, each waiting for me to say something. I was still in shock.

“Well, I’m up, and my morning just took a left turn into a pile of shit, so you might as well tell me what has you picking my lock,” he finally said.

I hurriedly explained to him my fears about wedding nights and sex and nakedness and the humiliation of having to wear socks and shoes but no pants or underwear.

“You do realize the irony in this situation, right?” he asked.

“What’s irony mean?”

“You wanting to know about married people screwing and then walking in when… No. You’re not back-dooring me into a conversation about this shit.” He ran his fingers through his hair, and blew a deep breath out through his nose.

“All right. Here’s the deal. You’re eight,” he said.

“I’m nine,” I said.

“Do I look like I carry an abacus with your name on it? Cut me some slack here, son.” He took another deep breath and started over. “What I’m trying to say is, you’re just a little kid. I’m going to make you a promise. On your wedding night, you are not going to be able to wait until your wife sees your penis. Half a tuxedo on, no tuxedo on, socks, shoes, you won’t fucking care.”