more on milk

behold the bottle! see it? that thing on the left? it's where i keep my semen. you knew mr nice guy was virile, but you had no idea he was THAT virile, did you? actually, i am joking. that's breastmilk -- i keep my semen in the milk carton on the right.

so where was i? oh yes, beholding the bottle. behold it! are you beholding the bottle? good. that thing is filled with stuff that came out of my wife! she was pumped like a holstein the other night. when i got home from work, she showed me the bottle in the fridge, handed me my daughter and said "i'm going to sleep. feed her. if you wake me up and it's not an emergency -- if she's not bleeding out of her eyes -- you die, bitch."

so mrs nice guy went to bed, leaving me with a tiny sleeping baby ... a ticking time bomb. the child was going to wake up at any minute and demand sweet, sweet breastmilk only to find her old man and a bottle. a recipe for disaster if ever there was one.

but! the baby slept. and slept and she slept a little more. it was great. i sat on the couch sipping cognac and reading rabelais in the original middle french, writing marginalia on the author's scathing satirical attacks on scholasticism. my baby honked like a goose in her bassinet. after about three hours, just as i was fine-tuning the impenetrable thrust of my new rabelaisian theory (mmm, pantagruel), the child was undoubtedly ready to be fed. i know she was ready to be fed because she scrunched her entire body into a tiny ball -- much in the manner that a pill bug does -- and began screaming in her sleep -- much in the manner that a pill bug does not. so i grabbed the bottle out of the fridge, popped it into the bottle warmer and, to keep the child from waking her poor mother, i stuck a ball-gag my pinkie in her mouth.

the bottle heated for what seemed like four score and seven fucking years as my child turned alarming shades of red and steam poured forth from her fontanel. FINALLY the bottle was hot. too hot. had to let it cool. christ! baby was about to explode from the rage. i would have had to explain to my wife why i was cleaning baby parts off the kitchen cabinets when she woke up. was not looking forward to that.

finally i squirted the milk on my wrist like i've seen them do in the movies and it definitely felt like milk. so i jammed the bottle into the kid's mouth. this is a child, mind you, who HATES pacifiers. she will only suck on nipples or fingers. that's it. i have been dreading this moment for days. i was going to have to attempt to bottle feed my daughter, a task akin, i was sure, to persuading angelina jolie to stop calling me (angie, baby, it's over. deal with it).

but i was wrong! i jammed that rubber nipple into her mouth and she began sucking and gulping with astonishing ferocity. (let us revisit that last sentence and take it totally out of context, shall we? let's say your phone rings one night after midnight; you pick it up and a breathy voice says to you "i jammed that rubber nipple into her mouth and she began sucking and gulping with astonishing ferocity." you'd think that was a little creepy, right? aren't you glad i'm not at all creepy?). anyway, the point is ... she took the bottle! she loved the bottle! she sucked down 4 ounces of milk like it was NOTHING! aww, yeah. that's my girl. then she let rip the biggest burp this side of tupperware. i was so proud. so happy. her tiny body lay curled in her father's arms, rhythmically pulsing with every tiny swallow. so precious. my heart broke a little.

until, that is, i realized the horrible truth of the matter ... now that mrs nice guy does not have to be physically present at every feeding, i will never be allowed to sleep again. and not sleeping does very strange things to mr. nice guy's perspicacity. for example, at one point last night he was dangerously tempted to take a hearty swig of the boob juice. but, alas, his daughter finished it all with a quickness. (and then she grunted and took a huge dump. i am just endlessly enthralled by merely watching her drop a big load in her pants -- the tongue comes out, she grrrrunts loudly, the eyes roll back, she smacks her lips. i can stare at her doing this for hours. i can't wait till she's 14 so i can tell her about the awesome faces and sounds she used to make whilst voiding her bowels. she will thank me for it.) in short, i was unable to sample the goods.

so then, stay tuned as, in the next day or two, i plan to live blog a TASTING OF THE BREASTMILK.