Sex & Cars

Kiss me, Hurt me, Daddy

1991 Jeep Cherokee

The distance between Jersey City Heights and Brooklyn Heights is not even 7 miles. The night we first kissed, it seemed like my 4x4 could not get across that stretch of road through lower Manhattan fast enough.

Laying on my twin bed about to crash for the night, I was watching whatever Netflix mailed me. When next to me, my phone buzzed and it was her. Her of recently-single status, whose hey-there button I pressed way too early, dashing any hopes of being more than friends. Like we had been for going on two years.

The night we first met was at a bar for a mutual friend’s birthday. I was brazenly single and when I locked eyes on her, my mouth watered like a lion ready to pounce on its prey. I laid back as other friends of mine greeted her with warm welcomes. My mind immediately scorned them all for not “hooking us up!” I’m over here all single and you’re NOT introducing me like the prize catch that I am?!

I was introduced to her later that evening… and, of course, her boyfriend. My blinders went right up and the friendship wall between us was most solidly erected. I’d been burned many times on the has-a-boyfriend front and didn’t play with fire anymore. We saw each other a lot over the next two years, but never alone.

Tonight, that would be different.

I raced through the Tunnel and across the Brooklyn Bridge not knowing what all the late-night flirty texts would amount to face-to-face.

She admitted she was slightly tipsy—which could bode well or very bad, depending on the timing. I knew where I was picking her up from the party and where I would drop her off. The two and a half miles in between was all the room I had to rev up my subtle suave.

As I pulled up on the brisk Brooklyn night, she was outside with a few friends. They gave her knowing goodbyes, perhaps foreseeing where the road might take us. She buckled up and I shifted into drive. Smiling “Hi”s were exchange and, as we crossed an intersection, I asked her if she wanted to go anywhere.

“I was kinda hoping we’d just make out.”

I pulled directly over into a loading zone, its garage door rolled up closed for the night. Within moments of the words leaving her lips, the car was parked, seatbelts unbuckled and my lips (at long last) upon them.

In a single motion, I lowered the passenger seatback and raised a sledgehammer to that friendship wall.

An hour (maybe two) later — after our kissing sufficiently fogged up the windows and we drove each other wild — I drove her home.

Snow had fallen earlier in the evening. Making the trip to midtown in the early morning hours almost too easy. And likewise, our OB-GYN’s ride in from Long Island was equally smooth.

I went out and cleared the snow off the Jeep as best I could the moment she began to feel contractions. From all we heard by friends and medical professionals, there was no need to rush. There would be time.

When I came back in, I cracked a joke about calling for a cab so we wouldn’t lose our great spot on the street for alternate side.

“You really want to make parking jokes with me right now?”

She was right, always. Time between contractions had gotten close enough for comfort and we headed into the city through the tunnel. We pulled up to the hospital drop-off area and I saw my wife to the curb. I handed her go-bag to an orderly who insisted on a wheelchair. I knelt beside her, kissed her forehead and, with a bursting smile, told her not to start without me.

She looked at me through the tops of her eyelids and whispered, “Park the car and get back here or I will hurt you. I was gone 3 and a half minutes, clocked when I hit the elevator button to Delivery. It was early and she was alone in the holding beds. I barely spoke the words “my wife just…” before a nurse pointed me in her direction.

All the wait was over. It was finally happening! I was giddy and grinning so wide my cheeks hurt. But the smile was wiped from my face when I saw the look on hers.

“Something is wrong.”

Something was wrong. With each contraction the baby’s heart rate dropped. An unhappy beeping sound told us this as I held her hand and tried to calm her. Then, just as I noticed the blood on her bed, nurses were upon us. Again, I hadn’t said two words and they were already on top of it. Monitoring her numbers from the nurses station, they notified our doctor, just minutes away, that they’d get her prepped.

Worst case scenarios ran through my head, a morbid habit I hated having in that moment. Conversations we vaguely had—about possibly giving up the baby for adoption, about her losing one with her ex, about baby names, ulcers, breastfeeding, cord blood and stem cells—all flooded my mind.

Our birth plan along with any other plans were out the window and she was heading to surgery faster than I could think. Her water seemed to break, but there so much blood it was hard to tell. As she was wheeled into an OR, I heard her voice brace as she said firmly, “Do what you need to me, just please, please don’t hurt my baby!” And she was gone.

“Dad, so how do I know for sure if a guy likes me?”

We hadn’t even backed out of the driveway before my teenage daughter dropped this bomb on me.

“Oh, Lina, he does,” I said, smiling right at this suddenly-timid woman. There was no way everyone didn’t have a crush on my daughter. She was as smart, funny and gorgeous as her mother and already wildly popular. “They all do.”

“Daddy…c’mon, no really…?”

I clicked the key back in the ignition to turn off the engine, tuned to the soul station and unbuckled my seatbelt, because this conversation was going to be a ride.

Letting out an introductory sigh, I turned to her without a drop of gravitas and just spoke from the heart.

“Emiliana, I knew this day would come and I’ve avoided it as best as I could. I am not great with words. I can’t even begin to imagine what you need to hear, what you go through everyday or even the right thing to say as a father of a girl in the world today. Your mom…”

For the first time in years those two words brought a crack to my voice and I had to stop and hold the steering wheel for support. I’d thought of her every day, I worked through her loss in therapy and I even spoke of her more and more often in the past couple years. But something about the topic of young love and the memory of our love, so young, sat heavy in my chest. I let out another deep sigh.

“She would have had great answers for you. A good mix of really honest advice and encouraging words of wisdom. Then, she’d wrap up with a good punchline so you’d be laughing so hard you’d know everything was going to turn out okay. I’m sorry you get stuck with me instead.”

Her eyes—the same big expressive eyes her mother had—said it was okay, but I knew she needed to hear more.

“Guys are clueless. We like shiny things that are fast or fast things that are shiny. When we’re not full of shit, we’re full of ourselves. We do a lot of stupid things and sometimes say even stupider things. But every now and then, you may come across one of us who has half a brain and isn’t a complete and utter disaster.

Does he like you? Probably. Does he even know what that means? Very unlikely, he doesn’t even know what’s happening to his body right now, let alone his brain, mouth or heart.

You’re going to get hurt. Maybe not by him, maybe not right away by him. It’s going to break your heart and you’ll cry your eyes dry. And trust me, it’s going to hurt me even more to watch you go through it and not be able to help. But, I promise to stay near enough to catch you when you fall.

I know I’m not really selling it, but when you do find it, love will be able to sustain you better than water and air. It will make you crazy with excitement to even just see them or hear them. And when you get to hold them, just a hand or a deep hug, you’ll never want to let go.

There is no right or wrong, no easy or hard way. There’s just you and whoever you let in. Every relationship is different. Your mother and I didn’t meet until we’d already been through it all. But your aunt and uncle met in high school, were each other’s firsts, and they’ve been sickeningly in love since.

I don’t know what will come your way. In life, in love. And I can’t give you some magic advice to show you the way. All I can give you is my heart and tell you you can borrow it whenever yours is broken.

If he likes you, great. Now, if you like him is what matters more. You will know in your gut if and when it’s right.

And, I know it’s too early to even say, but when you’re ready to love, just love with all your heart. At least then, you can know you gave it as best a shot you could.”

“Okay. There was actually some pretty good stuff in there, dad. You aren’t so bad with words.”

I smiled and shook my head into one last sigh. She was right, always.

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