If It Feels Good Do It

I was 21 years of age. I was not particularly smart at that time. I’ve written about many things on here, but never that era. Never have I begun something “I was 21 years old…”

That was an embarrassing time period.

I could not bring myself to write about it.

Well, until now. I’m over it.

(Only a few of you have heard the following Vegas story. But those few of you have heard it many times. Sorry. Bear with me.)

I was 21 years old and had my first real taste of Las Vegas. My girlfriend at the time broke up with me for the millionth time, so I left her in the Diablo Valley College parking lot and drove the nine hour drive straight to the City of Sin.

After doing some very unsuccessful gambling, I retired to my hotel. In the bar there I met this reasonably cute girl from Texas. I was not a smooth operator at all, but somehow we made it back to her room. And then well, she made me a bigger fan of Texas.

We spent a few days together drinking and partying. Toward the end of it I put her in the passenger’s seat of my step-dad’s BMW and we almost made it to a drive-through wedding appointment. But I was too drunk to drive to the chapel. So we just stumbled back to the hotel room.

A week later, back in the sober fluorescent light of the junior college classroom, I was glad to be single. Partying with that girl had been nice, but not worth the heavy price of a ball and chain. She had left Vegas and gone back to Texas. She was living with her family. For around one year, other than an occasional email, I didn’t hear from her at all.

Then one day she called me.

“Hello.” I said.

“Ian?” she asked.

“Yes.”

She proceeded to tell me something that caused the ground beneath my feet to move. Apparently, I had made her pregnant in Las Vegas.

“What?”

“But I’m no longer pregnant,” she said.

“You’re not?”

“No. I had the baby. It’s a boy. You have a son.”

I couldn’t believe her. I wouldn’t believe her.

“Are you sure he’s mine?” I asked.

“Yes I’m sure!”

But then we got off the phone. And then a few years went by. I figured she had either made the whole thing up or had realized that the boy wasn’t mine.

However, as soon as I got a job a few years later, she called me again claiming she wanted child support. I still didn’t believe I had a child until I received paper work from the court. At that point, I argued that I wasn’t the biological father. The courts made me take a DNA test.

And I was the father.

For years now I’ve simply worked out here in California, sending checks to Texas.

But now I’ve been unemployed for six months. The court agreement has changed. No longer do I need to pay as much, and now I have more visitation rights.

So, my son is heading out here next week.

I saw him once in 2004. This will be only the second time I have ever seen him.

I’m pumped. I hope he likes going to the beach. The weather has been warm.

His mother sent me a recent picture. Just take a gander at that badboy. Looks just like me, doesn’t he?

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