A Person Born Out of Wedlock
Recently I underwent a tonsillectomy and a uvulopalatopharyngoplasty, which is a fancy way to say they yanked out my tonsils and lasered off a few chunks of the inside of my mouth. My recovery included many days of muteness. I was unable to vocally perform my cheeky, yet clever observations about the wild world we inhabit and my unique existence within this habitat.
When I was cleared to return to my job, switching railcars at a local refinery, one of the first things I asked during the morning safety meeting was, “Who’s my train daddy?” Railyard switching operations involve crews often made up of three people: the conductor, the brakeman, and the locomotive engineer. The engineer drives the train, the conductor makes the switching plan, and the brakeman is the boots-on-the ground grunt of the crew.
“I’m your train daddy today,” said an old boy locomotive engineer, “and you’ll be my bastard brakeman.”
I’ve been vocal about my dislike for the daddy kink. I find that sort of sexual language to be hilarious when employed for communication purposes. If you’re into the submissive/dominate thing and like to flavour it with daddy talk, I say rock ’n’ roll! Language is the condiment of our sexual proclivities. If sex were a meal, language is what we look for in the refrigerator door before sitting down at the kitchen table.
Now, I’m not homosexual (notwithstanding the opportunity for an romantic interaction with some of the cast members of Ocean’s Eleven). But when the engineer, sorry, my train daddy referred to me as a “bastard,” I felt a curious twitch in my testicles (not tonsils, those had recently been removed). My confusion and emotional trepidation caused a misfire in my pre-frontal cortex. To put it succinctly — I was a little turned on.
Let’s consider some of the scientific data from my romantic history to explain my Pavlovian response to being called a bastard.
Technically, if we consider the facts surrounding the circumstances of my birth, I am a bastard or a person born out of wedlock. My unwed parents hit it raw, and nine months later your eloquent writer (me), also known as the blonde-haired, blued-eyed bastard, was born.
After I developed into sexual maturity, and despite my raucous bouts of drunken buffoonery, I’ve had the pleasure to date and bed with some incredible women.
In my early twenties I dated a gal for the better part of a year. During this time, I had left with a close friend to cause trouble in Missoula, Montana for a weekend. The salient memories from that road trip included: crashing a local university party; consuming a near lethal dose of Irish Car Bombs with a Kiwi; getting locked out of a Taco Bell; and breaking down on the side of the interstate when it was time to drive home to Alberta. The gal I was dating was not pleased when I called to explain the dire situation of being stranded in Missoula.
The adventure home was a story all its own. Moreover, when I arrived safe and sound, I immediately set off to the gal’s house. I was met with a stinging accusation in which she referred to me as “You bastard!” in the pejorative. The disdain the gal felt towards me for becoming stranded for 48 hours in Montana quickly dissolved and we proceeded to fuck like we were reenacting the lyrics from a popular song by the Bloodhound Gang.
Unfortunately, that relationship ended several months later after I suffered whiplash from a car accident and then found out the gal had been cheating on me. I believe that qualifies as adding insult to injury.
Years passed and a few women came and went out of my life, until a spitfire of a human lassoed my attentions. The emotional intelligence I had garnered up to this point in my life was amateur compared to the elite, high performance, yet chaotic, romantic machinations of this lady. My (undiagnosed) anxiety hijacked my amygdala and I respectfully ended things with this lady. However, a few months later, my pre-frontal cortex rebooted and I convinced this lady to start seeing me again.
Upon our reunion and during the foreplay leading up to our first sexual evening together after our long split, she referred to me as “You fucking bastard!” between moments of passionate kissing. German scientists could not have concocted an aphrodisiac powerful enough to produce the erection I was equipped with. This lady and I fucked like I was an American solider returning home to his wife after storming Omaha beach, liberating France, and capturing Berlin.
Sadly, I had to end things with this lady as I moved away to finish a university degree.
After completing my degree, I ventured into the perplexing world of online dating. Surprisingly, I matched with a smart and beautiful woman. Her intelligence was equal to her sexual prowess. We ended up dating and living together for several years. I thought I was going to marry her. But I was a dumb dumb and somehow ruined things.
In the death throes of our relationship, she referred to me as, “You fucking rat bastard,” before ending things. There was no hate, no anger, and no emotion in her words. It was the seal of the end, and it marked the irreconcilability of our relationship. There was a small, illogical part of my brain that hoped we could hate fuck each other in a bacchanal soaked ritual to save the relationship. It was over nonetheless, despite the circus of my imagination.
I’m still processing my own faults in regards to the end of that relationship. Quite simply — I fumbled a baddie.
I am deserving of the rank bestowed upon me at my birth. I have yet to fully understand the depth of the fissures of my anxiety. And I feel like a dunce when I attempt to diagnose the failures of my romantic history. However, I am optimistic for my romantic future.
The simple two-syllable unit of language remains charged with enough spirit to conjure up the most powerful of physiologic processes. The word has become embedded in the folds of my lizard brain. It’s simple, direct, and, for me, it’s a little kinky. Call me a bastard and I’ll want to marry you.
I took the necessary liberties with my romantic history so that I could narrativize (or bastardize) this story. It’s mostly fiction, folks. When in doubt, assume I made it all up.
