Deadbeat Dad

I generally like posts published over at The Good Men Project.  The site publishes articles and blog posts about feminism, men’s rights, fatherhood, sex, porn… It presents often unique viewpoints on really difficult topics.  Some are good and some are less good but I generally find them interesting, well-written, and thought-provoking.  I read a post there yesterday, though, that has me wondering what the Project’s publishers were thinking.   The title:  How I Became a Deadbeat Dad, written by W.F. Price.  Price runs his own website called The Spearhead, which includes on its blogroll such titles as False Rape Society and Wikimannia (“This Wiki is a knowledge base about the discrimination of boys and men.”)  The Spearhead also includes an article about the family court system that, at its core, argues that “men face something akin to a medieval inquisition during a custody dispute.”   My regular readers will know that I work on family law issues with domestic violence survivors.  Many of my clients seek child custody and child support.  Most are also seeking divorces.  Many also return to court many times to file contempt motions against the fathers who refuse to pay support for their children.  So I come to this with a bit of a bias, and I admit that freely.  But I have little patience for a man who writes that he is in arrears on his child support payments because of his wife, the judge, the opposing attorney; you know, the system.

Price was investigated for allegedly making death threats.  He was investigated not once, but twice for abuse against his own children.  He notes that “my ex, under the guidance of her mother’s lesbian, feminist friends, started claiming [a history of] abuse.”  So there are all of those things. In the end, opposing counsel presented a stipulation that required Price to attend parenting classes and anger management counseling.  (Anger management counseling is often ordered for individuals who abuse their wives or children or who otherwise act out in violence.)  The agreement also included a set amount of child support to be paid to the children’s mother.  Price fell into arrears on his support obligations almost immediately.  The good news is that he doesn’t care.  ”Yes, it sounds like an awful mistake, but to me, the time with my kids was worth it. They can throw me in jail, make a pariah out of me, or proclaim me a worthless deadbeat to the entire world, but I am not in the least bit ashamed—my conscience is clear.”  That’s great.  Mr. Price, you know that your kids need food and clothes and school supplies and all sorts of other necessities, right?  This is not about you. This is about your children, who have a legal right to support from their father.

Price has some advice for all you men out there:

Never go into marriage or fatherhood without being fully aware of the risks they entail. Never look at a young, willing woman without a critical eye, and always be prepared for the worst. And, if you should ever find yourself in this position, don’t lose faith or despair—they can take all your worldly possessions, your children, and even your freedom, but they can never make it right, and there are such things as honor and goodness in the world. Believe it, for yourself and your kids, if for nobody else.

 

Good fathers are out there. They pay their ordered child support willingly, because they understand that their children often need that money. I refuse to believe W.F. Price represents the majority of divorced fathers. I refuse to believe that most men look at marriage and fatherhood as solely financial risks and that most men consider having children while being “prepared for the worst.” This is not honor and goodness, Mr. Price. This is selfish, self-serving storytelling.

Some metaphor for you

I was just moving along, minding my own business and getting ready to start my second year of law school, when out of nowhere I fell in love. Which turned me into a fantastically sappy happy human being who LOVES THE CRAP OUT OF EVERYTHING. It’s all sunshine and rainbows over here. And unicorns and stuff. I mean it.

He’s in the other room right now, messing around on his laptop. He’s got Pandora playing in the background. He made me grilled cheese for lunch. He announced his new high score for Fruit Ninja. He wants to read The Hunger Games just because I told him I liked it. I don’t know how to explain the importance of all of these things, because you can’t possibly understand how my chest nearly burst when he did a version of Moonwalk for me this morning. (I know, right?) I didn’t know something could feel like this.

It’s like when I saw:

and I thought nothing could ever beat it. And then I saw this:

and I thought I couldn’t ever be so head over heels. And then I saw this:

and I was pretty much done for.  And now I just wait for the next fantastic tv show to demolish me.

That’s what love has been like. I thought I loved my partner as much as was possible, and then I found that the next day I could love him more. And THAT KEEPS HAPPENING. It’s weird. And kind of annoying. But also really cool.

 

The Hunger Games

I read a book this week. Fiction. The Hunger Games, if you must know. This is remarkable because in the entire time since the first day of law school, I have only read three for-pleasure books. Those three were re-reads of the first three Harry Potter books. I tore through the first one during my first winter break, the second during the summer after my first year, and the third during my second winter break. But I read no books last summer. Zero. I couldn’t stomach it. I’ve done so much reading since law school began–cases, study aids, law review articles, treatises, Bluebooks, and more–that my eyes and my brain rebelled against opening books when I had no reason to open them. And so when a day’s work or studying was done I tended to pass time with Netflix or Hulu. I let the stories come to me in the form of others’ imaginations.

Except I forgot that I do have a reason to open books. I love reading. I’ve always loved reading.  It’s incredibly pleasurable. And I forgot to remember that that’s enough.

I want to say that I stopped reading because law school intervened. That studying kept me busy. That I have spent the last two and a half years in a state of just-in-time and slightly-late.  All of which is true, even if it isn’t entirely the source of my reading hiatus. During law school’s first year, I scarcely had time to sleep. I existed inside constant mental, physical, and emotional exhaustion.  I had some free time, but not very much. Certainly, I had to make my free-time choices very carefully that year. I had time for a little bit of yoga, and a little bit of blogging, but not much else my first year. I believe this is true. So, ok, I get a pass for those two semesters.

But the truth is that I stopped reading for pleasure long before the I even knew what the LSAT was. I don’t know exactly when it started, but I do  know that by the time I was 19 or 20 I had switched from Dean R. Koontz to Hemingway and Shakespeare and that by the time I was 24 I was struggling with Lacan and Derrida and Freud. Because I got Serious. I started counting down the years left in my life and realizing that I had to start Enriching myself immediately or I would die in a state of…what? Ignorance? Which means that for the past 15 years or so I have restricted my reading to the point where picking up Harry Potter was a sort of rebellious act.

This was senseless violence and also completely unsustainable. That sort of black-and-white thinking (advancement or stagnation; literature or fluff; alive or dead) led me to throw up my hands and turn on the television (or to close my eyes and pull the covers over my head).  You know what I think is true? We–all of us–find ways to simply pass time. We go for walks; we weed the garden; we post to blogs; we take bubble baths; we play gin. This week, I took a deep breath, came to terms with my mortality, and read a book.

Told you I was Serious.

The angels have the phone box

Those who follow me on Twitter or Facebook know that I’ve fallen in love with Doctor Who. I’m not talking about the man who is the Last Time Lord, though my current iteration (David Tennant) is, well…you know. No. I’m talking about the BBC television show.  By which I mean the new series that started with the ninth Doctor. By which I mean “Blink.” By which I mean the best episode of anything ever. If you don’t know the weeping angels, I don’t expect you to understand.

Ahem.

I started this post with the intention of making this into a Life Lesson or turning it into an Amazing Story, but I think I won’t. I think I’ll just let that sit there. I think I’ll go watch another episode.

Right or wrong

I’ve been worried that I made the wrong choice. In the past few weeks, I began to think that maybe this was all wrong. What if I don’t want to be a lawyer after all, and what if law school was the most expensive mistake of my life? Maybe I don’t like this. Being a lawyer is laden with responsibility. It’s stressful to be handling some very important pieces of clients’ lives. And the work can be tedious–I spend lots of time returning phone calls, filling out forms, and leaving messages for people who I know will not call me back.

And then it gets fun again. I’ll be in court today. We’ll be working out some important details in today’s hearing and I’ve been prepping for this all week. I think I had forgotten how much I love this part. I love working out a theory of the case. I love juggling facts and outlining arguments. I have even grown to love the anxiety and excitement of being in a courtroom and standing before a judge. I love walking into a courthouse in my suit and feeling that buzz of being real. In a courthouse, I’m tangible. People read what I write and they listen to what I say and it matters.

So what if this is just a grand game of pretend? Am I just here for the stage performance?

I don’t know; I can’t answer that right now. Right now I have to put on my suit, grab my files, and head to court.

How many lives

I remember once saying I wanted to grow up to be a teacher. My second grade teacher was asking and what I meant to say was that I didn’t know. That being a teacher seemed like the right answer, when it was a teacher who was asking.  That I didn’t want to commit myself, not this early, not ever. That the question alone frightened me. That being a grownup seemed like a sad way to live.

It seems to be true that being an adult means a person has to give up more than she takes. A person can’t do everything she wants to do unless she is born with a small imagination and few dreams. How do you know you’ve made the right choice?

Stop it

We were talking about stereotypes in my Race, Gender and Law class yesterday.  One student’s proposal was that when we’re when confronted with systemic stereotyping, we should stop ourselves from engaging in stereotyping so that we could see one another as individuals and reduce the harm of stereotyping/profiling. In an ideal world, I said, this would be great. But we do not live in an ideal world. When I’m walking alone at night and a man starts walking behind me, I get nervous. This is stereotyping by gender, because if it were a woman behind me I would probably not be as nervous or even nervous at all (depending on the circumstances). If the guy walking behind me is scruffy or shady looking, I might cross the street. This is again stereotyping, this time probably by class and age and lots of different factors.  I don’t always place my safety above my desire to be polite, but when I am alone at night, I often do.  So I might cross the street or go into a storefront or stop and let the guy pass me.  I brought this up in class as an example of when stereotyping might be acceptable, if not necessary. It’s regrettable and perhaps disappointing, but I allow for stereotypes in a better-safe-than-sorry approach. I try to recognize my vulnerability when it presents itself to me.

To which a classmate responded that such stereotypes result from misperceptions or incorrect assumptions.  Looking straight at me, he said that I was more likely to be raped by someone I know than by a stranger on the street, and if I knew that, it might make a difference.

And so I wondered if our efforts to raise awareness of acquaintance rape have somehow backfired, at least a bit. The classroom conversation turned (albeit briefly) to talk of how I was living in fear, with the subtext being that this behavior was irrational. Yes, I am more likely to be raped by someone I know. But perhaps that is because I am careful when walking alone.  More to the point, perhaps acquaintance rape is so much more common because we live in a society in which some men do not understand that sex is not theirs for the taking, or because some men do not let themselves accept that a no really can mean no, or lots of other reasons to be addressed another day. My colleague was telling me that I was irrational, and perhaps ignorant. In a less public setting, I would have explained that I know what it’s like to be truly physically vulnerable, and most women have the same knowledge. It’s a shame that this is true, and it’s terrible that it’s chalked up to paranoia and ignorance. But there it is.

 

Luck

I went to a shop near my home that sells Tibetan merchandise. I call it “theTibet” store” and I pass it regularly when going to the local post office or pizza dive.  It’s a great little place and I sometimes go there just to look at the pretty stuff inside.  The jewelry is beautiful and it has gorgeous clothing and singing bowls and meditation cushions.  On top of that, it’s a local small business, and who doesn’t like to support local small businesses?

Anyway, I went to the shop today and, on a whim and because I had time before a meeting, I tried on this pretty dress that was on sale. I don’t wear dresses much, but this was a dress I would like to have, just because it’s so pretty and because I like the IDEA of me wearing it. You know, someday.  And it was onSALE.  And then on my way to the cash register, I saw ANOTHER dress almost exactly like it but in a different color and a different length that would be perfect for the SECOND occasion in which I would like to wear a dress. You know, someday.  And so I bought this second dress, too.  I bought two really pretty dresses with no occasions in mind just because I fell in love with them and they were on sale and because I wanted to reward myself for what felt like a really good week.  Anyway, most of us like to support local businesses, and I certainly do, and I had some cash from some books I had sold on Amazon and THEY WERE ON SALE.  (I mean, they were really inexpensive.)  I bought both of them.  Then on my way out the door I thought of one of my clients, and her astoundingly small income and the fact that she’s living off of food stamps and help from family members and if it weren’t for those things, she would be on the street with her children.  That’s when the guilt set in.

I guess the good news is that this store does not accept returns.  So I went home with my dresses and decided not to let myself be eaten up by guilt.  At home, I held the dresses up and admired them and took some deep breaths.  My mantra lately has been: when in doubt, just remember to breathe.  As I slowly exhaled, I repeated over and over: I’m not living my client’s life.

I’m not living my client’s life.  I’m not.  Of course I knew that.  Yet I imagine that if it hadn’t been for a few fortuitous events, I could be where my client is.  I could have fallen prey to the poverty that beckoned with every low-paying job I had.  I could have let other people’s opinions dictate what I would do in the world.  In the beginning, maybe I did give in to such things, but then I started to realize that I could fight for something else.  My client is a victim of forces that are beyond her control, and I do not fault her for the life she is living. It will be a hard climb out for her, and she may not make it.  She has not been given the tools and lucky breaks that I have received.  I have had lots of luck in my life, but, then, I have also made some choices that have let my path move in a different direction.  I will take responsibility for that, and I will let myself live in the world I’ve created.  My life is mine.