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GEEK part 3
by Ted Pelton

I had written out what I was going to say, run it back and forth through my head dozens of times. There were complex problems involved and I had to be delicate. But I wasn't on the phone two minutes with Karen before I blurted out: "I don't want to bring it to court, but you know I could get visiting rights to Claude." Long silence. I had planned to then show her how nice a guy I was by not pressing too hard, to give her some time to get used to the idea and have us figure some way by which I could get to visit with Claude occasionally so that Ken wouldn't find out. Still, I wasn't expecting Karen's reaction.

"You bastard!" She'd never yelled at me in the fifteen or so years we'd known each other, but now it came at me, "Bastard--bastard--bastard--bastard!" She took a breath. She was so angry that each word had to be forced out. "First of all, Claude is Ken's child. We've been through this. I thought you accepted that." But "accepted that"--this was kind of a code. It said the truth didn't matter. I had signed a contract. Yes--but it was fundamentally unfair. What was agreed between us didn't change reality: he was my son. Was I simply supposed to walk away? Many men do that. No. I was staying. I was a parent, a man. I'd been a geek, I accepted that, there's nothing I could do about it. But that didn't mean giving in to a lesser life, a life others had planned for me.

I started to answer, "But . . ."

"Shut up! I can't believe you. I can't. I really really can't believe you. Even if he was yours, which he's not, I can't believe you'd want to go to court and tell everyone how you raped me!"

"Rape?" I didn't know what to say, I was dumbfounded, so I just repeated myself. "Rape? I didn't rape you."

"Oh no? What do you call it. I was drunk and you took advantage of me. Don't you hear what they're saying these days? That's what they call acquaintance rape--it wasn't even date rape, because we even weren't dating. I didn't want to do it, but you kept begging me. You were so pathetic. And I don't even remember what happened, just waking up after you'd left with your come dripping out of me. How stupid can you be? It was a good thing I staggered back out to the living room before Ken got back, or else both of would be dead! I found the rubber there and it hadn't been used. You fucked me after I'd passed out and you didn't even use protection! What do you call that? I didn't consent to have you come in me!" She was shouting now, shouting and crying at the same time, with extra scorn piled on certain words. "I was drunk! How could you have done that! Do you know I get nightmares now thinking of that night! I could hardly lift my head up off the floor and you think I wanted to make it with you? The room was spinning and you kept begging me and begging me, and then you take advantage of me like that? And then I found the rubber on the floor! I threw up, Geek; I threw up when I found that, all over the backgammon board, the rug! You bastard! You raped me! What do you call it? What do you call it?"

She slammed the phone down and missed the receiver, then hung up on the second try.

I had planned to call Sandra afterward. We'd planned that I'd call her at Modell's right after I got off the phone with Karen. To her, Karen was this evil monster who'd broken up what might have been a stable family. Some of this came, I'm sure, from what she'd been through with Ahmet, but now I saw that I'd fanned the fire by giving her a watered down version of what had actually happened. But how could I tell her the truth? I couldn't call her. I put on some CDs--Sandra had given me some new stuff I hadn't listened to before, reggae, some traditional Moslem flute and drum music. I tried to forget what was happening. I was not a rapist. When you're young like that, a boy intoxicated with our sex-crazed culture, you're always begging to get laid. How could she turn it around like that? I didn't rape her and she knew it. But could I really tell Sandra how it had happened? The phone rang a couple of hours later, around seven, after I knew Sandra had gotten off work, but I didn't answer. What could I say? I now remembered details I'd forgotten from that night. I remembered waking Karen up earlier in the evening at one point when, during the middle of our backgammon game, she'd begun snoring. Her eyes were still kind of half open. And I can't really be sure what she said to me, she mumbled everything. She was more drunk than I was, but was I so drunk I refused to notice how wasted she was? Did she ask me to wear a rubber? I thought she had. Wasn't that consent? It certainly made what I did something different from rape. It's true, I didn't wear it, but it could have broken during sex, and how would it have been any different then?

I had to get out of the house. I got in my car and took off. I got out on the L.I.E. and hit eighty. I was heading West, toward the city, but I didn't know where I was going. It would be funny, I thought, if I ran into Ken's construction crew out here. How did any of this change the fact that I knew I was Claude's daddy? That far back in his lineage was African blood? This was the fact that was again being ignored in all this. I realized that I was looking for Ken on the highway because I wanted to tell him. He'd be home by now, though. That's what I had to do. I turned the car around and headed back toward town. I was going to Karen and Ken's. We were going to have it out, once and for all.

When I got there, Ken came out and met me in the driveway. He knew something, but I was committed to doing what I needed to do.

"There's something you should know, Ken."

"Go home, Geek. Don't piss me off."

Karen had called him on his cell phone, which I saw on the seat through the open door of his truck. He said something else, but I shouted him down. "There's something you need to know!"

Karen came out of the house and screamed. Claude looked out thought their kitchen window. "Get out of here!" screamed Karen. "Go away, Geek!" Crying hysterically, like whatever I said could be drowned out by her screams. But I was going to be heard. I screamed back. "That's my kid! Karen and I got drunk one night while you were at the Eddie Money concert and that's my kid! Not yours! Look at him! He's my kid!"

"I'm getting pissed off, Geek," Ken said, who was the calmest of the three of us. But I knew that was because if he allowed himself to get mad, he'd go apeshit. He spoke again in that calm voice, bars separating me from the jungle cat: "I'm going to kill you if you don't get out of here."

But I'd been scared of Ken long enough. I stood my ground. I lowered my voice, too. Perhaps I could reason with him. "Look at him," I said. "He's dark, like me."

He was on top of me in the next second, pounding me. I don't know how I ended up on my back so fast, but soon I was flat as he straddled me, belting me over and over, raining down upon me. I wanted to fight him, but I couldn't lift my head. My mouth was full of blood. I was just trying to say, again, "He's like me," simple words it seemed there could be no misunderstanding. Then the air shot out of me. It felt like gasoline was filling my lungs and the gasoline was on fire. I now actually feared dying, and once that fear actually hit me, nothing else mattered, not the fact that my son was watching me, way up above me, helpless to save me, not anything. When it comes right down to it, I'm a coward. Standing up to Ken had been stupid. I resolved in that moment that nothing else was important to me as long as I could keep living. Allah, forgive me, in that moment of weakness I gave up the man you had made me into and wept like a woman, pleading for my life to be spared! Men put on this earth are truly weak--I begged for Karen to intercede, to pull him off me, someone to call an ambulance. There was a pool of blood behind my head! Get me to a hospital! Then I can't remember what happened. But when, later, I came to in an ambulance careening through the streets, urging from side to side around turns, I knew I had made a new bargain and was being punished for breaking the last. Ken and Karen would deal with this however they would, but I would never bother these people again. I couldn't, as long as I lived. I've changed their names in this story, to protect their privacy.

It's my sincerest hope now that my story can help someone else and prevent them from making the same mistakes I did. I know now that I should never have taken advantage of Karen the way I did that night, not only by having sex with her, but by suggesting the evil game we played to begin with. It was the Devil himself speaking through me, a Devil I had invited into my life through my life of dissipation. Nor can Ken and Karen be blamed, for I should have preserved the trust my friends had in me and not sought to abuse their friendship for my own pleasure. And although I still believe Claude is my child, the way I went about preserving my relationship with him, I realize, was incorrect. I admit now that I stalked Claude, and that whatever I felt for him should not have translated into such abusive behavior. I lied, I misrepresented, I made myself less of a man than I'd been created, and I have only myself to blame.

But fathers also have rights, a fact I've been made even more aware of through my association with Forgotten Fathers. Forgotten Fathers is an organization made up of men like me who have had their sacred bond of fatherhood severed for one reason or another, leaving them no recourse but such anti-social behavior as stalking or, in more severe cases, even kidnapping. Forgotten Fathers lobbies governmental agencies to help recognize the rights of the birth father, who we believe should have rights to visit and help raise his child or children. But Forgotten Fathers is not just a lobbying organization. We also provide counseling for men who, like me, despair that not only their rights but their entire being are denied by today's society. Say the word sperm to most people and the best response you'll ever get is a nervous laugh. At worst, you might be accused of verbal assault or have a drink thrown in your face. Sperm is maligned as sticky and smelly, and in the age of AIDS a carrier of disease, a disgusting, harmful fluid. Yet the production of sperm in one form or another is natural not only to men or even to mammals, but to males throughout the animal kingdom. In human men, sperm are the vessels of Allah most high, and for this reason too the Pope stands firmly against all forms of artificial birth control, including prophylactics.

So much evil can enter one in a moment of lacking vigilance, and then the horror of that moment returns again and again, reminding you of your mistaken choices. I realize now that by not wearing a condom, I was irresponsibly endangering Karen, my partner in our brief moment of union, not only through failing to provide a contraceptive barrier, but also by removing the barrier to diseases, not only AIDS but herpes, syphilis, gonorrhea and a host of others. But I also realize that my action at that moment, my decision not to wear a condom, was in response to the social stigma attached to my sperm, a social stigma I was rebelling against in my own futile way. Why should I have geeky sperm? In my unconscious way I was hoping that perhaps something better would result out of my ejaculate. It may sound strange, but my desire to have my ejaculate acknowledged and accepted was a small, far off cry for help, and such irresponsible acts as mine will continue in our society until we as a culture destigmatize sperm. In fact, my entire character, my Geek-ness, I'm now convinced, stemmed from this rejection of my ejaculate. But sperm is beautiful. In my own milky white semen fluid are the seeds of untold generations, perhaps of African kings! A tablespoon of semen, spread out to the sufficient amount of eggs, would make more babies than you'd find on any given day in the world's largest city! Isn't this a wonder--evidence of the greatness and glory of God, if we truly stop and think about it? We talk about the glories of the computer chip and its amazing storage of information--what about the human characteristics stamped into the head of each single sperm cell? Until we begin to acknowledge sperm, the co-maker of life, and semen, the fluid medium which carries it to fulfill its manly destiny, we will never truly be healed as a society.

Forgotten Fathers finally stands for this, for responsibility, but also for acknowledgment, respect and, most of all, healing. My experiences have taught me that much healing needs to occur, between men and women, between mothers and fathers, and between fathers and their children. Sandra and I are now married. She knows my whole story and we have made our bond sacred so that we may raise our children with two parents, responsibly, imparting to them wholesome values. Allah has blessed us; Sandra is again expecting. It is never too late to reform, but in order to do so, we must develop mutual respect and love and awake from the lies we are told by a culture addled by the Devil.

This is why I've joined Forgotten Fathers and, recently, have become one of the organization's spokespersons. If you would like to have me or one of our other representatives come speak to your mosque, your synagogue, your civic or church group, or if you would like to schedule one of us to appear on your radio or television program, please give us a call at 1-800-SPERM OK.

It's time we did a little healing.

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