Young parents looked to me like anaemic, swivel-eyed zombies. To combat the idea of them, I stuck close to my childless friends - dwindling in number and sad as they were - and I tried to make them join me in laughing at the people who thought that self-regeneration was a good idea.
- The laughter, never heartfelt, soon hollowed. Relatives started to notice my reluctance to continue the species and took it upon
themselves to point out my responsibilities as a human and as a man.
- I was lectured by three terrifying women in my life, and told to stop being 'recalcitrant', 'impractical' and 'lazy'. My father tried to
point out the danger of the family line dying out, but this argument
didn't move me. Had mine been an ancestry of kings and emperors I might, I suppose, have felt some pull of destiny. As it was, the men in my family were distinguished only by a capacity for love out of all proportion with the ability to demonstrate affection.
- "Come on," said my wife Margot, "Let's just see what happens." She downplayed important decisions, to make me feel like I was being spontaneous when I agreed with her.
- And so I yielded to the silent lure of the invisible chemical strands that perpetuate all life on Earth. My brain was not going down without a fight, however. In fact, it had found a pair of boxing gloves from somewhere and was punching my heart, calling it a 'traitor to the cause', and wailing interminably.
- Margot suggested I was overreacting to the situation, that it would not be as bad as I thought. My disagreements became feeble from repetition, and eventually remained inside my head. Soon, a smaller version of myself appeared.
- I had had no contact with anyone under the age of five since I had myself been that age, and, with hindsight, I can see that the later problems arose in part from an assumption that some kind of
recognisable form of adult would appear.
- But it was not only completely incapable of conversation, it was
incapable of anything.
- It took over my life, and I saw that it would only become more
demanding, even after it could wipe its own arse. I pictured it in
years to come, cornering me with its genetically-conferred arsenal of emotional weaponry.
- It is only with the luxury of hindsight that I can formulate these
abstractions. At the time, I was acting as slave to the incompetent,
useless noisemaker. I found that my brain was starting to atrophy; I tried to singing to this ugly little thing and although I was assured
by everyone I met that it was, in fact, human, I had my doubts.
- On the evidence before me, there was no reason to think that this monstrosity would ever develop into anything more compre-hensible. I marvelled bitterly at the offspring of other animals, saw how most young could take care of itself, and then took another look at the absurd product of my woefully human loins, and felt renewed annoyance and bathos.
- I started to resent the baby deeply. All I wanted was to write haiku poetry, but I was too exhausted to move, let alone pick up a pen and produce words of oxyacetylene brilliance. I had planned to take the world by storm through the music of thought, and now I was a pair of hands attached to an instinct generator.
- These months were difficult for Margot, who despaired that I was acting like 'a lunatic'. She tried to reason with me.
- "This won't last forever, Roddy. Soon you'll have someone to catch balls with," she said. She was amazing, so patient, but I think she knew I wasn't convinced. It was different for Margot: her pre-childbirth terror had given way more or less completely to thetide of maternity, and while she was at least as physically and mentally drained as I was, she had belief in the project.
- My routine looked impossible to break. It started with alarmed
ejection from bed after less than three hours' sporadic sleep, was
followed by a sleepwalk to the office in a daze, with no artistic
shield to defend myself from the hammer blows of everyday life in one of the world's most developed countries, and then concluded by a return home to a wife whose love was turning dusty. Drastic action was required.
- After a thankfully swift court battle, I was granted a divorce from my infant son. A friend of a friend, solicitor-advocate to the rich and famous, was able to demonstrate the impossibility of guaranteeing a safe and happy life for the screeching bundle. I can't remember exactly what he said, but it involved 'damaging social norms'. I still thank God for those norms.
- The case set a precedent in British courts, now being studied by
undergraduate lawyers and inadequate fathers across Western Europe. The whole affair generated monumental media coverage, and the money gained from selling my story to a particularly voracious Sunday tabloid helped to fund my existence for the next several decades.
- Meanwhile, the messy court case led to the end of my short marriage, and the pain of loss was like nothing I could have imagined, despite having suffered third degree burns on my face as a child. I still loved Margot, but I had decided that haiku had to come first. I owed the human race nothing, and would take my chances with the consolations of rhyme and meter. Happily, this obscene pain, which I renewed occasionally by looking at photos of Margot, triggered a series of the most astonishing poems ever committed to the English language. I now live in a mouse-infested attic where I tickle the remains of my battered heart until it yields words, and I am alone and shunned. Every day I use my brain, and the rest of my body withers, but this is an arrangement I can tolerate.
