Tag Archives: family

Making babies: from the archives

How do babies get made, Dad? Well it’s complicated son. There’s quite a bit of preparation involved.

The first thing you have to do is go to a clinic with your partner and see a GP. You get asked lots of questions, like how many times you have sex each week and what positions you do it in.

You get asked questions about what kind of food you eat and how much exercise you do, and then they ask you more questions about the drugs that you use and how much alcohol you drink, and how many babies you’ve made before. The GP takes notes and fills in lots of boxes with ticks and crosses, then they give you a plastic container and ask you to masturbate into it.

What’s masturbating, Dad? How do you do it?

The GP gives you directions for how to get from his office to a small room with a small bed, lots of porn magazines, and a window with curtains that you can draw to if you want to. When you’re old enough you know how to do it, but you don’t have to be as old as me.

What happens after you masturbate into the plastic container? Does a baby get made?

No. Not yet. You give the container to the girl on the front desk, then you go back in to the GP’s office where they are waiting with your partner for you. Then they give you a chart that shows you how to figure out when your partner’s eggs are ready and they tell you to go home, smoke less, eat better, and have more sex.

After you’ve had lots of sex for about a month, you go back to the GP and they give you your sperm count and motility results from the plastic container. If it doesn’t look very good they ask more serious questions about the drugs you take and whether or not you’ve spent much time in prison…

Dad? Is it true that you’re not my real Dad?


The Truth is, my Son/Daughter, that I’ve always been there.

I know I’m supposed to be offering a critical review of Jim Murdoch’s The Whole Truth. It’s an imperative I have placed upon myself. One thing that strikes me though as I think about how to best go about doing it is the question of:

“whether or not Truth would know what was going to happen since he’d already seen Jonathan’s life from start to finish” (JM)

which arises somewhat unexpectedly from out of the end of The Whole Truth.

That question isor to me goes straight to the heart
of Jim’s account of
the relationship between Truth and Destiny.

I imagine it highly probable that, based on what he had seen happen before, Truth (like his brother Destiny) would be making a lot of educated guesses the next time around; especially if Truth is punting on Jonathan to change the direction of his life.

I can also imagine that Truth would be faced with a serious identity crisis at some point. He might even end up feeling like a father whose son doesn’t need him anymore.

If Jonathan’s father were to feel it was time to leave and then left (for Wales?), would Jonathan notice him gone? From what I have gathered of Jonathan’s childhood I can imagine he would feel a sense of having lost his first ever friend for reasons that were never explained to him. I can also imagine that Jonathan would mix the few details he had up in some kind of attempt at performing his own self-protection.

If I was the personification of Truth in that situation and I was given the opportunity to spend a few days with Jonathan again, I imagine I would tell him that I’d always been there.

For Lady Joanna Payne of Rigby

P.S. I think Truth is a bit of a Teddy Bear actually :)


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