I was actually speaking in terms of career moves, not his personal life.

“Oh yeah?” I didn’t know how to respond to his women issues. I wasn’t expecting that.

He said, “You got any kids yet, man?”

“Nah,” I told him.

He nodded. “Good. Because once you get ’em, there ain’t no going back to just being you. You’re a daddy whether you like it or not, and you damn sure have to pay the price for it.”

He said, “It’s just a crazy thing, man. Now I know the full extent of the sacrifices our parents went through to raise us.”

The conversation was a little too depressing for me. I didn’t know how to add anything to it.

I said, “It’s a tough job, huh?” It was just a generic response on my part. Like I said, I didn’t have a father, and I wasn’t trying to be a father.

Jerry took a gulp of his drink. “It’s much more than a fuckin’ job. It’s more like a lifelong poison. Sometimes it feels good to you, sometimes you wish you were dead—either you or them.”

That was extreme. I said, “A poison? Come on, man, I thought kids were our greatest treasure.” They just weren’t the greatest treasure for me.

Jerry looked me in the eyes and said, “Let me tell you something, man. My third child was a girl. And I didn’t even know her mother that well when she got pregnant. I found out when she was about two months in.”

He said, “I was already in deep shit with my other two baby mommas. So I argued with this damn girl to the point of wanting to kill her, not to have this baby. I mean, I had my hands full as it was. And I swear to God, man, I don’t know if it was me worrying about new child support payments or what, but I could feel the entire pregnancy draining the damn life out of me. And I didn’t feel that way with my first two. But this last one, man…

“Maybe it was because she was a girl instead of a boy,” he suggested. “But after that, I went ahead and got myself a vasectomy.”

“A vasectomy?” I repeated. That was more than extreme in my book. That was crazy! Why would he do that to himself instead of simply wearing a condom?

“Yeah, man. No more slip-ups for me,” he told me.

“They were all slip-ups?” I asked him. I could see once or even twice, but three times…

He shook his head and took another gulp of his drink. “I know. I only have myself to blame. But sometimes you wanna feel it all. Those condoms take the feeling away for me, man.”

I took a sip of my water. “Excuse me for asking you this, but have you ever once thought about staying with one woman, and putting her on birth control or something?”

I was asking him for the both of us. It sure made things a lot simpler if you remained with one woman and her one set of problems than multiple women and multiple sets of problems. But who was I to tell it? I was still collecting new women all over the country.