“I tried that before, man, but the girl didn’t want to be on birth control. And then I would have to pay for it even if she did use it.”

“Well, you’re gonna have to pay the piper before or after anyway. It’s a lot cheaper to pay before,” I told him.

He said, “I know, man, I know. So now I’m in a three-woman, three-kid bind, and they’re all trying to top one another.”

I looked at him and asked, “All three of them?”

He nodded. “You would think that at least one of them would be sane, right? But nope.”

I joked and said, “Well, you just have some bad-ass choices in women then.”

He laughed it off. He said, “Anyway, man, I don’t want to worry you with my problems. What’s been going on in your life? Where are you living nowadays?”

I looked at my watch before I answered to make sure I was still on track.

“I live in Atlanta now. What about you?”

“Columbus. Gary got too hot for me. Then I went down to Columbus, Ohio, and it got hot. So what the hell is the difference? But Atlanta? Man, I hear they got all kind of women down there.”

He was still thinking about women. I guess a vasectomy doesn’t kill your appetite, it only kills your ability to reproduce.

I laughed and said, “I’m just hoping to stay out of the same trouble you got yourself into. But I understand it, man. I just don’t understand the women sometimes. I mean, I know why we do what we do.”

Jerry laughed and said, “Well, we tend to be a little opposite. First we do it to please ourselves, then later we do it to please them. But they do it to please us first, then they do it to please themselves. So in the long run, they’re the ones who try to keep the shit going, while we’re busy trying to finish it.”

“Good point,” I told him. “But I got to catch this plane.”

“Hey, what’s your number, man? We need to stay in touch.”

I traded numbers with him before I headed to the gate.

“When is your flight?” I asked him.

He grinned. “My flight ain’t for another two hours. I just got here super early to watch people with lives to live and places to go. It’s therapeutic. It makes me know that I gotta keep it movin’.”

I walked away from Jerry and felt sorry for him and cautious for myself. I made jokes about his situation to keep it loose, but ties to three women with children had to be hectic. I didn’t even have an official girlfriend and I had problems juggling that, so I could just imagine the stress of three women with my kids.

Hell, I started thinking about thanking Andrea for not bringing a child into the world after meeting up with Jerry. But that was only his interpretation of things. Kids were still a joy to most people. What if Andrea had a beautiful baby girl for me? Would I call her a poison? I seriously doubted it.