21
"You know what? I got the craziest idea. Why don't you arrange a date to meet at your house? That way, she'll know for sure that you've received her into our family with open arms, because, you know, I'm going to marry her. I'm not going to waste my time proposing and preparing anything. I'm going to take her to the Court House tomorrow and we're going to get married. We've been without one another for too long, so I think that the only matrimony ceremony that has to have preparation to work out smoothly is the religious one. The lawful one can take place right now."
She lip synced, "You can't be serious."
He nodded.
"I like your idea better than I like mine. OK, so I have to go. Why don't you ask her what we want to ask her and then have her call me back later in the day?"
"OK, Mom, that sounds good. I'm going to swing by your house later today. If we waited seven years to have sex, I think we can wait less than twelve hours more, don't you think?"
Sara laughed and said, "I agree. Your dad wants to talk to you, but you won't know the details till you get here."
"That's good enough for me. All right, I'm going to let you go. I'll see you later." He ended the call.
"Is Sara for real? Does she really want to meet with me?"
"You know what? She's faked a lot of things before..."
She interrupted him and laughed hysterically, "Oh, God, I don't even want to think about her faking anything!"
"Well, Dad says that she's never faked it in bed."
"Oh, my God," she laughed even more intensely now, "I'm thrilled to know how passionate your parents still are about each other."
"They've been happily married for thirty years now."
"But you're only twenty-five, Ivan, and you're the oldest."
"I know, but when they got married, they couldn't conceive for five whole years. It turned out that my mother was taking an antidepressant that was somehow preventing her from getting pregnant. As soon the doctor told her what was happening, she stopped taking the drug, and the day that she stopped taking the drug, she got pregnant with me. I was conceived that day, February 2, 1981. I was born on November 16, 1981. As soon as I was born, she started taking it again. Then she stopped taking it and conceived my sister, Alana. Finally, her doctor reduced the dosage of the medicine and she could finally have the cake and eat it, too; take the medicine and get pregnant."
"That is one fascinating story. Have you ever thought about writing your autobiography?" "Well, I am writing my autobiography, but it would be really difficult to try and think
back to the key past events of my life, so what I‘m doing are writing a ninety-day-journal about enduring my mental illness."
"…Your mental illness?"
"It's nothing serious; just OCD."
"You don't think OCD is a serious matter?"
"That's another reason why I don't care that you have HPV, because I'm not a happy camper either. How could I possibly demand perfection in a woman when I couldn't be more imperfect?"
"Do you think that OCD is what has caused your previous relationships to fail, Ivan?"