DADWAGON

Sunday morning found me and Sasha over at Carroll Park, the frothing hub of weekend kiddie play in the middle of GoBoCoCa (Gowanus–Boerum Hill–Cobble Hill–Carroll Gardens). It was a warm day, but maybe because of the holiday the park wasn’t as overcrowded as it usually is; there was plenty of room for Sasha to run around and coast on her scooter and chase soap bubbles.

Ah, bubbles! It’s amazing how those floating spheres of soap so consistently thrill my kid; as I tell people again and again, bubbles rank pretty much at the top of Sasha’s love hierarchy, followed closely by Dora the Explorer, balloons, and Mommy. I rank a distant eighth. On a good day.

And on this day the bubbles were being blown—or, really, shot from an incredible battery-operated bubble gun (gotta get one!)—by a bearded dad maybe a decade older than me. Jodie, he said his name was, and he was there with his daughter, Charlotte, a 3-and-a-half-year-old with curly blond hair, brown skin, and Asian-looking eyes—pretty incredible. As Jodie (and, later, I) shot bubbles into the air for the screaming children to chase, he and I talked a bit about nothing in particular, just one of those casual parent conversations that we have again and again, often with the same people.

But what struck me about it was that a day earlier, at the birthday party for Nathan’s son, Nico, one of Nathan’s friends had complained to me about Carroll Park. It was, she’d said, not exactly a welcoming place—she’d never been able to make friends with the other parents there, and that once she’d started going to other playgrounds, she’d found them hugely more sociable, and Carroll Park less attractive.

Now, I’m not saying my brief chat with Jodie was evidence against her. I may never see this Jodie person again, and it won’t really bother me.

What it brought home, though, was that I actually expect nothing in terms of adult social encounters at the playground. When I’m out with Sasha, particularly at a playground, I’m not looking to make new friends, or have truly interesting conversations (as I do when I’m on my own); for me, it’s all about Sasha, and what she’s doing, and who she’s interacting with. At the same park few weeks earlier, in fact, she’d had a great time playing with a 4-year-old boy, who I nicknamed Guacamole. Guac’s mother (or maybe nanny?) was there, too, but she and I barely spoke, and that was fine. The kids were having a great time, and that was enough for us.

But now I’m curious. Do most parents take their kids out to playgrounds partly (or primarily) in hopes of interacting with other adults? Or am I alone in not giving a damn about the other grown-ups?

The other night I was in the Greek seaside town of Neapoli, down at the end of Cape Meleas in the Peloponese. I arrived late, and didn’t really want to be there at all; I’d been hoping to catch a bus to Sparta, but the buses had finished for the night. Reluctantly, I checked into a cheap hotel and set out to wander the main drag in search of a snack and a stiff drink.

As I passed by taverna after estiatorio after ouzeri, I examined the crowds: old men smoking cigarettes over tepid thimbles of Greek coffee, middle-aged guys escaping their wives for a few beers, and kids in their late teens and early twenties, clustered at tables right on the water. Looking at this last group, I came to a sudden realization: I hate kids.

Really, it’s not hate so much as lack of interest. Once upon a time, I would’ve tried to ingratiate myself with them, thinking these youths were the key to experiencing a new place properly—and that they’d be more accepting of a strange (okay, very strange) traveler. Now, though, they seemed young, so young, and boring.

The thing is, the other demographic groups didn’t really appeal to me, either. The old guys would be great—if they spoke English. The middle-aged dudes, too—if they could discuss something besides soccer.

Which brought me to my second realization: Those of us in places like New York are incredibly lucky. That is, we are grown up—with kids, wives, second wives, mortgages, second mortgages—and yet most of us still have an interest in going out. Not “going out” as in drinking or clubbing, per se, but in the sense of wanting, and being able, to have a regular presence in the public sphere, whether with or without our families. It may be tough to wangle such time, but we want it, and we’re open to the possibilities it may bring.

Not so (or less so) in small towns, or conservative societies, where getting married and having kids really does often turn people inward. Finding someone like myself—a mid-30s parent with a job—out in the evenings is a rarity. If they are out, they’re with their kids and spouse, and have little interest in meeting new people.

It’s too bad for me, I guess, because those people—those extremely normal people—are the ones I most want to meet. But instead they cede the cafes to the kids, who just make me feel old.

In Neapoli, though, things worked out. I wound up sitting next to a young couple, in their twenties, she (Chara) a schoolteacher on a little nearby island, he (Jim) a hairdresser down from Athens. They were definite hipsters—he was riding a penny-farthing he’d bought in Germany!—and we talked about the challenges of life in a really small place. Soon, a few more of their friends showed up, and together they formed an odd demographic island of their own. Then I left: I’d drunk a whole bottle of ouzo and needed to get up early, and I didn’t want to impose.

Two days later, I was on the Greek island of Ithaca, looking for a cafe to hang out at. At a travel agency, I asked the Queens-raised woman at the desk for a suggestion. There’s a nice place with a reflecting pool down the quay, she said.

I’d seen it, I told her, and didn’t want to go. Because it was full of middle-aged Spanish tourists.

Years ago, before I had JP, his mother and I lived in a college town while she was working on her doctorate, and I was writing a risibly bad novel. We fought a lot even in those days, which should have been a bad sign, but which we mistook for “passion.”

One particularly confrontational night, I decided I’d had enough, and in a pique of what I thought of then as “drama” (today I would call it avoidance) I stormed out of the apartment, telling my then-girlfriend to color my ass gone for good.

Sadly, I only made it to the bar next door, a cheesy, frat-boy-filled watering hole with a 2:1 person-to-television ratio. I took a seat at the bar and began drinking beers, enjoying my self-righteous indignation, not speaking to anyone, because who, among all of these irate hockey fans, would I want to speak to?

I did, however, eventually fall into conversation with a guy who turned out to be a visiting professor from Ireland, with a giant beard, a disdain for U.S. TV sports, and a willingness, for whatever reason, to hear me out and buy me drinks, on the condition that I switch to Jameson.

Hours later I ended up at home, on the tile floor of my bathroom, retching. JP’s mom listened to me polishing the floor for a while and came in to check on me. I should point out that I have no recollection of the source of our fight. But if it was anything like most of our battles, it probably had to do with her telling me how and when to do something, my responding that I would like to do it at a different time and in a different fashion, and neither of us being willing to agree to disagree in the hopes of getting said task done. In general, I lost most of our fights.

Anyway, there I was, lying on the floor, holding one puke-stained hand up to shield myself from the light that JP’s mother had just switched on. She was standing over me, angry from the fight, outraged that I had gotten drunk, and completely fucking incensed that clearly I was going to be in no condition the following morning to do whatever thing it was she had initially wanted me to do.

This, I imagine, could have been a turning point in the early stage of our relationship. We could have made up, committed to working together, and forged a better partnership. She could have left me because I was giving signs of nascent alcoholism. Or, we could do what we did: keep fighting.

“I win,” I said, not even strong enough to stand.

“You what?”

“I win.”

I have no idea what I meant by that, and I don’t think she did either. But we both knew it was true.

Morale of the story: I went out the other night for an informal 20th high school anniversary get together, at which I had a few too many drinks and not enough food. The next morning I woke up with a brain-rattling headache, severe enough to prevent me from helping out with Ellie.

And Tomoko got me aspirin.