Tears

I am at work, when suddenly I come over all strange. I feel dizzy. The room starts to spin. My guts ache and I have to grip the desk to compose myself. Sadness has run headfirst into my stomach. It isn’t the depth of the story I am editing, about a little girl who loses her pet frog, that brings tears to my eyes, it’s the thoughts that rush up from my subconscious. Will I ever watch this show with a child of my own? Will I ever actually be a dad?

I rush to the Gents, sit on the pan and let the tears come.

Great big watery tears. Buckets of them.

I never cry. I can’t even remember the last time I cried.

I cry for me. I cry for Nyla. I cry for us. I cry for my useless sperm. And then I start crying because I am crying. I am a man with dodgy sperm and I cry.

What kind of man am I? I bet my dad wouldn’t cry. I am not a man at all.

Once I start I can’t stop.  At first I try to hold it in. But I think its best to just let it all flow. Holding it in will only make it worse, like diarrhea, it’s best to just let it all come out. And anyway no one can see me.

I don’t just cry tears, I physically sob. It is embarrassing. I hope to God no one can hear me.

Then after what must have been a good ten minutes, it stops. I wipe away my tears. I feel drained. But in a strange way I feel good. Cleansed.

For a long time I just I sit pondering my existence. If you can’t father a baby what is life for?

It’s a big question and not best suited for a men’s toilet cubicle on the third floor of a seventies office block in West London. So I look around me and wonder instead what compels men to draw knobs on lavatory walls.