The Vasectomy Dialogues (Part 1)

A man is more than the sum of his names

When I think of manly, I think of my friend Travis.

It's weird that I don't think of myself. I'm just not that guy. I'm the guy who gets excited about artsy chocolate truffles, can tell you what a pecan duja is, and who you can find saying phrases like, "Wow, that cilantro foam on the deconstructed caterpillar sushi roll was amaaaaaze-balls!"

So, when I think of manly, I think of my friend Travis.

If dictionaries used pictures, there would be one of him under that word. It would show his strong jaw covered by a lumberman's beard and is leathery as fuck from all the time he spends in the sun. A beef-fed, corn-finished Georgia country boy who owns a small cabin near a lake.

Under the picture, you could read, "See also Redneck Metrosexual."

It shocked me the first time I heard him refer to himself as a redneck. I didn't think of him that way and I tried to tell him that much.

But he likes to tell defend his positions and tells me that rednecks can be progressive and inclusive, too, and you can see that in the use of the term "Y'all."

It doesn't get more inclusive than everybody.

The lake is close enough to walk to with his fishing rod, but he can also take his Jon boat (which is like a dinghy but for rednecks) and cruise for an hour to the dam, visiting boat friends and sipping on Crown Royal.

"You know, Carlos, boat friends!! You hang with them and do boat things, but you wouldn't do anything else with them outside the lake."

I. Did. Not. Know.

The cabin, of course, has enough artillery to defend the Federal Reserve Bank, and it will be used when the government finally comes to take his grandfather's rifle — the man he was named after.

Travis and I worked together. We either met in Atlanta, where our company was located, or at conventions across the country. When the meetings were over, we sat down with a glass of WhistlePig and traded stories.
I always want to hear about his hunting escapades.

On the last one, he and two of his buddies caught a 12-foot and 760-pound alligator.

Almost all his stories go like that: Travis hunting deer; Travis nearly getting killed by a wild boar and having to unload his 9mm on it because he is a slacker when it comes to oiling his rifles; Travis in the Alaskan frontier hunting... polar bears? Narwhals?… Whitewalkers? I don't know what you hunt for there or, more importantly, why you'd go there.

Once, I asked him if he had ever noodled for catfish.

If you don't know what catfish noodling is, it's when 'git'er done' folks wade into muddy lakes and go around it punching the edges of the lake until a catfish chomps down on their arms, and they pull the disgusting fish out. These catfish can reach up to 100 pounds.

Travis answered, "I don't mess with that shit. That's how you lose arms."

That's funny because that's exactly what I think about hunting alligators.

I like Travis because I believe that under the rough and gruff lies a sensitive man.

Of course, that's what I tell myself about every single rough-around-the-edges person I meet, and maybe it's the reason I always end up being friends with people like him. There is no questioning where you stand with a person like that; they'll fucking tell you — right to your fucking face. That's why he only has three friends.

One day, I called him while he was in such a place of vulnerability. It was the afternoon after he had gotten his vasectomy done.

He knew he didn't want kids. 

He knew that it needed to be done. 

But when the rubber meets the road, or in his case, when the electric cauterizer meets the vas deferens, he didn't want more rubber.

It seemed to me that from everything weighing on him, the end of his family's name loomed the heaviest.

It might seem silly to some people that you can be upset over a last name, but I get it. I have experienced such emotions with my last name.

I remember being a kid and telling people my last name and feeling it turn to marbles inside my mouth.

I have some good memories with my dad's side of the family, but not enough to feel myself the bearer of the name.

I know it comes from the Basque region because I have a cousin who is obsessed with our genealogy. He traced it back to a place in the Basque Country, where there was an actual plaque with our name on it, and he sent us a video of it.

"Dear Cousins, I am sending you this video with this plaque that has our name on it: Garbiras."

It was unclear if the plaque memorialized the street, the mound he was standing on, the sewage manhole underneath it, or if the sheep looming in the background was related to us.

But he sure was happy to find our name on that plaque.

I'm not attached to my last name, and there's no reason for me to be. 

My mom took the brunt of raising my sister and me. I saw friends in similar situations take their mothers' names, but I wouldn't consider that, either.

I won't change my name. It is my name, and I am not going to change it.

When I met my wife, she had a similar affiliation to her name, and when things started getting serious, she told me she had no plans to change it after our wedding.

I got it.

Twenty-five years as someone, and here I come with plans to not only change a very important piece of her identity but to burden her with a clerical nightmare of changing all her legal documents and credit cards.

That's no way to start a marriage.

I can't take credit for my progressive views.

In college, I had to study so much feminist theory that Judith Butler would've looked at our curriculum and said, "Whoa, estrogen much?"
The fact that she wanted to marry me at all was shocking enough.

I felt like a modern man, unencumbered by chauvinistic views of the past.

That only lasted until we started talking about having babies, and my wife shared with me her plans of giving our babies her last name. "I will carry them for nine months, why shouldn't they have my name?"

Which makes sense.

But it doesn't.

I tell everyone in my household; it is a debate as old as time: What came first, the egg or the sperm? And, of course, the sperm comes first. 

Eventually, I caved in because I love my wife so much, and she knows. 

We compromised and punished our unborn children with the longest hyphenated name possible, Rege-Garbiras. An early message to them that things in this family are corky.

It might have been all in vain. When she was younger, my daughter, Jovie, started referring to herself as Jovie Rege Cotijas as if I was related to the infamous man who patented the style of cheese, as if my name was Don Carlos Cotijas.

The disrespect.

She could have easily punned my wife's name with gems such as reggae, ragged, or rickety.

But she didn't.

She came up with a pun on her father's last name so clever that it escaped the boys in my school for twelve years.

To give my daughter more credit, in her almost five years of existence, we have only eaten cotija cheese once, and she retained the word long enough to apply it to a similar-sounding word.

She has also employed a memorization strategy to use uncommon words in the right setting, as seen when she put little green balls of Play-Doh on a bigger orange ball of Play-Doh, looked at it, and said, "It's a Pollock." Or when she was FaceTiming my mom and told her, "Let's pretend your name is Punani!"

I have to tell you, I never used that word, and I'm so curious to know who the hell is walking around my daughter saying, "Punani," or calling my mom one.

So I understood when Travis experienced a feeling that snuck up on him regarding his name. 

We live in a society that pressures men and women to do extraordinary things in the name of family and to bring children into the world who will do the same. 

When we should be focused on letting people be people, a world where being a good, honest person is more than enough.

Besides, just because Travis doesn't know it, it doesn't mean there are many little Travises running around hunting alligators, deer, and boars.

They are just not carrying his name, and as such, they are not his financial responsibility.

That's something he can enjoy while coasting on his Jon boat, sipping on Crown on a muggy Georgia afternoon with his boat friends.