I would've said the wrong things to children, had I fathered. Smarten up that face, young man. Or: I have important colleagues coming over, can you not look so young just this once? They might find your recentness unsettling. Or: Hey you kids, don't both of you walk in the hallway at the same time, the clustered rustling of garments makes parts of Daddy clench. But I didn't father, I've barely even uncled. The totality of my uncling is parenthetical. But it's also true that I was never visited by important colleagues so maybe it would've been fine. And I could have commissioned special silent outfits for them, colorful jumpsuits, close-fitting and lightly lubricated. Yes, it's now certain that I would have made a cordial and effective father. I would never raise my fist to my children until they grew tall enough to make it necessary. My children don't exist but they would be fairly clean if they did, and they wouldn't look too hard at others or ask the wrong way or make damning assessments of me when they get back to their rooms. They'd need rooms in which to privately enlarge. The ungirl can have the little room where I keep receipts, cleansers, and woozily stacked cartons and the unboy can take the room I've been saving for a lover whose apneatic snores, thrashes, or violent sleep gestures would keep me awake. Romantic but sneakily brawny, with a unique and heady musk. Contractor forearms. The kind of walleted ass you want to follow upstairs. A man whose revolting tabasco-squirted omelets are inedible but who'd never know it from me since he's so proud of himself for making me breakfast after a night of sexual hydraulics that leave bed linens rippled and dappled and the morning light exhausted. This potential man and these theoretical children are fighting over my rooms. If it were two boys they could have bunk beds with a little ladder and I could still have the man, or the man wouldn't semaphore in his sleep and could therefore share my bed and I could still have one of each kind of child. Life is nothing but possibilities.