Four Days of Almost New post My son-but-not-son

She orders for the table, because it’s her birthday and because she always orders for the table. Iced coffee strong enough to stand a spoon in, the glasses sweating rings into the tabletop, a plate of pastries nobody asked for and everybody eats, and a slice of cake that belongs to a four-year-old long before anyone says so out loud. The café sits at the foot of the apartment complex she lives in these days: glass, plants, the good kind of air-con that raises goosebumps after the street heat, and a pack of kids from the building orbiting the tables like small, loud moons.

Her son orbits with them. Every few minutes he swings back to check that the cake still exists, to report something urgent in Vietnamese and then the same thing again in English for my benefit, and to be let down by me.

I try SpongeBob on him first, and he looks at me the way you’d look at a man asking whether you’ve heard of electricity: he hasn’t heard of SpongeBob – huhu – so I switch to Asterix instead, a few panels, then a few pages of Don Rosa‘s ducks, and he leans in over my arm, all elbows and warm weight, with the kind of focus adults only manage for tax deadlines. I promise him Vietnamese-translated Asterix for next time. And we agree that cake is the best thing in the world, because it is – everybody knows that.

Two hours of that: her job, her husband, her family, how fast he grows and learns, how he keeps every adult in a three-apartment radius busy and awake, how he’s too young for pranks (for now, we both hope, a little). For him I’m Luit, his mom’s western friend who tickles too much, carries him on his shoulders, hides badly on purpose and always, always brings something sweet. For her and me he has a longer name, one we only ever say as a joke: my son-but-not-son.

Nobody at this table thinks he could be mine. A few years ago, for four days, he could have been.

I sat right next to her the first night. A former colleague had invited a handful of us for food, iced beer and karaoke, the holy trinity of any Sài Gòn evening, and we started talking before the first round was even on the table – the place, the food, work, the friend who’d put us there – and by the end we had a pile of inside jokes nobody else understood and some of the worst singing either of us has committed in public, in a room that smelled of spilled beer and somebody else’s perfume, the mic slightly sticky, the lyrics half a beat ahead of us. Then Zalo contacts, like everyone, and we called it a day.

Zalo is where it got curious. Small talk about the evening first, then about ourselves: where we came from, what had carried us to this city, how life and COVID were treating us in it. It took a few weeks for curiosity to turn into interest, and then we met again, after work, on a rooftop café under string lights and paper lanterns, Vietnamese pop drifting over tables full of students and couples, the sky over the city glowing orange-black, the night thick and warm around us, strong coffee on the table and khô gà lá chanh (shredded dried chicken with chili and lime leaf) next to it, a snack that has no business going with sweet coffee and goes with it perfectly. We talked relationship status (both single), plans, wishes, likes and dislikes, and near midnight we called it a day again, because work, and promised to do it again – with a crackle in the air that both of us pretended not to hear, and heard anyway.

A couple more dates, a whole weekend afternoon bleeding into evening, and slowly we both knew. She said it first, carefully, diplomatically, in words so non-committal I can’t even remember them. Then one dinner ran long past midnight and she told me, a little too casually, eyes on her glass, that the gates of her building were locked now and would stay locked until morning. Which btw is an actual thing here. So I asked if she wanted to stay at my place instead. She thought about it for one breath, smiled, and said yes – relieved, mostly, that she wouldn’t be spending the night outside. Sure. Relieved.

Nothing happened that night; we were both too tired for anything but sleep, so I found her a towel, a spare toothbrush, underwear that was more or less unisex if you squinted, and we slept in the same bed with a gap down the middle and two separate blankets, both of us very aware of that gap, and I slept fine, and something changed anyway.

Two dates later, the gap was gone and we were a couple.

Six months, three wild ones and three open ones, if I’m keeping score.

My apartment was our hotspot, and I mean hotspot quite literally: two bodies, three overworked AC units, and a Sài Gòn summer pressing against the windows. Bringing a foreigner into a local Vietnamese apartment house is still a far more delicate business than the other way around, so most of her free time and most of her nights ended up at my place, and a few of mine at hers – plus a handful of road trips across the country that were exactly as unbridled as everything else. We had a good time – really, every moment of it.

And, as with so many of my relationships before it, we found out fast that there wasn’t much underneath. We carried each other’s worries, fixed each other’s problems, shared fears and hardships and a ridiculous number of euphoric moments; underneath all of that there was nothing to stand on – no meaning, no long-term, no commitment either of us actually wanted to make. Girlfriend and boyfriend just for fun had worked earlier in our lives. Damn, it was the literal story of MY life. It wasn’t enough at the age we were, and we said so to each other, because saying things to each other was the one thing we’d always been good at. Three months in, we opened it up. She swiped on Tinder and met a few guys; I stumbled into a few men and women, some through Tinder, some through life. Things went on like that for a while, until we called it quits by mutual agreement, with a clear conscience and a strong, caring bond still between us.

No fight, no bad words, no tears, just relief: we quit the way we’d come together, in peace and laughing, because we could – and that tells you most of what you need to know about the thing we were quitting.

Three months later, still meeting for coffee now and then, she texted me that she had to see me. Serious, she wrote, and urgent. I was worried she’d run into trouble, or was sick, so we agreed on my place that same evening, somewhere private, and she arrived, and she sat down on my couch, and she came straight to the point. I put a glass of water in front of her. She never touched it.

She was pregnant.

WHAT THE FUCK – the party rollercoaster had just hit the wall at full speed.

She’d known for a while. Her body had started changing, her chemistry too, and she hadn’t known what to do with any of it, so she’d kept it to herself until she finally made it to a hospital for a check-up and an ultrasound: somewhere between the third and the fourth month already.

My brain opened every tab at once, and not one of them asked how this had happened or whether I was the father: how to take care of her, and the baby; how to make an us out of us again, properly this time; whether this country would keep tolerating its guest for the next 18 years; how to earn more, where to find a bigger apartment, where on earth you take classes in holding a newborn. Paperwork, bureaucracy, language, her family – OMG her family! – all of it in the space of a few seconds, and none of it in order.

My body, meanwhile, did the one sensible thing: it held her. I took her head in my hands, felt the damp heat of her temples against my palms, looked her in the eyes and told her she had nothing to worry about, that she wasn’t alone, that I was here for her and for the baby and for whatever was coming. That there was an us. She cried, and I held her hands, then all of her, her shoulders shaking against my chest, while my mind kept running laps behind my eyes: where to even begin, who to ask – so many questions, so many worries, so many – fears?

And under the fear there was – happiness, oh boy. If I was the father – and that was the first time the thought of another man even brushed past – this was the answer to a call that had been getting louder in me for a while (I’d written about it, in a rather dissolute way). A whole new chapter, of my life and in it. It was a cacophony, and the only things keeping me in the room were the weight of her against me, warm and real, and the knowledge that there were three of us on that couch now.

She was worried too, super worried: she wasn’t ready to be a mom, she said – then half-joked that nobody ever is. Worried about telling her family, her friends; worried whether I’d stay or leave her alone with it (I said my words again); worried about what our two very different backgrounds would make of a present and a future neither of us had planned. Then I cried too, and then we talked, seriously, about everything, including how – and honestly, we knew how: we’d been careless, at least in some of our wilder moments – rollercoaster ftw. But she’d also been on those few dates, and besides me there was one other candidate: an American, an expat about my age, a few years in the city. The numbers were against him, she said. She also said that was speculation, which didn’t calm me down in the slightest.

He didn’t know yet, so we agreed to fix that sooner rather than later, starting tomorrow, and then we were too empty to do anything but go to bed.

The first night she’d stayed at my place there’d been a gap between us and two blankets, and I’d slept fine. This time there was no gap. I held her the whole night and didn’t sleep at all – somewhere between exhaustion and shock, half awake, racing nowhere, her back against my chest and her breathing never quite settling either, both of us pretending the other was asleep, and full of a closeness and care that didn’t need a single word.

Sleep on it, sweetheart, the world looks different in the morning. Turns out you don’t even need the sleep: daylight does most of the work on its own.

We showered, got ready together, went to a Highlands Coffee for breakfast and came out with a plan. First, she’d meet the American – alone, because she trusted him, because she said he was a good guy, and because me standing next to her would complicate a conversation that needed simplifying. After that, a paternity test: clarify the situation, secure the area, then look ahead, step by step, the way you’d debug software (silly comparison, but the method works).

She texted him; they set a time for that afternoon. I worked from home, which is a generous description of what I did, since I couldn’t have followed anyone else’s inputs and concerns that day if my salary depended on it. Minutes took hours, and I ping-ponged between shit, what do I do now?! and this is great news, the future’s gonna be awesome, right?! with nothing in between, a state I still don’t have proper words for. Then she called: the talk had gone well, and he’d turned out to be exactly what she’d said: a good guy.

That evening I took a Grab through the thick evening traffic to a private international hospital, the kind that’s more discreet about this sort of thing and asks for less intimate paperwork than a local one (it still asks for some; my passport details are in a folder there forever). He was already there with her. Friendly, likeable, and at least as nervous as I was; we shook hands a little too firmly, both of us pretending this was a normal thing to be doing on a weekday night. It was awkward and straightforward at the same time, three people – four, really – filling out forms side by side and trading bad jokes about Vietnamese hospitals so that nobody had to touch the actual thing sitting between us.

An older doctor called her in first, serious-looking but kind, and kept her for almost 30 minutes. Then he called the three of us. He didn’t ask much; she’d told him everything already. He kept it professional, with a small, wholesome smirk tucked into the corner of his mouth, and explained the procedure: a non-invasive prenatal paternity test, a few minutes for us, three to five days for the lab. A nurse ran the checks every visit to a Vietnamese hospital begins with, whatever you came for – blood pressure, height, weight, any ongoing illnesses, yes or no – and then took three blood samples from each of us, the needle sting and the smell of alcohol swabs and not one of us watching the others’ faces.

Cotton, plaster, done.

He went home to his apartment. She and I went to mine and finally, actually slept, and I held her again, because she needed it – and, honestly, so did I.

Four days.

We covered the nerves with daily business: work, meetings, appointments, the grocery run. She stayed at my place most of the time, stayed in touch with him, met him in between, and all three of us did the one thing left to do, which was wait. I’d never understood before how physical not knowing is. It sits low in your stomach like a swallowed stone and turns every buzz of the phone into a small heart attack. A thousand possibilities and no certainty, anticipation with nowhere to go, chaos inside each of us and between all of us – and nothing to do about any of it but check the phone again.

Then the result arrived, through the hospital’s app, on her phone. A notification like any other.

The father… wasn’t me.

Woosh – I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t relief. She cried; I cried; for different reasons and for the same ones. When she’d pulled herself together she went outside to make a call – THE call – and I can only imagine what went through her in the seconds before he picked up. It took about ten minutes. She came back in, eyes red and steady, and said she needed to go to his place now, that the two of them had to talk, seriously. We said goodbye with a strange vibe between the two – three – of us, the door closed, and I was alone – and certain, and everything was empty.

I lay down on the floor, on my back, arms and legs stretched out, the tiles cool and hard against my shoulder blades, in the dark and silent apartment, and stared at the ceiling and cried, quietly, tear after tear sliding back into my hair, for a long, long time. Relief and disappointment, joy and sorrow, melancholy and a sense of loss I had no right to and felt anyway. I got up now and then, splashed water on my face, went back down. The AC hummed; somewhere far below, a motorbike beeped, then another. I kept checking my phone for a message from her; she stayed quiet all night, as she should have.

Somewhere in those hours I found out something I hadn’t known when I lay down: part of me had hoped it would be me, no matter the circumstances. It wasn’t a thought so much as a discovery, like finding a door in your own apartment you’ve never opened, and a whole furnished room behind it.

The sun came up, and I went to bed and slept long and hard, and the emptiness – if emptiness is even the right word – stayed for days and weeks after.

After that night, things got quieter. We stayed in touch, met now and then, until the pregnancy got serious and her life filled up with far more important things than a guy on a floor. Then it was voice messages and chats, through the birth and the months after, and she was in good hands.

The first time I saw her again in person was at her wedding party. She married the American; they’d come together in the middle of all of it and stayed together, and they fit – better than she and I ever did, and I can say that without a single splinter in it. They’re raising their son between two cultures and two languages, and they seem happy, properly happy. Her husband and I get along; she and I meet every once in a while for strong coffee and snacks, old stories and new ones, with a healthy distance in between that neither of us had to negotiate. Maybe we both grew up (I’m not a hundred percent sure about me).

The emptiness faded the way these things do, slowly and steadily, and the what if faded with it, because what happened can’t be undone and life doesn’t wait for you to finish asking. Physically, metaphysically, those four days changed nothing: a blood test, an app notification, one night on a floor. Emotionally, they were the thing that told me what I want.

Somewhere along the way – over one of those coffees, or on one of our walks, I don’t remember which, only that it was in English – she said properly what she’d half-joked on my couch that night. That you’re never ready, and if you wait until you are, you’ll wait your whole life; once the child is there, however it gets there, you grow into it.

Because that’s the actual story: my fiancé and I want kids – two, at least.

The longing is growing in both of us, and I see it everywhere now: kids in the park, kids in the supermarket line, kids outside the window when I’m running at the gym. I smile, mostly on the inside, sometimes on the outside, happy for them and dreaming of raising our own, of teaching them how to be good people, what ethics are for, how to be decent in a future that will be harder than anything we had and still carries hope. Of the two of us growing old with them, collecting memories and discoveries, being a family, being together, being whole. Life is too beautiful not to be shared.

And in the same moment I want it, I’m not sure I’m ready for it. I want the commitment; I’m scared of the commitment. I want it now; I want one more year. I’m 37, and I feel a pressure that’s entirely subjective and entirely real. I’m a guest in this country, and I live here on its goodwill – for how many more years? Next year my fiancé and I start our marriage journey, and Vietnam allows a same-sex wedding as a ceremony but doesn’t recognize it as a marriage. Adoption, surrogacy: on paper, the rules here are friendlier than in Germany – for a married man and woman, with a relative carrying the child. For two men, one of them a foreigner, that’s a different story again. And will I ever feel ready? Ready ready, I mean, and not just the promise that I’ll grow into it once a child is in my arms?

So many questions, so many quests. The clock ticks, and I don’t know how to navigate any of this.

But one thing is different from that night on the floor. Then I was certain and alone; now I’m uncertain about nearly everything, and not alone. I made commitments since then, and I keep them.

She was right, of course. You’re never ready.