I Can Barely Take Care of Myself

don’t get your period yet or have never had a wet dream.’ ”

He followed me back to the adult pool and talked to the kids and their parents. I went back to Child Watch Headquarters and let Sarah know that it had all been taken care of. “Uh, then what’s that?” Sarah asked. I looked and just as Security was walking away, the kids were getting back into the pool. Sarah and I retired from our beat that afternoon and ordered four more margaritas—well, we ordered six, but the waitress gave us a dirty look and said, “My tray only holds four.” And in a not-so-subtle way she said, “Four is a good limit. Dontcha think, girls?”

I SAT DEFEATED in Child Watch Headquarters, watching the kids finally get out of the pool as the sun started to go behind the clouds. I hadn’t yelled. I hadn’t said anything mean to the kids or about the kids to their parents. But I felt like a monster. How come I felt so guilty about wanting the rules to be enforced so that I could enjoy our vacation the way I paid for it?

It was the hotel’s rule that there was a separate pool for adults. Why can’t the two pools coexist without the generations crossing? It wouldn’t dawn on me to go act like an adult in the kids’ pool. I wouldn’t jump in the shallow end with a drink in my hand and start talking loudly to Sarah in front of a toddler about the best way to prevent a urinary tract infection after sex.

It’s so taboo to say that you don’t really enjoy the company of children. May I point out that the adults who brought their kids to the adult pool obviously did so because they did not want to be around only other children? Do they get a free pass because they procreated? I see parents all the time who get a kick out of saying, “I only like my kids. I don’t like other kids.” But if a single woman without children says, “I don’t like kids,” she sounds like a sociopath. I realize that one of those boys in the hot tub or girls in the pool could be president someday. I realize that we have children’s futures in our hands and they have our futures in theirs. I acknowledge that it’s a beautiful cycle and I’ll admit that I made myself tear up just typing that sentiment. I don’t want to be made to feel like a bitch because I’m upset that now, before those kids grow up to be president, they are peeing in my pool.

Sarah and I went back to our room and enjoyed some champagne on our balcony while we watched the sun set. We also maybe threw a pillow or two off the ledge. We also maybe threw an entire bag of Skittles, one by one, off the balcony at the people walking below (no, no children were harmed). We were well aware that throwing things off a balcony was against the rules, but we knew that the security and management team would be too lazy to bust us unless we told on ourselves.

I GOT HOME from the vacation to find out that there was a new upstairs neighbor in my fourplex apartment building—three new neighbors actually: a mommy, a daddy, and a toddler. My landlord made the executive decision to let a toddler live above a quiet, single woman who works from home as a writer on weekends. I long for the days when the twenty-six-year-old drunk girl lived upstairs and faked really loud, operatic orgasms until four in the morning. At least with her, I could count on the fact that she’d pass out immediately after and she’d stay asleep until about one o’clock the next day. (And if I was in the right mood, let’s be honest, it was scintillating to listen to the noises she was making.)

I’m sitting in my home office, typing, and I can hear him now, running up and down the length of his apartment. He sounds like he has weights in his shoes. Every once in a while he stops running, only to drop and then drop again a toy that sounds like a regulation-size bowling ball. I can hear his dad chasing him down the hallway playfully, which makes little Tony (I named him Tony) squeal with delight. Can we all admit that the sound of a kid squealing, even if it’s with joy, sounds like squealing? I can angrily press the button on an air horn or I can press the button on an air horn with a sense of carefree fun and either way it sounds like an air horn.

I woke up at five in the morning today because that’s what time Tony wakes up—or at least it’s the time that he starts crying and screaming and then choking on the phlegm he’s built up from crying, and then screaming because he thinks he’s going to die from choking on phlegm. Luckily, my dad taught me ingenuity. I put a fan on the floor. I turn it on low and it makes just enough of a sound to create some white noise. If I close my bedroom door, I can’t hear a thing that’s going on outside of my bedroom—which includes any smoke alarms in the hallway, my home security alarm, or a murderer if he decides to break a window in my kitchen so he can climb through and grab those enticing knives on my counter because he forgot to bring his own weapon. If only these parents upstairs knew just how selfless I was—putting aside my own peace of mind for a little peace and quiet because I know that there’s no way I can march upstairs and tell a toddler to stop crying about how he doesn’t understand yet that sleeping is fucking awesome.

I took to my Facebook page to get some advice about this situation with Toddler Tony. I asked my friends who were parents to tell me whether there is ever a good time or a good way to talk to the parents upstairs. Was it out of line for me to ask Tony’s parents to not let him run while wearing shoes? It’s a lot nicer than what I really wanted to ask, which was, “Why don’t you take Tony outside, you fucking morons? It’s a permanent seventy-five degrees in Los Angeles and you have this kid cooped up inside an apartment for eight hours straight?”

My friends’ comments ran the gamut from unhelpful to infuriating. Suggestions like: “Bake some cookies and bring them up to the new neighbors and slip into the conversation, ever so subtly, that you know of a good park in the neighborhood. Maybe they will get the hint that they should take Tony outside more and it could help educate them about the neighborhood.” They lost me at “bake cookies.” Bake? Cookies?

I made sure to phrase my Facebook question in a very pro-kid light. I was even gracious enough to admit that one can’t expect a kid to ever be completely quiet. Of course, some casual acquaintances of mine who have kids responded:

Jen, sometimes you just have to let a kid be a kid. As a parent, I know this from experience. It’s a tough, underappreciated job, having kids. May I suggest noise-canceling headphones?

I haven’t had time to bake any cookies (or buy any ingredients), and I’m definitely not up for wearing headphones around my house ten to twelve hours a day. But I have found a solution that works for me. Every time I hear Tony running up and down the entire length of the apartment upstairs and squealing, “Aahhhhhhhhhhhh!”—I put on a pair of high heels and I run up and down my hardwood- floored hallway, stomping and clunking and also yelling, “Aaaaaaahhhhhhhh!” at the top of my lungs. (I don’t have any downstairs neighbors—unless you count the termites underneath our complex.)

I’m hoping that Tony’s parents get the hint and realize that they are not living in a soundproof building. So far, even if they have gotten the hint, the noise hasn’t stopped. But I’m actually having a ball. It’s so therapeutic and freeing, I just might cut back my therapy sessions from weekly to biweekly. And if Tony’s parents stop by to complain, I’ll just ever so subtly inform them that my inner kid needs to be a kid and that I know from experience how hard it is to raise one.

4. Married… Without Children

If it was a Tuesday night in 2004, I was hanging out at the M Bar, a supper club that housed a popular night of stand-up comedy in a strip mall on Vine at Fountain in Hollywood. I was on a bit of a comedy hot streak—I mean as much of a hot streak as a stand-up comic can have who is performing unpaid for fifty people who are all crammed in the back of the room, trying to avoid sitting at a table because they’re too broke to order the stale bruschetta. My hot streak was because I was single and I’m never funnier than when I’m feeling dejected and undersexed. I’d just come to the natural end of a love relationship with (aka I was dumped by) Thomas, who had decided that it would be an improvement in his life to get back together with Hariette, his adult-Goth ex-girlfriend with a death wish. I should have known. He talked about her incessantly and I couldn’t keep anything in the nightstand drawer on the side of his bed that I slept on because it was full of her cards and letters from their fucked-up relationship. One card had dried blood and a rose on the inside. Yes, I read the cards. How else should I have amused myself while he was taking a shower or sleeping? This was before the Instagram app or Netflix Instant was invented.

I joked onstage about the band Weezer one night at M Bar and the guy who acted as the comedy show DJ