I Can Barely Take Care of Myself

pregnant me, lying on the couch in my elastic-waist jeans, yelling for him to bring me a diet ginger ale and then screaming when he brought it to me because he did it wrong. I wanted it in a glass with lots of ice. He had to start thinking like a girl, obsessing over the future and daydreaming about our childfree life together. I know guys don’t normally picture anything beyond the next pair of boobs they might be seeing naked.

Matt and I had a State of Our Union a few times a year, not just to talk about how we felt about kids (they should be banned from airplanes and not allowed to touch every single elevator button with their germ-laced fingers) but also to talk about what we wanted out of life. We both agreed that what was most important was the freedom to do what we wanted, whenever we wanted, whether that meant pick up and travel, move, change jobs, quit jobs, take four jobs—things that require the freedom of not having a family to provide for. I did not want to be one of those women who were willing to travel as long as they had the time to squeeze all of their breast milk into many three-ounce travel-size bottles. Matt sometimes worked on projects that had him sleeping all day and staying up all night, which is not conducive to child rearing unless you are a vampire. And I know vampires are considered sexy by groups of misguided tween girls who are taught to love men who could potentially kill them, but the reality is that vampires make bad dads and shitty husbands. They hibernate all day and then disappear at sunset—never able to tuck their own kids in at night.

For Matt, it was a decision not to be a dad, rather than a non-feeling. He said he didn’t make the decision in a day—it was just a shift from ambivalence to “no fucking way” over time. He likes how unscheduled his life can be. In his own words he says, “I can spend time alone if I want. I can make career decisions without restriction.” And perhaps the best reason of all: “Kids? What the fuck am I going to do with a kid?”

WE HAD A dream engagement. He proposed to me on a hot summer night in July under a full white moon from our private balcony at a small bed-and-breakfast in Malibu. After I said yes, we went to a restaurant and sat on the romantic beachfront patio right next to another couple and their three screaming children.

I can’t blame the kids. It’s fun to scream on a semideserted beach on a summer night. I screamed when Matt proposed and I promptly ran into the ocean in my dress. I didn’t know that salt water would cause it to disintegrate. The couple with their three screaming children probably wondered why this man was taking this hobo woman in a shredded lace maxidress to dinner and why she couldn’t get through any bites of her food without crying and saying, “No. No. These are happy tears. We’re engaged!”

I realized that what made it possible for this couple to keep the romance alive was taking their kids to local paradises like Malibu instead of a Chuck E. Cheese’s in a strip mall. At least once the kids were asleep, they could listen to the waves crash against the rocks, snuggle, and talk shit while digesting a four-star dinner: “What the fuck is wrong with them? Why do they scream in public? Why do we do this to ourselves?” I imagine going to bed with your husband after your kids have ruined your nice dinner out to be similar to the time that Matt and I bonded over his psycho ex-girlfriend showing up at a party just to yell at him for not liking her anymore.

One year later Matt and I stood at the altar of a nondenominational church, getting married by our Jewish justice of the peace, who was once my elementary school librarian. We wrote our own vows. There were two mentions of Bob Fosse and zero mentions of children. (At her wedding, fifteen years earlier, my sister Violet had acquiesced to having a Catholic mass. When the priest asked the traditional question, “Will you accept children lovingly from God, and bring them up according to the law of Christ and the Church?” she answered, “Yes.” She turned to me immediately after and mouthed, “No.”)

By the time I got married, a Catholic mass for their daughter was no longer important to my parents. Their biggest concern was that I help pay.

Matt and I went from table to table, thanking our family for attending, which is the most illogical of all wedding reception traditions. We just got married. Can’t we fucking sit down and eat? We have to watch our salads wilting at our special little table for two as we visit every relative who is already half in the bag? Our pinot grigio– breathed aunts kissed me on the lips more times during the reception than Matt kissed me. A few of our relatives hadn’t heard yet that we didn’t plan to have children and made some jokes as we thanked them for coming. There was a lot of, “You two better get to work! You’re a little behind!” In other words, “Jen is older than you and pretty soon she won’t even get her period anymore.” I wished we’d included this in our vows: “Dear Matt, I promise to love you. You’re a good egg. Speaking of which, I probably only have one egg left. I’m comforted by this but still paranoid about having some ‘miracle’ pregnancy. I vow to always take my birth control pill at the same time every night and am hoping that you might continue to use condoms as a backup until I hit menopause.”

Some people didn’t just ask Matt and me when we were going to have kids but took it a step further with, “Why would you get married if you don’t want to have kids?”

I had no idea that marriage was only supposed to be between two people who wanted to get between the sheets and make more people. What ever happened to marrying for love—or to get on your partner’s health insurance policy, or for presents? No one was going to buy two people in their thirties a four-slice toaster if we just continued to live in sin.

The next question always seemed to be: “But what if your husband changes his mind and starts to resent you?” The way I see it, when you marry someone, you ask him or her to take a vow in front of friends, family, and God, promising to pay your bills if you need it, take care of you when you’re sick, and not have sex with anyone else ever again. I have a feeling there will be plenty of opportunities for resentment.

When I asked Matt what he said to people who constantly harassed him about when he would procreate and then refused to accept his answer, he told me, “I just say no. That typically ends it.” Matt has a gift for soft-spoken brevity. Whereas I was always inviting him up to my cabin on Riled-Up Mountain—I tend to live at the top of it.

But, Matt, doesn’t it bother you that people assume that you have no say in the matter? People look at you as some helpless guy who can’t plant his seed because I’m so frigid.

Matt remained calm. “I wouldn’t tolerate people looking at me like that.”

Then again, how many people were really asking Matt about “our” plans to procreate? His friends were more focused on our plans to make sure that we always had an emergency pack of Camel Lights in our newly acquired hutch (thanks, Crate & Barrel gift registry!) for them to smoke if they got drunk at our place.

Some women tell me that I have to make the decision for my husband. They say that whether a man wants kids or not, he doesn’t have a biological clock, so he’s not paying attention to timing, which is the same reason men can’t be trusted to accept a kick under the table from a woman who wants to leave a boring dinner party. I know a woman who says that even though her husband isn’t ready to have children, she doesn’t want to fight about it and the day she’s ready, she’s just going to “forget” to take her birth control pill. Listen, if I could take two birth control pills, I would. And I’m glad Matt doesn’t have the same hormones I do. Thank God, because one person crying at those Sarah McLachlan commercials about adopting abused one-eyed dogs is enough in one household.

I REMEMBER THERE was one moment when I tried to muster up the desire to have children. Matt and I had just moved in together. I got work on TV about once a year and I was performing on the road at comedy clubs occasionally, but nothing was sticking. I had to admit that against my wishes, I basically had a professional hobby. I did not have a career. I was working as a temp to make ends meet. I was filing contracts for a law office in a windowless room. The only person in the office with a worse job than mine was the pimply intern who had to make ID badges for new hires. He came by my desk with a Polaroid camera to snap my photo (by the way, I think those kinds of photos actually do steal your soul). He said, “I know you. Do you do stand-up? I’ve seen you around.” I shushed him violently, spitting all over his camera, knowing what was about to happen if anyone overheard him. And right on cue the two women I worked for turned around and said, “You’re a comedian? You don’t seem funny. Tell us a joke!” I wanted to tell them the one about the girl who thought her life was going to be vastly different by the time she turned thirty-two.

I couldn’t see the future that I wanted. It seemed so impossible. It was easier to picture the future that I didn’t want—me moving back to Needham, Massachusetts, and working in my former high school as the substitute teacher for the tenth-grade drama class and saying things like, “You kids think you understand Death of a Salesman? It’s not just about not making a sale—it’s about disappointing everyone who counts on you but eventually realizing that nobody ever counted on you because you’re a ghost of a person.” But I had romantic love. And maybe love was all I was going to have. Some people don’t even have that, right? I thought maybe it would be nice to get to stay home every day, taking care of a baby instead of temping, and who needed to