One of the casualties of doing stand-up comedy and then using the same bathroom as the audience is that people will talk to you about your act. Sometimes if they like your act, it can be a more difficult conversation to have than if they simply say, “I didn’t like you that much.” (That happens a lot actually. I get it. I was shouting my opinions into a microphone for almost an hour. People want to tell me their opinions after and sometimes their opinion is that I suck.)
I have a stand-up routine I do about masturbation and the unwanted thoughts that go through women’s heads when they put their hands under their sheets. I need a story to think about. I need a fantasy that makes sense. I can’t just finger myself and picture Johnny Depp’s face. It needs a sense of realism, like how did I meet Johnny Depp? He lives in France. I don’t have a work visa. Besides, he has children and I’ve made it quite clear that I don’t want to be a mom and I don’t want to be a stepmom either. People love to talk to me about that and share their own tales, which are usually way more graphic than my act. This is part of a conversation that happened between me and a stranger in a women’s bathroom at the Improv in Palm Beach, Florida:
More power to the woman who finger blasts herself in the bathroom stall at work and then drunkenly confesses it to me. She was just telling me what
ONE DAY WHILE I was procrastinating writing this book (okay, looking up how to spell a big word), I was on Dictionary.com and the word of the day was “selfish,” with this quote underneath it:
Balzac is a big sack of balls. I know he was an important figure in French literature and some consider him the founder of realism but
The way I see it, becoming a mother makes a person selfless in their feelings toward their kid(s) but in a very primal way. It’s not even a choice. If a coyote came charging at me, I doubt many of my girlfriends would get on the ground in front of me and let themselves get mauled first, but that’s because they didn’t make me from their own DNA or adopt me from China after a yearlong process of paperwork and hope.
I’m no Balzac, so what do I know about motherhood? But if a mother’s love is selfless, does it mean that all mothers are selfless people toward all of humanity? There’s a big difference.
A lot of my friends who had kids in 2008 said that because they were getting no sleep with their new babies, they had no time to pay attention to politics. If someone as seemingly lobotomized as Michele Bachmann can have five children and raise twenty-three foster children while running for president, surely my friends can have one kid and still take the time to make sure that someone like Michele Bachmann never becomes president. Frankly, I think that once you have a child, you
I had other friends who were in a hormonal trance after giving birth and said they just “see things differently now,” and with regard to the future of our nation, they put their hands over their ears and sang a chorus of “I can’t hear you” because they didn’t want to get involved with anything “negative.” By the way, I also have friends who say the same thing after doing Ecstasy. Any adjustment to your hormones is going to make you see things differently. Just try to care about global warming after getting fucked really, really good twice in one night.
Becoming a mother doesn’t automatically make you a selfless person. May I present the jury with the following evidence? Kate Moss, Jaid Barrymore, and Brooke Mueller are all mothers. I know, I’m being a little judgmental toward these ladies, but at least I’m not calling them selfish to their faces in a public bathroom! Of course, most people on that list, if they were in a public bathroom, would be bent over the toilet at four in the morning, so it’d be hard to say anything to their faces.
It’s simple, really. The urge that most people feel to have kids is the exact same as the urge that I have to
But if you have enough money to have a kid and you’re partnered up with the love of your life and you two want to have children—am I supposed to think that you’re doing something more altruistic than I am? It’s what you want. It’s fun for you. I know that parents skimp on sleep because their kids don’t sleep through the night and they need to be fed. I know that some parents work a forty-hour-a-week job in addition to parenting, which is already a more-than-full-time job. Again, no one is making them do it—so I have to assume that the struggle is commensurate with the reward.
My career as a writer, stand-up comedian, and actor is a more-than-full-time job too. Sure, with my jobs, I can take a day off here and there and nobody dies, unlike a parent should she decide, “Nah, I’m not gonna watch my toddler today. I’ll check in with him tomorrow if he’s around.” That doesn’t mean that I don’t sacrifice or that I’m not sleep deprived, but it’s worth it because it’s what I want to do to the exclusion of anything else. I do not love the thought of being a mother enough (read: at all) to have a child
I don’t go up to parents and say, “You know what you guys should do in addition to what you’re already doing? You should start a small charity that helps birds that can’t read. What do you mean you don’t want to do that? How come you don’t want to add that to your schedule? Isn’t that selfish?”
I WAS AT a Starbucks on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles, waiting in line to order an Americano. The woman in front of me had already ordered her coffee but was holding the barista hostage as she and her toddler daughter decided on what the little girl wanted to eat.
“Do you want… a cookie? How about a… blueberry muffin? Oooh, what about… some fruit!”
The toddler, overwhelmed with choices, screamed, “
