I Can Barely Take Care of Myself

gavel and said, “Please rephrase the question. Don’t presume that the witness wants to have a kid. You doth lead the witness.”

Next, Eileen did this thing that pregnant women and moms do; she started in with her war stories. (Some alcoholics do it too at parties when they notice you’re drinking and they can’t.) They pitch it like some kind of cautionary tale but really I think it’s just a way to brag that they’ve been through some hell that you haven’t and you still won’t be a real person until your body is physically altered by birth or you’ve woken up in an alley in Tijuana with a sore taint and a new pet donkey.

As though she were granting me just one tiny hint of validation, Eileen confessed, “Well, at least you don’t have to pee every five minutes. That’s one good thing about not having kids. All I do is pee. I think it permanently affected my bladder. I can’t believe it but I’ve even started having to wear one of those little maxi pads in my underwear even when I don’t have my period, just in case some urine falls out.”

Falls out?!

When I was in first grade we had a bathroom inside of our classroom. The door must have been made of something very soundproof because none of us six-year-olds were self-conscious about going pee-pee or poo-poo in the private bathroom during class, except for this one kid, Scott Nelson. Scott was obsessed with all things “bodily function.” He pressed his body up against that bathroom door anytime someone went inside. He cupped his hands to his ears and you could see the strain in his face as he tried to hear a note of a fart or the crescendo of a urine stream.

When Amanda Jones was out sick for a week with the measles, we were assigned to write her get-well cards. Scott’s card was a picture of a bum sitting on a toilet. He drew an arrow pointing at the butt hole with a very educational but not quite get-well message, POOP COMES OUT HERE. It seems like when a woman gets pregnant, her inner Scott Nelson takes over and suddenly sentiments like this become polite party conversation.

I guess because the pressure on a pregnant woman’s bladder is for the greater good of bringing life into the world, we should all just sit back and hear about how when they puke they pee and when they pee they fart and when they fart they actually shit their pants. Can’t pregnant moms just sit around and talk about civilized things like macaroon cookies—are the ones from Paris really the best? Or debate about their favorite Kennedy brother, or lament that because it’s not the 1970s it looks stupid to wear a hair scarf? Why do pregnant women want to tell me at parties that lately they are secreting a starchy white fluid about once a month that causes their underwear to crust? Especially when I’m trying to eat a cream cheese finger sandwich? Scott Nelson was a troubled probable future serial killer when he wanted to talk about what comes out of his butt—what’s your excuse?

Eileen’s exposed left nipple seemed to be a beacon of light for other mother ships at the tea lounge. Suddenly, I was surrounded by a handful of women breast-feeding their young and a handful of women still incubating theirs. One pregnant woman leaned over and said to Eileen in this ridiculous stage whisper, “You were right, girl. I’m horny all the time.”

Listen, it is scientifically proven that pregnant women get super-horny because it helps them hold on to their mate who impregnated them. If they weren’t horny, their mate would just be living with an overweight pickle eater who stopped shaving her legs. Yet every pregnant woman tells anyone who will listen (I’m looking at you, Jessica Simpson) that she’s eight months pregnant and has never felt sexier or hornier! Guess what? If you didn’t feel sexy or horny during your eighth month of pregnancy—you’d be crying in a ball on the bedroom floor, clutching a snot-filled tissue and wearing your food-stained fleece pajama bottoms as your cheating husband walked out the door with your nonpregnant Pilates instructor. It is not interesting that you are horny when pregnant. If I want to watch women talk about sex openly, I’ll watch The Golden Girls episode where they go on a cruise and decide to buy condoms and Blanche makes that impassioned speech over the loudspeaker.

When did toilet talk become acceptable daytime party chitchat? When I was on ADHD medication I was so constipated that I had to shove a suppository up my ass. I didn’t tell the girls at the stupid fucking tea party this fact. In fact, I have never told anyone that. Now I’m just telling you to brag about how I’ve never told anyone. Is this what Stockholm syndrome feels like?

Another semiacquaintance, Ali, said to me, “Jen, you’re getting the perfect training for motherhood at this party!”

Eileen fielded that one. “Oh, hah, Jen doesn’t think she wants children.”

Ali looked confused. “Why don’t you think you want children?”

“I… actually… I know that I don’t want children,” I said.

Ali shifted her bundle of joy to her other boob. “Well, I mean, can you physically not have children?”

Oh, that’s a polite party question! Are you barren? Maybe I am barren. I don’t know. I’ve never taken a test. I have taken an AIDS test twelve times because I really care whether I have AIDS. I have never taken a fertility test because I really don’t care whether I am fertile. I told Ali that I assume I am perfectly able to carry a child, especially since my childbearing hips kept me from becoming a professional ballerina, but I wasn’t planning to test them out.

Ali and the other mothers exchanged a look. “But, so… you’ll adopt, right?” She seemed pleased to have solved my problem without a pesky series of IVF treatments.

Adoption is a wonderful thing. Especially if you’re Madonna or Angelina Jolie and you can take a private jet along with some private paparazzi to a third world country and pick out a beautiful baby while wearing designer aviator shades and couture khaki pants. What I don’t understand is that when I tell people that I don’t want to have kids—they immediately think I mean I physically can’t give birth. I don’t know how to be more clear about this. I do not want to make a child nor do I want to pick out a child like I’m at a cabbage patch or a Cabbage Patch Kids convention. It’s just this simple: I do not want to raise a child.

Ali warned me in a whisper, “But you could… regret that decision.” She seemed horrified, like if someone whom she is six degrees of friendship separated from ever regrets not having a baby, she’ll be personally affected and have to go on Prozac to deal with her feelings.

“Look,” I said, “I’ve been through worse things than regret and I think I’m old enough to have a pretty good hypothesis on this one. I’d rather regret not having a child than having one.”

Ali interrupted, “Oh, but you wouldn’t regret having one!” That’s when her little girl Marta pointed at my face and said, “Why do you have ugly red dots on your cheek?” Ali and the Mommies shared a mutual chuckle. Ali acted as if her child pointing out my acne was just the revelation I needed to change my mind. She said, “See? Kids keep ya honest and grounded.”

Honest? Her kid pointed out my PMS breakout. That’s rude, not honest. And I don’t need a kid to “keep me grounded” when I have adult acne itself to do that. Oh, boy! Just imagine how much worse off I’d be without kids— I’d be walking around feeling good about myself at a party!

I’m not offended by what a toddler says to me. Her brain isn’t fully developed yet. And judging from the behavior of her mom, it probably never will be. But some parents become so rude once they have kids. How about a simple teachable moment for little Marta? Could Ali not have said, “Honey, we don’t point out things we see on people’s faces unless we’re helping them.” For example, “You have something white and crusty on your chin, I think it’s toothpaste. God, I hope it’s toothpaste.” (Dog owners are the same way, incidentally. They can’t stop their animals from behaving badly and they never apologize for their little ones who can’t speak. Meanwhile, I’m left with an unwanted wet nose sniffing around my crotch in public.)

At this point I hadn’t been to a birthday party for a friend that started at two and ended promptly at five since I was a kid. If you’re going to have an afternoon birthday party to accommodate you and your friends’ new lifestyles as parents—just go all out and have the damn thing at a park or a playground or something. There’s nothing fun about trying to drink a hot tea while toddlers crawl underneath me as though my legs are a jungle gym. (And speaking of jungle gyms, when I was a kid all I saw when I saw that thing on the playground was a death trap. Let’s get the kids all loaded up on sugar and send them outside to hurl their bodies around some lead pipes! We’ll build it over some brain-busting concrete to catch their fall!)

SATURDAYS ARE MY day to write or run errands, and in Los Angeles if I time it just right, I can hit the dry cleaner and the grocery store—both only two miles from my house—and it only takes six hours with traffic. I had to basically lose a day, like some punishing form of daylight savings, just to see my friend on his birthday. The mothers in the crowd were doing what they would be doing on a Saturday anyway, breast-feeding their babies and changing