I took a morning after pill recently even though I have had unprotected sex with every long-term boyfriend I have ever had without the slightest hitch, thereby convincing me that I was infertile (which makes me feel super skinny). I did, however, by virtue condom malfunction, possibly get closer than ever before to ruining my life, so opted for the most expensive Smartie. We split the cost, which was $50. I briefly wondered if it wouldn’t be more economical to wait and see if anything cropped up, and if so, could it be sold for at least twice that on the black market, but then I remembered my super-strict policy of not bringing any more humans into the world.
There was a time when I thought it would be neat to make a little baby out of my stuff and another dude’s stuff. Specifically, when I was 26, and I was in the most in love I felt anyone could ever be and living with Chris. I thought living together, by choice, meant that we were going to continue doing so for the foreseeable future. No dice! I discovered, painfully, that his lack of testosterone, combined with a profound disinterest in doing anything to remedy it, would put my dreams of matrimonial bliss on their deathbed. I made a choice to bury them with ceremonious fervor, and for two years threw myself into comedy. I spent long stretches of time feeling fulfilled and unstoppable, punctuated by intense bouts of anxiety about having put my eggs in the ladypants-career basket (I can’t believe that I read Backlash and that bullshit still got to me). Out of convenience and I guess, loneliness, I spent a year or so of this time in an on-and-off relationship with a Kyle, a great guy that I was not in love with. In the conscious part of my brain I assumed that was all there was for me. If I could end up getting paid to be funny and getting laid every once and a while, everything else would fall into the category of icing. I was all, “I wanted to spend my life with Chris, and that was great, but I wont feel that way again, and that’s that.” Then suddenly I did, because duh.
Last night Adam told me “You feel like home.” He said it because I like to recycle everything and wear hiking boots, which indeed is very Pacific Northwest (cue song above). But I took it to mean something more, because as you may have gathered, that is my M.O. It’s not my fault, language itself being a shorthand for something else, the complex shit going on in our brains. People have always said things that mean more or other than what they are really saying. Suddenly though, at least in my relationships but also I feel like in culture in general, there is this pressure to take people at their “word.” It sounds legitimate enough, but as long as you’re sitting around listening to someone talk you might as well watch what they are doing while they say it. Chris liked to wax poetic about the two of us buying an old building together and renovating it, but it was clear from day one, had I paid any attention at all, that we were going to have to build a special wing in it for his batshit ex-girlfriend, Michelle.*
Adam said that home thing after he bought me groceries to cook dinner for him with and then, the next morning he got up early and washed all the dishes in my house. Look, compadres: I’m not looking for someone to tell me what to do with my life, or someone to renovate old buildings with, or build surprisingly shitty new ones in an 9th level dream world (re: Inception- seriously, why did it look like war-torn Beirut in there? How boring and unimaginative were those two?). I’m just looking for someone that makes me feel like that, that home thing. When I fall asleep on his shoulder and it’s actually comfortable, or when he puts my foot in his hand and I feel like tinkerbell, or when he’s out on the road and beaten down by this or that and I know how talk him out of it, to me, that’s home.
I still don’t know about babies. I feel like me not having a baby is going to be my baby shower gift to all my friends who do. Like, this way, my kid wont steal the last drop of clean drinking water from your kid, or beat her out of a job, because she won’t exist. It’s like a savings bond of negativity.
*Real name used. Fuck you, Michelle.
