Seduction and Snacks by Tara Sivec
1. Arby’s Anyone?
Hello, my name is Claire Morgan and I never want to have children.
For those of you out there who feel the same way, is it just me or does it seem like you’re in the middle of a horrible Alcoholics Anonymous meeting whenever someone finds out you never want children? Should I stand up, greet the room as a whole, and confess what brings me to the seventh circle of hell I constantly find myself in? It’s a house of horrors where I’m surrounded by pregnant women asking me to touch their protruding bellies and have in-depth discussions about their vaginas. They don’t understand why the words placenta and afterbirth should never be used in a sentence. Ever. Especially over coffee in the middle of the day.
You know what brought me to this decision? The video we saw in health class in sixth grade. The one set back in the seventies that had some woman screaming bloody murder with sweat dripping off of her face while her husband lovingly pat her forehead with a towel and told her she was doing great. Then the camera panned down to the crime scene between her legs: the blood, the goo, the gore, and the humungous porn bush that now had a tiny little head squeezing its way out. While most of the girls around me were saying, “Awwwwwww!” when the baby started to cry, I looked around at them in revulsion muttering, “What the hell is wrong with you people? That is NOT normal.” From that moment on, my motto was: I’m never having children.
“So, Claire, what do you want to be when you grow up?”
“I’m never having children.”
“Claire, did you choose a major yet?”
“I’m never having children.”
“Would you like fries with that?”
“I’m never having children.”
Of course there are always those in your life who think they can change your mind. They get married, have a baby, and then invite you over expecting you to be overcome with emotion when you take a look at their new little miracle. In truth, all you can do is look around at the house they haven’t had time to clean in six weeks, smell their body they haven’t had time to bathe in two weeks, and watch their eyes get a little squirrelly when you ask them the last time they got a good night’s sleep. You see them laugh at every burp and smile at every fart. They manage to bring poop into every single conversation, and you have to wonder who the crazy one really is here.
Then you have the people who believe your flippancy is due to some deep, dark, secret issue with your uterus that you’re overcompensating for, and they look at you and your vagina with pity. They whisper behind your back and then suddenly it turns into a horrible game of “Telephone,” and the whole world thinks you have life-threatening fertility issues where pregnancy will cause your vagina to spontaneously combust and your left tit to fall off. Stop the insanity! All my bits are in working order and as far as I know, I don’t have exploding vagina syndrome.
The simple truth is I just never thought pushing a tiny human out of me that turns my vagina into something resembling roast beef that no man would ever want look at, let alone bang, was a stellar idea. End of story.
And let’s face it people, no one is ever honest with you about child birth. Not even your mother.
“It’s a pain you forget all about once you have that sweet little baby in your arms.”
Bullshit. I CALL BULLSHIT. Any friend, cousin, or nosey-ass stranger in the grocery store that tells you it’s not that bad is a lying sack of shit. Your vagina is roughly the size of the girth of a penis. It has to stretch and open and turn into a giant bat cave so the life-sucking human you’ve been growing for nine months can angrily claw its way out. Who in their right mind would do that willingly? You’re just walking along one day and think to yourself, “You know, I think it’s time I turn my vagina into an Arby’s Beef and Cheddar (minus the cheddar) and saddle myself down for a minimum of eighteen years to someone who will suck the soul and the will to live right out of my body so I’m a shell of the person I used to be and can’t get laid even if I pay for it.”