Eight years ago reading that would have melted the stalactites hanging from his space in my heart, formed by ice that thickened every time I changed my outgoing voice mail message so it would sound like it belonged to a carefree person who obviously had missed his call because she was too busy out having fun; the ice that had grown thicker still with every evening spent cleaning the top of the refrigerator and polishing the faucets and all the other pointless shit you do when you think your boyfriend is coming over and you want him to know how clean and put together you are. Eight years ago, I would have poured myself a drink and put on some red lipstick and rented a hotel room in the hopes of seeing whether our bodies still fit together the way they used to. I sat with that text for a minute before responding with this: “I really loved you, my man. We could’ve been a good thing.” Which is probably lies? But it doesn’t even matter, because this is now, and I’m totally fucking bored.
A Bomb, Probably
Everyone I know is having a goddamned baby and what that means is you can’t just stop by your homegirl’s house unannounced with a bottle of Carménère and a couple of tubes of Pringles to watch hours of makeup tutorial videos on YouTube anymore. Because that baby might be sleeping or eating or doing its taxes, and you are going to mess it all up with your loud, single-person bullshit. That baby does not have time to listen to an in-depth analysis of the string of unanswered text messages you recently sent to your latest unrequited crush. Nor does it have time to deconstruct the most recent episode of The Bachelorette. Unless you’re coming over armed with a bowl of creamed peas and a cardboard book for that kid to chew on, just stay in your tragic one-person dwelling and hope like hell that the next person they hire at work will be someone not stupid to whom you can relate.
I am in a relationship now with a woman who has children, and let me just say that most certainly was not how I was expecting my destiny to knit itself together. I thought for sure I would be spending my stress-incontinence years picking moist dog food crumbs out of my aging shih tzu’s slobbery beard while earnestly considering circuit court judicial endorsements in my local newspaper, but now it looks like I really do have to learn what molly is and how to know if your kid is on it. Being in a relationship has turned me into a total asshole. Hold up, not that kind; I still don’t vote regularly or eat rutabaga or use words like “plethora” in regular conversation. But I do do lame stuff like “thinking about my future” and putting money away “just in case.”
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Right now I’m “babysitting” and here’s what that looks like: the girl child is in the sunroom gobbling high-fructose corn syrup by the handful, watching irritatingly loud cartoons, and building a bomb, probably, and I’m in the dining room paralyzed with fear that she might ask me to tell her a story or cook her something nutritious or—God forbid—help her with her homework. These kids are going to find out real quick that my perceived intelligence is a web of lies built on a crumbling foundation of charm and quick wit. The other night, the boy child was working on his algebra homework at the dinner table, and when he asked me to look over a problem, I was like LOL and pretended to be choking on a brussels sprout. I was doing some long division by hand yesterday and dude blurted, “Is that even math?!” while squinting at the numbers and turning the paper upside down and shit. “I think it’s hieroglyphics,” murmured the girl. Bitch, I don’t know new math! I don’t even know how to figure out a 20 percent tip on an odd-numbered check!
Want to know the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do? Not yell a string of offensive curse words when I banged my finger in a kitchen drawer with an impressionable child in the room. I’ve had colonoscopies that were easier than holding my pulsating hand in a dish towel and looking into those wide, blue child eyes and simply saying, “Ouch!” In my mind I was kicking every stupid pot and pan in that motherfucker while howling “SHIT FUCK YOU SON OF A BITCHING DICK!!!” and foaming at the mouth, but kids don’t need to hear that, so I just took a handful of aspirin and ground my molars into stumps as pain radiated up my arm.
Five years ago, at a cozy, sunlit corner table at our favorite breakfast spot, my friend Anna looked up at me from her bowl of chia porridge with tears shining in her eyes and said, “Samantha, I’m pregnant!” And I started crying, because she’s been my friend since we were ten years old and I love her more than anything. Then she said, “It’s two babies! They’re the size of lentils!!!” and by that point we were both sobbing and hugging and curious onlookers shot us scathing deathlooks because the brunch line at that place is always bananas. I made a concerted effort not to reach out and put my hands on her belly because I read somewhere that that’s rude, and please somebody give me a medal for that restraint. I couldn’t believe that this jerk who wore hemp necklaces and put Ben Harper on every single mixtape she made in high school was about to be somebody’s mother. Technically two somebodies. Horrifying.