I Can Barely Take Care of Myself (16 page)

I tried to motivate myself into working out again by going to bed at nine o’clock and setting my alarm for six with every intention of going jogging around my neighborhood. Every morning
I’d wake up cranky to the sound of my alarm and violently hit snooze. I’d feel insulted, condescended to—as if the alarm had set itself because it noticed I’d gotten a little chunky. I’d think,
It’s still dark outside. Not even farmers are awake this early. It’s dangerous to be up this early—this is when all of the murderers are just finishing up their rounds for the night and they have time for one more quick alley-strangling before they go to bed at sunrise.

I’d put on my gym clothes around five o’clock at the office so that I could stay in the mind-set of “going to the gym after work.”
Well, the gym clothes are on, so it’s not like I’m going to get into my car and just drive by the gym.
And every night at six, I’d get in my car wearing workout clothes and . . . just drive by the gym
and head home.

Eventually I got tired of wearing wrap dresses, because every day in the kitchen at work I’d run into someone who would say, “You’re dressed up today! You have big plans tonight?”

“No,” I’d answer. “I just don’t have any pants that fit.”

“Oh, Jen. You’re so funny.”

“No. I’m serious. I’m not going anywhere tonight. I’m going home to stand around and feel my thighs touching.”

I decided that until I lost the weight, I at least had to wear a pair of jeans that fit. I’d seen billboards for a brand of jeans called Not Your Daughter’s Jeans that promised to suck your stomach in up to your neck. Until now, I’d resisted putting something called Not Your Daughter’s Jeans on my body. It’s a wildly insulting name when you think about it. It’s nothing like that Oldsmobile ad campaign
from the 1990s: “It’s Not Your Father’s Oldsmobile.” That meant, “Your dad isn’t that cool but you are. We have updated, cool Oldsmobiles for you, you young, hip person.” Not Your Daughter’s Jeans implies, “Oh, your daughter wouldn’t wear these jeans. They’re for older, heavier women. Your daughter is a size zero. She doesn’t put peanut butter on a doughnut and call it a high-protein breakfast.
Your daughter doesn’t need to wear a body shaper with sweatpants. Men want to have sex with your daughter and not you.” Not Your Daughter’s Jeans abbreviates their brand to NYDJ in a lot of their ads. I guess they’re hoping people get confused and think,
Oooh, NYDJ. That must be the brand of jeans that cool New York disc jockeys wear.

I went to a mall to try to find some Not Your Daughter’s Jeans
and one of these young “daughter types” was working the counter. She said to me in that baby voice that’s all the rage nowadays, “Um, no? We don’t have that brand? But why don’t you buy the jeans you used to wear but a few sizes bigger?” Yeah, why don’t I go to Home Depot, buy some rope, and hang myself? I know my options.

I left the mall without the NYDJ jeans, but I treated myself to a frozen
yogurt because I felt I’d earned it after walking and standing for thirty minutes in a row.

The people who will tell you the truth in this situation are gay guys and your mom. I don’t really have any gay guys in my life anymore. (I have a theory that gay guys are closer with straight women when they’re both at a period in their lives when they realize that they like penises but aren’t quite sure
how to go about interacting with them. Once gay guys come out, it’s just a constant hunt for dick, working out at the gym, and buying dog beds. The straight-girl friend isn’t coming over for any more Friday-night sessions of singing into a hairbrush to En Vogue’s “My Lovin’ [You’re Never Gonna Get It].”)

But it took a gay guy to make me realize that my stomach full of burritos looked like a baby.

I was at a happy hour with a friend. We were standing around chatting when a gay man-friend of hers came running over. It was pretty loud already (we were in a gaycentric restaurant, so it’s always a nightclub no matter what time of day). Natasha introduced me to her friend and said, “This is Jen. She just got married this year!” The
oontz-oontz
of the bass was too loud for him to hear her correctly,
but he could tell that a woman was standing in front of him and another woman was excited for her and there was news. He shrieked
in support and you didn’t need a quiet bar to hear the international language of “someone thinks you’re fat.” He put his hand on my stomach and said, “Congratulations! When are you due?” I wanted to go back to my local senior center and undo my vote in support of gay
marriage.

MY MOM GETS to see me on television about once a week on
Chelsea Lately
. She’d been at home reclining in her chair over the past few months and noticing that her daughter Jen’s normally pointy chin was becoming very round. She thought to herself,
This is beyond the camera adding ten pounds. I wonder if Jen is pregnant. She’s been married for seven months. She could be.

One day, I was
sitting in my Spanx and eating my second bagel of the day in my office, e-mailing with my older sister Violet, who is also a member of the childfree-by-choice club. (She has three cats, a pony, and two horses; she prefers her living, breathing responsibilities to have fur, a shorter life span, and no need for a college education.)

I waddled away from my desk to head to the kitchen for a third
bagel and I forgot to lock my computer. I left my Microsoft Outlook open. Chelsea walked into my office and composed an e-mail to my sister.

Violet, I’m pregnant. We didn’t want to have kids. It’s a mistake. I’m not sure if I’m going to keep the baby. I want to talk to Mom about options. But you have to tell her. So call her on my behalf tonight.

Chelsea walked out of my office. I waddled back
into my office. The only thing I saw was an e-mail from my boss Sue, telling us we could go home early. I shut down my computer, never checking my sent messages. I stopped by the kitchen to grab a fourth bagel for the ride home. My cell phone started ringing during my commute. It was Violet. I was driving, so I ignored it—I was too busy singing along to
Juice Newton’s “Angel of the Morning” in
between bagel bites. My sister calls me a lot and usually she doesn’t even want me to pick up, she just wants to narrate
The Bachelor
into my voice mail. “Jen? It’s Violet. What’s up? Oh my Gawd this girl is such a geek. She’s cryin’ because she didn’t get picked to go on the helicoptah ride.”

I went to bed that night having never called Violet back. In the morning, I listened to her messages.

First message: “Jen, I got your e-mail. What the hell is going on?” I was still waking up and thought,
What the hell
is
going on?
What
e-mail?

Second message: “Jen, you’re pregnant? You really want me to tell Mom? Let’s at least talk first.”

Third message: “Jen, I called Mom. I couldn’t bring myself to tell her but I did tell her that you have something to tell her. So call her this morning.”

I called Violet and she read me “my” e-mail to her. She believed me when I told her that Chelsea wrote the e-mail, but convincing my mom that nothing was wrong would be another story. I bit the bullet, called my mom, and said, “So, Violet told you I have something to tell you?”

My mom couldn’t stop the panic in her voice: “Jennifah, what is it? Is something wrong in yah marriage?”

“No, Mom.
Everything is fine. Listen, Chelsea broke into my computer and e-mailed Violet, telling her I was pregnant.”

The panic in my mom’s voice shot off like a rocket: “Jennifah, you’re
pregnant
?”

“No. I’m not pregnant. Chelsea was playing a prank.”

“Well, Jennifah, why would she do that if you’re not pregnant?”

“Mom. Do you know what a prank is? You don’t spread truths about someone if you’re pranking
them. She was kidding. This conversation that you and I are having now is exactly what Chelsea wanted to have happen.”

My mom’s rocket tumbled back to earth and now her voice was somber. “But you really ah pregnant, aren’t you?”

And she was off and running before I could even get a word in. “You know this is so funny, Jennifah, because I was watching you on TV the othah night and you know I
think you’re a beautiful girl but your face is so round. It’s just like a pregnant woman. You look like you-ah filled with water, like a balloon . . .”

“Mom!”

“Oh, Jennifah, what ah you gonna
do
?”

So my mom had just done two things that are probably not in any handbook called
A Normal Parent’s Reaction to Things.
First, she lamented that her married, thirty-five-year-old daughter might be pregnant.
Typically moms are laying a guilt trip to convince their thirty-five-year-old married daughters to
have
children. I’ve always thought that mothers who ask their children to provide them with grandchildren are acting like Joe Francis, the mastermind behind
Girls Gone Wild: Come on! Take your top off for the camera because it will benefit me!
It disturbs me on one level that suddenly, marriage invites
people’s parents into the bedroom. At a certain point, we all have to admit that parents asking their children for grandchildren is really just a polite way of parents asking their kids to get down and fuck.
Come on, honey! Take your pants off and let my son-in-law penetrate your vagina without a condom. I know I raised you to be modest but I must ask you, just this once, to put a pillow under your butt and get those legs up over your head so that when he ejaculates his sperm inside of you, it just slides right into your uterus and makes me a grandchild on the first night of your honeymoon!

Second, my mom essentially confirmed that the camera had added its magical ten pounds to the twenty pounds that I’d added to myself and I looked like a human water balloon.

I stood outside of a
Starbucks, shouting into my BlackBerry, “Mom, don’t worry, I’m not pregnant!” as people stared while making awkward attempts to hold the door for me. It was like the opposite of the conversation that Madonna had in her song “Papa
Don’t Preach.” I wasn’t in trouble deep and I was not going to keep my baby—because there wasn’t one.

I’M NOT MAKING fun of my mom and I’m not just saying that because
she’s going to read this. I wouldn’t have it any other way. I love having a mom who, if I were pregnant, would automatically ask, “But what about your career?”

There’s an article tacked to my corkboard that my mom ripped out of a magazine. The headline is “Child-Free by Choice” and the byline is “Not sure motherhood’s for you? You’re not alone.” My mom wrote on a Post-it note:

This is from an old magazine that I found in a drawer. However, I think it’s still relevant.

The note is written in her perfect Catholic school–taught cursive handwriting. In addition to writing in perfect cursive, my mom is the last of a generation who still clips articles and sends them via snail mail when she could just e-mail them to me. I appreciate it, though, because my e-mail account is already clogged
up with friends from high school who have turned ultraconservative and send me forwards about how illegal immigrants are bringing down the economic system and stealing all of our jobs.

My mom is really supportive of my decision/instinct not to have a kid. Part of me thinks the fact that I’m publishing a book about it makes her even more supportive. Even though I know her support is genuine, I
think that if I decided to become a Wiccan transsexual poet, the acceptance of that would come easier if there was a promise of a book display at Barnes and Noble stores nationwide of
Jen Kirkman: My Life as a Wiccan Transsexual Poet,
and a possible appearance on
The View.

She told me recently that I never played with baby dolls as a kid.

“In fact, Jennifah, you took the clothes off a baby doll
I bought
you and instead dressed up the cat like a woman and then did a photo shoot. You had a Cabbage Patch doll named Ramona whom you loved, but I think it was because she was named aftah those books you liked. And Cabbage Patch was more of a status symbol anyway. You usually carried her by the arm and let her yahn hair drag on the floor.”

(This further supports my theory that the childhood
signs that you have no instinct to mother
anything
, not even cats or dolls, are very similar to the signs that you will grow up to be a gay man—both evident before age ten.)

My mom kept interrupting the stories about me to tell me about herself: “Jennifah, I never thought to say, ‘Why don’t you be a moth-ah when you grow up?’ I thought it would take away from what you were showing me you wanted
to do. All you did was talk about show business. When you weren’t at ballet and tap school you were putting on shows in the living room for nobody. Everywhere I took you, you asked people if you could tap-dance for them.”

To be honest, it sounds like I was an annoying kid. Thirty years later, whenever I’m drunk, if there is a DJ in the vicinity, I request “Thriller” and I do an interpretative
dance. (This half-serious dance is to distract from the fact that I can’t quite nail those Michael Jackson/zombie moves.) A lot of people, when they drink, their hometown accents come out. When I drink, my inner child comes out and all I want to do is dance for you. Thank God this (usually) happens when I’m hanging out with other drunken people who hopefully just think that I’m standing still and
it’s the room that’s spinning.

At the end of our phone call outside Starbucks, my mom finally believed that I was not pregnant and that I wouldn’t be having an abortion or a baby. But she also reminded me that no matter what happened—if I did end up having a baby sometime—she would support me and not judge.

My mom’s only regret about my plan not to have children has to do with her desire to
look at potentially beautiful people. When I
interviewed her for this book, she said to me, “Jennifah, I think your children would be beautiful and it sometimes makes me sad that I won’t get to look at attractive children who you made. That’s what moth-ahs think. Don’t let anyone tell you differently. It’s not always some altruistic thing. Sometimes you just think your children are so good-looking
that you want to see more of them.”