I Can Barely Take Care of Myself (19 page)

Recently I ran into my old friend Rich in
line at Target. I was standing there with my industrial-size bags of Skittles and a magazine about doing yoga and eating healthy. I was catching him up on the last year of my life, which went something like: “So, yeah, I’m divorced and dating around and I love living alone and I’m working all the time—traveling about every other weekend as well as finishing up my book about being childfree.” For some
reason, this prompted him to say, “Aw, come on, Jen Kirkman. You’d be such a good mom!”

This statement is at best condescending and at worst patently false and potentially dangerous. It’s like telling a friend who you know has a paralyzing fear of wild animals that she would make a great game warden. Seriously, she should just shake off her deep-seated anxiety about being around rhinos and lions
and just go out there and guide some poor, innocent family on a safari. I’m sure you’ll do fine!

A few years ago, Matt’s parents threw us an engagement party at their house. My former future mother-in-law and I stood side by side in the kitchen, prepping for the guests. (Well, I think I was just pouring myself some wine while I awkwardly watched her chop vegetables.) It was an idyllic scene,
the two most important women in one man’s life, coming together over food and wine. (Okay, I was the only one with the wine.) Sort of semicasually, her knife hand holding the neck of a celery stalk hostage, she said to me, “So, I think we should talk about how you and Matt don’t plan to have children.”

I braced myself, expecting she’d take a blender, turn it on, and hold my hand over it, threatening,
“Tell me again. Tell me one more time that you’re not giving me grandchildren. I dare you.” I figured she’d at the very least say something like, “You’re a horrible, soulless, morally barren woman who is stealing a future family from me and my son!”

Instead, she said very simply, “I support that decision. I participated in the women’s movement so that women could have more choices in life and
this is one of those choices.” I felt relieved. She worked full-time and raised two kids but she didn’t try to make me feel like I needed to do the same.

But what would a conversation with your mother-in-law be without a little nugget of guilt that she gets to leave on your pillow before she turns down your metaphorical marital bed?

“Still, I can’t say that it isn’t a little bit sad to think
that I’ll never see your children,” she continued. “And I know that you two would make great parents if that’s what you wanted.”

I THINK THAT people confuse a woman with empathy with someone who has the emotional means to raise a child. I’m not mother material but I’m a nice person, sure. And I’m a nice person because I’m usually in a good mood and I’m usually in a good mood because I’m not responsible
for raising a child I don’t want.

There was this one time, back in 2002, where for a month I helped raise an eight-year-old boy—by accident, after he had an accident in his pants.

“Skyler defecated in his pants in the middle of class and he needs to be picked up from school, immediately.” That’s what the principal said to me over the phone as I was busy typing up invoices for my boss Jared’s
flailing set design business that he ran out of his Glendale, California, home. Jared was home but he was locked in his bedroom downstairs, sleeping off a three-bottle wine bender. Skyler wasn’t Jared’s son. Skyler was Jared’s girlfriend’s son. Bethany, the girlfriend, wasn’t home. She was twenty miles away in Brentwood, taking a yoga class that, as she once bragged, “lots of celebrities and celebrity
assistants attend.” Bethany was a former catalog model in the Midwest and moved to Los Angeles (well, Glendale) to pursue her dream of . . . some sort of ambiguous fame. She thought that once she was discovered, someone would figure out what to do with her now thirty-seven-year-old body. She would have been the cover model if there were a Los Angeles–based catalog called “Negligent Mothers with
Delusions About Their Modeling Careers.”

Nobody wants to deal with an eight-year-old boy who pooped himself—especially the administrative assistant to the guy who lives with this kid’s biological mother. Although I was self-conscious about driving my two-door Hyundai, which made me feel like I was behind the wheel of an oversize plastic toy car, I still had some pride. It was
my
low-status, oversize
plastic toy car and I didn’t want someone with shitty-pants to sit in my passenger seat.

The principal said that I wouldn’t be allowed to pick up Skyler because I wasn’t a relative. I phoned Bethany on her cell and told her that the next pose she needed to get into was “downward driving home” to pick up her son in his shit-stained Spider-Man Underoos. Bethany sighed and said that it would be
rude to leave in the middle of class (as opposed to talking on a cell phone in the middle of class?) and that she wouldn’t be able to pick up Skyler. She whispered, “Listen, do you know the actor David Duchovny? Well, his
personal psychic is here and we’re getting along really well. She says that things aren’t so good between him and Téa Leoni right now and that it might be the perfect time to
introduce me to him. I mean, nothing romantic, but he could keep me in mind for any acting roles. I really shouldn’t leave class. I want to talk to her more after.” I tried to comprehend that David Duchovny had a psychic and that Bethany thought that she and her crystal ball would be good show business consultants.

Bethany had to call the principal and get me special permission to pick up her
son, because the school had this pesky rule about strangers just showing up and grabbing other people’s children, putting them in their reasonably priced cars, and driving away.

Before I left to pick up Skyler, I had a momentary maternal (or simply logical) instinct. I brought a few pairs of underwear and a few pairs of his pants. I figured that if I brought him a bunch of clothes, he might feel
like he had some control over the situation—it’s a task for him to do, pick out his own outfit like a big boy (and hopefully not lose control of his bowels in said outfit this time).

When I got to the school the mother of the other boy involved in the incident started yelling at me. First of all, I didn’t know there had been an “incident” and that there was an “other boy”—I thought this was a
private matter of Skyler taking a dump in front of the entire classroom. I tried to calm this mother down and explain to her that she should not yell at me, because I’m not Skyler’s mother. This enraged her even more. “No wonder he’s starting fistfights! Then he shits his pants when my son fought back? He has no mother to teach him manners and no real father to teach him to defend himself. And then
they send a secretary to pick up their son?”

I wanted to say, “I’m technically an administrative assistant/bookkeeper. Actually, what I really am is a stand-up comic but things are going a little slow right now.” But it didn’t seem like a good time to be defensive about my career. This woman had long acrylic nails and a crazed look in her eye that said, “Come at me, girl. I don’t care if these
zebra-striped babies break on your cute little God-given nose.”

Skyler was hiding in the nurses’ bathroom because he didn’t want me to see him without his pants on. Trust me, I had no interest either. I handed him his clothes through the door—and he said, “Yes! These are my favorites and I’m not allowed to wear these pants to school!” Score one for me. Thank God the school nurse had already cleaned
Skyler’s underwear and hosed him down or whatever you do when a kid does a number two in an unauthorized area. I took his hand as he left the bathroom, and as the other boy’s mother yelled, “Coward!” in Skyler’s face, I felt a wave of rage. I wanted justice. I put my finger to her lips and I said, “You
do not
speak to a child like that. He will be disciplined but
not
by you. Do you hear me?” And
with that, I grabbed my son-for-a-day’s hand and we left. I felt like the mom from
Good Times.

Just like I had done so many times in my own life, Skyler got into my car and immediately started crying. He sobbed, “Everyone is making fun of me for pooping at school.” I thought about my experience as a stand-up comedian and how when I get heckled I think,
At least I get to stand here for a living, making money right now, and you people have to look at me. I’m the one who’s doing a fun thing no matter how much you think I suck.
So I said to him, “It is pretty gross that you pooped yourself. Right? If it wasn’t gross, you wouldn’t have changed your pants!” He started to giggle. I figured I was onto something so I went on: “But it’s normal. You got scared. And you know what?
You
got to leave
school early. All those kids who are making fun of you—still have to be at school for three more hours! So if they make fun of you tomorrow, maybe you can make a joke.”

“Yeah!” he said. “I’ll tell them that if they were smart, they would poop and get to leave school early. I’m a genius!”

I laughed. I have no idea if this was an appropriate way to handle the situation but at least I was there.
His mother was doing a sun salutation and plotting to steal Téa Leoni’s husband.

Honestly I never liked Skyler that much. He was fresh. He would tip over my pen cup every day at my desk, which was in the living room. Since his mother never disciplined him, he would watch
cartoons turned up really loud while I was trying to work. One time when I was feeling really badly and desperately trying
to find another job by searching online job listings on my current employer’s computer, Skyler turned on a TV program superloud. He said, “Jen, do you think this guy is funny?” I turned around and was face-to-TV with Blake, my tuna-fish-stealing, feathered-hair-sporting ex-boyfriend from college. He was the host of a hugely popular children’s show on Nickelodeon. This show had been on TV for years,
whereas the last show I had appeared on was GSN’s
Funny Money
—a now defunct game show where comedians did snippets of their acts in order to help contestants win money. The contestant I was paired up with lost all of her money and I bombed with a terrible “at least getting dumped is better than having cancer” joke.

“What’s wrong?” Skyler asked.

I wanted to stay strong in front of an eight-year-old
but I started to cry a little bit. “I know him,” I said.

“Is he your boyfriend?”

“Not anymore.”

“How come he doesn’t love you anymore?” Skyler asked. “Is it because he’s on TV?”

Now I wanted to punch this kid but I also wanted to sit on the couch next to him and say, “Skyler, you’re never going to forget your first real love. You think you’re doing fine and you haven’t seen him in years and
then he’s on TV pouring syrup on his cohost’s head and you think . . . maybe if I’d stayed with him, my life could look the way I want it to look.” But I said none of that. Because the next thing out of Skyler’s mouth was, “I think you are a nicer person than him and I like you. So don’t be sad.”

How did this kid who had no parental guidance find it in his heart to want to help take care of me—a
stupid administrative assistant who picked him up once after he shit his pants?

Does that one selfless act on my part (which was also technically my job) prove that I would be such a good mom? I don’t think so. I think I’d be so overwhelmed and unhappy about raising a child that
I would turn into the asshole in yoga class trying to put my leg over my head and hoping to run into David Duchovny’s
psychic.

TWO YEARS AGO when our best friends, Grace and Christopher, called us to change the location of our standing Saturday-night double date, I was instantly suspicious. Instead of making a reservation at a restaurant, they wanted us to come to their house to avoid “noise” and “crowds.” We’re not that cool. We never went anywhere hip, noisy, or crowded.

When Grace and Christopher bought
their house a few years ago, the first thing they pointed out to us was their guest bedroom. “If you guys get wasted, you don’t have to drive home!” On this night, Matt and I walked into their house and they sat us right down at the dining room table. We skipped our usual predinner cocktails, and I noticed only
one
bottle of wine was on the table. I eyed their sidebar—no bottles sat waiting to
be opened. Grace was drinking water and pretending to be totally into it even though we spent countless Saturday nights in the past getting near-hiccups from drinking Viognier and crying, “No,
you’re
my good friend.” “No,
you
are.”

I wanted to say, “Grace, you’re obviously pregnant and you have to wait the doctor-advised twelve weeks to tell people, but you can tell me. I promise I won’t blog
about it,” but even I understand there are boundaries here. When my dear childhood friend Shannon was first pregnant, I happened to be visiting her in our hometown in Massachusetts. She pulled the classic lie that every pregnant woman tells: “I’m not going to have a cocktail with dinner because I’m on antibiotics. I have a cold.” You have a cold? Really? Why aren’t you sneezing? Why didn’t you cancel
our date to go out for drinks if you had a cold? Why did you go to work today? No woman I know would ever listen to her doctor’s warnings about alcohol—unless she was pregnant. If a doctor said to any of my girlfriends, “Even one glass of wine tonight could bring about Armageddon,” they’d be like, “Well, we’ve had fun here while it lasted. Can I get a pinot grigio?”

Grace and Christopher made
their big announcement. After years of being on the fence, they were going to have a baby. My heart sang for them and then sank for me. I was scared. I’m the baby of the family so I never experienced the terror of my parents saying, “You’re going to have a little sister,” and me whining, “But I like how things are! I don’t want to make room for any new people!”

Everything was going to change.
Even though we’d never actually been wasted enough to have to spend the night in their guest room, I liked that it was there. It represented a spontaneity that I could . . . count on. Now the only drooling and helpless creature in the Drunken Guest Room would be a baby. And what about my hikes with Grace? Would I still be able to run off into the woods with my pregnant friend and talk about my secret
younger-man-in-a-band sex fantasies or would I be too self-conscious around the baby’s undeveloped earbuds to say anything dirty? Would we have to cancel our weekend lunch because Lamaze class ran long? Are Lamaze classes even still a thing?