Jen Kirkman - I Can Barely Take Care of Myself

One year later Matt and I stood at the altar of a nondenominational church, getting married by our Jewish justice of the peace, who was once my elementary school librarian. We wrote our own vows. There were two mentions of Bob Fosse and zero mentions of children. (At her wedding, fifteen years earlier, my sister Violet had acquiesced to having a Catholic mass. When the priest asked the traditional question, “Will you accept children lovingly from God, and bring them up according to the law of Christ and the Church?” she answered, “Yes.” She turned to me immediately after and mouthed, “No.”)

By the time I got married, a Catholic mass for their daughter was no longer important to my parents. Their biggest concern was that I help pay.

Matt and I went from table to table, thanking our family for attending, which is the most illogical of all wedding reception traditions. We just got married. Can’t we fucking sit down and eat? We have to watch our salads wilting at our special little table for two as we visit every relative who is already half in the bag? Our pinot grigio–breathed aunts kissed me on the lips more times during the reception than Matt kissed me. A few of our relatives hadn’t heard yet that we didn’t plan to have children and made some jokes as we thanked them for coming. There was a lot of, “You two better get to work! You’re a little behind!” In other words, “Jen is older than you and pretty soon she won’t even get her period anymore.” I wished we’d included this in our vows: “Dear Matt, I promise to love you. You’re a good egg. Speaking of which, I probably only have one egg left. I’m comforted by this but still paranoid about having some ‘miracle’ pregnancy. I vow to always take my birth control pill at the same time every night and am hoping that you might continue to use condoms as a backup until I hit menopause.”

Some people didn’t just ask Matt and me when we were going to have kids but took it a step further with, “Why would you get married if you don’t want to have kids?”

I had no idea that marriage was only supposed to be between two people who wanted to get between the sheets and make more people. What ever happened to marrying for love—or to get on your partner’s health insurance policy, or for presents? No one was going to buy two people in their thirties a four-slice toaster if we just continued to live in sin.

The next question always seemed to be: “But what if your husband changes his mind and starts to resent you?” The way I see it, when you marry someone, you ask him or her to take a vow in front of friends, family, and God, promising to pay your bills if you need it, take care of you when you’re sick, and not have sex with anyone else ever again. I have a feeling there will be plenty of opportunities for resentment.

When I asked Matt what he said to people who constantly harassed him about when he would procreate and then refused to accept his answer, he told me, “I just say no. That typically ends it.” Matt has a gift for soft-spoken brevity. Whereas I was always inviting him up to my cabin on Riled-Up Mountain—I tend to live at the top of it.

But, Matt, doesn’t it bother you that people assume that you have no say in the matter? People look at you as some helpless guy who can’t plant his seed because I’m so frigid.

Matt remained calm. “I wouldn’t tolerate people looking at me like that.”

Then again, how many people were really asking Matt about “our” plans to procreate? His friends were more focused on our plans to make sure that we always had an emergency pack of Camel Lights in our newly acquired hutch (thanks, Crate & Barrel gift registry!) for them to smoke if they got drunk at our place.

Some women tell me that I have to make the decision for my husband. They say that whether a man wants kids or not, he doesn’t have a biological clock, so he’s not paying attention to timing, which is the same reason men can’t be trusted to accept a kick under the table from a woman who wants to leave a boring dinner party. I know a woman who says that even though her husband isn’t ready to have children, she doesn’t want to fight about it and the day she’s ready, she’s just going to “forget” to take her birth control pill. Listen, if I could take two birth control pills, I would. And I’m glad Matt doesn’t have the same hormones I do. Thank God, because one person crying at those Sarah McLachlan commercials about adopting abused one-eyed dogs is enough in one household.

I REMEMBER THERE was one moment when I tried to muster up the desire to have children. Matt and I had just moved in together. I got work on TV about once a year and I was performing on the road at comedy clubs occasionally, but nothing was sticking. I had to admit that against my wishes, I basically had a professional hobby. I did not have a career. I was working as a temp to make ends meet. I was filing contracts for a law office in a windowless room. The only person in the office with a worse job than mine was the pimply intern who had to make ID badges for new hires. He came by my desk with a Polaroid camera to snap my photo (by the way, I think those kinds of photos actually do steal your soul). He said, “I know you. Do you do stand-up? I’ve seen you around.” I shushed him violently, spitting all over his camera, knowing what was about to happen if anyone overheard him. And right on cue the two women I worked for turned around and said, “You’re a comedian? You don’t seem funny. Tell us a joke!” I wanted to tell them the one about the girl who thought her life was going to be vastly different by the time she turned thirty-two.

I couldn’t see the future that I wanted. It seemed so impossible. It was easier to picture the future that I didn’t want—me moving back to Needham, Massachusetts, and working in my former high school as the substitute teacher for the tenth-grade drama class and saying things like, “You kids think you understand Death of a Salesman ? It’s not just about not making a sale—it’s about disappointing everyone who counts on you but eventually realizing that nobody ever counted on you because you’re a ghost of a person.” But I had romantic love. And maybe love was all I was going to have. Some people don’t even have that, right? I thought maybe it would be nice to get to stay home every day, taking care of a baby instead of temping, and who needed to be out every night doing stand-up at Joan’s Pizza Place’s Thursday Night Open Mic? If I had a baby, surely my hormones would kick in, I’d become really Zen like the Red Sox, and my life would be devoted to our kid. I could even be a funny mom! Maybe that was the master plan for me all along.

But somewhere deep down I knew that being a mother wasn’t right for me. And by “deep down” I mean that when I pictured having a baby instead of pursuing my dreams, I would immediately feel sick; it felt like my intestines were trying to unwind and slither out of my butt.

My ex-boyfriend Thomas would always say, “When are you going to get this comedy thing out of your system? I’m ready to move to Northern California and start a family.” And then by beer number four the dream became “I’m just going to go back to New Hampshire and open up a small revival movie theater. You can come with me. We’ll have a family.”

Thomas had had a mean father who was also a photographer. Unlike his father, Thomas was actually great at photography. Unfortunately he kept his pictures half developed and hidden in his closet. I wanted to invite people over to look at the work in his closet and tell them it was an art installation called Hit-You-over-the-Head Symbolism. He didn’t know how to go for his dreams but he was convinced that once a baby was born, that would replace his dream. His life would be solved. He wouldn’t have to try and maybe fail and disappoint himself or his father in the process, then somehow he’d make enough money showing screenings of Casablanca in a rural town to buy the family some diapers and Campbell’s soup and Daddy some Merit Ultra Lights and a six-pack of Budweiser. And then by beer number six Thomas’s plan was to move to Mexico and work with animals just like his favorite guy, Jeff Corwin from Animal Planet. Even if I wanted to go to Mexico with him, kids had to be part of the deal. He always said to me, “Who’s going to take care of us when we’re old if we don’t have kids?” Oh, I don’t know, maybe the robust and thriving second-run-movie-theater community will take us in if some of those Mexican armadillos won’t.