Jen Kirkman - I Can Barely Take Care of Myself

Have these moms ever heard of yoga? Meditation? Volunteering for the elderly or the homeless? Taking care of a relative? There are lots of ways to not think about yourself and when you’ve truly mastered not thinking about yourself, you don’t even have the urge to tell everyone that you are not thinking about yourself!

You know who does a lot of good deeds and doesn’t have kids and totally understands what’s important in life? George Clooney. Unlike me, he doesn’t give a fuck what you think about the fact that he’s not “selfless” enough to father a kid. He’s not writing a book defending his position. He’s having sex with a cocktail waitress and then saving Darfur. Both are noble positions.

I read in Marie Claire that George said, “Even one kid running around my villa makes me nervous, so I’m definitely not a candidate for father of the year! If I need to surround myself with children and feel like I have this big extended family, I can always call Brad and Angie and ask them to stay with me, just to remind me why I’m so happy without.”

Booyah! Not only does George not have kids—he wants to gently remind you that he’s friends with Brad and Angie and lives in a villa in Italy. Try to tell me with a straight face that changing diapers is preferable to drinking wine on Lake Como.

So-called journalists constantly ask him, “But, George, don’t you want to be a father?” He recently answered no for the millionth time and also said that he has no plans to dye his hair and that he’s going to embrace the gray instead. I want to embrace who I am just like Clooney. (Except I’m dyeing my gray hair every six weeks. Fuck that. Women still haven’t mastered that “distinguished gray” thing—we end up looking like vegan Wiccans.)

My old friend Tammy shook my bottle of silver-sparkle nail polish and asked, “Big plans this weekend?”

“No, actually. I’m just going to relax.” I tried to concentrate on reading a tabloid. I did want to find out how Nicole Richie went from party girl to business owner.

Not one to let her clients read anything without interruption, Tammy said, “Your husband and kids out of town?” I mean, technically, yes, my husband and kids were out of town. My husband was in another town called Ex-Husband-Ville and my kids were in a town many galaxies away called “Nonexistent Limbo.” I wanted to give Tammy the benefit of the doubt and assume that she didn’t remember that I was the woman she once shamed for not having children—but I saw the look in her eye. She was jabbing at me and not just with her sanitized nail clippers. She knew there was no husband or kids because I looked well rested and didn’t have food stains on my shirt. My old instinct kicked in and I answered, “Naaaaaww.” We made eye contact and in that moment I thought of my inspiration, George Clooney. Just like me, he did the marriage thing and he couldn’t commit, and having children just isn’t for people like George and me! But I panicked because I am not George Clooney. I am not friends with Brad and Angie, nor do I have a villa or any self-confidence. So… I lied.

I beckoned Tammy close with my unmanicured finger. I whispered, “Can you keep a secret?” I motioned to my uterus or where I think my uterus is—I could have been pointing at my kidney—and said, “I’m expecting. But we haven’t told anyone yet because it hasn’t been twelve weeks. I’m still nervous.”

Tammy dragged her nail file across her mouth to give me the “my lips are sealed” promise. She realized that she had crossed a line in making a pregnant woman tell before it was time. She blushed and waved her hands. “Okay, okay. I see. I see. Just a few weeks along. I ask no more.”

Tammy then started yammering to her coworkers in the language of her native country, the place where I’d finally be accepted as a woman who was not dishonoring her family. The other manicurists snapped to and sashayed to my side, like a bunch of chorus boys at the sight of Carol Channing.

The women brought me pillows for my back, warm washcloths for my face. The owner, “Trisha,” walked over, clutching a bottle of vanilla-scented lotion. She tapped my shoulder. “Up. Up,” she ordered. I leaned forward and she started massaging my neck. “For free. For free,” she promised. A free neck massage? A pillow for my back? Even with my 20 percent tips I’d never had this type of attention!

I was having fun watching people believe my lie and I started to tell Tammy the details of my pregnancy, which I’d farmed from listening to my friends talk about their experiences. I told her about the morning sickness, which wasn’t so much about throwing up but about how inexplicable nausea gripped me every morning, an uncomfortable sensation akin to taking a vitamin on an empty stomach. I told her about how my food cravings were getting weird—not just what I was eating but how I was eating—and that I went to restaurants and stole french fries off total strangers’ plates. I told her about how I was so horny from pregnancy hormones that I took paper towels off their cardboard roll and made a DIY dildo. I told her all about how the bliss from being pregnant made me want to keep the good feeling going, so I tried Ecstasy for the first time and felt the baby kick like she was at a rave.

Tammy touched my knee and said, “Sshhh. You rest.” She even closed the magazine in my lap and told me to shut my eyes. I felt like a genius. I got the benefits of motherhood—feeling like I fit in with a tribe of women, not feeling judged, actually being told that it’s not rude of me to close my eyes and tune out the person rubbing lotion in between my toes—without having to sit there with a human being growing inside of me and pressing on my bladder, causing me to have to cut the pedicure short so I could pee.

When I went to pay for my mani-pedi, Tammy waved me off. “This one on us.” It was like an impromptu surprise baby shower. A free mani-pedi? That’s like someone handing me a free thirty-five bucks, which equals two boxes of diapers or six boxes of baby wipes!

While pretending to be pregnant really suited me for a blissful hour of pampering, I resented that I was treated better just because I was a mother-to-be. If I’d shown up at the salon telling everyone about how I’d just worked for ten hours and spent an hour each way in traffic, would I have received a free vanilla-scented neck massage? When I think about Tammy and other women who think like her, I get as angry as I do at homophobes who for some reason can’t stop thinking about two men fucking. Mind your own business! All paying customers on Planet Earth deserve a comfortable stay—not just mothers. Even though womanhood technically begins when you get your period, it seems that in our society nobody considers you a woman until you stop getting your period for nine months at a time. Okay. I will admit—that is one huge selling point for pregnancy.

The ladies gave me a curious look when I left, because even though I was only a few weeks pregnant, I stood up and cradled my lower back with my hand, pushing my stomach out as if I were about to give birth. I let out a sigh and waddled toward the front door. I realized I’d forgotten what month into my pregnancy I was and I was behaving as if my water were about to break. But Tammy and Trisha and my new extended family thought I was just a hilarious knocked-up Charlie Chaplin with my physical pregnancy comedy. They clapped and giggled like toddlers watching a thrilling game of peekaboo.

Being fake-pregnant for an afternoon gave me a new perspective on life. I realized, finally, what was important: well, I realized what wasn’t important. It is not important to get the approval of people whom I don’t know about a very personal decision. As I walked out the door, Tammy threw the bottle of glittery silver nail polish in my purse. She winked at me and said, “Keep it.” I accepted her generous gift because with my husband and children permanently out of town and because George Clooney still hadn’t invited me to Lake Como, I definitely needed a little sparkle in my weekend.