Jen Kirkman - I Can Barely Take Care of Myself

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?

As Grace and Christopher told us the story of what the last eight weeks of pregnancy had been like, I remembered a conversation I’d had with Grace recently. I realized now that she’d been trying to tell me that she’d changed her mind about having kids a few weeks earlier when she asked, “Did you see the YouTube video of that chimpanzee that just gave birth?”

“No. Gross. I’m sorry you had to see that,” I answered.

“No, Jen. The mother and baby were bonding. She just instinctively licked her wounds and tended to her baby. It was so natural.”

“Well, of course it’s natural. All monkeys do is fuck and have babies, right?”

“It got me thinking, even though I’m worried about bringing a child into the world, I’m still an animal with normal urges and I can’t intellectualize that sense of hope I feel.”

I completely missed out on what she was probably trying to tell me and dismissed her with, “Well, thank God we’re not monkeys! We can take birth control! Speaking of primal urges, have you ever fantasized about having sex with a twentysomething painter?”

On the drive home (we didn’t get drunk enough to warrant that spare room sleepover) I said to Matt, “Once that baby is born we are never going to see them again.” I knew what was coming—this wasn’t my first baby rodeo. (Sidebar: Even I can admit that a baby rodeo would be very cute—although stressful. You don’t want to fall off a horse when you still have that soft spot on your skull.) As usual, Matt thought I was being dramatic (I was). He explained to me that when two people love each other very much and want to make a baby—they can still hang out with their friends just like always, except there will be a baby in the room. I explained to him that everybody knows your dumb friends coming over to order Chinese food can interrupt the bonding process between mother and father and child. Even doctors say you need at least three months of constant bonding to make a healthy relationship with your baby. But I am like a baby, and if I lose three months of bonding with my girlfriends, my development is affected and I start peeing myself just to get some goddamned attention.