Jen Kirkman - I Can Barely Take Care of Myself

Eileen bounced baby Henry in his BabyBjörn. He spit up a little bit on her hand but she smiled and said to me, “It’s all worth it. Every minute.” Then asked, “So, when are you going to have kids?”

I wanted to answer, “It’s none of your business, but since you asked… ,” and tell Eileen that I didn’t really want to find myself strapped to a poop machine at an overpriced tea shop anytime in the near future, but in the interest of polite conversation I just said, “Actually, I don’t want kids.”

This is where that polite conversation should stop. It should be no different than her asking, “So, when are you buying a multimillion-dollar mansion?”

Me:“Actually, I don’t want to buy a multimillion-dollar mansion.”

Eileen:“Oh, no mansion? That’s cool. That’s your personal choice. So, how crazy was Mad Men last week? Boy, that Don Draper sure does like all kinds of midcentury modern pussy!”

BABY HENRY FIDGETED in his external cotton-womb, trying to unbutton his mom’s shirt. Eventually, like all men, Henry gave up trying to figure out how to work a hook and-eye clasp and just pulled Eileen’s shirt to the side, located her boob, and put his mouth right on her nipple. I felt like I was thirteen years old again and watching Alex the Burnout go up the shirt of Nicole the Skank on the dance floor during Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven.” And just like Nicole the Skank, Eileen the Mom let her date suck on her left one in front of all of her friends.

Eileen seemed sad. The breast that baby Henry’s mouth wasn’t attached to was kind of… leaking. It looked like her nipple had left a sweat stain on her nice afternoon tea party shirt. As she bounced, she let out a few farts that tooted along in perfect time with her rhythm. She didn’t acknowledge the farts so I didn’t either. Maybe that’s why Eileen wanted me to have a baby, even though she didn’t know me. Maybe once you’re at the point of having a boob that drips like a leaky faucet at parties, your instinct is to proselytize. You’d be more comfortable surrounded by women who are leaking and farting as well. You can harmonize like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. And then when you’re done harmonizing you can go door to door, extolling the virtues of multiple wives for one man who will give him at least a dozen children!

I know that nothing you love comes easy. There’s crying, flatulence, and wetness with anything that’s ultimately worthwhile. That’s how Eileen feels about raising baby Henry and how I feel about spending all of my time working on my career. I wish I could spend less time on it, but I don’t make the rules about how much dedication it takes just to get a morsel of success in show business and stand-up comedy. Just like Eileen doesn’t make the rules about how much dedication it takes to keep baby Henry alive and happy. Eileen chose motherhood. I didn’t. And to me, that’s where the conversation ends. That and when someone starts making toot noises out of her butt while I’m trying to eat a cupcake.

Even though I’m the one making this argument, I resent having to refer to my career as my baby in order to explain myself to parents. It suggests that as long as a woman has something she feels maternal toward, then she passes as a regular human being. She wants to swaddle her career, so we’ll make an exception and give her a pass!

Women don’t have to have maternal urges to be women. My career is not my surrogate baby just like my car is not my surrogate sex slave just because I turn it on and ride it. Men don’t call their careers their sons or daughters. A fireman without kids doesn’t have to pretend that his job is his baby replacement. Oh, yeah, when I walk up those forty flights of stairs fighting back the burning and falling asbestos, I just cradle the hose in my arms and think, This is my baby.

It’s a weird thing society puts on us women. They tell us that we can have careers (well, after they told us we could vote—they sort of said it would be okay if we wanted to have a career, as long as we agree to get paid less than a man for the same job), and then they tell us that we aren’t real women if we have careers but no babies, and if we dare pick a career over a baby… we better at least talk about that career like it’s a baby in order to blend in and not call attention to the fact that we’re selfish women who are not carrying on the human race.

I don’t actually feel maternal about my career, although there are similarities to motherhood. Sometimes my career has me out of bed at five in the morning and it doesn’t give a shit how much sleep I’ve had the night before. I have to constantly come up with new things to “play with” or my career gets bored. You’ll never see me breast-feeding my desk or taking its temperature rectally, although I am steadfast about wiping it down every day with antibacterial wipes. (Don’t worry. I use the environmentally friendly, chemical-free wipes. I want to make a nice planet for other desks to grow up in.) But unlike with motherhood, I don’t feed my career. My career feeds me, and I can’t ignore my career because if I do, someone younger and funnier will give it the attention it needs and then she’ll get her own sitcom.

I WENT ON a business trip one weekend and the guy who drove the shuttle from the carport to the airport said, “Where you headed?”

“New York City,” I told him.

He got all bright-eyed. “New York City. I’ve always wanted to go there. But I only know about it from Sex and the City repeats.”

I was delighted. I realized that my subtle streaks of racism had prevented me from ever assuming I’d get to talk about one of my favorite TV shows with a straight, middle-age black guy.

“Can I ask you a question, Ms. New York? Now, let me guess, are you a Carrie, a Samantha, a Charlotte, or a Miranda? Let me see…” He took a look at the motorcycle boots I was wearing and said, “Damn, girl, according to those shoes, you ain’t any one of those ladies.”

I explained to him that it’s not comfortable to wear Manolo Blahniks on a red-eye flight and that it’s not financially comfortable in general for me to wear shoes that cost a thousand dollars.

“So you’ll get to town and see your girlfriends and have some drinks, like a cosmo or even a lemon drop? That’s a new one I’ve heard of,” he said.

“Well, I land at five forty-five a.m. at JFK, so I’ll probably just try to find a yellow cab and avoid those guys with the duct tape on their 1988 BMWs who call themselves ‘independently owned car services.’ But then yes, I will probably see my friends that night. I haven’t given any thought yet as to what type of drinks we’ll have.”

I was having fun with my driver, who looked like a world-weary older black guy but had the soul of a 1980s teenage club kid heading to the Limelight. That is, until he said, “Your husband and kids okay with you taking off for this girls’ weekend?”

“Well, actually it’s not a girls’ weekend. I have a business meeting. Anyway, I’m not married and I don’t have kids.”

“Girl! What you waiting for! You’re attractive! You can find a man!”

I’m not sure why this myth exists that only attractive people get married. Have you ever googled “Cracker Barrel weddings”? I told him that I had once had a husband, that that husband and I did not work out, and that I’m very happy because I get to do things like get on a red-eye without asking anyone’s permission. Suddenly it seemed like I was slowly falling into the trap of needing the approval of the guy driving the shuttle from my car to the airport.

“But you wanna have a kid, right?” he asked (I was no longer fooled by the wide-eyed club-kid persona). I told him no. He said, “Hell, what? I have six kids. It’s hard to afford them these days and they are a pain in my ass. They have minds of their own, but I love them. They are the light of my life when I go home. What’s waiting for you when you go home from New York City?”