I was sitting on the BART trying to think of something to write tonight and thought I had settled on admitting to some of the silly extremes I've gone through to show women I really wanted to be with them. Somewhere along the way to formulating the first sentence I read this in the confessional, "hey two blue lines. pregnant by the FB. fuck."
I've never had to face up to any real issues with pregnancy. A few women I've seen had some worries privately, but didn't tell me anything until their tardy periods had finally arrived. Hearing that was always a surprise. It's huge news, but how can you reasonably respond when you're told such a big change had been possible after the fact? Pregnancy is the one irrefutable demarcation that separates men and women. A man's understanding of pregnancy can never go beyond a grasping rhetoric and loving empathy.
It's strange that something so fundamentally separate can become the catalyst for two people to make serious life commitments to one another. I've remember having sex with a woman I was seeing a few years ago, we were drunk and had gotten carried away and soon enough were having sex without a condom (and she wasn't on birth control). As I was on top of her I wondered what would happen if she got pregnant. I felt an unspoken obligation to pull out, but I wondered what would happen if I just came inside of her?
What if that led to her getting pregnant? It was exciting to think about, imagining our early stage romance suddenly confronting something serious; a weighty sense of consequence to frame all the fun we had been having. Those sorts of thoughts have crossed my mind during sex more than once over the years. I want to do it, to tempt the possibility.
It's a stupid thought, full of romantic delusion and ego. Having children is not some flirtatious roleplay you can have with your partner for a few days and then be done with. It's not some pretty idea that sounds nice when you're in the middle of sex and have a brain full of boozy swagger. It's funny how close that possibility always is. It doesn't make sense that something so life-changing can be traced back to a single night, an hour of sweaty and playful sex. Looking back, you could remember those minutes as the very moment when your life path veered off ninety degrees into the ether.
There is the alternate choice, too. Pregnancy doesn't have to mean two decades of sacrifice and submersion in child development, PTA meetings, and fights over who drank the last box of apple juice. Like pregnancy, abortion is something a man can never really understand. We can empathize, offer support, read about it online, but there is no way I'll ever know what it is really like. There is no analog in the male experience.
I'm not sure if my parents planned to have me. I was born four years after my older brother. I remember growing up my parents told me that I was a "surprise," with conspiratorial smiles. I was talking with my dad last week and he told me one of the only times he had seen my mother cry was when she was pregnant with me. She had been worried about what it would be like to have a second child, scared that it would be too much to manage in the face of the uncertain future that lay before them.
As a man, that sounds like a rhetorical worry that's entirely familiar. I would rationalize all those fears away, reassure her of my commitment and willingness to figure out a way to make things work. I wonder how much comfort that would be? With something growing inside, both a part of yourself and a separate living thing, how much would those words really mean?
Men are needy and selfish because we never have to give anything of ourselves to anyone. We can commit our time and energy to someone, but we never have to share our flesh and blood. And we don't have to feel the loss of that flesh and blood when the choice is to let the pregnancy go. Even in love, you can only come so far. Every time you have sex with someone you're that close to it, on the edge, wondering what would happen if you leapt.
Previous Posts:
Sex Machine: Don't Forget to Masturbate
Love Machine: My Mother
Love Machine: Thanks But I'll Pass, or Handling Rejection
Naked Machine: Buying New Underwear, or Sex in a Dressing Room
Date Machine: Look Ugly in a Photograph
Love Machine: On Your Own, or Moving On
Love Machine: Going to Bed Angry
Love Machine: The Hooker on the Corner
Sex Machine: Having Sex on Inauguration Night
Sex Machine: If You Can Get Me Hard I'll Show You A Good Time
Date Machine: Tool Academy, or Watching TV with Your Girlfriend
Sex Machine: Getting Laid
Love Machine: I Was a Six Year-Old Virgin, or Is There A Happy Ending?
Date Machine: Getting Pierced on a Date
Love Machine: Hitting Snooze on the Morning After
Date Machine: Let Me Seduce You With The Cardigans
Date Machine: I'm Too Sexy For Your Blog