I have all-day disgust rather than morning sickness. I just lie on the couch and sense things, hearing, smelling, feeling and tasting what no human should. My husband Dave was eating ice cream and it was like the ice cream and his tongue were in my ear and I realized that ice cream is exactly like cat food. I can only eat one food item per day. I never know what the thing will be, but then it will come to me and I'll call Dave at work and tell him to go get it and bring it to me. The other day it was mashed potatoes and corn, that's what I could eat. And he brought me a sweet potato instead and I burst into tears. I said, "I can't eat this!" At night I lie awake: I can hear him breathing. I have to change the sheets every day because I might smell them. I am terrible to be around. I am terrible to be.
A great deal of my day is spent planning to sue. Between unpaid child support, distributors who blew me off when my magazine closed, producers who snorted my money up their nose and never gave me the master tape and magazines who never paid me for articles, I'm owed $40,000. I never bothered with it before, because I just figured that's part of the freelance life you get ripped off. I put up with a lot in my non-pregnant life because I was concentrating on other things. In my nauseous lethargy, however, all looms large. Why sue over $200? Why not? It's fun to sue. I watch these TV court shows and get all worked up. Today I told a practical stranger to "grow up" because she was thinking of leaving this woman she's in love with due to fear of future pain. She answered, "Well, you're right. But wow! You are one mean pregnant woman!" I told her she's lucky all I did was chastise her for not seizing love, rather than suing her.
There was a phone call for Dave. He took it in the office. "She's gone sort of wack-o," he whispered, unaware that my new ears can penetrate two closed doors.
December 16, 2001
There were maybe a dozen women, all pole-dancing, except they weren't doing it for the dazed onlookers they were trying to come! Some even took their thongs off so they could rub against the metal poles uninterrupted by fabric. One woman she looked like me did a backbend and was rubbing her naked pubic area against the cold black pole, balancing on her shoulder blades so she could attack her own nipples with her fingers. She bent further and further back until her head was between her legs (upside down) so she could make out with the floor. Fortunately, it looked clean. Then I realized it was me, since I used to be able to put my head between my legs in a backbend, before I was pregnant (and before I was thirty-three). Some of the other ladies came around to stick vibrators and feathers at me, so inspired were they by my licking of the floor.
I was exposed to chicken pox last week, and since I never had it as a kid, I had to go to the hospital for horse shots of other people's blood in my ass. This was so their antibodies would "train" my blood to fight chicken pox now could be very serious for Fetus. Instead, the Other People's Blood just made me sick. I couldn't keep my fever down so I just slept and slept and had dirty, dirty dreams. After the pole-dance dream I woke up and remembered there's no reason not to have sex (something I haven't done in weeks). I told Dave to get on top of me. He asked if it hurt, I lied and said no. I arched my back like I had in the dream. Maybe not at such an ambitious angle. In fact, that might have been a sigh rather than an arch. I didn't move an inch, to tell the truth. But with pregnancy, there is increased blood flow everywhere, including between the legs, so the heightened senses extend to pleasure receptors. Meaning you don't have to move much to have an orgasm. But sadly, it's a speedy, shallow orgasm. It leaves you always wanting more, and then more comes so easily, but it's never what you felt you were capable of. Five minutes and several disappointing orgasms later, I couldn't remember why I'd thought sex was a good idea. "Come right away," I told Dave, and since in the last couple months that poor guy has gotten used to doing exactly what I say, he did.
The next day I awoke in a good mood nonetheless, and wanted to go to the beach. We all put on our long johns, ski pants, coats, hats and mittens and headed out. We put one blanket down on the sand and Dave and my son Wolf wrapped me up in two other blankets and left me there while they went off to play. Have you ever seen a wounded animal that looked somehow happy? As long as they're not whining the wounded animal whine is the worst sound in the world. But normally, they lay there with their bloody paw or whatever is wrong looking so content, as if they know there's nothing they can do but wait and lick, wait and lick, and having their entire spectrum of possible actions spelled out so simply for them is comforting. That's how I felt, in my big blanket roll on the beach. After spending two months on the couch in front of the TV and occasionally dragging myself upstairs to the computer screen, the wide open sky and sea was just about the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen. The clouds were very thin and seemed to criss-cross. I started thinking it was an enormous canopy of mosquito netting, and I was a giant in India or South America going to bed. I still had my fever.
I could hear Dave and Wolf yelling in the distance. I don't mind my body becoming someone's house for nine months. I don't even mind the terrible time that I know will follow where the former tenant wakes you up every hour-and-a-half all night long with their "Feed me"-"Gaze lovingly into my eyes"-"Change me"-"Do something!"s. Because eventually they'll go away from me, like Wolf was doing now with Dave. And someday they'll really leave me, and marry someone, and after he or she has had enough of making someone miserable, they'll make them as happy as I was right then.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Lisa Carver is the author of the books Dancing Queen, Rollerderby, The Lisa Diaries and Drugs Are Nice. She's written for Hustler,Index, Icon, Feed,Newsday and Playboy, among others. She lives in New Hampshire.
