I Can Barely Take Care of Myself, Jen Kirkman [the false prince txt] 📗

said they just “see things differently now,” and with regard to the future of our nation, they put their hands over their ears and sang a chorus of “I can’t hear you” because they didn’t want to get involved with anything “negative.” By the way, I also have friends who say the same thing after doing Ecstasy. Any adjustment to your hormones is going to make you see things differently. Just try to care about global warming after getting fucked really, really good twice in one night.

Becoming a mother doesn’t automatically make you a selfless person. May I present the jury with the following evidence? Kate Moss, Jaid Barrymore, and Brooke Mueller are all mothers. I know, I’m being a little judgmental toward these ladies, but at least I’m not calling them selfish to their faces in a public bathroom! Of course, most people on that list, if they were in a public bathroom, would be bent over the toilet at four in the morning, so it’d be hard to say anything to their faces.

It’s simple, really. The urge that most people feel to have kids is the exact same as the urge that I have to not have kids. I don’t want to have kids and so I am not going to have kids. People who want kids are going to have kids. I’m doing what I want to do and people who want kids are doing what they want to do. What about this scenario makes me selfish? If you did not want to have a baby and yet you found one on your doorstep with a note that said TAKE CARE OF THIS BABY, USING WHATEVER RESOURCES YOU CURRENTLY HAVE, OR EVERYONE ON EARTH DIES, and you chose to sacrifice your life as you knew it so that nobody died, I’d say, “Wow, you are the definition of selfless. Not even Balzac can argue against that.”

But if you have enough money to have a kid and you’re partnered up with the love of your life and you two want to have children—am I supposed to think that you’re doing something more altruistic than I am? It’s what you want. It’s fun for you. I know that parents skimp on sleep because their kids don’t sleep through the night and they need to be fed. I know that some parents work a forty-hour-a-week job in addition to parenting, which is already a more-than-full-time job. Again, no one is making them do it—so I have to assume that the struggle is commensurate with the reward.

My career as a writer, stand-up comedian, and actor is a more-than-full-time job too. Sure, with my jobs, I can take a day off here and there and nobody dies, unlike a parent should she decide, “Nah, I’m not gonna watch my toddler today. I’ll check in with him tomorrow if he’s around.” That doesn’t mean that I don’t sacrifice or that I’m not sleep deprived, but it’s worth it because it’s what I want to do to the exclusion of anything else. I do not love the thought of being a mother enough (read: at all) to have a child and do what I do for a living. I don’t want my spare time, which is an hour here and a weekend there, to be taken up with the making and raising of a person—and I feel like that’s the most unselfish thing I can do. I know enough to know what I can’t handle—which is a child tugging on my T-shirt and saying, “Feed me,” when I walk in my front door. Because usually I’m rushing to the bathroom to pee and you know what? A lot of times I don’t make it to the toilet in time and I pee a little bit in my pants. I have my own diapers to change.

I don’t go up to parents and say, “You know what you guys should do in addition to what you’re already doing? You should start a small charity that helps birds that can’t read. What do you mean you don’t want to do that? How come you don’t want to add that to your schedule? Isn’t that selfish?”

I WAS AT a Starbucks on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles, waiting in line to order an Americano. The woman in front of me had already ordered her coffee but was holding the barista hostage as she and her toddler daughter decided on what the little girl wanted to eat.

“Do you want . . . a cookie? How about a . . . blueberry muffin? Oooh, what about . . . some fruit!”

The toddler, overwhelmed with choices, screamed, “Nooooooooo!” to everything. The mom said to the barista, “I’m sorry. Do you have any of those miniscones in the back?” I had about two minutes left on my personal clock to order and get the coffee, otherwise I was going to have to turn around and leave. I didn’t want to be late for work. But I’m a pretty patient person for someone who is a complete spaz in all other areas of life and I know that bringing a kid with you into a store with shelves full of goodies turns the simple task of ordering a coffee into an ordeal worthy of rebuilding a community after a devastating hurricane. It involves a lot of bending over, picking things up, and putting them back in their place (reason no. 425 that I don’t want kids). The mom turned to me and said, “I’m sorry.” I said, “Oh, it’s okay.” And then I added, “Being a couple of minutes late for work is worth it for some coffee.” I don’t know why I said that. I was trying to be funny in that “Hey, we’re making jokes about work and coffee” way.

I immediately went into damage control and sputtered, “I didn’t mean—”

She cut me off with a look of vague disgust and said, “You don’t have kids, do you?” I shook my head no, like I was a toddler who knew I was