The following are exerpts from an email string between my friend Rosenrosen and myself. We were discussing the fact that we could probably make a really effective Health Class video to be used to discourage teenagers from having babies.
Rosenrosen: They should hire us to make a video about the consequences of sex. Like going without sleep for 6 weeks straight, and the ancient Incan monkey god telling you to bludgeon your husband in his sleep.
Me: They should spend a week on lochia, with poster-size photos of the state of one's underpants during the six-week-gorefest that is postpartum.
The posters should be scratch'n'sniff.
Rosenrosen: And a full-length video presentation of hospital-grade breastpumps at work, stretching your nipples out to 18 inches, while the mother sits there, crying that she feels like a cow.
"Mooo-ooooo-oooooooo-oooooooo-oooo! Oh, gawd, what have I do-o-o-o-ne? WAAAAAAH!"
Me: Cut to a video of me, sitting on the fold-out couch holding an engorged breast in one hand and working an Avent manual pump with the other while crying and going, "Look at me...I'm a fucking cow!! MOOO!!! MOOOO!!!"
Zoom in on my husband, who's standing in the doorway bottle feeding the infant.
The look on his face is one of abject terror.
Rosenscary: Next, a scene of my baby screaming for 6 straight hours. And don't edit for time. Make the bastards listen to him scream for the full 6 hours. Make them stay after school, if necessary.
Show me rocking him, singing every hymn from the hymnbook because I've run out of children's songs. Show me trying to take him for a drive, putting him on the dryer, running the vacuum, bicycling his legs, and trying every bullshit method ever concocted to help colicky babies. Finally, cue the dramatic music, and feature my husband saying "I'm too fucking old for this shit."
Next, show my husband's severed head, bouncing down the steps of the mobile home porch, and show me digging a shallow grave in the state gamelands, holding a screaming child in my front-facing child carrier.
Me: Cut to my living room.
It's 1 AM, and every light is blazing because the little shit screams less if it's bright. He's like a fucking anti-Mogwai or something. Show the baby screaming in his little blue boppy with the little bees on it; he is stiff and red with rage. Show me in my post-partum colic clothes: blue plaid shirt, size XXL, great big sweat pants, greasy hair in a messy pony tail, Velma glasses smudged and askew.
'Rosemary's Baby' is on the television, and the sound is nearly all the way up. Somehow, though, I can't hear it over the baby's screams.
My face is expressionless as I turn to the squalling demon sprog and say, "You're a stupid baby, and I don't like you very much."
Skip ahead a few nights, and show me in the nursery at 3 AM. I'm wearing the same colic clothes, and I'm rocking the chair so hard that it's about to break. The springs go "woinka woinka woinka".
The baby is quiet and almost asleep, but if I try to put him down he will scream. And scream and scream and scream.
I am not singing; the son of Satan does not suffer lullabies. It is motion he desires, and a mouth full of bleeding nipple.
I suspect that he enjoys the taste of my blood.
I am looking at the window furtively.
Do I suspect a prowler? Do I fear a draft will chill my baby?
No, I am wondering how I might be able to toss the little fucker out the window and make it look like an accident.
Fade to black.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment