Still Childless - There Are Reasons

My thirty fifth year of walking this earth is bearing down upon me and thus far I've managed to dodge the whole breeding, spawning, fatherhood thing. Of course I'm now of an age when more than just a handful of my friends are impregnating one another and ushering in their own private bundles of joy into the world. I'm simply not one of them and neither is The Great Organiser. That's not to intimate that such an eventuality has been forever stricken from the cards for us, it's just that we've got, well, other priorities. And if what I've seen of parenting so far is to be believed as the norm, I might wait a while longer.

Take The Big Gay Wiggle (not his real name) for example. Whilst he's somewhat biggish he's neither gay nor one of the Wiggles. He and his wife—coming up with an appropriate name for her has been tough; we'll call her The Counsellor—had their first child about two years ago and it all went well; from The Counsellor's womb emerged a happy little bub and The Big Gay Wiggle could be found at parties demonstrating his ability to cradle an infant in his left hand while he counter balanced with a beer in the right. Parenthood seemed grand. It was possible to take the baby to a barbecue and still chug a shitload of booze.

The Counsellor herself had been taking more than her fair share of swigs from the baby Kool-Aid bottle. Judging her attitude towards motherhood, you'd think that their newborn was shitting lumps of opium into her nappies and her parents had been eagerly scooping it up and smoking it. They were that high on parenthood.

"So when do you think you and The Polished Turd will become parents," she imploringly asked The Great Organiser on one of our return visits to Australia.

"Um, it's not really part of any plan we've got right now. Besides, there are plenty of adoption-worthy kids out there who need good homes."

That kind of response brings the blast door slamming down extra hard on any further conversation with a new mother. In one fell swoop the mother's entire life for the past year has been rendered inconsequential. A well orchestrated recover is possible, but it takes a conversation genius to execute it. Moreover neither the The Great Organiser nor I could be bothered.

Compare the parental disposition one year later. When The Counsellor's attitude towards motherhood the year prior gets taken into account it should come as little surprise that she and The Big Gay Wiggle decided to throw themselves at the mercies of procreation once again. The weird part was the circumstance. The Counsellor hadn't had her first period since the birth of her first child and she was waiting for it to come around. And she waited. And she waited. And she waited.

She got bigger.

She got fatter.

The Big Gay Wiggle placed his hand on her nascent bulge whilst out at nature park and remarked, "Shit Love, I felt a kick."

She was five months pregnant.

Just after The Great Organiser and I lobbed into Australia their second child was born. The attitude was completely different and we'd have been forgiven for thinking that the Kool-Aid had been replaced with vinegar.

"We're done with that one. We didn't see it coming and we've got a few things to sort out now."

Yeah, I bet you have.

Then take last Saturday night. Whitey and his lady and daughter are doing what so many people who fall pregnant whilst living in San Francisco: they have their baby and then promptly flee for the 'burbs. It's a sad state of affairs for new parents in this city and the parents can't be really held to blame entirely. The school system is in disarray, the housing is cramped and it costs a boatload of cash to live here. All's well when you're pulling a fat wallet salary, but when that baby's mouth starts to beg for food why not do a bunk for Oregon?

The Great Organiser and I put on a spread for them on Saturday night. Things were going along just fine when the shorty decided the coffee table would be a great thing to headbutt. In the words of The Big Gay Wiggle's mum, "babies are really hard to kill. I mean really, REALLY hard to kill. You can pretty much drop them on their heads and they'll bounce right back up into your arms." She's probably right you know, although I'm hardly one to judge. None the less the baby was by now a writhing, bellowing mess, and the ice pack, despite arresting the swelling, made her irritation even more pronounced, thereby bringing Whitey's dinner to a close. He'd barely made it a third of his way through the plate.

The rest of the guests—there were two others visiting, one of whom supplied more bottles of awesome wine than were really needed—sat back, enjoyed our childless state of being and proceeded to polish off as much of the vino as possible.

We slept well that night, awoken not by crying children hungry for attention, but instead by warring cats.