Repost Riposte

Originally titled "Life Among the Breeders"

I've recently discovered a new and searing social awkwardness, a discomfort so powerful it scatters my entire sense of physical equilibrium and leaves me wondering if I'm about to pitch out of my chair and onto the floor.

The only thing I can compare this to is the days of junior high, when for no discernible reason, I insisted on attending dances in the cafeteria only to creep wretchedly around the perimeter in slow, clockwise circles, praying for no one to notice me and then praying just as hard for the opposite. It's that kind of discomfort.

I've begun to keep company with breeders.

Let me make clear at the outset that I quite like these women-- they're funny and engaging, and they make delicious muffins-- I just keep running into the regrettable inconvenience that I have not yet knitted together my own little burbling bundle of genetic material, and this keeps me from having anything to add to discussions of, say, chapped nipples and episiotomy stitches. At least, not anything appropriate.

I'm also left to figure out what to do with my hands when the conversation falls quiet and everyone else is tickling toes or planting big blubbery kisses on fat little tummies. They all seem so wholesome, so purposefully engaged, so motherly, and then there I am in their midst, fiddling with a fork and nervously dragging the tines through congealed cinnamon glaze. I feel almost suspect, sinister, like in my childless hedonism I might as well be tying off the tourniquet and juicing up a big syringe full of smack.

It never quite made sense to me that anyone would genuinely enjoy a junior high dance-- I mean, how could you? It's dark but there's still that old meat and canned corn smell of public school cafeteria, the disco ball adds a nauseating sense of vertigo, and the DJ has to keep everyone happy so the music careens across genres to encompass rap, techno, country, pop, and Tejano. Motherhood seems about as compelling to me, and yet, oddly, like the dances in junior high, I occasionally find myself drawn to the idea, or at least drawn close enough to feel an intense shudder of awkwardness and doubt before I hurry back home and pop a birth control pill.

In all my laps around the GJHS cafeteria, I think what I was looking for was some tiny glimpse of the future, some theoretical time when the prospect of wandering out into a crowd of heavily cologned boys and dancing with one wouldn't make me want to retch in pure fear(incidentally, I only ever danced with one boy in junior high-- he later turned out gay). Maybe hanging out with the breeders is a similar exercise in hope.