by Mike Steeves
MARY
They don’t tell you about this when you’re young, or, if they did, I wasn’t paying attention. For some reason we treat it like it’s a big secret. I mean, I’d heard about it, I knew it was a thing, but nobody talked about it. And nobody talks about it now either, including me. I talk about it with James, of course, but that doesn’t count. We talk about everything, or at least as much as a married couple can manage. Obviously there’s stuff you shouldn’t say, but sometimes I end up saying it anyway. It’s weird. It’s like I forget who I’m talking to. No, it’s more like I think I’m talking to a different James instead of the one that I’m actually talking to and I end up saying things to the imaginary ‘James’ that the actual James probably shouldn’t hear. I think he can take it, but then I realize that it doesn’t matter whether he can take it or not, there are some things, big surprise, that you just shouldn’t say out loud. But this isn’t one of those things. What’s worse is that not only does nobody talk about it, but what little they do say is misleading, so you end up feeling like a freak if your experience doesn’t match up with that of these good-intentioned people. Growing up, they lead you to believe that getting pregnant is as easy as catching a fucking cold. In grade nine, a girl in my class got pregnant, and the way everyone talked about her made it seem like if you had sex there was a ninety-nine percent chance you were going to have a baby. It didn’t matter if you used condoms because there were all sorts of stories about people who went to drugstores and poked holes in them, or they broke, or they came off while you were doing it, or you put it on wrong in the first place. The pill was supposed to work, but then somebody would tell you about how their cousin was on the pill, and used a condom, and only had sex once, and she got pregnant. For obvious reasons they kept us in the dark. They didn’t tell us that you could be perfectly healthy, have sex with a perfectly healthy guy, that he could come inside of you while you were in the fertile period of your cycle, and that despite all of this (despite doing exactly what you were supposed to do in order to get pregnant) nothing would happen. Obviously none of this bothered me when I wasn’t trying to get pregnant – I just assumed that I didn’t get pregnant because I was doing everything right. By that I mean that I was doing everything I needed to be doing in order not to get pregnant. But maybe it had nothing to do with what I was doing. Maybe I didn’t get pregnant back then because I couldn’t. It’s possible I didn’t even have to use birth control – that if I stopped using the pill, condoms, sponges, diaphragms, and all that other crap, that nothing would’ve happened anyway. I had been brainwashed into thinking that having sex and not getting pregnant was so rare you had a better chance of getting hit by lightning, twice, while simultaneously winning the lottery. They didn’t tell us the truth – that it was possible to have unprotected sex again and again without getting pregnant. They never prepared me for this and so when it happened to me it took a few months before I could recognize what was going on. When we decided to pull the goalie and started actually trying to get pregnant we expected that it would happen right away. So when it didn’t happen we automatically assumed that we were doing something wrong. ‘Are you sure that you came inside me?’ I would ask after getting my period, and James always answered back with the same irritated tone that yes, he was very sure. Even though I knew he was telling me the truth – after all I had felt him come, and I could feel it running out of me – I still thought that maybe he was mistaken, that he’d thought he’d come inside when he’d actually pulled out at the last second. Or maybe, I thought, he did come inside but it hadn’t been deep enough. Maybe, even though it felt like he was coming in me, his dick was barely inside me, and this was why it didn’t work. But after we’d been trying for a couple months I started to think that something else was wrong. I’d read a ton of stuff online about the ovulation cycle and was pretty sure that we were having sex during my fertile period. I used those strips that tell you when you’re ovulating, and I also learned how to check my cervical mucus for signs that the egg had dropped. I got a basal thermometer and started tracking my temperature. After months of doing all this crap and still not getting pregnant I started to worry that I was doing it all wrong. ‘Maybe the strips are defective,’ I thought. ‘Maybe I’m not reading the thermometer correctly, or maybe it’s broken.’ The whole cervical mucus thing was particularly frustrating because the description of what I should be looking for (‘clear and stretchy – similar to the consistency of egg whites’) seemed to leave so much open to interpretation that I could never be sure of what I had going on. I couldn’t trust anything. So the only way to be sure that we were having sex during my fertile period was to start having sex every day. And so here was another thing they don’t tell you about when you’re young. The way that everyone talks about sex, the way it’s represented on TV and in movies and books and music, leads you to believe that there's nothing better than sex, and that getting to have sex every day would be like a dream come true. But anybody who actually has sex knows that this is complete horseshit. Don’t get me wrong, I like having sex as much as the next gal, though I’m definitely more into quality than quantity. Even if James and I were five years younger, even if we’d just met and everything was new and exciting, I would still consider having sex every day to be more of a curse than a blessing. But after five years together I’m sure I don’t have to explain why this is causing us a shitload of problems. Based on what has turned out to be a false assumption (that having sex during my fertile period would lead to pregnancy) I had reached two equally false conclusions (that we weren’t doing it right, and that we weren’t doing it at the right times) and as a result of these two false conclusions we started having sex every day. This was the only way we could be one hundred percent sure that we weren’t leaving anything to chance. James referred to this strategy as blitzkrieging the womb, and it was obvious by the way he said it that he didn’t think it was going to work. But since he didn’t have any other ideas, and since what we’d been doing wasn’t working, he conceded that I was right, it was the only way to be sure. The moment my period stopped we started having sex, and we didn’t stop having sex until my period started again. It’s a cliché that married couples rarely have sex, and that when they do it’s a joyless exercise, and there’s a related cliché that when a married couple is trying to get pregnant the sex they are having is the most pragmatic and joyless of all. And the cliché about clichés – that they are clichés for a reason, because they are actually true – could probably be applied to our situation. I’m not saying that the sex was awful. Quite the opposite, actually. Since we were having so much sex we definitely improved over time, to the point where we could pull the whole thing off in under five minutes. And even though we were having sex all the time we didn’t fall back on routine. We made a huge effort to keep things fresh so that the whole thing wouldn’t turn into something unpleasant that we didn’t look forward to, or that we might try to avoid. In the end though, all that came from this was that it made us feel more alone, more lost. James was very aware of how anxious I was that there might be something wrong with me and that this was the reason I couldn’t get pregnant (and not because we weren’t doing it right) and he did everything he could to be considerate while we were having sex. He kept things light and tried to distract me by focusing my attention on the nuts and bolts of what we were doing, and it was actually very sweet, but even though he was so attentive and caring he ended up coming off as needy, and instead of creating an intimate mood it could get pretty tense. For my part I tried to keep the sex low-impact, because I was self-conscious of how our sex schedule conflicted with his nightly routine of spending hours and hours doing God knows what down in the basement. I picked times when he took one of his breaks from his work, so he wouldn’t see it as an interruption or a distraction, and might even look forward to it as a way of unwinding. And while we were having sex I also did my best to keep it light, and tried to turn him on by doing things that weren’t really how I got off but that
I knew he liked. If he couldn’t get it up I always did my best to reassure him and told him that we could try later, and sometimes we would. In a way, our sex life had never been as good as it was when we were trying to get pregnant. We’d never been so considerate and kind and attentive and dear to each other, but none of that ultimately mattered because our daily regimen of sex was putting incredible pressure on our relationship. It didn’t matter what we did, we couldn’t ignore the fact that if we weren’t trying to get pregnant we wouldn’t be having sex on a daily basis. Even though it was really nice in a lot of ways and brought us closer together and all that, there was no denying that we were both in despair over having to fake it like this. It wasn’t because of anything that happened while we were having sex, just that we didn’t have a choice in the matter. We had to have sex every day to ensure that we were doing everything possible to get pregnant. To be blunt, if we didn’t cover every base then we couldn’t forgive ourselves once my cycle was over and it was apparent that, yet again, I didn’t get pregnant. What made everything worse – what made the whole routine so demoralizing and even depressing – was that even though both of us tried to keep a positive outlook and hope that all this sex would result in me getting pregnant, we both suspected there was something permanently wrong that no amount of sex would be able to cure. I don’t remember exactly when I noticed this was the case, but I think it would be fair to say that after six months of this daily sex routine both us knew nothing would come of it. Every month we would have sex every day but nothing ever happened. I would eventually start feeling all the symptoms that signalled I was going to get my period soon, and then it would come, and we would start all over again. This drained the whole thing of the pleasure we should’ve been experiencing. We knew we were going to have to keep trying, and that it didn’t matter what we did to make sure our daily routine didn’t become a chore that eroded the bonds of our love and affection – this erosion was inevitable. So even if the sex was good – which it often was – mutual resentment started to creep in, and every night we looked forward to our sex routine with dread. Since we both knew that this was possibly going to destroy our relationship we started to talk about going to the doctor. If we could confirm that there was nothing wrong with us (biologically that is) then we’d be able to maintain our optimism because we could be sure that even though we were having a hard time, our routine would eventually pay off. ‘If I just knew that at the end of all this I was going to get pregnant,’ I’d say to James, ‘then I’d be able to handle anything.’ If the sex wasn’t good, if James couldn’t get it up, or got it up but couldn’t keep it up, or if he could only keep it up by getting all distant and just pounding away, obviously fantasizing about someone else, then I would try to reassure myself by dreaming about when I would finally get pregnant, but at some point our mutual despair just became too strong, it was impossible to fake it like we’d been doing for the first six months, and I stopped trying to reassure myself because I had pretty much lost all hope that it was ever going to work. ‘At the end of it all,’ I thought, ‘we will be exactly where we were at the start.’ ‘We just need to confirm whether or not something is wrong,’ James would say, once it became obvious after more than a year that we were starting to despair. ‘Even if it turns out that something is wrong, at least we’ll know what we’re dealing with.’ Once we finished having sex, once we had tenderly and considerately seen to each other’s sexual needs, we would lie next to each other and I would immediately sink into despairing thoughts about how, even though we were doing everything right, the chance that this most recent sexual encounter would result in pregnancy was highly unlikely. (And yet, this time had as much of a chance of being the time as any other time we had sex. So it was hard not to get my hopes up.) I’m sure he was having the same thoughts, and if we had admitted to each other that we were sinking into despair then we might have been able to comfort one another, but instead we kept it all hidden from each other and pretended that we were feeling optimistic. Never admitting what we were really feeling eventually led to resentment, because even though we both pretended that we were optimistic, it was obvious we knew that we were pretending. If we’d just been honest about how we were really feeling then we might have been able to avoid these feelings of resentment. So we agreed to go to a doctor, basically to reassure each other, since we’re apparently incapable of reassuring each other on our own. ‘At least this way we can be sure,’ James said, ‘that there’s nothing wrong with us.’ Our daily routine, our monthly routine (and now yearly routine) had become so depressing that the only way we could keep from sinking into total despair was to get medical confirmation of some biological explanation for why we were having trouble getting pregnant. ‘This way,’ James said, ‘we’ll be able to relax, because at least we’ll have a better idea of what the problem is.’ James always talks as though we are in this together, that this is just as difficult for him as it is for me, which, no matter how hard I try not to let it, deeply offends me. He claims to want a child just as much as I do, but we both know that this is total garbage. There’s no way that he wants a child even a fraction as much as I do. There’s no way he could want a child the way I do. Full disclosure: if I hadn’t come to James and told him how much I wanted to start a family together (‘more than anything’) then it’s more than likely he would have been happy to wait for years before he brought it up. Knowing him, he’d leave it until I was way past menopause and then act all surprised, like ‘Really? I guess I never thought about it that way.’ There’s no way for me to prove it, but I’m almost one hundred percent sure that there’s a significant part of him that would’ve been happy to keep doing what he was doing indefinitely. Nothing ever changing. I’ve always been the one to suggest that we take the next step. I’m the one who wants our relationship to progress, while James, from what I can tell, is determined to maintain stasis. It was me, not James, who suggested that we move in together after we had been dating (exclusively) for more than two years. And I was the one, after we had been living together as common-law for at least five years, who proposed that we finally make it official and get married, not in a religious ceremony, but in a civil ceremony, by a justice of the peace. And once we got married I was the one who gave the ultimatum that within a year I wanted to be with child. So when James insisted that this was just as important for him as it was for me I found it hard not to call him out on that. Not that he didn’t want children – I’m sure that in an abstract, high-minded sort of way he did – but I knew that if I gave any indication that I didn’t believe he wanted a child as much as I did he would freak out. The handful of occasions that I haven’t been able to hide how I really feel on this subject have resulted in huge, multi-day arguments. He literally can’t stand knowing that I don’t believe him, even though he doesn’t even bother concealing the fact that he doesn’t actually believe himself. This is what I can’t stand. If he admitted that he didn’t want a child as much as I did I wouldn’t be bothered at all. But since he insists that we both want a child with the same level of need and longing and urgency, and since he insists on this with such infuriating stubbornness, sometimes, when we are talking about getting pregnant (which is basically the only thing we talk about these days), I feel like I am losing my mind. Like I am actually losing the ability to distinguish between reality and fantasy. ‘Which is why we need to see a specialist,’ James says, ‘so that we can stop living in limbo.’ (One time, he said ‘hell’ instead of ‘limbo.') ‘That way, even if it’s bad news, we’ll know what we’re dealing with.’ James wanted to stop ‘dealing in conjecture’ and find out ‘what the real issue is.’ ‘We don’t have to live in ignorance like this,’ he said to me, as if I was an idiot. ‘There’s all sorts of resources available to people like us. What’s the point of living in the twenty-first century, in one of the richest countries in the world, in one of the most privileged socio-economic classes within this country, with some of the most talented and educated specialists in the entire profes
sion, and some of the most advanced technology known to man, if we aren’t going to take advantage of our advantages?’ When he gets worked up like this, when he starts dropping terms like ‘socio-economic,’ and saying things like ‘take advantage of our advantages,’ it’s only a matter of time before he completely freaks out. Usually I try to hide what I’m really thinking and just agree with everything he says, although it’s important that I agree enthusiastically, so that he thinks I don’t just agree with him, but that he is actually explaining my own thoughts to me so that I can understand them more fully than if I’d been left to contemplate them on my own. Sometimes I slip up, maybe out of irritation, but most likely from boredom, and I end up saying the very thing that will make him hysterical. Instead of telling him the real reason I’m reluctant to go see a specialist, I make something up based on opinions and beliefs I don’t possess but that I know from experience will drive him into an exasperated rage. ‘Nothing is one hundred percent, James,’ is what I say. ‘All those over-educated doctors and their million-dollar machines still manage to get it wrong all the time. And even if they aren’t wrong, they probably won’t be able to tell us what we want to know. You haven’t read as much about this as I have,’ I say, knowing full well that it’s things like this that make him almost speechless with anger. ‘All they can tell you is that there’s nothing wrong. That’s the best we can hope for. But even when there’s nothing wrong people still end up not being able to have children. There’s no medical explanation. One in ten women who can’t conceive have no idea what’s wrong with them. It just doesn’t work. So I know you think that we’re going to get some sort of diagnosis or something like that, but that’s not really how it works. It’s true,’ I say, ‘that sometimes they can tell you if something is wrong, like if you have a low sperm count, or if they find cysts in my uterus or something like that. But a lot of the time they don’t find anything. Most of the time they can’t even tell you what’s wrong.’ Even though this was all true, I knew that James would disagree. I’ll admit that there was a part of me that wanted to provoke him, to piss him off, but once I had finished I realized that he was going to argue with me, and I regretted saying what I’d said, because while I had accomplished my goal of enraging James, I knew that whatever he was going to say was going to be extremely upsetting for me, and that without intending to, I had brought on the exact scenario I’d been desperate to avoid. The thing that pissed me off so much was that James was willing to argue with me even when he had no idea what he was talking about. I had just stated some inarguable facts about what we could expect when we went in for testing. These facts came from the medical literature I’d been reading about pregnancy, as well as from my friends who had first-hand experience due to their own problems with getting pregnant. But just because he felt that what I had said was incorrect, even though he had nothing to base this feeling on, he had no problem telling me that ‘it might be a little more complex than that.’ ‘Don’t get me wrong,’ he said, aware that he was about to provoke a full-on fight, ‘I know that you’ve read way more about this than I have, but from what I understand it’s a little less mysterious than that.’ While James was explaining conception to me my mind started to drift, and somehow I ended up at the memory of an episode of Cheers I saw only once when I was in junior high. In the episode, Sam and Kirstie Alley were trying to have a baby together, and there must’ve been a problem with Sam’s sperm because Kirstie Alley kept on nagging him about wearing refrigerated underwear and other things that are supposed to help with motility. This was when I first learned that people had to try to get pregnant, and that it wasn’t easy, that they had to try all the time, and that nothing may come of it. No baby. So I guess what I said earlier about being completely misled about the problems that women have with getting pregnant wasn’t entirely accurate. My teachers, my parents, my aunts and uncles, my friends, my friends’ parents – literally everyone I knew never – said a thing, nothing in school or in anything I read ever referred to it, but on TV I found out that people could have sex – constantly – and never get pregnant. I’m not talking about being barren. I’m not referring to the movies of the week that dealt with women who had to adopt babies, or steal them, or have them implanted in their uteruses, or in the uterus of someone else, in order to enjoy the privilege of being a mother. A barren woman is someone who knows that they can never get pregnant – maybe they’ve had their ovaries removed, or they had some weird infection that fucked with their tubes – whereas someone who is infertile is perfectly capable of getting pregnant, but for whatever reason it doesn’t work for them. So I’m not thinking about the sweet middle-aged women in movies or sitcoms or shitty novels, who, despite the fact that they’re always ridiculously likeable, have a really sad and lonely thing going on, and who you eventually find out can’t ‘conceive’ or ‘bear children,’ usually because of something really traumatic (and lurid and incestuous, or luridly incestuous, from their past), and even though back then I couldn’t appreciate what a unique service Cheers provided for everyone going through the same thing, I’m glad to know that at least one TV show was doing the right thing. Of course now that I’m going through it there’s no end to the amount of shit you can find online. James is right when he says I know a lot more about it than he does, I do, but this doesn’t stop him from trying to tell me about it. ‘They have all sorts of tests they can do now,’ he said, ‘and usually they can tell you if – you know – something is wrong or not. And if there is then . . . well . . . you know . . . there’s stuff they can do sometimes to fix it.’ (What he didn’t say was that if they don’t find anything, and there’s nothing wrong with me, then there’s basically nothing they can do.) ‘This happens all the time,’ he said. ‘I know you’ve read more and I’m not arguing that. I’m just saying that there’s other stories out there. . . . I’ve met people, and everyone has a story like this. If it’s not about them, then it’s someone they know,’ he said earlier this evening from his usual perch at the foot of the bed, while I’d taken shelter under the covers. We had just tried to have sex but he couldn’t get it up and I wasn’t up for going through the routine we had for this scenario. It requires a lot of effort and patience on my part, something that usually doesn’t bother me (it’s not all that different from some kind of boring but physically invigorating chore, like landscaping or snow-shovelling) but since on this occasion I could see that he took it for granted and expected me to go through this routine, I got annoyed. It was annoying, the way he expected me to go along with his little fantasies, and all at once I decided that there was no way I was going to be able to go through the motions this time. James basically expects me to do all the work. I’m the one that has to make it happen. There is really no telling what his dick is going to do. He might go on a streak for months, only to slip into a funk that lasts twice as long. When he gets like this, he speaks about his dick as if it’s out of his control, like some sort of wild beast or a force of nature. According to him, the only way to get it to work again was if I pretended that there was nothing wrong. ‘Just keep doing what you’re doing,’ he said, ignoring the fact that it was physically impossible for me to keep doing what I was doing. So eventually I gave up and this led to an argument. So . . . fucking . . . predictable. The stupid thing about this specific argument we had on the night of the cat incident was that I had taken up the exact opposite side than the one I was actually on. It was me, not James, who first suggested that we go see a fertility doctor. I was the one who suggested that we should get tested. But the reason I was taking the other side and pretending that I wasn’t entirely behind the plan of making an appointment with a fertility doctor for this month was that I could tell that James believed that if there was a problem, it didn’t have anything to do with him. He was obsessed with the idea of seeing a fertility doctor because, instead of seeing our problem as something that we should go through together, like a quest, he saw the whole thing as a kind of game that we were playing against each other, and I
could tell that he thought he was winning. When he said that he ‘just wanted to do it sooner, rather than later,’ he was, as he saw it, calling my bluff. And instead of confronting him head-on by telling him that I had already looked into it and made an appointment for next week (all true), I messed around with him for a bit. Whenever he gets worked up he starts talking a lot of garbage, like complete nonsense, so it’s easy to trip him up. He isn’t really paying attention to the words coming out of his mouth. It’s not like I made a conscious decision to piss him off, but in retrospect I’ll admit that this was what I was doing. But now that I’m telling this I feel like I’m painting an ugly picture of our relationship. The majority of the time we’re great. There is so much I’m leaving out, all the ways that we love each other and the daily kindnesses, the sacrifices, all that. But that’s not really the story I’m telling because this isn’t really about our relationship at all, this is just about what happened with the cat. So it’s a coincidence that on the night of the cat incident we happened to be having a fight, that’s why I’m focussing so much on all of this, and not because I think we have a bad relationship. So my point is just that James has been in a slump. The only time he goes down to the basement anymore is when we get in a fight, and the only time he leaves the apartment (and doesn’t come back for hours) is when he’s been down in the basement, working on something that he’s been saying for years is ‘almost complete’. Which, as I said, doesn’t really bother me, but definitely bothers him. That’s the whole point to telling all of this. To give some context for how I was feeling that night. Whenever we fight I always get really tired afterwards. And we’d been fighting so much that week that I was in a sort of waking coma. We went from being really tender and sweet one moment, to saying the most bitterly hateful things the next. No matter how many times we fight I can never get used to how we change so completely. It’s hard to describe. I invariably end up using the same clichéd expressions you hear all the time. ‘It was like he was a different person,’ or ‘We were looking at each other like complete strangers.’ But when I try to break down the feeling into the most simple components I have to admit that it’s actually not all that complicated. When we are being kind to each other, when we are being patient, sweet, and understanding, it feels as though this is the way it always is, as if this is the only reality that exists, and even though I know that we fight all the time, the memory of these fights is completely unreal, like I’m remembering a dream, and somehow I end up believing that even though we fight a lot, it doesn’t really matter, because that’s not who we really are. When we do get into a fight, however, I feel the exact opposite way. It’s as if all that tenderness and patience is an act, that the only thing we ever really do is fight, and that even when we’re not fighting, all we’re doing is biding our time until the next confrontation. And of course, since we can shift so quickly from cuddling on the couch to screaming in each other’s faces, I end up feeling like I’m losing my grip on reality. Which, in a way, I am. The analogy I always use is that it feels like I’m a nun who keeps losing her faith and then finding it again, on a daily basis. Because, just like a nun, when I lose my faith, I lose it completely. When we argue I basically start mentally packing my bags. There is no hope for us. There never was. We were just going through the motions. We were never really in love. When we go into that hole, when it goes dark between us, it feels as though even in the most recent past, when we were being loving with one another, that I never really felt the way that I thought I felt towards James. I just wanted to believe that I felt that way, I thought. But then, once we made up, I realized the only real thing I have in my life, the only thing I could believe in, the only person I could count on, was James. ‘You’re too much of an idealist,’ he says. ‘How much of an idealist is the right amount?’ is what I say. He’s into nuance, the grey area. I’m more of a black and whiter, myself. I know that the world is really complex and that nothing is ever one hundred percent, that you can’t ever really know the truth about anything and all that crap, but that’s not really how it feels. For me, there’s not a whole lot of complexity. There’s zero nuance. The feeling I have pretty much all the time is that the truth is staring me directly in the face, like right up in my face, breathing all over me and looking deep into my eyes, and just like in real life, if someone is standing that close with their face pressed up against your face so that your noses are touching, looking you right in the eye, it’s only natural to look away. It’s exhausting to maintain eye contact with someone else, especially if they initiate the eye contact, all you can do is stare back at them and try to keep a straight face that denies them access, as you’re basically held hostage by their stare, or you can give in and let them see whatever it is they think they can see by staring for so long. Either way, most of the time, if you’re like me, you pretend that you don’t notice them staring, and act as if you’re lost in thought, even though you’re not really acting at all. What you’re actually doing by avoiding eye contact is saying to the person staring at you that no matter how penetrating and persuasive their gaze may be, you will never acknowledge the look they are giving you, and by refusing to make eye contact you are saying to the person looking at you that whatever it is they think they see, they aren’t really seeing it, that whatever they think they know, or what they think they’ve just found out, they don’t really know, and they haven’t found out. By avoiding eye contact you are saying, ‘You may think you can see something, but it’s not really there. It doesn’t exist for me.’ When the truth is staring me right in the face, I instinctually look away, but just like when somebody is staring at me, I can feel it no matter what I do. It takes way more energy to constantly look things in the eye. Looking away gives me a bit of control over what I consider to be a pretty intense and unrelenting situation, even though I know this is actually the dictionary definition of sticking your head in the sand. What can I say? Maybe there are advantages to sticking your head in the sand. What’s the value in seeing things coming? When a nurse is giving you a shot they tell you to look away because if you can’t see what’s happening then you may not even notice the pain caused by the needle, but if you insist on watching you end up anticipating the pain, you imagine the needle entering your arm and piercing the fat and muscle, and the anticipation of what’s about to happen is worse than the needle itself, or, to put it another way, if you know what’s going to happen then everything gets worse. Which is why, when a painful truth is staring me right in the face, I prefer to look away. Even though it felt like something was wrong and that the reason I couldn’t get pregnant was that I was barren or James was shooting blanks, everyone I talked to all said the same thing – they knew someone who took a year, two years, three years, somebody else had a cousin who had completely given up and then got pregnant while she was in China to pick up her adopted baby. ‘How long have you been trying?’ they ask, and when I tell them that it’s been more than a year, they wave me off and tell me that it’s completely normal at my age to initially have problems getting pregnant. Despite all these anecdotes and words of encouragement I know for a fact that something is wrong. How do I know? Because I know. Because it’s staring me right in the face. It should’ve been as obvious to me then as it’s obvious to me now. Going to the doctor to have all these tests done basically allows me to confirm what I already know, because I can feel that something is wrong. Even though there was no reason for me to suspect I would be one of the six percent of women that can’t have children, or that I might marry someone who falls into the percentage of men that for whatever reason can’t make it work, I should’ve at least considered the possibility when I started thinking about having a baby that it might never happen for me. By now, all of my friends have kids. A lot of them are working on their second. If you were to look at a picture of me and my friends back when we were young, there wouldn’t have been anything to tell us apart. We all looked the same, wore the same clothes, did our hair the same way, made the same faces, and struck the sam
e poses. (It’s kind of ironic that at precisely the age we think we are most ourselves, or that we are somehow unique and original, we are actually the least like ourselves and completely unoriginal.) I know it’s crazy, but I feel like you can tell somehow, like you can see all my friends’ future children crowding the frame like a bunch of unborn ghosts, while surrounding me you might see an empty aura, like a sad little halo, or something like that. I’m not religious. I don’t believe we were put on this planet for a reason, or that something happens or doesn’t happen for a reason. There’s no plan for us. No higher power is watching over us. There’s no such thing as fate. I know all of this. But when I think of everything that has happened over the past couple of years, and all that is still happening, I can’t shake the feeling that I’m being tested by something. It’s like everything is building up to a climax, and if I can just hang on and be patient then it’ll all work out somehow. Sometimes, even though I know it’s a complete fantasy, this theory is the only one that makes any sense. Otherwise, I think, everything that has happened to me and the problems I’m having with getting pregnant are just part of a chaotic swirl and don’t mean anything at all and the reason I can’t get pregnant is a total fluke and not because of anything wrong with me or James. When I look at these pictures of me and my friends when we were young it’s hard not to project what I know now onto who we were back then, and when I look at all the photos they post online now, it’s like I’m looking at the fulfillment of a prophesy that was made back when all my old high school photos were taken. On the night of the cat incident this is what I was doing – I was going down the social networking rabbit hole. When James left for one of his ‘breaks’ I’d been writing an email to my sister about everything that was going on and how I was feeling. But as soon as I took a pause from my email, I decided to check Facebook. Like most people, I spend an hour or two every day torturing myself by going online and indulging in the most ridiculous shit. I tell myself that I’m keeping up to date on the lives of my friends, that I’m maintaining my social life by interacting through short public messages with the handful of my friends who actually bother to maintain an online presence. I tell myself that – as I scan hundreds of pictures of my friends – I am just doing what everyone else is doing and that keeping up this loose network of friends, family, and acquaintances, despite my deep ambivalence, is an essential part of being a functioning member of society. I want to emphasize that I’m sure a lot of people have a way better experience with Facebook than I do. It’s more than possible that the problems I have with social networks are actually just my own problems, or that the problems I have with Facebook are simply an extension of the problems I have with myself. But even if that is true, it hardly helps me with the feeling I get after I spend any amount of time online. As I said, it starts out innocently enough. I might go online to do some banking or to check the movie times, but within a few clicks I end up on Facebook. I don’t think about it, it just happens, and once I’m on Facebook I immediately start telling myself I should get off. I know what being on Facebook does to me, and as soon as I realize what I’ve done I tell myself that nothing good is going to come of looking at my friends’ photos. Then I feel like an asshole because I can’t just enjoy looking at pictures of my friends on vacation, or with their children, or read about their great careers or creative projects, without experiencing powerful feelings of envy, and for some reason, anger, and a whole lot of other feelings I can’t even name. What kind of person am I that I can’t just be excited and supportive of my friends, and be happy for them when it looks like everything is going their way? Why do I resent the way they tell me about the joy and successes in their lives? Would I really appreciate it if they started talking about their failures, or wouldn’t I just find some twisted way to resent that too, and somehow, through some ridiculous logic, get jealous over their suffering, as if it was another thing they had that I wanted? At the very least I would probably think they were overreacting, or they were too full of self-pity to notice their problems weren’t really problems at all, just the cost of doing business out there in the real world. By using a combination of these arguments, and others like them, I end up staying on Facebook as a sort of challenge, daring myself to go on there and feel nothing but good will and happiness for my friends and family, but this doesn’t stop me from continuing to repeat to myself the entire time I’m on Facebook that I’ll get off after I look at one more picture, or one more post, or link. I think, ‘After this album from Veronica’s European vacation I will close down Facebook and go do something more productive,’ but of course as soon as I finish looking at those photos I immediately go to another friend’s profile to see if they’ve posted any new pictures. Each picture feels like an insult. I open up a picture of my friends having a picnic in a park to celebrate their daughter’s second birthday and it’s as if the people in the picture collectively reached out and slapped me right in the face as hard as they could. My friend is smiling into the camera as she helps her daughter open a birthday gift but she might as well be spitting in my face. Even though what I’m looking at is just one picture out of thousands, a completely normal and clichéd snapshot of one of the ordinary milestones that litter my friends’ lives, that increasingly clog up all of our lives so that it feels like they’re made up entirely of milestones, I feel as though I have been personally insulted by this image. They must realize, I think, as I scroll through reams of snapshots, how painful it is for someone like me to see them enjoying a life that I’ll never know. There’s no excuse for this kind of shameless showing-off. They post all these pictures under the pretense of sharing these moments with their online community but all they’re really doing is putting themselves on display. There are pictures of them on sailboats, or on the summit of a South American mountain, or they’re laughing their asses off at a wedding, or dancing up a storm at an exclusive after-party, but even though the subject of these pictures is constantly changing, the message is always the same. Look at me. In short, these pictures are telling us that our friends’ lives are orgies of fulfillment, an unending stream of satisfying moments spent with friends and family in exotic and beautiful locations. Even though I know that it’s all an act, that what they’re actually doing is covering up for all the time they spend alone, or surrounded by strangers, or people they don’t like at all and who don’t like them, wasting away years of our lives in their sad little offices, eating their sad little lunches, or hiding away in their cramped apartments and run-down houses, even though it’s obvious that they’re trying to put out a different image of their lives, there’s something about these photos that is so convincing that I can’t help but think that maybe their lives really are as fulfilling as these photos seem to suggest. Maybe, when I’m staring at the photo of my friend with her husband and two kids in some picturesque vista, posing at the edge of a cliff somewhere in Ireland, overlooking a magnificent stretch of bright blue ocean, I’m not looking at a carefully composed lie, but the gospel truth. It’s nearly impossible to distinguish between what is actually happening and what we want each other to think is happening. I’ve become so obsessed with trying to determine what’s going on in these pictures that I end up analyzing them with the same focus and attention to detail that an art expert would use with a painting they’ve been asked to authenticate. The problem with this is that Facebook photos aren’t masterpieces. With art, an expert can draw on their vast knowledge of painting technique and themes, history, and biography – even biology and chemistry – they can look at a picture until they lose themselves in the infinite possibilities of interpretation, and they can try to determine what the artist intended, and whether they succeeded, and, if they didn’t succeed, why not. But a Facebook photo isn’t really meant to be analyzed, that’s why you end up scrolling through a bunch at a time, because on their own there’s not really much to look at, it’s more about getting information than anything else. Whenever I go to a gallery, which isn’t very often, I always leave with a sense o
f exhilaration, a sense of possibility, a feeling that the world which often seems so limited is actually so full that it’s literally swelling. But every time I spend an hour or two on Facebook I always end up feeling as though life is a narrow set of gestures with only a few combinations at our disposal. There is one thing, though, that Facebook photos and artistic masterpieces have in common, and that is, whether you are painting a landscape or posting a picture of yourself in front of the Eiffel Tower, you are always trying to recreate something from the past, only so you can change it or force it into a new shape, or obliterate it altogether so that once the dust is settled all that is left is this depressing present that we all find to be so inadequate. When an artist paints a masterpiece (or when someone takes a picture and puts it online), they are simultaneously representing all the artists (and posters) that came before them, while they are also showing us they are completely different from these artists (and posters), and the masterpiece (or Facebook photo) they’ve created is something totally original. On the night of the cat incident I found myself staring at a set of photos that a friend of mine had posted after her honeymoon in Africa. They were just like all the other Facebook photos that people take while they are travelling in Africa. There were photos of my friend posing next to various animals, mostly snakes and monkeys, and making exaggerated faces of sheer terror, as if they had something to be scared of. There were nature shots – snow-capped mountains, vast prairies, even vaster deserts – where my friend would be posed next to her husband and sometimes accompanied by people who must’ve been guides or drivers, or they might be standing in a small group or with another couple of tourists like themselves. My friend looked extremely happy and in some of the pictures her face was literally beaming with joy. And of course there were loads of pictures of them eating, seated at a table loaded with plates and bowls piled high, a mix of glee and disbelief in their eyes, or there were photos taken after the meal, where they were posed over the dirty plates looking ridiculously pleased with themselves. When I sat there in a deep trance trolling through the photos of my friends’ honeymoon in Africa, I was struck by an overpowering sense of déjà vu. Even though my friend was under the impression that she was sharing a profoundly personal experience (a life-altering trip with the love of her life), she was in fact demonstrating how deeply impersonal this experience actually was. There was nothing distinct or unique or even peculiar about her photos of her honeymoon. Basically, in these pictures, she was always mimicking other pictures (that were essentially mimicking other pictures, all the way back to . . . what?). She could have been anybody. What I ultimately find to be the core problem that all my other online problems revolve around (or more like the root problem, since all my other problems stem from it), is the way that I am constantly scanning these photos, not for very long (although I do scan over the same photos multiple times and I’m sure in some cases I’ve looked at the same photo what must be dozens, maybe even hundreds of times), and that I never feel any love for the people in these photographs. If I were being totally honest I’d have to admit that most of the time, as I’ve already said, I’m feeling envy, sadness, longing, disdain, maybe a little desire (not much though), definitely a healthy amount of full-on rage, nostalgia so strong I actually have to lie down, and in my better moments I get all wrapped up in sentimentality that kind of resembles love and affection. But I can turn this affection on and off, like the way a kid feels about their pet, a feeling that’s sharp but doesn’t cut very deep, so even when I stop for a second on a picture of one of my oldest friends holding her baby in her arms, a look of pure bliss on her face, and I’m able to see through my own very complex fucking feelings that a picture like this brings up, and I have a brief moment when I’m capable of thinking about something beyond my own hang-ups, all that happens is a little flash of emotion that passes through me without any lasting effect. And these moments are rare. For the most part all that looking at these pictures of my friends does is bum me out. Instead of bringing me closer to them it creates a huge distance. I see all these pictures of my friends living their lives, and even though I know it doesn’t make any sense I feel like they’ve abandoned me. That I’m all alone. It might be someone I see all the time, like Veronica, and I may have just hung out with her a couple days before, but when I go online and look at her profile and start scanning through her pictures I feel like I no longer know her in the way I thought I did and that we’re not nearly as close as I thought we were. What’s worse is that my friends seem less impressive online. For instance, I think Veronica is definitely the most beautiful person I know and possibly the most beautiful person I’ve ever met – I’m not exaggerating – but in all of her Facebook pictures I find that her looks are only average. There’s nothing special about her in any of these pictures and some of them are even unflattering. But then the next time I hang out with Veronica, after looking at her Facebook pictures, I’m immediately reminded that she is in fact as beautiful as I thought and the pictures not only didn’t capture her looks but actually distorted them, just like when someone tells you that your friend, who you know to be one of the nicest people in the world, is a complete asshole, and even though when you hear gossip like this and know it’s a lie, it still somehow manages to leave a mark. I remember when Jen thought Damion was cheating on her. She was convinced. But after a while she admitted she’d been feeling depressed and insecure and that Damion hadn’t done anything to make her suspicious. Actually, she conceded, lately she felt he was being clingy and she was thinking they might need to take some time apart. Give each other a little space, she said. And even though I know the reason they’re likely going to break up has nothing to do with Damion cheating on Jen I can’t help thinking about it whenever I see them. I even hit on Damion one night after drinking half a box of wine. Since, in my mind, he’d already been unfaithful (even though he actually hadn’t been), I figured, in my drunken state of mind, that he might be open to something with me. In my defense, it was a couple of months ago, when things were particularly shitty between me and James. He was spending all his time in the basement, and while I was really trying to be supportive I knew that most of the time he wasn’t doing any work down there. How is it possible to spend that much time working on something without producing anything? That’s what I had asked him the same night that I drank three-quarters of a box of wine and hit on Damion. The thing is, I really don’t care what James does down in the basement. I really don’t. As long as he’s happy, I’m happy. But whenever he spends any time down there, he usually comes up looking like crap, and then he just sits on the couch with a miserable look on his face. If I try to talk to him he freaks out. Every day we go through the same routine. Whenever I suggest that we get out of the apartment, even if it’s just for a walk, he gets this panicked look on his face and then goes on about how far behind he is and how he feels like he never has enough time to work. Then I tell him that I think that if he did something different to break up his usual routine it might help him relax and be more productive. I explain that the only reason I’m suggesting we go for a walk is that I’m worried about how all that time down in the basement might be affecting him. ‘I know how important this is to you,’ I say, ‘but what’s the point of spending all your time down there if you don’t even like it? Even if you were able to finish what you were working on,’ I say, ‘I feel like you wouldn’t be able to enjoy it.’ Inevitably, when I talk to him like this, I end up offending him. I’m actually worried about him, and I know that most of the time he’s down there all he’s doing is brooding. James thinks I don’t believe in him. His words. Maybe he’s right, because I don’t really know what he means when he accuses me of not believing in him. If he means that I don’t believe it’s his destiny to spend his life in our basement working away on something that nobody will ever see, then he’s right. But I’ve never hidden that from him. It’s extremely rare to succeed at what he’s trying to do. I believe that he’s more than capable – that maybe he’s even talented �
� but whether he succeeds or fails doesn’t really matter to me. Like I said, I just want him to be happy. So I guess in that way I do believe in him, since I believe that he’s deserving of happiness. What I always say to him whenever he’s freaking out and accusing me of not believing in him is that I love him. ‘I love you so much,’ I say. ‘How is it possible for me to love you but not believe in you?’ And he always answers, ‘I don’t know, you tell me.’ On the night that I drank basically a whole box of wine I decided to fight back so I told him that he was right. ‘I don’t believe in you,’ I said. ‘I love you, but I believe that you’re wasting your time down in the basement, and you’re wasting my time too.’ This wasn’t true. I know how much his work means to him, but, to be blunt, I don’t really give a shit what he does in his free time. I didn’t resent him for throwing his life away on an impossible goal, I was just pissed that he had to be so miserable about it all the time. It hurt that he didn’t believe me when I tried to reassure him that I didn’t care whether he ever came to anything or not, and he would constantly try to provoke me and start a fight, but I knew if I admitted to what he was trying to get me to say – that he was fucking things up between us – then he’d be completely devastated. He accused me of not believing in him, but he only did this because he was fairly certain that I actually did believe in him. He’s like a little boy sometimes, a little boy who thinks he’s in love and constantly breaks up with his girlfriend so she’ll tell him how much she loves him and wants to be with him. James needed constant reassurance, and never suspected I might get fed up one day and do the opposite, so even though he’d been baiting me for months he was pretty shocked when I told him I didn’t believe in him. He stood up and went down to the basement. I caught him completely off guard. He expected me to go on about how I believed in him more than anyone else, so when I told him he’d been wasting his time (and mine) for the last seven years, that he should’ve done something he was ‘suited for’ instead of screwing around all day with no end in sight, it was as though I told him that his whole life was one big mistake. I knew what I said would hurt him, but I think I underestimated just how little he believed in himself and how much faith he’d invested in my opinion. So when I lied and told him I didn’t believe in him, it was just as devastating as if I had revealed that I’d never loved him, or that I used to love him but had stopped years ago and had been faking it for almost as long as it had been for real. He was so shocked that he stood up without a word and went to the basement, and instead of chasing after him I went over to Jen and Damion’s and got smashed off a box of cheap white wine and told Damion he had ‘strong features’ as well as many other things that I now feel really shitty about. Ever since that night we have avoided the topic of James’s work in the basement, but I could tell it was bothering him, and whenever we got in an argument over how he couldn't get it up I couldn’t help but feel like what we were really arguing about was how I no longer believed in his life’s work. And because this had become such an issue, even though I never really thought about it before (whether I believed in James or not) ,now it was something I thought about all the time. As I sat there at my computer looking at pictures Jen and Damion had posted from the night we came close to having a threesome, I wondered if maybe James was right, and that even though I loved him I never really believed in him, which is only to say that I’ve never thought of what he did down in the basement as something to believe in or not to believe in. I’m being completely honest when I say that it didn’t matter to me whether he was a genius or just some guy fooling around by himself in his man-cave. It’s a cliché, but I love him the way he is, which doesn’t mean that I don’t think there isn’t room for improvement in certain areas, but, just like how I’ve been meaning to learn an instrument, or start a small business, or take a language class, or all the other things I plan on doing but never really get around to, it didn’t matter to me whether he ever got around to making any of the improvements I thought he could stand to make. That is what I meant by fine the way he is. Not that he’s flawless, just that I’ve made peace with the flaws. And I don’t get why he couldn’t see that it didn’t matter to me what he did down in the basement so long as he was happy, or why I had to constantly reassure him by saying that I believed in what he was doing. It bothered me that he didn’t really understand how I felt about him, or that if he did it was cancelled out by his own doubts about himself, which were pretty severe. It was at some point during this Facebook trance that I realized the cat was in the hallway. I must’ve already heard something by then but I ignored it or explained it away without even being conscious of what I was explaining. Sometimes I’m able to convince myself with the most far-out explanations for something without understanding what I’m hearing or seeing or feeling. Just last month there was an earthquake. Small. Only four point five or something like that. But large enough. I had just put some water on to boil when everything started to shake. If you’ve been through one then you know what it’s like. The closest comparison I can think of would be having a train pass right by your bedroom window, but without the train noise, and since I wasn’t expecting an earthquake – they never happen here or anywhere else I’ve lived, and this was my first – I thought that what was happening was anything except an earthquake. The first thing that occurred to me was that the water must be boiling so much that it was shaking the kitchen. This, of course, is insane. But this is the sort of stuff I come up with. I had put the water on not even a minute before so it was impossible that it had already started to boil, and even it if were possible there’s no way that a boiling kettle can shake a kitchen, let alone an entire building – which was what was really happening – the way that an earthquake can. I immediately realized how crazy it was to think that the kettle was the reason for what was happening, but my next idea was just as ridiculous – I thought that my neighbours were doing laundry. I even listened for the sound of a dryer coming through the walls, but I eventually realized that this was just as stupid as the kettle theory. By that point I was panicking because I couldn’t make sense of what was going on and just as I was considering whether it was a low-flying plane, the shaking stopped, and just as abruptly I stopped thinking about what had happened. I should’ve been at least mildly disturbed. I should’ve checked online at least, but I didn’t think about it again until the next morning when I was listening to the radio and I found out that it had been an earthquake. I was shocked. An earthquake – and I had tried to explain it away by a boiling kettle, or a loud dryer, or a low-flying plane, and when each of these didn’t hold up, I simply forgot about it. It reminded me of this time I had seen a couple arguing outside of a club and then read in the paper, the next day that a woman had been murdered outside of a club by her boyfriend. I was sure that the woman I had seen was the murder victim in the paper and for a moment I considered calling the police, but I eventually let it go. I feel like this happens all the time, all this tragic shit is going on and most of the time we don’t even know it. The moment you walk out the door there’s a very good chance you’re going to pass someone on the street who is going through a serious crisis. But most of the time you walk by without even noticing. It’s like that story Veronica told me about somebody she works with who was living next to a dead guy for a month. Apparently she’d just moved in and met her neighbour in the hallway that night and then never saw him again. She never heard him either, even though the previous tenant had warned her that the walls were thin. Every night she watched TV in her apartment she would wonder why she couldn’t hear anything coming from the other side of the wall. Then she noticed a smell. At first she thought it might be a plumbing issue, but when she called and complained they sent someone to check and nothing was wrong with her pipes. The smell didn’t go away though and eventually she called again to complain and this time the super decided to check next door. She was with him when he let himself into the apartment and they found her neighbour’s body decomposing in his bed. But it doesn’t even have to be that dram
atic. You might find out that someone you worked with was going through the worst time of their life, and when you look back through your memory to see if you missed something, it doesn’t take long to realize how obvious it should’ve been that they were in pain. It’s not that you’re ignorant about what goes on in other people’s lives, it’s just that you’ve got your own shit to worry about. When the cat first came through the front window screen I ignored it. More specifically, I thought to myself, ‘That must be coming from next door.’ But then I heard something else, a breathing or sneezing sound. I knew right away that it belonged to a cat. Our street was crawling with them. Since we’d moved in there’d been a couple of cat incidents. James liked to keep the screen open in the basement because he said he needed fresh air, but this meant that our neighbour’s cat would stroll in. After the second time he came into our kitchen we started keeping the screens shut. Now, I thought, the sounds had initially come from the front room. It was definitely a sneezing sound that I was hearing. I found myself wondering what sort of diseases cats can pass on to humans. I was pretty sure rabies was one of them. I felt sick to my stomach all of a sudden. The idea of a rabid animal in my apartment was literally sickening. I have nothing against cats. We had one growing up. I’ve never thought about getting one but I understand the appeal – they’re cute. To each their own, I guess, but since our neighbour’s cat started coming into our place I’ve been having nightmares of my bed being invaded. Needless to say, the moment I heard the sound of a sneezing cat in the front room I prayed it would go away. And for a moment, when the sneezing stopped, I even managed to convince myself that it had gone back out the window. Then the sneezing started up again and I knew that I was going to have to do something. There was a part of me that was considering all sorts of fucked-up possibilities, scenarios that were horrifying and totally realistic. But I never gave them any serious consideration, and they didn’t develop beyond a flurry of sensations that crowded out my thoughts, like the way that darkness surrounds the headlights of an approaching car, so you only focus on what you can see, and take it on faith that nothing is going to come hurtling out of the darkness and throw itself in your way. Since my neighbour’s cat had come into my apartment before, it was understandable to suspect that the noises I heard were coming from him, or from a stray in the alley out back, so I naturally ignored my more irrational fears (like a home intruder) and zeroed in on the cat theory. I grabbed the broom from the kitchen and ran back just in time to catch the cat coming into the hallway. All the lights were out except for the reading lamp by the couch where’d I’d been sitting, and the glow from the laptop that I’d put on the coffee table, still open on Veronica’s Facebook page. I didn’t recognize the cat. It was puffy and dark and moving slowly, but not with the usual alert caution, that way they have when they are exploring a new place – this was more like the weary movements of a cow, a sort of slow plodding that freaked me out. I expected the cat to be afraid of me but it kept coming at me. It kept its head low and swung it side to side, which only enhanced its resemblance to a cow, and I could see that there was something hanging from its mouth. At this point, I realized that it was making a sucking sound, like a drooling baby with a mouthful of candy. The thing in its mouth was limp and dark and stringy. All at once I felt a revolting mix of anger and pity. I assumed it had caught a mouse and that the sucking sound was something it did when it was excited, or that this was the sound cats made when they held mice in their jaws, and the reason it was coming right at me without any sign of fear was that it was proud of itself and was showing off its catch. Some of my friends own cats and I’ve heard them tell stories about waking up to find a bird on their pillow, or finding a mouse resting on the welcome mat as they are on their way out the door to work, but this wasn’t my cat, and it didn’t look anything like the neighbour’s cat, which was smaller and had shorter hair, so why would it bring a mouse into my apartment? I wanted it to go away. Why did it pick my apartment? Why didn’t it bring this mouse to somebody else? Even now that it was in my apartment, why couldn’t it tell that I was angry and scared? Why didn’t it leave? I thought cats and dogs were supposed to be all in tune with people’s emotions. Not this one. It just kept coming at me with that stupid walk, making that gross Silence of the Lambs sucking noise. I started yelling at it to keep back but it actually started coming even faster. I stuck the broom out and pushed it into its face. Instead of scurrying away like I expected, she collapsed face-first onto the floor. Her movements were so clumsy, not like any cat I had ever seen. I was literally horrified. Like pretty much everybody else in the world, I have a deep fear of anything unusual. I know it’s not cool to admit to that sort of thing. Everyone likes to pretend that they don’t get freaked out by stuff that is out of the ordinary, but of course most people do get freaked out when they see something weird, or gross. At least I can admit it. Whenever I see someone with a deformity I can’t help but be completely terrified. I know it’s wrong, and that someone with a deformity is just as natural, or as freakish, as someone who’s perfectly normal, but knowing this doesn’t seem to change how I feel about it. There was something off about the way the cat reacted when I shoved the broom in its face. I wouldn’t have been able to articulate it then, but now I would say that it seemed indifferent, or at least it seemed unafraid, which freaked me out. I tried to sweep it towards the kitchen – my plan was to kick it out the back door – but it flattened itself to the floor and as I was trying to push it forward it managed to squeeze itself under the couch. This only made me crazier. ‘This thing thinks it can just stroll into my apartment with a bloody mouse in its jaws and hide out under my couch,’ I thought. ‘Like I don’t have enough problems already, now I have to deal with some feral animal that’s all high from killing a mouse?’ I got down and jammed the broom under the couch. I could feel the weight of the thing against the handle, but I didn’t look to see where it was. I didn’t want to see it. The way it hung its head and the look of the bloody mess in its jaws made me nauseous. Even as I was crouched down on the floor trying to pry it from under the couch I was already remembering the image of the cat – whose head, I now realized, had a weird, box-like shape to it – and while the actual moment only lasted a second, it felt like I now had the ability to pause the image and examine it with the sort of deep focus of a witness who, after a crime has been committed, is brought in to stare at a series of photos, or a composite sketch, or maybe even the actual face of the suspect, so that they can take all the time in the world to figure out what it was (and who it was) that they really saw. Back in the hallway, when the cat was coming towards me, I’d been so freaked out I almost ran out the back door. Somehow I managed to overcome this urge, but, once I did, the next thought I had was to get the cat out of the apartment. I experienced all of this before I even really saw the cat. Everything happened all at once, and at some point I focussed in on the thing dangling from its mouth. I remember thinking to myself, ‘What is that?’ and then I immediately decided, ‘It must be a mouse.’ But as I was trying to pry her loose (she’d turned on her back and dug her claws into the bottom of the couch), I found myself stuck on this image of the cat coming towards me in the hallway. At the same time as I was frantically trying to get the cat out the back door, I was calmly reviewing the memory of my initial encounter with the cat just seconds before, and, just as I felt it give way a bit, I realized that the thing in the cat’s mouth didn’t look anything like a mouse. For a second I almost stopped. I probably let up a bit. The cat was desperate to stay under the couch. I could feel her fighting against the broom. The truth is, I wasn’t doing a good job – I didn’t have a very good grip on the broom so I couldn’t put a lot of strength into it – and even though I desperately wanted the cat out of the apartment, a very significant part of me was scared to have to see it again. I managed to drag her to the edge of the couch. This was strange too. On the one hand, it was obviously desperate to stay hidden and was doing everything it could to resist the broom, b
ut on the other hand it seemed listless, like its heart wasn’t in the fight, and I remember thinking that for a stray cat it wasn’t very wild. Where was the snarling? The hissing? I’d seen cats in fights – they go crazy. They flail and squirm and basically turn into little tornadoes of panic and fury. This one was almost limp, as if she’d more or less given up and was only making a show of resisting when it was actually looking forward to being captured, or killed (since I expect that most animals, no matter how domesticated, always assume that when someone comes at them with a broom it’s because they plan on killing them). I couldn’t understand why it was so intent to stay under my couch when to do so meant fending off my broom attack, and even though I was terrified of the cat’s oddly shaped head and the bloody mass in its mouth, and had to fight the urge just to run out of the apartment and wait for James to get back and take care of it, I could feel a sense of outrage building up inside of me. It doesn’t make any sense, really, but I felt that the way this cat had invaded my apartment was totally unfair. I realize that ‘fairness’ doesn’t really apply to the behaviour of stray cats and that it was just as ridiculous to take offense if it rains when you’re on vacation. You spend your days in the hotel room trying not to let it get to you but it’s impossible not to feel like life is messing with you, testing you, or even that the actual weather was conspiring against you, as if nature was something with a personality, and was being a bit of a prick. I know how narcissistic this must sound, and I know that the cat didn’t come into my apartment because of some grand design, or in order to torment me, or as a sign or symbol of my fate, but that it picked my place at random (well, almost at random, since James must’ve opened the window before he went on his break). There’s a huge gap between knowing something is true and actually believing it, and at that moment what I truly believed in my heart of hearts was that this cat was deliberately messing with me, or that someone had sent it in order to mess with me. Of course nobody was messing with me, it was just bad luck, for the both of us, especially for the cat, who thought she might be safe in my apartment (the chances were in her favour since this is a cat-friendly neighbourhood and I expect most people wouldn’t have reacted the way I did), but now that I was crushing it with a broom she was obviously afraid for her life. She was terrified that once she was out in the open I would catch her and kill her. This was all that was going on. Just a frightened stray. But I didn’t believe it – or maybe I kind of believed it, but I definitely didn’t feel it. What I felt was that after a shitty day, which was part of a series of shitty days making up a parade of shitty months (maybe even years), when I could’ve really used some sort of sign that things were going to get better and that life wasn’t going to turn out to be a random series of disappointments, was the precise moment that capital-L Life decided to send me a sign. A scary one. I started going at the cat pretty hard. Up until that point I’d been trying to reason with her – mind you I was reasoning with a broom, but still I was trying more to coax her out rather than to force her. All of that changed. I could feel myself giving in, or letting go. I was giving in to the disgust I felt for the cat. A powerful revulsion had been rising within me the moment I set eyes on the thing but I’d been fighting to keep it down. I knew that if I gave in to this feeling I would go berserk and trash my apartment, or something even worse. Once I let go of my fear over what I might do to my apartment, or myself, or the cat, then it was easy, a relief even, to give in to the overpowering disgust that was coursing through my veins. If you’ve ever seen a child who’s been bullied finally snap and turn on her tormenters then you’ll have a pretty good idea of what I looked like – screaming over and over again, something along the lines of ‘Get out! Get the fuck out! Get out!’ while I chopped and sliced with the broom in a total frenzy. I’m only exaggerating slightly when I say that, for a moment, I lost my mind. But it worked. The cat crawled out from under the couch. She was making that sucking noise again, except now it was louder and she was wheezing as well, or at least I think that’s what it was, since it was faint and disembodied, as if the wheezing was coming from another cat hiding in my bedroom (and even though I knew that this was ridiculous I definitely considered it for a second, which should give you some idea of how messed up my thinking was by that point). I was standing between her and the kitchen. I smacked the broom down in front of her a few times and when she froze I swung as hard as I could. She literally flew through the air. This took me a bit by surprise, even though what happened was more or less what I’d intended (except it’s not accurate to say that I intended anything at all – I just swept the cat towards the kitchen with everything I had, and I don’t remember thinking of what the result would be). I watched with a sort of creeping awareness as the cat sailed through the air and slammed into the kitchen table. It had splayed out while it was flying through the air, so it hit the table and then crumpled to the floor. I thought of a Frisbee, when it wobbles through the air before bouncing off a tree and spinning into the ground. The cat smacked into the table leg and I remember thinking to myself, ‘You killed her.’ I’d been lying to myself about why the cat was acting so weird, and what it was that was hanging from its mouth. I’d been so freaked out and scared that it wasn’t until I watched the cat spasm in pain when it struck the table leg that I became aware of what I’d actually known since it crawled under the couch. And it wasn’t until I said to myself, ‘You killed her,’ that I knew that I knew. The cat was obviously severely injured, most likely because it’d been hit by a car. I stood there with the broom in my hands. She scrambled to her feet and then ran out the kitchen door as fast as her little broken body could move. I ran to the door but she was already down the stairs, though I seriously doubt that I would’ve gone after her, since, now that I knew the shiny mass dangling from her mouth wasn’t a little dead mouse but most likely the cat’s brains or guts, and that the reason she had such a weird shape to her head was that her skull had been crushed, I was even more horrified, and just the thought of what I might see if I got close enough to pick the thing up actually made me nauseous. As I was standing there at the kitchen door the whole incident started flashing through my mind. Now that I knew the cat was seriously injured it seemed almost insane that I could’ve mistaken the stuff pouring out of its mouth for a dead mouse. I flicked the kitchen light on and at the spot by the table where she had landed there was a splatter of blood that trailed to the kitchen door, and when I went back to the TV room and turned on the lights I saw a trail of blood from the hallway that led to the couch where it turned into a smear (which must have been where I hit her with the broom). I followed the blood down the hall and, while I’d been right – James had left the window open – I saw that the screen had been shut, and the cat had torn through it. She had been hit by a car and then ran to the first open window she could find, and even when the screen was closed, she had torn though it. She had been looking for somewhere safe where she could hide and instead she was beat up by a crazy woman with a broom. The poor little thing was terrified and no doubt in a lot of pain and I had turned it back out into the street. ‘And the worst thing is,’ I thought, ‘I knew what I was doing the entire time.’