Untitled, 1:19 AM Tuesay Morning 28 April 1998

This entry comes with an expiration date. It will be removed from the site on May 5.

Rhonda and I would drive to K-Mart, upstate, to buy shoelaces, or batteries, or silverware. Every time you went into the store, you could watch another fat mom as she swung her meaty, open palm into the cheek of her six year old.

Each time, I wanted to yell and scream, but you do not interfere between parents and children, and I am not brave. So over and over I watched that execution of small, evil, pathetic power, and stayed mute.

Each time, I wanted to yell and scream, but you do not interfere between parents and children, and I am not brave. So over and over I watched that execution of small, evil, pathetic power, and stayed mute.

I have a friend named Karen, someone for whom I freelanced last year. We ate lunch together last Friday. There's an entry about another lunch with her somewhere in this diary. We had chicken wraps, in plastic containers, at Au Bon Pain on 15th St and 5th Avenue. It flatters me that she enjoys going to lunch with me, because I like her very much.

Karen has not been able to conceive a child. She'd never said so before this lunch, but I had guessed it from other details. Some of the same details came up at lunch, and she explained more of the problem. In my mind, I saw that odd hanging garden they show you in health class, when they explain, "this is the reproductive system of a woman." Soon, that image faded.

She told me how frustrating it was, the trips to doctors, and eventually to adoption clinics. Both the fertility treatments and the adoption process are expensive, not covered by insurance, and wrenching. She told me how people treat her. Friends say, "maybe your husband doesn't want children," or "why don't you just relax," and "it's God's choice." I never imagined others would shame a woman if she could not conceive, that they would prescribe medicines made of guilt and embarassment. Perhaps they mistake giving advice for giving help, love, and sympathy.

After lunch, I went back to work, and when I got home that night, I suddenly felt outrage towards the people--just ghosts to me--who had insulted my friend. I sat and seethed. I was angry because people looked at her and only saw her womb. I was mad because people look at me and only see fat, or at my friend Anne and only see that she's gay, boxing us in. You can't communicate with so many people because their brain shuts off exactly at the point where you begin.

I thought about those kids upstate, smacked into early adulthood. In among all those struggling children, there should be a baby for Karen and her husband. An exception, genetic or political, should be made. I haven't known them for as long as some other friends, but it is fine to imagine the two of them leaning over a crib at four in the morning, trying to figure out what the hell to do next, frustrated and proud and full of love for the child, all of the feelings that parents have at once. They could make good work of it.

Were I faithful, I'd pray for intervention. If I were very rich, I'd secretly give money to the fertility doctors. Were I connected, I could have the mayor make some calls and simplify the adoption.

But I'm none of these things, and it's not my place. So I wrote this little essay instead, out of sympathy and powerlessness.