Test of Pregnancy

We're not not trying

“Circumcision?” I said.

He smiled. “That was out of nowhere,” he said, grabbing his can of Modelo.

It was. But it wasn’t. Earlier that day, I decided I needed to determine whether my new boyfriend would be the right father for my children. Because three weeks before, we stopped using condoms. A few times, we hadn’t even pulled out. It felt great. It was exciting. It was closeness. It left a noticeable need for discussion.

“As you may have noticed,” he said. “I already am.”

I huffed a laugh from my nose and took a sip of my mezcal margarita.

We were at a restaurant in Mexico City. The trip was to visit a friend of mine. But the day I booked my flights was the day before my new boyfriend and I started having unprotected sex, which was two days after we verbally declared what we’d nonverbally known – our mutual love for one another. We didn’t want condoms or oceans between us.

“Would you circumcise your child?” I clarified.

“Honestly, I don’t have strong opinions on the matter,” he said.

“That’s a first,” I said, with a wink.

He and I always talked, but rarely about us or our future. We talked about ideas and didn’t always agree. But that week, we hadn’t had much time alone, let alone time to talk alone. My friend was with us. She took the bus in from a more distant village and stayed in the Airbnb I booked. For seven days, the three of us did everything together except sleep.

Alice Austen’s photograph “Mrs. Snivley, Jule, and I in Bed” (1890)

Back when she and I lived in the same Midwestern town, when she and I were concurrently healing from juvenile heartbreaks, we’d sometimes even sleep together. It was messy. Life was. We drank and danced and tried to grow up, but sometimes it was down. When we both moved to different countries – she followed a guy, I followed a job – I thought it was a good thing.

“I have a proposition for this meal,” I said.

“Beyond the eight courses of tacos?”

“Yes, and beyond cleansing ourselves of this trip,” I said.

He laughed.

The vacation wasn’t fun. It wasn’t exactly meant to be. I’d warned him of this in advance. I said, “It’s an intervention masquerading as a reunion. You can be my moral support.”

The man my friend followed to Mexico stopped sharing his heart with her soon after her arrival. Her preexisting condition, a dependence on spirits to maintain her spirits, filled his place. Back in the Midwest, I never acknowledged that. I knew she was hurting. I wanted to help. But I also didn’t want to push her away.

On our reunion, she wanted it to be like old times. But it wasn’t. The first night, she blacked out and tried to kiss my new boyfriend. The next day, she made sure he knew she’d done even more with me. “She must have told you,” I heard her say when I got back from the bathroom. I hadn’t.

I apologized to him that night in bed. I didn’t want to stir shit up. I wanted to do the opposite. I wanted to say what needed to be said when it needed to be said, but I was still figuring out how.

Our server arrived. “Are you ready to order?”

I said yes. Then my new boyfriend ordered us sixteen tacos.

We were seated next to the window of the second floor of a converted warehouse. I looked out past the streetlights below us. Wind blew in, bending the tea light’s flame sideways. I thanked the server as he left, then I looked my new boyfriend in the eyes and said, “Given our recent foray into unprotected intercourse, I wondered if you’d be up for discussing the hypothetical questions someone like me would discuss with someone she might have a baby with.”

“So,” my new boyfriend said. “Circumcision.”

I smiled. He recounted how his English mother took him to a Mohel in Derby to remove his foreskin. It was too tight and made his urine spray. He said he’d prefer his theoretical son to avoid that pain, but he was open to his partners’ perspective.

“Boy or girl?” he said.

“Good question.”

I knew we should have discussed whether a pregnancy was wanted before reciting the recipe for procreation. But it was better late than never. I wasn’t sure I felt that way about my period. My period was late, but nothing about me was regular. My family and the friends I once depended upon were buses and plane rides away. I was in the midst of starting a monogamous relationship, even though I considered myself a relationship anarchist. And despite the madness of being prepared to create life with a man I met months before, I was not worried. Not about myself.

“Two People in Costumes,” by Alice Austen

“Not a boy,” I said.

He said, “I think it’s natural to want what you know.”

“How did you feel after that circumcision anyway?”

“I thought the Rabbi turned my tip into a lychee fruit,” he said.

“How did you know about lychees at six? I hadn’t even tried mango until I was an adult.”

He told me how his dad would surprise him and his siblings with exotic fruits “like coconuts” for special occasions. I thought about my friend’s parents. So many of her stories included them not being around.

I asked, “Do you worry about your parents’ influence on how you might parent one day?”

“What do you mean?” he said.

I told him about how I didn’t really know what moms were like in private. I saw moms on TV, my aunts at parties, and my friends’ moms when I was a guest in their home. But I wondered if I was missing some fundamental experience.

He said, “Parents don’t have to be perfect. They just have to be there.”

I smiled to myself. We agreed on this.

Ever since he’d taken me to meet his aunt in his hometown the month before, I knew family was at least not not important to him. But very little in our lives could have shown me whether our idea of parenting – and even, if it came to that, co-parenting – was compatible. And given all death and distance taught me about depending on the status quo, I wanted to know if our contingency plans were compatible.

I kept swirling the last ice cubes in my watered-down cocktail. I asked if he wanted to try it. He said it tasted like “ham juice.” I couldn’t believe he’d limit the flavor of smoke to meat.

Our first tacos arrived. Chicken. We both liked them. The next was steak. He liked it, and I thought it was fine. The bean one, the opposite. He had another beer. I didn’t.

We spoke about private education, childcare, and date nights. We knew we knew so little, but our hearts were in good places, I thought. Not equivalent perspectives, but compatible.

Carne asada was served. Then cactus. Pescado.

“Guy Loomis, Alice Austen, and Gertrude Tate in Car,” Alice Austen (1910)

I wondered whether my friend’s bus had gotten back to her town safely. If her dog was waiting for her. I wished I could’ve kept following her. I wondered if I was wrong to bring my new boyfriend. I knew she’d have done the same, but what did that mean? I watched his eyes grow soft as the restaurant’s lights dimmed. The tablecloth tickled my bare thigh.

“I have another question,” I said.

“I’m ready,” he said.

“Talking hypothetically here,” I said.

“Yes,” he said.

“Ten years from now. We have kids. You’re not happy. I’m not happy. We decide there’s not much else we can try other than separating for our mutual joy. How do we manage this?”

He nodded as he wiped his mouth. He scrunched his eyebrows in a way that told me he was thinking, not judging. I took a bite to conceal my eagerness. This was my only dealbreaker.

“This is a good question,” he said, continuing to eat.

“I think kids need their mom. So that would have to be a priority.”

“What if I moved back to Minnesota?”

“Then they’d have to be in Minnesota.”

It was what I needed to hear. And I didn’t think that’s why he said it.

“And, you know, if I died,” I said, looking down, but aware his face pinched up in worry. “Would you keep my dad in the picture?”

“Of course,” he said.

I smiled toothlessly. He did too.

“Do you think you’re pregnant?”

“What would you say if I were?”

“You know, it’s mental. It’d be insane. But,” he said. “I’d be excited.”

“I feel the same way.” My stomach felt light, despite being full. Then sick, for feeling excited for my future while worried for others. “I’m probably not,” I said. “It’s just a few days. I blame the stress.”

“It’s sure been something.”

“Thanks for coming,” I said. “You really got a glimpse of my past.”

“We all have one.”

On our winding drive from the restaurant, I texted her: Let me know when you’re home. I love you.

She responded: I’ll be ok. I love you. Abby = Family.

Then: BTW, I like him for you.

After my new boyfriend and I got through airport security, we went to a convenience stall to buy water bottles and saw pregnancy tests behind the counter. I asked the airport kiosk attendant for a “prueba de embarazada,” and blushed. Not because of the purchase, but because I was unsure if that was the correct phrasing. The Spanish word for ‘embarrassment’ is so similar to the word ‘pregnancy.’

She smiled. She understood me. She was so happy for my new boyfriend and me. She didn’t know we weren’t pregnant.

Flying back to London, my new boyfriend, Joe, shared his headphones with me. I leaned my head on his shoulder as he clicked play on “Waterloo Sunset.”

We started trying, or at least not not trying, the next week.

That’s all we can do.

Soundtrack:

Thank you, reader.

You could be doing a million things, but you read this, and I’m sincerely touched to have spent that time in your head.

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