The Weekend Everyone Told Me I Wanted Kids

Staying in NY over a holiday weekend can be lovely.  For one thing, you don’t have to compete in the amazing race to spend four hours in stand still traffic on the LIE/Montauk Highway or try and wade through half of your fellow Tri-State area residents at Penn Station who also had the clever idea of ditching out of work to get the earlier train.  For another, you have actual free time that isn’t relegated to Friday happy hour, waking up early Saturday thinking about exercising, then sitting in workout garb for three hours while you work your way through “just one more episode” of Sex and the City on HBO On Demand, finally squeezing in a pathetic workout before you go to brunch, drink all day straight through the evening, pass out and then wake up Sunday morning wondering when it’s an appropriate time to put in a Seamless order big enough to feed any ten people while willing the sun to never shine again.  That’s what happens in a typical two day weekend, right?  The point is I stayed in NY over the Memorial Day holiday and there was definitely something in the water.  

Saturday night I went out with this guy who – I can’t make this shit up – goes by the name Sunny.  Already, I had the feeling this wasn’t a match made in pretend heaven.  Sunny is a reflection of his personality, so says he, and mine, well, we all know is anything but.  He tells me to meet him somewhere in the village, I text him that I’m late, and he replies that he’s at a Starbucks in Nolita drinking water.  Everything about this, down to the Ethos water that saves the kids in Africa or something, irritates me.  Now the cab driver is barking at me, and I’m all, “hold up hermano, you’re preaching to the choir here!”  

So I fetch Sunny out of the Starbys and we walk over to Po.  Of course, he didn’t make a reservation and because the place seats every bit of 20 people, there’s a wait.  We put our name in and go for drinks next door.  He orders whiskey on the rocks and, through the slight language barrier, proceeds to tell me - unprompted mind you - that he just got out of a long term relationship and I’m the first person he’s gone out with since it ended.  Neat!  

At dinner, despite the fact that I just ordered two chardonnays over drinks, he presumptuously orders red wine for us both.  I generally stay away from red wine.  You know how gin makes some people clinically insane?  That’s what a healthy serving of la vin rouge does to me.  We had two + bottles.  While I’m trying my best to keep crazy at bay; he looks up at me and blurts out, “Why don’t you want to have children?” 

Me: (chokes on wine) I'm sorry, what?

Sunny:  Your profile.  It says you only maybe want children.  I almost didn't ask you out. 

Me: Umm, my profile also says if you asked my friends what kind of man I'm looking for, they'd tell you someone who is obviously gay to everyone but me… oh, you're serious... well, you know, there's already 7billion people on the planet.  There are plenty of men and women out there hell-bent on adding to that more than staggering number.  I'm just not sure I am one of them. 
Sunny:  I think you want to have kids.

Me: You know what; I honestly don't know that I do.  I'm really not just saying that.

Sunny: I don't think you're being true to yourself.  I think you really want to have children. 

Me:  You met me two hours ago, so while I get that you don't know me all that well, I assure you that right now, I am not interested in putting someone else's needs before mine for the next 24 hours, much less the next 24 years. 

Sunny:  I think you just need to be honest with yourself and what you really want.

Me: OMG OMG please make this stop! So did I tell you about the iPhone app I want to develop?**

Sunny: Oh, that's a good idea and I could have my friends build that in 20 minutes.  I'd like you to meet them later.  We should go into business together on this.  

**I was previously concerned this would sound racist, as Sunny is Indian, but at this point I’m well over my red wine limit and the concept of Jennifer Jr was starting to make me nauseous.  Desperate times and all.

The next day on a friend’s rooftop, things were getting pretty serious with this gin and pureed watermelon concoction I’d made.  I was into it, for sure.  As I’m standing there relaying the tales of the previous evening’s revelry, a friend of a friend I’d just met about an hour earlier steps in and accuses me of wanting to procreate.  Like, when did I get a baby rattle tattooed on my forehead and not notice?  What is going on?  And what about a chick in a backless dress with a solo cup containing a shload of gin in it screams maternal to you?  I don’t get it.  Maybe I should stop baking cupcakes and cookies for people. Can I take another step back from this uncomfortable conversation without falling down the fire escape or actually, is that a solid action plan?

Dave (who is now a friend) is a preppy, fellow FloRida transplant currently residing in CT.  Unfortunately, bringing up the topic of writing code wasn’t going to get me out of this one.   I needed a different approach.  I assured him that despite having come out on the other side of my red wine coma looking pulled together, that I am not a terribly nice person and I’m  actually pretty selfish.  No dice.  Time to pull in the big guns:  the financial responsibility of having offspring and my desire to dwell in NYC till my end of days.  Right now, those arrows aren’t crossing anywhere, anytime soon and that leaves you with the option of having a weird, UES chemical baby at like 45-years old. 

I’ve always considered myself more of a downtown gal, currently on hiatus in Brooklyn.   To go ahead and state the obvious, I never saw Sunny again even though, strangely enough, he asked.  And as far as Labor Day is concerned, Jitney me.  I’m perfectly happy to be one of the city-iot lemmings flocking to the Hamptons.

Vennifer.