Mad Atoms

A short time ago, my lady friend was talking about her unpleasant flu symptoms when I jokingly said it sounded like morning sickness. That wasn’t possible, she said, unless something was “funky” with one of the condoms we’d used.  Uh oh… 

My mind raced back a few weeks to when, already in bed, I discovered my condom box barren. Using superhuman about-to-be-denied-sex total recall, I suddenly remembered where I’d stashed a lone, long-forgotten rubber. Like a post-apocalyptic drifter retrieving a can of beans amongst the rubble, I triumphantly dug out the tattered prophylactic. Then I opened it… 

…and a fine powder spilled out. “Curious. Well, technically it’s still good,” I thought, cleverly ignoring everything I knew about proper condom storage. Oops. 

As the days passed back in the sobering present her “flu” symptoms continued to eerily parallel every first signs of pregnancy list I could find. It was time for the dreaded What-If conversation.  My attitude on abortion is the same as my attitude on heroin: I think it should be legal, but not cause I wanna do it myself. But the lady friend and I are both young and dumb (I accidentally killed my pet cactus for god’s sake), so it was a no-brainer.

That said, I’m not sure I’ve ever felt more despicable than when I Googled “abortion prices.” After another week of deluded finger crossing there was just no denying it. She was all sortsa late.  

It wasn’t time for ye ol’ abortionary just yet - we needed a pregnancy test, and since I’m funemployed the task fell to me. My nerves were flared so, being the whip-smart genius this article no doubt illustrates me to be, I decided I should to get high. 25 minutes later when I found myself staring at an entire section of pregnancy tests at Rite-Aid, I realized this was the worst idea ever. To prevent myself from completely losing my mind I had to sit down on the floor while I incompetently perused the tests like I had any idea what to look for. 

Knowing you’ve successfully achieved your biological purpose, a switch flips in the monkey sector of your brain. I suddenly found myself thinking - Maybe I want a baby! It wasn’t that absurd at my age. I mean, what if we get rid of it, and then a bus hits me next year? Maybe this is my shot! Sure, I’d only known this girl a few months, but she was cool. We both had good teeth. We’d save money on braces down the road! I may have been irresponsible enough to use a clearly defective condom and get stoned to go buy a pregnancy test, but I’m also good at plenty of stuff. Plus, I killed my cactus cause I didn’t read the directions it came with. I’ll for sure read the directions that come with the baby!

I realized I’d been sitting on Rite-Aid’s floor for about 20 minutes when the middle-aged pharmacy woman started giving me weird glances. I ended up just randomly grabbing a test. Rite-Aid was having a great booze sale, but I didn’t have the balls to stand in line high with just an EPT and a handle of Jack. Later while I sat on my couch, having a long dark teatime of the soul while the lady friend peed on a stick in the bathroom, I really regretted not having that whisky. 

But as it turned out, she was NOT pregnant. Since she’d had to go off the pill a month or so prior, that apparently just threw her cycle way out of whack. Eventually her period came and our abortion plans went. 

The crazy thing was - I felt oddly disappointed. I didn’t want an abortion and I didn’t want a kid, but there was an unanticipated empty feeling in knowing nothing had happened at all. My monkey brain wept. 

Plus I’d developed a twisted sort of pride in my condom-piercing super sperm.