Page 1 of Did My Love Life Shrink in the Wash?
Prologue
‘Babies’ – Pulp (1992)
The first time I had sex, all I could think about was getting pregnant. There I was lying quite naked under the duvet of one Christian Riley (seventeen years old, blue eyes, loved The Cure, now fixes fridges) and the only thing that went through my head was how scared I was of bringing this boy’s kid into the world and becoming a teenage single mother. All I could see were the ruddy faces of middle-aged biology teachers, the righteous tones of my mother echoing in my ears.I don’t want to be a mother. I can’t be a mother.
Needless to say, the sex was a bit of a non-event. I spent most of the time asking him if the condom was on, never came and watched in bewilderment as his bulging eyeballs informed me that he had. Any momentary joy was only experienced some fifteen days later, after my period made her appearance and I squealed with delight in a toilet cubicle, so loudly that a rumour started that someone was masturbating in the college loos.
My sexual adventures soon progressed at university where, admittedly, I thought less about the possibility of babies, and more about personal fulfilment, exploring the potential joys of a penis around my person. There were episodes of morning-after shocks, morning-after pills, sex in cars, great sex, stoned sex, stranger sex, bad sex, your best mate’s crush sex, on a countertop fridge to get revenge on Paul who dumped me the night before my first-year exams sex. A fair bit of sex. As university should be, I was party to an educational experience that enhanced my interpersonal relations and allowed me to build a credible and applicable skills base.
Then I left university, and I started having real-world sex which is like university sex except the rent is higher. On a teaching placement, I shagged the head of PE (decent cock; made hamster noises throughout). I went outa lotand hooked up with postgrads who ran marathons but lived in house shares with bad Wi-Fi and rotting bathrooms. One time I half had sex with my sister’s brother-in-law (non-penetrative dry humping in the back of a black cab; they bring that story up to shame me at most family meals). I had a couple of flings that never really went the distance, a couple of relationships that ended in heartbreak (I’m talking to you, Tom Edwards; he who shagged his ex-girlfriend the night he broke up with me).
Until along came a young man called Will Cooper and with him, sex in a long-term relationship. Being on the pill gave me licence to envisage babies as part of our sketchy, future life plan of suburbs, family motors and possible rings on fingers. For now, there was just spontaneous sex, condom-less sex, comfortable sex, know-how-to-make-me-come sex, unshaven legs sex, make-up sex, sex in the shower, sex on an IKEA coffee table that couldn’t take our collective weight (ending with plywood splinters in my arse cheeks). Sex because we loved each other.
Then one birthday weekend in October, we ended up at one of those electronic music festivals in a London park where we consumed far too much alcohol, painted our faces dayglo and had drunk sofa sex when we got home. I awoke the next morning worse for wear and forgot to take my pill. Or I may have thrown it up. That bit I don’t remember. And now, I’m lying in a hospital bed, having trouble looking over my bump as a midwife called Maggie wears me like a hand puppet.
And believe it or not, as I lie here, it’s young Christian Riley who jumps into my head: scuffling about in his bedside drawer, pretending that those weren’t the first condoms he’d ever bought in his life. I think back to that atypically responsible teenager who understood the biological realities of the situation. I lie here revelling in the irony that I have become such a rubbish adult. For as soon as I had pushed babies out of mind, into some realm of contraceptive impossibility… well, here I am. I seriously think that Maggie has her whole hand in there.
It’s a Wednesday night. I’m fourteen days overdue so I’m being induced, having just experienced another sweep, though I might need to get Trading Standards in on that debacle. A ‘sweep’ is a light, feathery motion favoured by orchestral conductors and autumnal leaves. I would have defined what I just experienced as a looter’s ransacking of my undercarriage. In the neighbouring bed, another pregnant woman called Kate is giving explicit instructions to her husband, Rob, as to the whereabouts of her forgotten paper knickers. According to my sister I won’t need those. ‘Imagine knickers made from kitchen roll,’ she tells me. I don’t suppose to tell Kate. She has brought the baby car seat along and everything. Ours is in the boot of the Suzuki Swift. I hope.
Will’s holding one of my hands, looking though a names website on his phone. ‘What about Rex?’
‘Like the dinosaur? The musical band? Or Harrison?’
‘Who’s Rex Harrison?’ he enquires.
Lordy, you think you know people. I’m about to have his child.
Maggie the Midwife interrupts. ‘Looks like you’re only one centimetre dilated, my dear.’
Maybe she’s joking.
‘He’s just too happy in there.’
She’s not. She continues to lecture us with some authority about drips and possible two-day labours while my eyes glaze over. Maybe I’ll be like an elephant and gestate for three years and they’ll make a Channel 4 documentary about me. ‘The baby was “too happy” in there so grew and emerged as a feral toddler beast with long mullet hair, suckling until he was ten. The mother grew to the size of a house and survived the gestational period in a series of kaftans made of old curtains.’
Maggie looks unamused by me, like I won’t provide any good midwifing excitement for a couple of days, so she gathers her gloves and giant tube of lube, abandoning us. Will still mumbles about baby names like Ace and Gandalf. I think it’s to hide the fact that he’s nervous as balls about what’s going to happen in the next day or so. That’s if this baby ever comes out. I huff with boredom and realise the only way to better my disappointment is with babies of the jelly variety.
‘Why don’t you eat the green ones?’ asks Will, his fingers raking through the sweets.
‘They look like bogeys?’
He doesn’t question it. We’re strangely silent. He then directs an impromptu jelly baby play on the bed sheets. I am red and he is green. It starts innocently enough – the jelly babies slow dance for a while to a porno soundtrack which makes me giggle. However, they end up quite quickly in a 69 position.
‘Why is my jelly baby so easy?’ I ask.
He pops them in his mouth. ‘She wore red, the hussy. What did the midwife put inside you?’
‘Some sort of hormone gel.’
‘How does it feel?’
‘Like my vagina just ate an oyster.’
‘I love you.’
‘I love you too.’
A kiss. He always kisses me on the forehead. I like to think of it as a tender gesture of love but he often jokes it’s because I talk a lot. I tend to ramble, so he can never get near enough to my lips. A smooch on the forehead allows him to display love but also calm me down like an off switch.
