A true story by Guata Girl
I was 26, living in Seattle with a musician. Sounds like fun, right? Like a little indie-girl dream. And it was, in a way-- complete with tiny, funky apartment downtown, near all the too-cool-for-you bars where the bartenders knew us by name. I would read in the bedroom while he gave classical-guitar lessons in the "living" room (really, it was just the "other" room). We smoked loads of pot and watched amazing films from the '70s like The Deer Hunter and The Shining. He was smart and pretentious and my friends hated him, so I saw less and less of them. We fought constantly --he was a double Scorpio, after all, and I'm a triple Aquarius-- and, therefore, had lots and lots and LOTS of exciting makeup sex.
Without a condom.
What? We pulled out. It was all good. It was, really. Until he didn't make it out in time-- but he was pretty sure he had. I'd been using the pull-out method for years, so I let it go. And go it did. That little swimmer went and went, all the way to the Mothership Connection and then one day, Aunt Flo --who'd made a faithful, punctual house call every twenty-eight days without fail since I was nine-- didn't show. I knew immediately.
I was poor. So was he. He was mercurial, diffident, prone to delusions of grandeur, and frequently downright mean to me (I apparently smacked him in the eye in my sleep once, which I don't remember but for which he never forgave me). I didn't want to have his baby, but I wanted to be loved. I figured we'd work it out together, make our decision as a couple...whatever happened, I felt certain my new vulnerability would bring out the best in him. I thought, "If nothing else, he'll hold me in his arms and tell me he'll love and support me no matter what I decide." (Never mind that we had yet to even utter the "L" word.)
We watched the little strip turn blue, and after a moment's silence, he said, "So I'll help you get rid of it.
"There wasn't any question on his part, for one second, about what I might want, and that sealed the deal. I decided to go home to California, to the loving arms of my mom, for the procedure: I figured, if I was going to do something so potentially traumatic, I'd rather be where I knew I was unconditionally loved. Where it was at least sunny, and I could go to the beach for self-therapy. I invited him to come along; he refused, citing work conflicts (he was self-employed). Rather, to my utter shock and consternation, he actually took this decision of mine as a personal affront! You see, by leaving, I was depriving him of the opportunity to "be there for me" while I enacted one of the most painful, confusing decisions a young woman can make. His unbelievable self-centeredness overwhelmed me, engulfed me like a wave, and I rode it all the way home to Cali.
By then I was several weeks along, and I looked beautiful-- my skin glowed and hair shone, and incredibly, in spite of the emotional turmoil I was experiencing, I felt great. Pregnancy agreed with me. When my mom saw my swollen breasts, magnified nipples and thickening waistline, she started to cry-- but stopped herself. She hated him, too.
After falsifying a local address in order to qualify for MediCal, I went to the nicest Planned Parenthood in our area. They lubed up something that looked like big white plastic dildo and stuck it deep inside,taking an ultrasound to determine the --gulp!-- age of the fetus. They wanted me to look at the screen but I refused to look. Based on the size of the speck, they told me I was five weeks along... too early for either a medical or surgical abortion. I would have to wait another week --let it grow some more!-- before anything could be done with guaranteed results.
I was horrified at the prospect of letting something grow so that I could kill it easier. Like I said, I was finding the physical experience of pregnancy quite enjoyable (to the extent that I could allow myself to experience it as such, anyway), and the thought of prolonging the experience made me wonder if I would lose out to biology and be compelled by Mother Nature to change my mind.
Meanwhile, as I sat at home mulling these things over, I called the voicemail I shared with the musician to, well, check my messages. I was (and am) an actor by trade, and these were the days before we all had cell phones. I hadn't told my agent I would be out-of-town, much less why, and I feared the worst: an audition.
Once again, I was shocked by my insignificant other's actions: he had changed the password so that I would be unable to check messages.
His logic was staggering: he felt "violated" (we lived together!), his privacy compromised. Dumbfounded, I considered the incredible, perverse irony of my situation: I was given one course of acceptable action by the babydaddy, with no other alternatives even open to discussion, and when I made the choice to exercise this option, albeit elsewhere (where I would receive the best care)-- I was punished for not "including" him! Him! My mind reeled; all he could think about, as I was being probed with space-age dildoes while a collection of cells rapidly becoming a love child multiplied within me and my ex-Catholic self waited for a lightning bolt to strike, was himself. My mother paced the hallway, drinking white wine and calling him every nasty word in Spanish ever invented.
And then, in that moment, the lightning struck-- my abdomen. I doubled over in the worst monstrous incarnation of a menstrual cramp imaginable. I was miscarrying. My mom began to cry, and this time she didn't stop herself. I did, too... tears of gratitude. The decision had been made for me. I went back to PP just to make sure, and they confirmed it: spontaneous abortion (which I've since thought would make a good name for a particularly hard-core and un-PC ladies punk band). They seemed unsurprised at the clinic; and even rather pleased for me, which made me secretly wonder if they hadn't mercifully done something to induce it. (I baked and sent them cookies just in case.)
I bled profusely and cramped horribly for two more days, durinng which my body miraculously returned to its pre-preggers condition. My mom and I stared in wonder at the mirror, unable to believe the speed with which my body had restored itself. We then did what any two women would have done in our situation: hit the thrift stores!
I didn't tell the musician right away; I told him the day after it began. By then, he had restored my voicemail access in an act of contrition. When I got back to Seattle, and packed my things to move into my own studio across town, he told me of a dream he'd had, a dream from which he'd awoken with tears on his pillow: he had found an infant girl by a riverbank, a newborn with black hair and eyes, like mine. I still don't know how I feel about that.
I'm 33 now, and actually had a medical abortion a year after that happened (that time I got pregnant using BOTH a condom and a diaphragm with spermicide). Somehow, the experience I detailed above, of that reprieve my 26th summer, stands out much more strongly in my heart and mind than the "real thing" I was to experience a year later. •
