OTHER PEOPLE'S CHILDREN

It begins around 40.  That ticking sound that started at 35 gets louder.  Whoops!  Forgot to have children. 

Now, as a lesbian, having kids is a little trickier since accidental pregnancies tend to not happen. Besides, I’d have to be really drunk.  Like that one time college.  Hey, we all experiment. 

Anyway, around 40, for those of us who expected to have kids by now and find ourselves without any, the ticking reaches a point of distraction.  So we consider the options:

1.     Anonymous donor/sperm bank which is kind of like a one night stand without the walk of shame.  But 50 thousand dollars? If I had that kind of dough, I sure as hell wouldn’t waste it on sperm, especially when there’s so much of it lying around. 

Which leads to the second option.

2.     Begin the mental inventory of male friends.  Who’s married?  Who’s single?  Old enough to remember “The Big Chill?”  Who’s Successful?  Artsy?  Who’s open minded enough to participate in this kind of life changing experience?  Should he be involved beyond donation?  So many questions.  Eventually leading this single girl to a drink and a cigarette – two things apparently frowned upon during pregnancy - puritans.

3.     Adopt one of them made in China models.

4.     Meet a woman who has already done the work.

It began innocently enough.  She was only 8.  Hmm…that doesn’t sound innocent at all, does it?  Let me rephrase, I met a woman who had an 8 year old daughter.  Let’s call her “Punky.”  Punky thought I started coming around the house to hang out with her while her mother cooked dinner.  It was fun.  We’d watch public television together, participate in learning crafts, and read.  Wrestling was frowned upon as promoting violence but we still managed a few body slams now and then. The next thing I knew, we started to become pals.  Until…Punky caught her mom and I stealing a smooch in the kitchen.  Not a big smooch, but a smooch nonetheless. 

And that’s how the war began.

Like most wars, this one was about territory.  And after a lifetime of absolute power, this princess wasn’t about to cede one iota of the kingdom. 

I never had a chance.  But that didn’t stop me. 

Reasoning with an 8 year old is an exercise in crazy, so explaining that adding me to the equation actually meant more love, not less, was interpreted as “I’m taking your mother and putting you on the next boat back to China!  bwahh hah ha…

I needed a new approach.  I resorted to bribes and trickery.

I happened to working for PBS on a kids show at the time, so needless to say, Punky was the Princess of Swag.  She was outfitted with hats, t-shirts, posters, pencils, stickers and anything else I could lift from the foundation.  Her response, “I love Ruff Ruffman.”  Then.  “But I still hate you!” 

When that blatant attempt failed, I began to feign interest in soccer.  Because really, what’s better than setting your alarm for 7am on a Saturday to watch a bunch of kids who barely understand the rules of Red Rover engage in a complex game of passing and goal scoring?  Week after week I saw a group of frustrated sweaty kids who for the love of God, should be home watching cartoons and eating Cap’n Crunch.  Plus there’s the added bonus of being an object of wonder.  Obviously, mom’s been coming to these games alone all year…they’re not sisters…ooh, lesbians.  How exotic.  Our politically correct exterior is compromised by our traditional upbringing.  Cognitive dissonance takes over so they say nothing, and stare.  And at least in the case of the fathers, and maybe one hot mom, imagine what we do in bed.

After about six months, Punky realized I was in it to win it.  I picked her up from soccer practice one day and we stopped at a local BBQ place for take out.  On the way over she complained that my car smelled like coffee, the radio was too loud and that I was not to speak to her.  After we ordered and were waiting for our food, there was one stool open by the window.  I offered it to her, but she refused, so I sat down.  As we waited, and she looked at everything but me, I could see how tired she was.  I sat there quietly, and the next thing I knew, Punky came over and rested on me.  For 15 seconds she was my kid.  This battle was mine.  But the war raged on. 

Even though she was not my girlfriend’s biological child, Punky learned a lot from her mother, especially when it came to trust. Every step closer - like that one - was met with tremendous recoil.  So every time Punky let me in, she’d push me back twice as hard – just like mom. 

Here’s a lesson for all you would be step-parents, pointing out this mirror pattern of behavior in answer to the question, “Do you think I’m a good mother?” is always a bad idea.

And so on it went.  Punky’s Sherman marching through my Atlanta.  I hate you, you’re not my mother, you can’t tell me what to do, you’ll never move in here, you’ll never marry my mom, I never loved you, I was lying, blah blah blah.  

I needed to retreat.  But there was nowhere to go. 

Mom defended Punky’s actions by suggesting I was assigning adult motives to a child.  I don’t know, she seemed pretty damn immature to me.  My suggesting she lend diplomatic relations to the turmoil turned into my making her choose between myself and Punky.  Speaking of childish motives!  Mom liked to point out that my “lack of compassion” stemmed from my not having children of my own.  Note to all of you single parents out there looking for love.  Saying, “You don’t understand; you don’t have children” is never going to make things better.

No, I may not have children, but I have been on the planet long enough to gain a little insight into the parent/child dynamic.  And whether they’re homemade or store bought, they’re still a reflection of you.  So the next time you’re wondering why Punky’s such a pain in the ass, and ruining your love life - look in the mirror. 

Cause I’m telling you – first hand – nobody can break your heart like a kid.

SEX & THE CITY 2

**Contains Spoilers** as if there was actually a plot.

As the lights dimmed and the opening credits started for the first Sex & The City movie, my silenced cell phone lit up.  I saw my sister’s name and knew the news wasn’t good.  In her no BS way, she simply reported, in true Fischer fashion, “Our mother is dead.”  My 76-year-old mother had a stroke earlier that day, and I was a thousand miles away.  I already had a ticket to fly to Chicago in a few days, and after some debate, we decided she would get through this one as she had the other scares, and I should come in as scheduled.  She didn’t.  At 8:30pm on Saturday, June 7^th, 2008, I was faced with a choice.  A silly choice, but a choice.  Do I sit through Carrie & Company or do I leave?  Leave and do what, exactly?  It was date night.  My girlfriend at the time had gotten a sitter for her 8-year-old.  Our relationship was in trouble and the strain of my mother’s declining health was pushing us to our emotional limits.  I had made my way into the lobby of the Harvard Square theatre to finish the call and sat there, alone, staring into space.  I could hear that the movie had started.  I thought about my mother.  How she worked for years in designer sportswear at Bonwit Teller and then in couture handbags at Marshall Fields.  I thought, who better to spend time with than four ladies who love beautiful clothes as much as she did?  I went back into the theatre and slumped into my chair.  I really wanted to get lost in the fantasy of Carrie’s wedding to Big, but the distraction of the day’s events made for a more compelling movie in my head.  I sat there in a daze, thankful to not have to interact with anybody.  I remember thinking, “this movie isn’t very good,” but chalked it up to circumstance.  Girlfriend was little comfort, and less than two days later, on the night before I was to leave for Chicago for my mother’s funeral, we broke up.

A few months later, when the movie showed up on HBO, I tuned in and realized that even through my crazy grief filter, I was right.  It wasn’t very good.  It wasn’t terrible, but it was too long, and Carrie and Big didn’t seem like a plausible couple to me.  Their whole wedding debacle made me question the viability of a love that could turn so quickly.  Still smarting from my own love gone wrong, I was far more interested in Miranda and Steve.  Could they overcome true betrayal?  But as a fan of the show (I own all 6 seasons), I know that in Carrie’s heightened world, the emotional hard work comes in third behind Girl Power and Fashion Week.  Carrie seemed shrill and shallow in contrast to her friends who had moved from party-girl-ville to hot-mom-land.  Even Samantha’s story – that she couldn’t commit to Smith – seemed to be coming from a place of truth.  A sweet city hall ceremony and brunch with the gang was a fitting end to these ladies and their stories. 

Bringing Carrie to the big screen proved once again that there are women who will spend money to see movies.  It’s no secret that the over 40 (30?) female demographic is considered non existent by Hollywood standards, but there are a lot of us out there the same age as Carrie, who want more than just a chick flick.  And while the S&TC franchise doesn’t ask a lot from its fans, it seems to appreciate how invested we are in the characters.

And so, upon the success of the first movie, a second was commissioned. 

It’s been said that the women of S&TC behave like gay men.  If this is true, then the characters who showed up for the sequel were four tired old queens.  What a bunch of miserable, shallow, shrill, unlikeable group they’ve become.  Miranda and Charlotte being the least offensive, I think because they were allowed to mature a wee bit.  Their relationships with their husbands and children are complicated and messy in spite of being portrayed as one dimensional.  As fans who’ve “known” them for so many years, we can accept the conceit of Charlotte baking cupcakes in vintage Valentino, and Miranda suddenly in a position where she’s being treated misogynistically , because of the knowledge we bring with us when we enter their world.  Women in their 40s can relate to them on some level, even those without nannies.

But Carrie and Samantha remained stuck, selfish and immature.  Their disrespect to the culture they were visiting was probably intended as high camp, but instead came across as lowbrow.  I am not easily offended, but really, Samantha?  Flipping off an entire crowd of Arab men?  Using menopause as an excuse for such loutish behavior?  And Carrie, a few nights at home on the couch and suddenly your life is over?  You run into Aiden 6,000 miles from home and can’t manage to behave like an adult?  I never liked Carrie and Aiden together.  They never had any energy as a couple.  They had nothing in common, they shared no mutual interests, and they had conflicting lifestyles.  I could accept that ridiculous kiss if there was an iota of chemistry between them.

And yet, the most egregious offense of Sex & The City 2, was not Stanford and Anthony’s big gay wedding, the lack of a real plot, or the bloated running time, it was the fact that the City wasn’t New York.  I’ve seen interviews where the setting is rationalized as a backdrop for an escapist fantasy.  Er, the entire series was an escapist fantasy.  But what made it real, was four modern archetypes finding themselves in a city where it’s easy to get lost.  By taking away the character of New York City, and replacing it with Abu Dhabi, we are left with a sophomoric at best, and at worst, an insulting “fish out of water” story.  The ladies deserve better than that.  And so does the audience.

Somewhere between Samantha giving a blow job to a hookah pipe, and Carrie’s “race” to find her passport (exactly where she left it…big wow), I found myself hoping my phone would ring.