Pregnancy, Hangovers, and The Trick of Memory

At the time of this posting I will have just returned home from a tradeshow for my real job. I know what you’re thinking….this free Substack doesn’t turn a mean profit? No, no it doesn’t. As much as I would like to write these ridiculous posts for cash I doubt I’m giving out such high-level wisdom that anyone sane would actually pay for it. I’m forced to work a day job just like every one of you peasants reading this. And this past week, that work involved a tradeshow.

For those of you who don’t know anything about a tradeshow it’s pretty much a weeklong sprint of drinking, dinners, and grin fucking until your soul has been sucked from inside of you and spit out onto the tradeshow floor. It’s exhausting. It’s demoralizing. You need to wear a name tag. Need I say more? Each year I return home a shell of my former self. I am dejected, exhausted, and often sick. My wife in past years has nurtured me back to health, calmly allaying my addled mind and body. Every year when I return home from this event I feel like I am on death’s door and she does everything in her power to restore me to full health.

This year I doubt that will be the case. She is currently eight months pregnant and while dealing with that small nuisance she’ll also have to watch our two-year-old. I don’t envy her position. Watching a two-year-old is tough and watching a two-year-old when you can’t touch your toes must be damn near impossible. But that’s not why I won’t be getting the spa treatment from my wife when I return home. I made a huge mistake fellas’. The biggest mistake you can make. I…brace yourself…actually told my wife I’d rather be her this week…

That’s right. I said I’d rather be pregnant and watch a two-year-old than drink and talk shop for a few fucking days. I don’t often make these blunders but this one will surely cost me.

When I said it, I genuinely believed it. I know how I’ll feel after five days straight of boozing with barely any sleep. My insides will feel like they’ve been lit on fire, my lower back will be pulsating with pain, my TMJ will be acting up like a motherfucker, and I’ll be severely nauseous with a tinge of brain fog. It will suck. I’ll tell myself I’ll do it right next year. I’ll get more sleep, I’ll only have a couple cocktails each night, I’ll work out every day during the next tradeshow. But you and I both know that won’t be the case. I’ll never learn.

After I mentioned I’d rather switch places and was met with a look of pure disdain, I thought I’d lighten the mood by telling her how many kids I wanted with her. I told her that she still drives me crazy, pregnant or not, and this craziness would only lead to more children. Just how many was the question. The one we have and the one that’s coming are well and good but I need more. However many more she’ll give me, was my exact wording.

I thought this profusion of love would get me back on her good side. It didn’t. Because I broke another rule…never talk about having more kids when your wife is eight months pregnant. If you want to know what it’s like living in a house with a pregnant woman just stop by your local soup kitchen. You’ll most likely see people who are hungry and have mental disabilities. That’s my wife. Famished and psychotic. Last week she started crying watching Lucas the Spider (a kid’s show about an animated spider) and then housed a box of cereal. She is not to be trusted in this current state of mind.

So it wasn’t shocking when her response to the question of more kids was none. No more. Zero more children. She can’t go through this again.

Now look, I was there for number one. Traumatic shit. Imagine pushing a bowling ball out of your body and if you can’t push it out (or they can’t pull it out), they’ll have to cut you open and take it out. Imagine being injected with a footlong needle just so that you might feel only half the pain “natural” birth might cause. Imagine, for one second, you have another human just hanging out inside your stomach for 9 months that will forcefully eject itself from your most private of regions whenever it feels like. I personally cannot imagine such a predicament. If I take a big enough shit you might find me weeping next to the toilet after. That’s the difference between men and women. Our ailments (like hangovers or the common cold) absolutely wreck us. When we are not at full health, when we cannot provide, we crumble. We are weak when we are not strong. Read that again. We are weak when we are not strong. But women are the exact opposite. The worse things get the better they perform. A pregnant woman is truly a wonder.

With that in mind I thought about her answer again…

She said this same thing, around this same time, during pregnancy number one. That she would bear no more children. But here we are waiting on number two. Did she not remember the first pregnancy? Had it been wiped from her mind before wanting to conceive number two? And now the real question becomes…how long does it take until she forgets this one?

I know I just went on and on about the glory and the beauty and the power of a pregnant woman and yadayadayadablablabla. Okay Alex, we get it. Women are amazing. But don’t you always say men and women aren’t so different? Yes, yes I do. And don’t you always say that besides some glaring differences like bench press reps and 40 yard dash times times and the ability to reach something high up on a counter, that men and women are on average very similar? Yes, yes I do. So let’s take this line of thinking a little further…

What’s the male equivalent to pregnancy? Hmm…

What causes men the most pain? Hmm…

For me that’s easy, hangovers. The name of this blog says it all. They are hell. Avoidable hell, but hell all the same. Just like pregnancy. I hate when I wake up and my mouth feels like I’ve eaten a thousand q-tips. I rarely get headaches after a night of heavy boozing but when I do you can find me walking around the house in a neck brace. The stomach pains are the worst. When you can’t take a step without wanting to hurl it’s not even worth being alive at that point. I’d take a footlong needle to put me out of my hungover misery any day of the week.

But what do I find myself doing every weekend?

Drinking' alcohol like it’s the night before prohibition. I don’t have the same excuses as my wife either. We waited a year and a half to have another kid and it will probably take another year and a half after this one to convince her to give it another go. I had a hangover last Sunday and by Thursday I was itching for an ice-cold gin. What kind of brainless fool am I? Maybe one day I’ll stop. But that’s highly doubtful and I hope the same applies to my wife. I’d like to have a basketball team of girls (that’s five – send a prayer up for future Alex) and that’s all riding on the fact that my wife will forget this pregnancy like I forget hangovers. And that she doesn’t kill me after reading this post.