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Platial | Who and What's Nearby
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[November 26, 2005] Through the power of Journalism®, I got myself on the guest list for ohn Bizarre>'s stand-up act at the Loon tonight.
It was fucking funny. The man is clever and quick and full of energy, and he's got this rubbery Bugs Bunny physicality.
In the last few minutes of his act, he brought up his recent vasectomy, and me being me, I cheered. Me being me, I was also sitting way-the-fuck in the front, where he could see me. As could most of the club.
"That's strange," he said, "Normally I don't hear cheers for that from other dudes. Do you have one?"
I gave him a thumbs up.
He asked me how long ago I got it. "When I was 23. Two years ago." The crowd made surprised noises. He asked if I was married or had kids, and asked if my girlfriend went with me (he says it's a procedure women watch with a sort of "Yeah, take it, bitch!" attitude), and made various funny jokes about it. He talked about when his father got a vasectomy 30 years ago, when the procedure consisted of hitting you in the crotch with a large rock, and was relieved to hear that, yes, they'd taped bits of me down to keep them out of the way, because he'd worried that they'd just been doing it to fuck with him. And about the guy he asked, who said, "No, the nurse held it for me." ("What a great doctor! 'This is Jessica, she'll be your Wang Holder tonight.'")
The show ended, and the older man who was sitting by me, the one Bizarre said dresses like the villain in an episode of Kojak, invited me to play some pool with him, and didn't want to hear me say I absolutely suck at it. Presumably, he wanted to have a little talk with me about my genitalia.
As I walked towards the back of the room, three women in their 40s stopped me. "You know it's reversible," the middle one told me.
"There's only a 30-50 % reversibility rate," I told her. Because of scar tissue on the vas; and it can be hard to reconnect tubing when there's a centimeter of it sitting in a vial of fluid on my shelf; and because your body usually starts building antibodies programmed to destroy sperm, I wanted to add. I've written articles about this, I wanted to add further. I've done research. I know more about this than you. These are my *genitals* we're talking about.
She didn't understand what this meant, and said something about me being 90 'when' I change my mind.
"Oh, lease>," I told her as I walked away exasperated.
My coworker, who I was there with, was just kind of stunned, and looked at me like the dog you just did a magic trick for. "You have a vasectomy? But... why?" Because I don't want to have kids. And because I don't want to have to worry about it. And because I don't want my partners to have to worry about it, either. He didn't really listen as I tried to say that if I'd decided to have a kid at age 23, nobody would've told me I was too young to make that decision to my face. Even though the decision *I* chose impacts no-one's life but mine, and doesn't impact another human being in its formative years. ("It's not like getting a piercing, man," he added. He owns a local tattoo and piercing parlor.)
25% of the U.S. population never has children. This percentage has stayed the same for a long time; one-fourth of America doesn't want children, and manages to keep clear of having them accidentally. And probably about 25% of the population flat-out can't understand that decision. And in the middle are the people who don't really care, but had kids anyway.
Meanwhile, 50%, one out of every two, half of the babies that are born in this country weren't planned. Half of us were created deliberately; and the other half were accidents.
I made a decision based on the person I am, the person I've been for the first full quarter-century of my life, the person I would like to become, and based on the theoretical smaller people I could potentially create. And I find it exasperating that people act like I don't know what I was doing, or that I was somehow being irresponsible or selfish.
But the looks I got from people after the show were pretty amusing.
The next year I moved to Portland, and in the early weeks of my stay John Bizarre played a comedy club downtown, which my coworkers had free tickets too. So I went and saw him again. And again we discussed my decision to be childless in front of another crowded club full of people.
[November 26, 2005] Through the power of Journalism®, I got myself on the guest list for ohn Bizarre>'s stand-up act at the Loon tonight.
It was fucking funny. The man is clever and quick and full of energy, and he's got this rubbery Bugs Bunny physicality.
In the last few minutes of his act, he brought up his recent vasectomy, and me being me, I cheered. Me being me, I was also sitting way-the-fuck in the front, where he could see me. As could most of the club.
"That's strange," he said, "Normally I don't hear cheers for that from other dudes. Do you have one?"
I gave him a thumbs up.
He asked me how long ago I got it. "When I was 23. Two years ago." The crowd made surprised noises. He asked if I was married or had kids, and asked if my girlfriend went with me (he says it's a procedure women watch with a sort of "Yeah, take it, bitch!" attitude), and made various funny jokes about it. He talked about when his father got a vasectomy 30 years ago, when the procedure consisted of hitting you in the crotch with a large rock, and was relieved to hear that, yes, they'd taped bits of me down to keep them out of the way, because he'd worried that they'd just been doing it to fuck with him. And about the guy he asked, who said, "No, the nurse held it for me." ("What a great doctor! 'This is Jessica, she'll be your Wang Holder tonight.'")
The show ended, and the older man who was sitting by me, the one Bizarre said dresses like the villain in an episode of Kojak, invited me to play some pool with him, and didn't want to hear me say I absolutely suck at it. Presumably, he wanted to have a little talk with me about my genitalia.
As I walked towards the back of the room, three women in their 40s stopped me. "You know it's reversible," the middle one told me.
"There's only a 30-50 % reversibility rate," I told her. Because of scar tissue on the vas; and it can be hard to reconnect tubing when there's a centimeter of it sitting in a vial of fluid on my shelf; and because your body usually starts building antibodies programmed to destroy sperm, I wanted to add. I've written articles about this, I wanted to add further. I've done research. I know more about this than you. These are my *genitals* we're talking about.
She didn't understand what this meant, and said something about me being 90 'when' I change my mind.
"Oh, lease>," I told her as I walked away exasperated.
My coworker, who I was there with, was just kind of stunned, and looked at me like the dog you just did a magic trick for. "You have a vasectomy? But... why?" Because I don't want to have kids. And because I don't want to have to worry about it. And because I don't want my partners to have to worry about it, either. He didn't really listen as I tried to say that if I'd decided to have a kid at age 23, nobody would've told me I was too young to make that decision to my face. Even though the decision *I* chose impacts no-one's life but mine, and doesn't impact another human being in its formative years. ("It's not like getting a piercing, man," he added. He owns a local tattoo and piercing parlor.)
25% of the U.S. population never has children. This percentage has stayed the same for a long time; one-fourth of America doesn't want children, and manages to keep clear of having them accidentally. And probably about 25% of the population flat-out can't understand that decision. And in the middle are the people who don't really care, but had kids anyway.
Meanwhile, 50%, one out of every two, half of the babies that are born in this country weren't planned. Half of us were created deliberately; and the other half were accidents.
I made a decision based on the person I am, the person I've been for the first full quarter-century of my life, the person I would like to become, and based on the theoretical smaller people I could potentially create. And I find it exasperating that people act like I don't know what I was doing, or that I was somehow being irresponsible or selfish.
But the looks I got from people after the show were pretty amusing.
The next year I moved to Portland, and in the early weeks of my stay John Bizarre played a comedy club downtown, which my coworkers had free tickets too. So I went and saw him again. And again we discussed my decision to be childless in front of another crowded club full of people.
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