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  That said, pregnancy was a thrill for me. I had fetishized the pregnant bellies that streamed through my living room throughout childhood, and to finally be the owner of one was a dream come true. It helped that I didn’t suffer from much nausea and already owned an impressive collection of elastic-waist pants. I would strip down to my skivvies every day, look in the mirror, and caress my tumescent belly like I was starring in an Internet fetish video. And rather than worry about the weight I was gaining, I focused my perfectionistic efforts on making sure I was gaining enough. For nine months, there was nothing I ate that couldn’t be improved by a topping of cheese, avocado, or ice cream. It was catharsis à la mode.

  But all good things must come to an end, and the gift of pregnancy ended with a decidedly less bucolic sensation. Some of you know what I’m talking about and are reflexively Kegeling from the sense memory. For the rest of you, I would like to attempt to describe what natural childbirth feels like.

  No one has actually asked me what it felt like to push a baby out of my body without drugs, but I feel it’s a public service, because when I Googled “What does childbirth feel like?” in order to try to do a Karate Kid montage of intense mental and physical preparation, all I found was a bunch of Yahoo! message board posts in which women basically just said that it hurts.

  Before I gave birth, I kept joking to my horrified mother that I was going to live-blog the experience, but even if I’d done that it wouldn’t have clarified anything for you. It probably would have looked something like:

  5:50 a.m.: First contraction!!!!

  5:55 a.m.: Shit, these are close together.

  7:30 a.m.: Owwwwwwww.

  8:00 a.m.: [Retching sounds]

  8:30 a.m.: FUCK EVERYONE IN THE FACE.

  In between contractions, I focused on looking pretty.

  10:00 a.m.: Hi, guys, this is Jeff. Una says if I try to get her to type anything else into her phone she’s going to kill my entire family. She’s mostly screaming now. It sounds like Gilbert Gottfried got stuck in a garbage disposal.

  1:00 p.m.: Jeff again. I can never unsee this.

  1:30 p.m.: I’ve been to hell and back. Baby is bare-assed; I’m wearing a diaper. How is this fair?

  So before I block it out completely I’d like to document my birth as best I can. Obviously, everyone’s experience will be different. One woman’s stabbing vagina pain of death is another woman’s unrelenting, shooting genital hellfire.

  First things first, I skipped early labor. That’s the beginning stage in which you supposedly feel relatively mild contractions every half hour or so, but can still do things like bake cookies, watch movies, and walk places without crying. So I don’t know what that feels like, but compared to active labor I’m going to assume it feels like dry-humping the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.

  Active labor, for me, felt more or less as follows: First, it’s like the baby is putting a corset on you, but making it too tight on purpose so you’ll pass out at the cotillion and ruin your chances of ever dating the heir to an oil fortune. The pain of contractions wraps around your belly and shoots down through your pelvis. At first you can breathe through them, but soon you have to moan and then yell into a pillow. The corset is suddenly made of knives, and they are stabbing you where the sun don’t shine.*

  The worst part was “transition.” Unfortunately this does not mean a soft dissolve into the next scene, in which you are holding your beautiful newborn and simultaneously eating a whole pound cake. No, in this context the word “transition” means that you are fully dilated and the baby’s head is moving through your cervix. Of course, at the time I didn’t know I was in “transition.” I thought I was in Dante’s heretofore-undocumented tenth circle of hell, except instead of Carrot Top attempting to give me an erotic massage, I was simultaneously splitting in half and feeling like I was about to shit on my duvet.*

  I have outlined my other nine circles of hell below, for reference.

  After transition comes pushing, which most people assume is the really painful part, but for me it was a bit of a relief, because I got to be an active participant in the birth and not just a moaning, writhing, passive victim. From movies and TV you think that after pushing for five minutes the baby comes out, which is sometimes true for second or third births, but for first-timers pushing can last a few hours. But! The good news is that you won’t know how long it’s taking because you’re too busy concentrating on each contraction—which now feels like you’re attempting to push a barbell out of your ass—and the sweet, sweet sixty to ninety seconds of peace and painlessness you get in between them. The bad news, of course, is that it ends with a human head coming out of a place you equate with pleasure.

  The head coming out hurts, I won’t lie. I can’t describe it any better than that it feels like what it is: a head coming out of your body. There’s a stretching, burning sensation that gets more intense with each push. But by that point you’re screaming, “Get this thing out of me, nooooooooowwwwwww!!!!” and looking like someone Photoshopped Nick Nolte’s mug shot face onto the body of the Exorcist girl, so the pain takes a backseat to the most focused bearing-down you will ever do. Birth makes your worst poop experience seem like shooting feathers out of a T-shirt cannon.

  There you go. Essentially, what I’ve just told you is that childbirth hurts. Who knew? My insights are invaluable. But here’s something no one else says: the most alien sensation of all is when the body comes out. Because even though you’ve done the hardest part, and your cervix is passed out cold and your central nervous system is shuddering and pouring itself a shot of Jameson, nothing will prepare you for the feeling of having a set of little arms and legs pulled out of your abdomen and through your baby chute. It’s not so much painful as it is incredibly weird. But then you get your wrinkled little spawn plopped on your chest, and the oxytocin starts flowing, and suddenly you are dry-humping Mr. Stay-Puft . . . with your heart.

  And I never criticized my body ever again.

  Hahahahaha. Lies. Of course I do. But it has gotten a lot better, with the exception of my vagina, which I choose no longer to look at, since the last time I did, it resembled an appliance that you try to shove back in its original box, but it won’t fit, and there are cords and polystyrene peanuts hanging out. It was depressing, so we just e-mail now.

  VII. Body as Frenemy

  Once you have passed your peak of attractiveness and settled into a slow, steady, relaxing downhill slide, the body becomes no longer a bombshell or magician or villain, but something more along the lines of a wisecracking sidekick who mostly hangs back only to deliver a barb when you least expect it.

  For example, one day not long after I gave birth, I looked down and noticed that my ass was gone. It had just cut and run—didn’t say good-bye, didn’t even leave a note. (Evidence suggested that my breasts had started to give chase but tired by the time they reached my lower ribs.)

  “BUTT DISAPPEARED!” I frantically typed into my Google search bar, which has recently suffered through such wide-ranging queries as “celebrity photobombs” and “Outside of cheese wheel edible?” Alas, the Internet offered me no solace, only a variety of links to weight-loss message boards. And yes, I had lost weight: thirty pounds of baby weight plus seven extra pounds of constant breast-feeding, acute postpartum anxiety, and a diet that consisted almost exclusively of infant tears and orange Fanta. But still, it seemed unfair. I still had a belly as soft and pliable as fresh pizza dough, which merrily jiggled when my kid climbed into my lap for story time. Why couldn’t that have magically melted away? Why should my butt be the one to pay for what my uterus had wrought? And where did it go? Did it follow the Reagans to Big Butt Island in the hopes of returning with a trunkful of junk? Did it become invisible and travel to Los Angeles to stalk Lara Flynn Boyle? It could have at least left a note.

  As I encounter the first signs of real aging, I’ve started to won
der why the What’s Happening franchise—the book series, I mean, not the ’70s television show about urban black life in Los Angeles (although I most definitely would watch What’s Happening!! . . . to My Body?, especially if Rerun danced)—deals only with puberty. Because while adolescence may be the first time our bodies play tricks on us, it’s certainly not the last. What of the postpartum period? Perimenopause? Hospice? Herewith, a summary of my findings thus far, both from personal experience and extremely unscientific observation, otherwise known as “A Short(ish) List of Physical Betrayals.”

  HAIR

  No matter where you fall on the color spectrum, from Nick Cave to Nicki Minaj, chances are that by your midforties you will find enough shades of gray to create, if not a bestselling trilogy of erotic novels, then at least a gross scrapbook. (Note: they’re not all on your head, these gray hairs. Get excited!)

  FACE

  Imagine a flipbook of John McCain’s cheeks as he shoots through a wind tunnel. Beginning at age thirty-five, each page represents one year of your life.

  EYES

  During your twenties, you can call them “bright.” If you can manage to say anything bitchy or insightful on a semiregular basis, your thirties and forties can coast on the sassy adjective “gimlet,” no matter the depth of your crow’s-feet. After that, it may be best just to keep them closed.

  NOSE

  Never stops growing, regardless of truthfulness. Some individuals attempt to camouflage this ever-enlarging protuberance with a garden of colorful gin blossoms, which are permanent and aggressive perennials.

  DÉCOLLETAGE

  Derived from the French word décolleter, meaning “to be forced to wear crewneck sweaters due to the fact that the sun spots on your chest have joined to form one giant leather patch, sort of like the trash heap floating in the Pacific Ocean that can be seen from space.”

  HANDS

  Evolution has taught us that primates are our closest mammalian relatives. But considering the slow transformation of once-youthful fingers into brittle, gnarled claws, I say: remember the bird.

  BREASTS/PECTORALS

  Drawing of my “bobos” by my two-year-old son, 2013.

  As you age, most parts of the body look better lying down, because the excess skin recedes into the blankets, revealing your original shape. Not so with the chest. It is only at this point in life that the true purpose of armpits is fully revealed: supine breast rests.

  ABDOMEN

  The media encourages us to strive for “six-pack” abs, and while that dream is deferred for most of us as we pursue loftier goals like incubating humans or finishing a plate of mile-high nachos, it can be helpful to think of the torso as a six-pack of beer. With each decade, beginning at birth, take away one can, until they are all gone and you are left with a warped, stretched-out set of rings.

  ELBOWS/KNEES

  Begin winking. This is less delightfully coy than one might hope.

  THE DREADED Q WORD (LADIES ONLY)

  Ugh, I cannot say—or even type—this word. It makes me cringe with humiliation. But you all know it. It starts out like the band fronted by Freddie Mercury and ends like Joaquin Phoenix’s original hippie name, which also happens to mean the thin, flat, often green-colored organs of vascular plants such as trees. It also rhymes with the last word of John Grisham’s bestselling legal thriller The Pelican Brief. It happens sometimes when your vagina simply has too much to say and gets flustered, or when you attempt an inverted yoga pose. It is, quite simply, the worst.

  And those are just my external findings. I haven’t even mentioned the decrease in serotonin that can lead to the unironic purchase of cross-stitch patterns or Isotoner clogs, or the inexplicable popping noises that sound off whenever you squat.

  No one tells you these things. Nora Ephron tried to, but her report was too specialized. What we need is a textbook, something with a quick-reference index for things like “wattle” and “thuttocks” (the unfortunate result of a vanishing border between upper thigh and lower cheek, a term coined by noted anatomist Alyssa Milano). Because as it stands—or falls, since that’s much more likely to be the case—it’s a shock to the system. If you’re anything like me, one minute you’re trying to pick out the right size Super Ball to even out your training bra, and the next you wake up to find that some part of you has gone inexplicably missing—and you just can’t find it anywhere.

  Not even in the squatting position.

  A Scar Is Born

  Picture this: You are standing on an auditorium stage, cloaked in darkness. The audience, made up of your family, friends, entire elementary school class, and the original cast of Beverly Hills, 90210, titters nervously. They don’t know what to expect. But you do. You have been waiting for this moment your entire life.

  The spotlight comes on as the first note rings out across the cavernous room, and even though you’re temporarily blinded you can tell from the audible gasps that you look amazing in your skintight, iridescent jumpsuit and high-heeled boots, your normally limp hair a halo of Diana Ross curls. You raise the microphone to your Dr-Pepper-flavor-Bonne-Bell-slicked lips and, feeling your heart thump in your chest like a drum circle of angels, sing the first lines of Madonna’s “Like a Prayer.”

  Life is a mystery / Everyone must stand alone . . .

  To everyone’s shock and awe, you sound exactly like Madonna, and the fifth-grade orchestra sounds exactly like professional studio musicians—somehow they have even gotten their hands on an electric guitar and full-size church organ. Jason Priestley is already on his feet giving you a standing ovation before you’ve finished the first verse. And you allow yourself to smile a little bit, knowing that the best is yet to come.

  It was hard to find a gospel choir who would perform for your pittance of an allowance. But as luck would have it, the very first Harlem church you walked into in your immaculately white Reebok high-tops welcomed you with open arms, and when they heard your sultry alto, surprisingly rich and sexual for someone so young, tears streamed down the singers’ faces as they closed their eyes and swayed, waving their arms as if inviting God himself to bear witness to your gift. You made their robes at home, dousing your mother’s eggplant-colored bedsheets in glitter, and when the moment arrives, as stagehands pull back the thick curtains to reveal two dozen sparkling backup dancers belting out the chorus, a roar emanates from the crowd almost loud enough to drown out the bass synthesizer. By the time the smoke machine starts, and you are lifted into the air on your hidden platform to bring it on home, news crews are bursting through the auditorium doors, stumbling over each other in their haste to capture even a moment of this miracle, to share with people who are suffering and in need of a reminder that there is still magic in this world.

  Are you still picturing it? Great. Now you know what it felt like to live inside my head at age twelve.

  The physical reality of age twelve was only slightly less glamorous.

  Madonna’s Immaculate Collection (1990) notwithstanding, almost all of my favorite music was produced between 1991 and 1994. Salt-N-Pepa, En Vogue, TLC, Boyz II Men, Kris Kross, P.M. Dawn, Naughty by Nature, Arrested Development—these are my totally unironic, nonguilty pleasures. Even one-hit wonders from forgotten stars like Sophie B. Hawkins and the unfortunately surnamed Ce Ce Peniston make me swoon. We would not be friends if your instinct is to change the station when “To Be with You” by Mr. Big comes on the radio.

  And my obsession with the early nineties doesn’t start and stop with the Billboard Hot 100. I love saying “Boutros Boutros-Ghali.” I own both a Cross Colours jacket and a stack of Sassy magazines that I won on eBay. No movie will ever be as perfect as Reality Bites. It is one of the great tragedies of my life that no men have ever battled for my heart by doing a sing-off of “Two Princes” by the Spin Doctors. I consider the Oscars a miserable failure if Billy Crystal doesn’t enter on horseback, and despite how wrong it is, I still thi
nk Erik Menendez was hot. A part of me will always live in 1993.

  Apparently there is science to back up this phenomenon of acute nostalgia. During adolescence we experience the fastest period of brain growth since the trippy crash course of infancy, so what we observe and learn between twelve and fourteen can stick in a way that’s more indelible than what comes before or after. And hey, if I can blame my multiple Color Me Badd CDs on science, I’m gonna.

  However, the small section of my temporal lobe not reserved for Sir Mix-a-Lot lyrics is engraved with more troubling recollections of the exquisite, crushing pain of early puberty. There are the physical betrayals, of course—here lie the seedlings of my lifelong unibrow obsession and my bloodhoundlike knack for detecting untreated body odor—but the emotional scars run even deeper, drawing a sense memory map across my nervous system that will forever link feelings of shame and sadness to pop culture escapism.

  Let’s start with insomnia and Garrison Keillor.

  Obviously.

  Every Saturday when I was young, my parents would listen to A Prairie Home Companion on the radio, and so it happened that at a very young age I fell in love with the slow drip of Midwestern molasses that was Garrison Keillor’s voice. Since it was radio, I didn’t know what he looked like, so I imagined my preadolescent crush, Sam Malone from Cheers. I would lie awake at night listening to tapes of News from Lake Wobegon, letting Keillor’s languid, dusky baritone lull me to sleep.