The
time was 3:36AM and I am masturbating in the bathroom on the fourth floor of
the university’s main library when a clatter comes ringing through the door.
Annoyed, I stilled my hand from persisting with its familiar rhythm and waited
for the interloper to leave me be. My irritation grew when my veined love
muscle sunk back to its lowly state after the sound of a voice—a male voice at
that—echoed off the tiled walls.
“But there is justification. You heard the doctor; the odds of retardation are
like…ten times greater amongst the offspring of first cousins. Really Lisa I
don’t even know how you’re even thinking of keeping the thing. I thought we
talked about this? We made a mistake—a horrible, drunken mistake. To think of
this as anything else is sick! Lisa you’re sick! I think I might vomit right
now just thinking about it! Please please please I am begging you: do the right
thing here. We will move on with our lives, forget it ever happened, shit maybe
even be comfortable enough to laugh about it in a decade or two. Lisa, do you
hear me? Aren’t you listening to anything I’m saying? Anything the doctor said
to you?”
There was a long pause. If only I
could have seen myself positioned as I was in that moment: legs shot out
directly ahead of me with pants and boxers at my ankles, the soles of my shoes
pushing against the stall door so as to keep the illusion alive for the
intruder, apparently a cousin-fucker, the myth that he was the bathroom’s sole
proprietor. I wanted to laugh, cry, but mostly disappear completely from the
absurd plight all around me. I was beginning to seriously consider the prospect
of the air vents near my feet when the silence was broke by the sound of a
child’s weeping. “I don’t know why you’re doing this to me. You realize” the
voice sobbed, “you realize our lives are over. One hundred percent. Over. Not
just in all the ways a normal unplanned pregnancy can fuck things up, no that I
could maybe live with. Friends, our family for godssake, they all will be gone.
What in the world will they think? We’d have to move out of the state—out of
the country! Can’t you see, Lisa? Can’t you fucking understand this in that fucking
pea-sized brain of yours?” Now, where the voice lacked sniffles and blubs it
compensated with volume. “You ruined my life! You fucking killed me you stupid
bitch! Please! Just abort the damned thing and save the three of us!” Pause.
Long ominous pause followed by a distinguishable crash. In came skidding across
the tile, a cell phone. Quickly my eyes darted beneath the graffitied door where
legs crowded a pair of aging jeans. Then, a sinister trilogy that still deafens
me: a metallic click click boom.
The blood in my eyes hindered my
vision. It was a text message. But I could only see the date: April 1.
