What happened was my friend got divorced, and then, for a while, she went to live with my parents. She said, my friend, that she wanted to spend some time with people who liked her. I lived in California too, though up north. With my husband, though my friend did not ask if she could stay with us. I guess I was a little offended. Told myself she wanted to be tended to, knew I would not tend to her and knew my mother would. Though also I was relieved. Just then we were trying to have a baby. Baby books everywhere and me lying on my back, in bed, a thermometer in my vagina, trying to take my basal body temperature so I’d know when to fuck my husband, this, we’d been told, was the most natural way. My mind so filled with this one desire—baby, baby, baby—it might as well have been blank. Dutiful copulation. Tension and resentment packed into each of our small rooms like pudding into pudding cups. “Do you think,” my friend asked me, “that it’s ethical, right now, to have a baby. Considering where we are. In late capitalism, the life cycle of the planet.” I hung up. My husband and I did not end up having a baby, though not for ethical reasons. Later we also got a divorce. Having a baby, in any case, is never ethical. I don’t mean it’s not, just that’s the wrong scale.

Also that I’d started involuntarily imagining what it would be like to fuck every man I came into contact with. What it would be like if the power went out and everyone else in the room were raptured and we just had to do it right there on the conference room table for the sake of, you know, humanity, his hand in my hair, pulling, and me opening my mouth to protest, the words dying in my throat. Involuntarily, right. I was working in HR at this point, is that irony. I should know, that PhD I didn’t finish was in English lit. Probably this was connected to the fact that I’d started watching porn. Every morning, right after taking my basal body temperature, like putting a thermometer in my vagina gave me the idea. Like I couldn’t think about making a baby without thinking about making a baby. In retrospect I think I was mad at my husband. Is that too obvious? Remarkable how hard it is for women to admit they’re angry. Not annoyed or upset or irked or miffed or any sentiment that might be captured in a text message that ends in a series of exasperated question marks. Angry.