It’s not like this is breaking news or anything, but I have learned that Ricky Martin has announced that he is gay.
Duh, right?
Why do people even bother coming out when the out-ness is already so very very clear?
This is a story about how Ricky Martin may be gay, but he is almost certainly the devil. And I am thinking some SEO magic is going to be whipped up through the pairing of “gay” and “devil,” and that amuses me. Even though, to be absolutely clear, I am in no way suggesting that homosexuality is the devil’s work.
Only Ricky Martin.
Imagine me, 90000 months pregnant and about to give birth to first daughter Maj. Except she won’t fucking cooperate. I have never done this before, and I am certain I am doing it wrong. I am having hideously painful contractions every 3 minutes or so, but am not dilating, am not progressing, and am not, apparently, having a baby anytime soon.
They (and by they, I mean Satan’s Kaiser nurse minions) send me home with clucking suggestions that I return when the contractions are coming at two minute intervals.
Which simply never happens. For the next 3 days, I have contractions approximately every 3 minutes. They are unrelenting and exhausting and painful. I do not sleep at all and I cry a lot. I cry on the phone with the nurses, who explain to me that if I can sob and talk to them for longer than 2 minutes without having a contraction, the baby is not coming yet.
We have several of these conversations over the course of these 3 days, and by several I mean more than 20. Each time, they tell me, “It’s not time yet. Your body will tell you when it’s time.” And each time I am too tired to argue and too tired to fight. Each time I docilely agree to stop bothering the busy nurses. Each time, I hang up and go back to the hell that is this last part of my first pregnancy.
I try to remember the birthing class instructor’s advice about going to my “happy place,” advice I laughed off at the time because it seemed so stupid. I am not a “happy place” kind of girl.
But now, I search my mind . . .
I remember the instructor said to breathe. And so I know I am fucked, because the unborn baby is ruling my breathing. She’s somehow reaching through the uterine walls and grabbing little baby fists of all my breathing organs. I am left gasping and panting and moaning for breath.
There is no fucking happy place. It was all a fucking lie.
Three nights I am sleepless like this. Three days and nights of writhing and crying in front of the television . . . watching endless MTV, its images a blur of colors and sound and rhythm. Three minute videos and three minutes between contractions . . . I found comfort in the connection.
You know how sometimes you’ll read about a car accident in which the music is somehow stuck on a single song after impact? And so the seriously injured driver, thrown out of the car and unable to reach the music controls, is forced to listen to Billy Ray Cyrus’ song Achy Breaky Heart in an endless loop until help arrives?
My memory plays tricks on me, because in my memory of my labor, MTV was playing all Ricky Martin all the time. Not a variety of his songs, either . . . just one. One song in an endless tortuous loop that played over and over again as I lay, broken and shattered, thrown cruelly through the windshield of my life.
The song? Livin’ La Vida Loca. Over and over and over again.
Upside, inside out she’s livin la vida loca
She’ll push and pull you down, livin la vida loca
Her lips are devil red and her skin’s the color mocha
She will wear you out livin la vida loca Come On!
Livin la vida loca, Come on!
She’s livin la vida loca.
She’ll make you take your clothes off and go dancing in the rain.
She’ll make you live her crazy life but she’ll take away your pain
like a bullet to your brain. Come On!
I was mesmerized and hypnotized and entranced. It was a sort of demonic sexed-up happy place, and it soothed me.
And then, on the third sleepless night, I began to hallucinate.
Ricky Martin came to me. Spoke to me. Stood in my darkened room with his chiseled features and pretty-boy hair and his magical shaking ass (seriously, is there ANYONE who didn’t know he was gay?).
Arms swaying above his head, pelvis thrusting, eyes glowing yellow, Devil Ricky spoke to me. Spoke directly to me as the music pounded in my head and the video played on my walls. The words were familiar, and yet different somehow.
She will wear you out, livin la vida loca
She’ll make you go so crazy
But I can take away your pain
Put a bullet in your brain! Come on!
Beautiful Devil Ricky stood before me gyrating and singing, over and over again, about how a bullet would solve everything.
Devil Ricky promised we could go to the happy place forever. Together. And even though I knew Devil Ricky was gay, I was so very very tempted.
Instead, I screamed for Mark and told him to take me to the hospital. NOW. I was not coming home until they had taken this baby out of me.
Turned my back on Devil Ricky and slipped into the waiting arms of God.
God’s hugs feel a lot like an epidural, in case you were wondering.
thanks. now it’s in my head. that’s one horrific birth story! lol.
Ummmm . . . this is the happy part of the story. The birth story will have to wait for a day when I am really really drunk and find humor in the tale of more than 4 arms inside my body at one time.
It could have been worse! It could have been, I don’t know, Annie Lennox screaming at you. Or Poison. Well, actually Poison may have been pretty awesome.
Epidurals are the greatest. Birthing is the worst. Sorry to offend those who hate epis and love pain.
I know Annie Lennox. I love Annie Lennox! Annie would not have appeared before me and suggested suicide. Annie is not the Devil.
Not like Ricky.
Also . . . Someday, I will share my carefully thought out and neatly typed as-close-to-home-birth-as-possible birth plan with you. And we will laugh and laugh and laugh. And if there are drugs available, we will do them.
There is no fucking happy place <—- This right here is why I refused to even step one swollen foot inside a Lamaze class.
My mom gave birth to 4 of us at home, with the rest of us kids in the next room. I know it can be done without drugs, and I thought I could do it. I have a history of kidney stones, and that is some painful fucking shit. But the exhaustion? The unrelenting never-ending pain and the overwhelming exhaustion of my own personal labor experience?
That I could not do, and drugs, for me, were required.
Especially after the gay hallucinations started.
You are SO not making me regret I adopted my children. I had breast cancer, a double mastectomy and three reconstructive surgeries…but I don’t think they hold a candle to birthing watermelons out of your vagina. Yeah, not regretting the adoptions.
Kallan’s birth (and my entire labor with her) was soooooo much easier than Maj’s was, and neither birth can be compared to your experiences. After each, after all, I got to take home a new family member. And that was (and is) awesome!
Devil Ricky just complicated matters for a bit.
I wonder how many other people can include Ricky Martin and “Livin’ La Vida Loca” in their birth story.
I am sure not many.
You are not the first person to refer to this as a birth story! This is not a birth story. This is the story of how Devil Ricky tried to make me kill myself.
It is so obvious.
I love that song! I know, you want to shoot me huh?
Well, since I am nosey I read all your comments. Lanita’s comment made me laugh, then I read your reply to her and I was like “awwwww”. Then I read how your mom had all five of you guys at home. Ummm……what?!?!?! I want to hear more about that!
I may write about that sometime . . . I will share with you that when I was born? My mom and dad spent the night playing cards and drinking with the midwives (at least that’s the story I heard) until her water broke. And then I was born shortly thereafter. An auspicious beginning.
I wrote about how hot he was in my little pre teen diary. And about how my mother said he was gay but “he sooo, like, is not!”
Sigh.
I was crushed when he came out of the closet. Not because I have any sort of strange attraction to him anymore, but because it means my mother was right. I hate it when she’s right.
Epidural. They should write a song about it’s holy awesomeness.
I didn’t really need one when Kallan was about to be born, but I had such fond and lovely memories of the first time’s effect, and I was so frightened of missing my epidural opportunity and then having Devil Ricky show up again . . . I asked for the epidural.
Needed or not? It was awesome.
Moms are annoying when they are right. Or so my children tell me.
Before even reading the whole post….WHAT?? Ricky Martin is what??? Where have I been???
The devil thing is going to throw you, I’m guessing.
Ok—- now that I have read the whole thing…(and for the record am still in shock!)— I am going to have that song in my head all day long…..thanks! :(
xo
Guess what’s in my head? The “through-the-windshield” song I mentioned . . . Achy Breaky Heart.
Don’t tell my heart, my achy breaky heart, I just don’t think he’d understand.
Sigh.
I must confess that I like Achy Breaky Heart. It conjures up memories of dance halls, wooden floors with sawdust and longneck beers.
For me, he has transformed into Miley Cyrus’ dad, and it’s just weird. And insanely catchy.
i would most certainly agree that god’s hugs feel like epidurals.
Amen to that.
When I got my epidural with my first son I asked the anesthesiologist for his address so I could send him a Christmas card. I would have leaped out of bed and hugged him enthusiastically if I had not been (1) enormously pregnant and in labor and (2) completely numb from my boobs south.
This is a crazy story.
I feel for your crazy devil Ricky Hallucinations. I am glad he didn’t put a bullet in your head.
On another point I had a dream the other day were I couldn’t eating raw ground beef. It happened to occur after I read your log of poo story.
So thank you.
Yay for fucking with your dream life!
I AM AWESOME!
What?
You are awesome! But eating raw ground beef is gross.
Yes, it is gross.
You are a dream freak.