Shot with a Fart gets a thirty-second standing ovation before Tommy disappears behind the bar again and Chuck makes his way over to kiss his sister on the cheek and say “Did you like the show?” to me.
“Very much,” I say, laughing. “I sure wish I had an uncle like you.”
Chuck smiles proudly, but breaks eye contact before saying, “What are you drinking? On the house for Danielle’s friends. Especially those who wear Mötley Crüe buttons.” He makes the devil horns with his right hand and sings, “Shout at the devil!”
I raise my own devil horns and in a deep, put-on voice sing, “Home sweet home.”
“Best rock ballad ever. Fucking ever,” he says. Then he quickly covers his mouth and says, “Sorry,” to his sister.
“Ewwwww,” Tommy says. “Bad words!”
“What do you think, Tommy? ‘Home Sweet Home.’ Best rock ballad ever?” Chuck says quickly, redirecting like a pro.
“We should perform that one next week,” Tommy says.
“We’d have to change our cover band name if we started doing Crüe songs.”
“But Shot with a Fart is the best name!”
“I completely agree, little man!”
“This is Portia, Chuck,” Danielle finally says. “She went to good ol’ HTHS. In my class.”
Chuck smiles with nothing short of movie-star charm and shakes a finger at me like I’ve been very naughty. “I thought I recognized—”
“Chuck, we need you. Get up here!” the beefy bartender calls from the front.
“To be continued.” Chuck gives two sets of devil horns to Tommy, sticks out his tongue like Gene Simmons, and then says, “Dude, you totally rocked.”
“You rocked too, Uncle Chuck.” Tommy returns the devil horns before Chuck jogs back to the front bar and yells something at a blonde, who smiles as Chuck points me out.
The blonde delivers two bottles of Budweiser to our table and says, “From Chuck. If you break his heart, I’ll kill you.”
“Easy, Lisa,” Danielle says.
“I’m serious.” Lisa holds my gaze for an uncomfortable beat and then walks away.
I look to Danielle for an explanation and she says, “Lisa and Chuck have worked together for years. She acts like his mother. What can I say? It’s weird.”
“Okay.”
Several people come over to our booth to congratulate Tommy, and Danielle keeps telling them that it’s not necessary to give Tommy tips, which seems strange to me because—from what I’ve gathered so far—she could certainly use the money.
Chicken wings and tuna melts arrive as Tommy colors with crayons in a blank notebook and Danielle tells me all about the Oaklyn public school system and how Tommy is “special” and “gifted” when it comes to performing, but those skills aren’t appreciated in towns like Oaklyn and Collingswood and Westmont and Haddon Township.
I’m tempted to point out that her kid just got a standing ovation for performing right here at the Manor in Oaklyn. The people here at the bar seemed to appreciate the hell out of Tommy. But I know from experience that you should never disagree with a woman when she is speaking about her children. Women lose their objectivity when they give birth. There is no reasoning with a mother when it comes to her child, especially her firstborn.
“It’s an okay school, but I mean, it’s not Faddonfield,” Danielle says, referring to Haddonfield, the wealthiest town in the area—the one that always seems to outperform the rest of us no matter how hard we try, proving that money and contacts help a whole bunch in America.
“Fuck Faddonfield,” I say. “You want your kids to grow up snotty and entitled?”
“Portia!” Danielle says, and gestures to her son with her eyes and head. “Yo!”
“Sorry. I’m not used to being around kids.”
Tommy is drawing what looks to be Guns N’ Roses’ Appetite for Destruction album cover—a cross with the skulls of the band members decorating it.
Her five-year-old knows that album, which features an illustration of a raped-and-left-for-dead-in-an-alley woman with her underwear around her ankles on the inside flap AND uses the word fuck multiple times on different tracks, and Danielle’s worried about my using profanity in front of him?
“Do you want kids?” she asks.
“No.”
“Oh,” Danielle says in a surprised way, trying to mask her disappointment. Or maybe it’s disapproval.
I don’t elaborate on the many reasons I don’t want children. I know it will win me no points tonight.
I always think of Philip Larkin’s poem “This Be the Verse” whenever someone asks when I’ll have children. My mom fucked me up, and I don’t want to pass that on. Imagine if I had children with Ken the misogynistic porno king? Khaleesi and company would have hurt much more than my pride. But I also don’t want to be like Danielle, who seems to live solely for—or through—her kid. I want my life to count. And I’ve seen how so many women have kids as a way of contributing when they no longer feel as though they are contributing. Their college dreams and hopes are crushed by the world, so they fall back into the traditional role of motherhood, where they will be praised for simply taking a man’s seed into their bodies and then allowing it to grow. They become livestock, really. The simple fact that they’ve reproduced makes them palatable to society. A woman could be the worst mother in the world, but if she is holding a baby in public, everyone will smile at her with admiration usually reserved for saints and deities. She’s not just some woman anymore, but a life giver, a Mother Mary. That’s how they trick us into going through the pain of childbirth and all the rest. Just reproduce, and people throw you parties and buy you gifts and sympathize with you. You enjoy a sense of belonging and achievement simply because you had sex successfully. And who can resist that?