All the things I am supposed to want circa 1991
“I think I know the answers and I want to give them to you because it’s what you want or what you think you want and maybe you deserve to know.”
“Did you say something?” Eric shouts from downstairs.
I don’t answer immediately and Eric shouts again.
“Caitlin, did you call?”
“Sorry babe, I was talking to myself.”
I lie because I don’t want Eric to know that you exist yet. Do you exist yet? If you’re unborn somewhere in my belly does it count?
“I’m ready to go when you are,” Eric says.
I can hear him downstairs playing on the Megadrive. When did it become acceptable for grown men to make a cartoon hedgehog run around on a TV screen for hours on end? It’s a fad I tell myself. If I were to walk downstairs and tell him my news, perhaps show him my pee on a stick as proof, he’d probably drop his controller. I imagine the scene and see both Eric and cartoon hedgehog stopped in their tracks. I don’t know what happens next. I can see the hedgehog on the screen turning to face us, to congratulate us. I’m just not sure what Eric says. And I’m not sure I want to be congratulated.
I put my shoes on and walk down the stairs to tell Eric that we’re ready to go. He’s sitting on the edge of his seat embroiled in the game but he turns it off as soon as he sees me and is rid of the stupid hedgehog. He stands up and kisses me.
“That was so like a naughty school boy,” I tell him.
“I feel no shame,” he replies.
On the underground I realise that I have no idea what Eric has been talking about for the last half hour. The world blurs by and I keep going on autopilot. I could stop everything if I just shouted out my news. But I don’t. I don’t say anything when we enter Browns.
“Smoking or non smoking?” the maitre d asks and all that I can think is that we’re going to have to get used to a non smoking life. Of course we take the smoking section. It’s an affront to freedom to do otherwise.
We sit at a big table and wait for our friends. As they arrive one by one I talk and instantly forget what I’ve said. I remember sarcasm, irony, philosophy bundled up in popular culture. We’re the sitcom of our time, just not so funny.
Brad bemoans the fact that we don’t have Starbucks in London yet. “You wait till coffee culture comes to Britain,” he tells us. Apparently it will change our lives. I have no idea if he’s being ironic. I order a coffee. Brad asks what type of coffee they do and the waiter tells him it’s Douwe Egberts.
The night goes on as any usual Friday night. Karlie points out that it’s Friday the thirteenth. She asks me if I know that in the original Friday the thirteenth horror film Jason hardly featured at all.
“He certainly didn’t wear a hockey mask and run around like the bogeyman,” she says in a way that I have no way of knowing how I’m supposed to respond to. Is this a good or bad thing? I don’t even like horror films. I’m aware they exist but that’s it. I look at her and try to engage my irony detector but I get no reading. I can only think that this damn pregnancy has influenced my ability to detect irony. God, how am I going to exist without recognising irony? I can’t imagine a life without irony.
Franklin saves me. He interrupts saying, “It’s good to talk.”
Karlie and I look confused.
Franklin works in advertising. He gets paid to come up with slogans.
“We’re looking for an ageing actor to sign up for telephone commercials to let everyone know that they should use their phones more. Telecom thinks that people’s phone bills aren’t nearly high enough. If they get people thinking that they’re bad people for not phoning home we’re all richer for it.”
Franklin is stuck in 1988. I think he misses Thatcher already. I try to think of an advert telling me that it’s good to talk. I don’t know anyone who is afraid to talk. Why would we need to be told that it’s good to talk? I must phone Mum tomorrow.
For only a moment or two I’m left alone with no one to talk to. I look for Eric and feel comforted at the sight of him at the other end of the bar. I stop to think. Was conversation always this silly? I talk but don’t say what I have to. Would the world stop if I stood on the table and screamed that I’m pregnant? All night I feel like I’m on the starting blocks but never able to start. And then I feel like we’re all in limbo here, that we’re all on hold. I mentioned this once to Eric and he said that it’s symptomatic of a new decade. He said that the hangover never lasts that long, that there’s fun around the corner.
From my seat in the taxi I can’t imagine a life of fun. The immediate future brings a night of MTV because I can’t sleep. I’m twenty four years old and thought I was going to be free. I thought maybe for the next ten years or so we could do what we want. By the time the end of the world gets here, as we turn the corner in 2000 and run straight into either a Nostradamus predicted apocalypse or mid life crisis, we won’t care. We would be fine. But I don’t know you will be. Will you know, as a child that your parents could do anything they want? Will you know what time you grew from? Will I remember?
Eric goes straight to bed when we get in, a little worse for wear. It’s still acceptable to get drunk. I lie with him for a little and then creep downstairs. I stare right through the MTV that I watch but it doesn’t send me to sleep. I plug in the games console. How do you turn this hedgehog game on? When you arrive in this world I want to show you what we did. I want you to know everything we had before it was gone.