Mommies Who Drink

Firstly, thank you all so much for taking time out of your busy schedules to think of names for my dildo. Freddy, I don't care if Dubya is fucking the world these days, I am not calling it that, I don't want Dubya in my Bush or Bush in my Dubya ... you know what I mean. And I cannot call it Dynorod like your friend S does, because there is something about that name that conjures up thoughts of plumbers and those rods they stick down sinks and pull up all covered in gunk, and somehow that is not erotic.

Sean, your suggestion, The Emma Sculator, is one hundred per cent gold. But still, it lacks the human element in a name that I was looking for. Jo, Lawrence, as in Lawrence of A-Labia, is brilliant, but too funny, and I can't crack up every time I'm trying to have a frig. Amanda, I thought my suggestion, The Boss, was sexy, but you are right, thinking about a naked Donald Trump complete with frightening comb over, is not going to get anyone off anytime soon. I reckon I am going to have to go with Dirty Harry, it has a tiny bit of danger, a sprinkle of sexy Clint Eastwood, and a kind of matter of factness about it that appeals to someone as down to earth as myself. So there you have it.

And now, on to my next topic, Mommies Who Drink.

This cartoon, by yours truly, highlights the awful times one usually has when going out for a drink with other moms. The four usual outcomes are:

a. Inability to stop thinking/talking/boring you to tears about their kids, their achievements in pre-school, their ability to write their own name, or their kid's peanut/milk/seafood allergy. Yeah, whatever.

b. If they are nursing, they will not drink a drop of alcohol, because they are scared it will affect the baby's stomach, or that one glass of wine will give the kid permanent brain damage. Even I feel for this crap the first time round. But let's face facts, nursing mommies, not imbibing alcohol makes for very poor conversation, no offense.

c. They are swamped with guilt/wondering if little Tommy and Tammy will survive two hours without them, and worrying themselves ragged about whether dad will be able to cope with looking after the kids. Probably, is the answer, provided he is of average intelligence, you left him watching a football game, and provided him with enough beer to lull him into a pleasant stupor when the kids' hair pulling/verbal abuse becomes too distracting to following the game.

d. Given a tiny window of opportunity, some mommies will hit the liquor hard, get blind drunk and tell you all their deepest, darkest marital problems. Option d. is the only interesting one, especially if the confessions contain details about their sex life, or lack thereof.

Look, don't get me wrong, I was lost in the wilderness of Mommyville for a while. I was a (reluctant) follower of the belief that your life is your kids, and that you need to put their needs above yours. Well, screw that for a game of soldiers. Sure, for a while, it's a question of survival. Who in their right mind is going to go out drinking when the kids are small, when you know you are going to have to go home and have a baby wanting to nurse at five and the older one up at seven, banging on a saucepan with a spoon. Frankly, I was totally knackered for five years. My drug of choice was sleep. Alcohol was the last thing on my mind.

And then at some point you emerge from this cell, which is largely of your own making. You emerge from this world of play dates and Play-do and diapers and sippy cups and sticky fingers all over everything, and not five minutes to yourself. You emerge blinking into the sunlight. And you realize that yes, you are tired. You are tired of being someone's mother. You are tired of lacing up shoes and packing snacks to go to the park and emergency pairs of underpants for the almost potty trained one. You are tired of thinking about a hundred child orientated details a day.

You know you are tired of all this and yet you have no idea who you are any more. You are a blank piece of paper. Okay, I did write a lot of fiction over the last few years to keep myself sane. I am not a totally blank piece of paper. My piece has a few hundred thousand words on it, but still, I did not know who I was. And maybe it will take me a while to get my groove back. All I know is, I am partially on my way to finding it. And I know I do not have to get shitfaced to do so. These days I am becoming, almost (whisper it) mature.

Take a recent incident, when I was out at a bar/tapas place with my friends Christine and Kate. Believe it or not, I was the mature one that night. A couple of years ago, Christine had a botched piece of stomach surgery for a hernia, and recently had it corrected, to the tune of $5,000 (because the insurance company termed the procedure cosmetic). The only funny thing about that is that they removed so much skin that she lost her belly button (which isn't funny for her, but funny when you look at her stomach, which is as flat and as undented as an alien life form). Christine is stressed out. The family have a lot of financial worries, plus Christine has two little kids at home, as well as a work from home job, and is going cuckoo.

Anyway, that night, it was obvious that Christine had decided that she was going to go all out. She's thin as a reed and doesn't look like she eats more than a granola bar a day, but as soon as we get to the tapas place she starts ordering tons of food and cocktails. I say, "Do you think that's wise. I mean, do you usually drink?" (Me! I actually said that! Unbe-fucking-lievable). To which she says, "No, I haven't drunk in about a year, but I feel like letting my hair down."

So she orders six portions of tapas, plus, as an afterthought, a bowl of calamari. I eat about half the calamari and I am pretty full. This is the most exciting thing that has ever happened to me, I actually feel totally full after a meal the size of a child's cereal bowl. I used to be able to just eat and eat and eat and eat, and now, I can't. It's fucking fantastic.

So Kate and I hardly eat any of this food, while Christine eats plate after plate of delicious but greasy tapas, and I think, where the heck is she putting it? And soon Christine is telling us all about her sex life, or lack thereof, which I promised not to blog about, but which was pretty, er, eye opening, and we all talk about this topic while Christine drinks more cocktails, weird ones like blood orange and mango flavored martinis, which I only have one cocktail and some wine.

Eventually, at one, I tell Christine we should maybe be making tracks. I only suggest going because, well, I have to be up in five hours and also, she is giving me a lift. Well, she doesn't really want to leave, but in the end she does. Of course, the next morning she phones me and says, "Did you get food poisoning from that meal, because I have been up all night vomiting." And I just think, I don't think it was food poisoning, it was just eating an incredible amount of food when you're not used to eating much and imbibing an incredible mix of drinks when you're not used to drinking.

Don't get me wrong, Christine is a scream. But it an attempt to get away from the huge amount of stress at home, it is sometimes tempting to go a bit over the top when you go out. And it's just going to make you hurl.

But let me tell you this. You do need to get out there and act the fool once in a while. Because having kids does not necessarily turn you into a boring old cow. Or at least, it doesn't have to.