The other day, I was having lunch with my mother in the basement apartment her and my father live in, when she dropped what felt like a very pointed comment out of nowhere.
You know, if you don’t have sex in your thirties, your body’s going to go into early menopause. You can confuse your body into going into menopause!
She said it in French too, which is even scarier. I stared at her for a second and then down at the vichyssoise and the flat sprite on the table. I couldn’t tell if she somehow knew I haven’t fucked in a second (years) or if she just heard that somewhere and was just making conversation. You know how moms love repeating stuff they heard somewhere. They never have a source. Moms would be so good at Twitter.
Anyway, I had a feeling she didn’t call my happily married sister to tell her that shit.
It felt like it was pour moi.
Later, in the shared backyard with my father sufficiently occupied with his flowers, I leaned to my mom and half-whispered:
How long do you think it takes before your body just shuts your shit down?
I don’t know how true any of this is, but it felt true enough, threatening enough, and possible enough for me to carry it with me, on the bus and then the subway and the 12-minute walk home from the subway.
True enough to make me download Hinge again. True enough to make me question a choice that I thought I was okay with, at least for a day.
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