Read Love... And Sleepless Nights MAY 2012 Online
Authors: Nick Spalding
I think this is the
real
reason why they tell you not to drink while pregnant.
The combination of alcohol and centrifugal force would be enough to throw you on your arse every thirty seconds.
Also, it transpires a pregnancy bump has hitherto unforeseen magical powers. It makes you completely invisible to members of the opposite sex!
I’d like to think I scrub up pretty well when I make an effort, and I’ve always attracted the appreciative stares of many a man when out clubbing in the past - particularly if I’m wearing a ridiculously short dress and heels that show off my long legs.
This evening though, I could have been wandering around in a see-through PVC jumpsuit, wearing a hat with the words ‘I’ll fuck you for a jelly shot’ written across it in neon letters and I’m still convinced not one man would have so much as glanced at me.
It’s a depressing realisation.
The bump is like a brand. It means I’m definitely off the market.
…not that I’m on the pull or anything, but a woman likes to think she can turn heads even when she’s happily married.
I’d have to sexually molest the fruit machine in the corner to get anyone’s attention in my present state.
What makes it worse is that Melina, a woman I’d cheerfully have sex with if I leant that way, is getting all the attention I’m not.
Never mind though! I can drown my sorrows in –
…oh no, wait a minute. I can’t even do that, can I?
I just
love
being pregnant!
We leave The Bog
And
Trellis at
. I’m stone cold sober thanks to my three diet Cokes, but Melina and the girls are already in a warm, happy haze of light drunkenness following several glasses of wine.
As we walk towards the nightclubs, I get my first inkling of what being drunk involves - when viewed from an objective standpoint.
For some reason the other three girls have all gone deaf.
I assume this is the case, as they’ve all started shouting.
Consumption of alcohol squares with volume it appears.
‘What club you wanna go to?’ Melina says loudly, only a few inches from my face.
‘I’m not bothered, to tell the truth,’ I reply.
‘Let’s go to Mother Kelly’s!’ shouts Rachel.
‘Yeah. Mother Kelly’s is great!’ agrees Shelley.
Mother Kelly’s is
not
great. Mother Kelly’s is a shit hole with a sticky floor and stickier toilets. The road behind it is affectionately known as ‘stab alley’.
‘Off to Mother Kelly’s we go then!’ screams Mel.
I sigh, knowing they’ll brook no argument from the pregnant, sober one, and consign myself to a night of having my shoes sucked off my feet.
Once past the leering bouncers (not leering at me though - I could have started performing oral sex on one of them and he probably wouldn’t have noticed) we enter the night club and make our sticky way over to the bar.
The girls order a round of shots. I have a lime and soda water. I can’t have another Diet Coke as the caffeine will keep me up all night, and I frankly need a decent night’s sleep.
I just
love
being pregnant!
The others knock back their drinks with gusto and proceed to order another round. I suck on my straw and begin to think of ways I can take this out on Jamie’s penis. It’s to blame for my current displeasure and it will pay for its crimes.
I spend most of the next hour sat in a booth at the side of the dance floor. I get up and have a half-hearted go at dancing, but I can feel the baby kicking every time I do so much as a sideways shimmy, and my legs are as heavy as lead weights after five minutes.
My friends are way past the legal limit now and are having no such problems.
There they are: three otherwise sensible, professional ladies, whirling round on a sparkly dance floor like a trio of over-excited baboons with electrodes up their arses.
Consumption of alcohol also takes away your ability to dance, it would seem.
Mel is hopping around with her arms stuck out in front of her, resembling a confused Dalek.
Shelley is doing some kind of grinding thing that’s making me wish my eyes would spontaneously cease to function, and Rachel has found one of the dancing poles near the stage. I rather wish she hadn’t, as any minute now I’m likely to get a really good look at her vagina.
To her, I’m sure she looks like a professional stripper, sexually arousing every man in the night club with her sexy, energetic dance moves. To me (and anyone else not drinking) she looks like a mental patient trying to fuck a lamp post.
Her legs flail in every direction, her head whips round like a prize fighter about to go down in the tenth.
I’m thinking of going over to pull her away from the bloody thing before she hurts herself, when the inevitable happens.
Trying the old ‘legs clamped round the pole and back arched seductively’ pose, Rachel loses her footing and goes crashing to the dance floor with an audible screech.
We now discover yet
more
interesting aspects of the drunken state: The inability to feel either pain or embarrassment.
Rachel is up in seconds, laughing like a loon. She’s going to have an enormous bruise on her backside tomorrow, but for now she brushes off the accident as if it never happened.
Amazingly, many of the men on the dance floor are still regarding her with animal curiosity.
Great
… so you can gyrate around a pole like a rutting hyena before falling on your arse in a heap - and
still
get more attention from the male species than if you’re just a tiny bit pregnant.
Fantastic
.
I sigh and get up to go for my seventeenth wee of the evening.
Mother Kelly’s is just the place you want to be when your bladder is weaker than the British economy.
How truly delightful it is to repeatedly hold a graffiti-covered door closed with my hand while squatting over half a toilet seat to go about my business.
What really caps off the experience this time round is the two people having ugly sex in the stall next to me.
‘Give it to me!’ she growls. Given the state of the place, I can only assume she means dysentery, as the chances of achieving orgasm through the miasma of piss and cheap perfume are small to say the least.
I hope he gets her pregnant,
I mutter under my breath.
It’s only when I look round to see there’s no toilet paper that I decide the evening is well and truly
over
.
‘I’m going,’ I shout at Melina, who is still bouncing around looking for the Doctor so she can exterminate him.
‘It’s only
!’ she wails back.
‘I’ve got a headache and the baby’s giving me hell!’
Mel looks understandably disappointed.
This is her first night out without her own child for a long time and I guess she wants to make the most of it.
I would feel guilty, but I already need another wee and if I drink any more lime and soda water I’m going to be sick in a very green manner.
Mel tells Shelley the bad news and we all troop off to find Rachel.
We eventually find her locked in a death struggle with an Arsenal fan. At least it looks like a death struggle initially. As we get closer it becomes apparent they are kissing.
…and touching.
Oh good God, there is so much
touching
.
If we don’t do something soon, touching is likely to move on to
insertion
and then we’re in real trouble.
I pull the two love-birds apart.
The Arsenal fan looks angry for a second, then utterly non-plussed.
Somebody completely invisible has just broken up the advanced necking session, so his confusion is entirely understandable.
Rachel isn’t any happier, but she can see me just fine, so is a lot clearer on what just happened.
My face is like thunder, so she doesn’t put up much of a fight when I tell her we’re evacuating the premises.
‘I’ll just get Gavin’s number,’ she says.
‘Fuck Gavin,’ I tell her. ‘You’ll thank me in the morning,’ I add, dragging her away by a reluctant arm.
We’re nearly at the car when Rachel goes three different shades of green and runs behind a row of wheelie bins.
Melina staggers over to help hold her hair back, while Shelley deposits herself on the nearest car bonnet and sparks up a fag.
For my part, I ignore the fact I need the toilet and prop myself up next to her.
As Rachel strains behind me and Shelley hacks up a lung, I reflect that being sober and healthy due to pregnancy might not be such a bad thing after all…
‘Good night?’ Jamie asks sleepily from the couch when I get in the door.
‘Let’s put it this way. If I’m going to throw up a lot, have no centre of balance and look deeply unattractive, I’d rather have a baby at the end to show for it.’
He gives me a confused look.
I wave it off, smile to myself… and go for another sodding wee.
Love you and miss you, Mum.
Your stone cold sober daughter, Laura.
xxx
Tuesday 10 September
‘I want bacon,’ the monster growls at me from her duvet cocoon in the centre of our bed. ‘Get me bacon.’
‘Yes mistress,’ I say humbly, tugging my forelock as I back out of the room in fear for my life.
‘Bacon and chocolate. I want bacon and chocolate,’ it tells me, cold, hard eyes boring their way into my mortal soul. ‘Together!’
I must serve the creature.
I must do as it says.
I stumble down the stairs, the sound of its ragged breathing following me to the ground floor.
In the kitchen, I get out the frying pan and place three rashers of bacon into it.
‘Make sure it’s fucking crispy!’ it screeches, and I quail over the hob, praying that one day soon sweet death will take me in its warm embrace and spirit me away from my hideous servitude.