Axm Article, March, 2006
I’m house sitting in Queens Park (QP) and there are children everywhere. They even go to school, so you know they’re posh. And loud and privileged and white and, horror, abundant. Rumor is that this used to be a nice area, working class Irish and then slightly black, until a few queers appeared, and bling! An organic cafÈ sprouted, complete with dry muffins at three pounds a thump and really expensive watery coffee.
Things got worse when those dashing Notting Hill bohemians rehabbed and then decided to breed. They sold their flats for the same price as a QP house, which they filled with tinies meant to justify Daddy’s soul-numbing PR job. His days are about professionally raping other daddy’s over the phone. But the wives? They stroll the streets, pushing monster behind monster, like a parade of smelly lambs heading toward slaughter. The only difference is, these little lambs will grow larger and fatter until some day, they’ll be sitting behind a desk tracking my eating habits and deciding what I can and can’t watch during prime time.
My paranoia extends even to Starbucks, which, last I checked, was a vestige of at least semi-adulthood. Of course, the young folk that work there are excitable art students and freckly, four-eyed Jewtards, but they’re over 18 whether or not they behave that way. Tiny tots aren’t meant to have caffeine, it might speed their growth or stunt their growth or burn their sensitive skin if they crawl any closer to my computer.
And yet, while doing research by cruising the net for cock in QP’s only ‘bucks, I am surrounded by strained carrots and kiddy toys. A pram runs over my foot, without apology, on the way to the toilet. And that was my good foot, the one with five toes and no purple nails.
When I try to pee, there’s a line. Not to watch me, but in front of me. There’s only one adult toilet at this ‘bucks. The other toilet is donated to the plight of parents changing diapers. Apparently modern nappy changes require privacy. Can’t they do it in a stall? Considering the ballet-like positions I’ve managed in a stall, it seems like the nappy changing posture should be a snap.
Which brings me to my query: Since when did raising these teeny fuckers become such a big deal? Why do all the moms look harassed, and the few faggy, marginally hot dads that have decided to stay home look so overwhelmed? Cooper wears argyle socks and has grayish sideburns and he stares back. He watches me a bit while he’s feeding junior something out of plastic. Plastic he’ll probably throw away. Damn, the waste involved in raising kids is enormous. Can’t we nail their petite feet to the floor and feed them through tubes? To the gentle reader, that might seem harsh. I prefer to see it as a model of Swedish style enviro-caution.
“Little Cooper eats a lot,” Big Cooper says, shyly. Green-eyed fathers in brown corduroy make me shy too. And nasty.
I’m almost ready to hand him my card or anything else he requires when Cooper Sr. huffs and hollers and sighs as if he’s raising an army, and not just some little alien that might be more useful as canon fodder. Why was my single, working mother so much calmer and humbler and simply better at this child rearing bullshit than Mr. Smarty chords with his Oxbridge MBA?
He waddles off to pooville, mini Cooper in tow, when a rich hippie in a pricey parka saunters in with a strapped-down comatose four year-old, plastic grocery bags hanging from the pram’s metal bars. She rocks and rolls up to the counter, ordering a soy latte like a recovered alcoholic demanding whiskey. There’s dread in her voice. She must be exhausted, like her peers, because white women wheel their kids around for far too long, as if they’re precious stones that shouldn’t be soiled by paved roads. Naturally, once inside, little Chelsea can do whatever she pleases, including strolling up to mum, grabbing her boob and asking for a drink, which to my mind means she’s too old to breast feed.
I could never be a pedophile, and that’s too bad because if I were, I’d film this Starbucks charade every morning with my camera phone and save loads of money on internet porn. But kids are a turn off. They’re so unappreciative, and they take and take, When they’re grown up if they have big dicks and nice shoes, it’s those selfish types with whom I might fall in love, but in the meantime, can we lose the smell of talcum while I’m trying to buy some negro porn? Black on Black, which apparently includes a clubhouse, doesn’t come cheap, mo’fucker, especially because I’m paying five pounds an hour to use Starbuck’s wi-fi. Christ, the sacrifices I make to be both caffeinated and sexually satiated are incredibly selfless.