I Want To Live Like Common People

But realizing I already do hurts my feelings.

Lately, I’ve been listening to Pulp’s “Common People” on repeat. I listened to it five times yesterday on my walk to and from Walgreens to buy tampons. Why was I buying tampons, no one has ever asked? Well… in an effort to do slightly less irreparable harm to the planet I’m leaving my children, I’d been trying to introduce the reusable Flex Disc into my menstrual routine. Unfortunately, due to what I can only assume was user error, things weren’t going well. The words “crime scene” leap to mind. On top of the bioremediation I was performing on my underwear every half hour, coming face-to-face more intimately than I’m used to with the sheer quantity a woman hemorrhages once a month while still being expected to work, cook, maintain physical appearances, and clean up around the house was making me hate my family, who all happen to be men. So that’s why I was buying tampons!

On my walk, I found myself pondering the question, am I Common People, or am I that bitch who wants to live like Common People? I certainly dance and drink and screw because there’s nothing else to do. And yet, if I laid in bed at night, watching roaches on the wall, could I really not just call my dad to stop it all? I mean, maybe not my dad because he’s 82 and lives a thousand miles away, but I could call someone. It’s not like my only recourse would be to chug a bottle of Nyquil and leave the roaches to their wall parade. (If all this sounds like gibberish, listen to the song! Speaking of gross bugs, it’s a real earworm!) Anyway, I imagine most people who aren’t like, heiresses to the Sarah Lee fortune want identify (though maybe not actually live) as Common People. The alternative would be accepting that while life feels hard, we’re actually just spoiled and weak.

The reason I bring all this up is that my husband has a new job. I am happy he has a new job, because the money I make comes in lump sums with unpredictably long gaps in between, and every time I make one of those lump sums, I wonder if it’s the last time I ever will. Conveniently, my husband’s new job provides our family with a steady income and he can do it from home. Inconveniently, it means he has to work all day every day except Saturday, with the most intensive labor falling right around when my children return home from day care and school on through their bed time. We can’t afford (nor really want) a nanny and have no nearby “grandma or grandpa who wants to help out” but thanks for the killer suggestion JD Vance, so up to this point, my husband and I have essentially split domestic labor straight down the middle. If hearing that makes you want to give my husband a big ole pat on the back fuck off because all he’s been doing is his literal fair share. Point being that now, because my husband’s time is consumed with helping our family in a different way, a lot more housework and childcare falls me. I don’t expect you to give me a big ole pat on the back either, but I do think I deserve one.

Should I feel guilty about hating housework and resenting childcare? Because I don’t. My disdain is a radical act of feminism! Maybe that’s why this more traditional female role my husband’s new work schedule has thrust me into seems almost funny, and more than a little interesting. When I can set aside the tedium, I feel like I’ve been sent to one of those tourist traps that recreates life as it was hundreds of years ago, like when Gayle and Oprah went colonial and learned to churn their own butter. And my kids are doing cute shit right now, like learning to read, and revving up for Halloween. So whatever. Like life itself, this current setup is temporary. I was prepared to grit my teeth (effortlessly, in fact - did you know teeth grinding is an off-label side effect of Wellbutrin?) and endure with minimal indignation. But then I got a little peek behind the curtain of how other households function, and what I saw not only shocked me, it hurt my feelings.

The other night I attended a gathering of writers. It wasn’t particularly fun, but the group I was chatting with (all men and fathers but me) were pretty transparent about being there because we needed an excuse to leave the house. One guy just got divorced and seemed sad about it, but also couldn’t stop talking about all the work he was landing, so ya know, correlation? Causation? I shouldn’t speculate. What I should have done was predict what was coming next. Foolishly, blindly, ARROGANTLY, I did not. Instead, I began to ramble about the respite I’d come seeking from the demands of my current domestic hell. But as I walked the group through my husband’s new work schedule (nobody asked), it occurred to me, something’s not connecting. There I was among fellow writers, looking for sympathy that I was being robbed of precious time that should have been spent meditating on life’s big questions and spinning my musings into golden prose! But in my colleagues’ blank stares, I saw my own femaleness reflected back at me. Did it not seem unusual or unjust that I was suddenly entirely responsible for my children’s care because I’m a woman?

When I got staffed in my first writers room, I was 27, one of only two women on staff, and not yet contemplating children. The other woman was in her late 40s and did not want them. Most of my male colleagues were in their late 30s and 40s, and many of them were fathers. The majority of their partners (all wives but one) did not work or worked part-time, and assumed the lion’s share of day-to-day child care. I wasn’t close with many of these guys — I spent most of my time in the bathroom crying and shitting my brains out from anxiety — but I assumed their families chose a particular division of labor because of how demanding our jobs were. If there was sexism at play, I didn’t want (nor did I feel like it was my business) to interrogate it. I liked that my colleagues’ arrangements elevated the importance of our (my) work. I liked being one of the writers instead of one of the wives. But fast forward to the other night and those blank stares, I suddenly felt like one of those terrible “feminists” who pulls the ladder up behind her. What an idiot, thinking of my womanhood as secondary when to the rest of the world, it can never be.

By no means do I consider myself a “guys girl.” I resent the fact that my professional life has left me surrounded by mostly men, and I resent that my conniving little womb keeps popping out more of them. I fucking love women! But do I love being one? Most of the time, in my role as mother and wife, I feel like I’m cosplaying. My children and my husband are my whole heart, but the cliche of my life’s outward appearance seems like a great big joke. If Common People were Common Women, I tend to act like the bitch wanting to live like one. But sometimes life reminds me that a lot of people, mostly men, don’t see it that way. Sometimes something shakes me awake to the truth, though not the only truth, that a version of me is really and truly a Common Woman, standing in a puddle of my own blood.