I’ve never been good at giving news. I wanted to be a journalist in college, but I kept crying when I listened to NPR, so I chose comedy instead.
With that in mind, it was a Saturday night, and I had just picked my then-boyfriend Gabe up for our hot date: feeding spaghetti to the unhoused. He gave me the classic awkward car hug and kissed me. He told me his sister just had her first baby. Seeing this as the perfect segue, I told him I, too, was having a baby except I wasn’t keeping mine. He blinked at me.
So I did what any woman of a certain generation might do in this situation. I played him Enya’s greatest hit, “Only Time.”
The lyrics were eerie and ethereal:
“Who can say where the road goes?
Where the day flows? Only time”
Gabe became sick in the following days and didn’t talk much. Not that he talked much to begin with, but now he was practically nonverbal. He felt personally responsible for the situation, but I couldn’t blame him. I was there too. Did I consider that I come from a long line of fertile women or that this was how babies were made? No, I wasn’t exactly thinking.
Originally from North Carolina, Gabe, who played drums, moved to Los Angeles just a year prior with his two musician brothers. Out of place but finding his groove in long, solitary nights of painting and playing music with his family, he was living an artistic, albeit quiet, life. During the day, he worked as a substitute teacher, and I worked at being a stand-up comedian in L.A., which, if you look closely enough, is not work at all. I was underemployed. A baby wasn’t in our cards. Besides, I had my career to focus on.
I called Kaiser Permanente and asked for an abortion.
“I’ll take one abortion, please.” I asked like I was ordering a pizza.
“You’d like to terminate a pregnancy?” the person on the other end of the line confirmed.
“Yes, an abortion,” I repeated.
“When would you like your termination?”
Kaiser directed me to Planned Parenthood. The closest clinic I could find that could do the abortion the soonest (two weeks from then) was in Lawndale. That was two hours away from where I was living at my childhood home.
I had my brother drive me with my sister in the backseat. I went to the appointment and waited three hours to be seen. I waited so long that they played the first two “Twilight” movies on the small overhead TV. Women of all ages sat in the waiting room, darting their eyes, looking for connection and distraction. The only thing I could bring myself to do was put on red lipstick and take selfies. They told me the baby was 5 weeks old. The nurse was nice in a customer service way. She told me to expect chunks.
That week, I shot a comedy sketch. Entitled “How To Get Rid of COVID in 5 Easy Steps!,” I acted out five very fake ways to get rid of COVID-19. It got 110,000 views on TikTok.
A month later, I hosted a comedy variety show at El Cid on Sunset Boulevard. Around that same time, Roe vs. Wade was potentially going to be reversed, and Texas outlawed abortions. So I made some joke about my beat-up car and abortions that went something like this: “I’m really glad I got my abortion in California because if I were in Texas, I couldn’t drive out of state. I have a 1999 Toyota Camry — it just couldn’t handle it.”
That’s how Gabe’s brothers found out. Me talking on a mic to 60 strangers in a Spanish restaurant on a Wednesday. We didn’t discuss it after. I posted the joke online a few weeks later: 2,892 views on TikTok.
Soon after, my sister told me she had seen Gabe on a dating app. We broke up soon after that. I processed it the only way I knew how — once again by telling jokes to strangers. “My ex was really into door hardware. (Beat.) He was on Hinge. My sister told me he was on Hinge. I don’t recommend that. (Beat.) Having a sister.” It ended up with 19,600 views on Instagram.
A few months post-breakup, Gabe came over. After having sex, he was washing up in the bathroom, and I was in the bedroom. I called out to him.
“Do you ever think about the fact that we almost had a kid?”
His reply was instant. “All the time.”
“All the time” played like a mantra in my head for days. It rang out to me in my sleep, in my waking life. I wanted to replay my 20s, to rewind, to fast-forward, to choose differently. I would try to see myself with a child. They’d be 4 years old now. Gabe would be there. We’d be living together in North Carolina where he’s from. We’d be happy. I’d be writing. He’d be painting. We’d have big windows and a backyard.
Recently, Gabe moved back to North Carolina. I’ve stopped performing. When I think of foregoing a baby for a comedy career, I think: What career? I work as a copywriter. No awards to my name. Nobody recognizes me. I never made it to 100,000 followers. At the time of writing this, I have 3,390 followers on Instagram. Just 96,610 to go.
I think of Gabe and think of him thinking about it. The potential kid, the aborted future. I wonder if he mourns it too. He must. Like a botched cover of Enya’s greatest hit, his voice calls out to me from the wall between us.
All the time. All the time. All the time.
Emma Estrada is a writer and comedian living in Glassell Park. She co-hosts Confessions, a monthly reading series. Learn more about it on Instagram: @confessions.reading.
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This story originally appeared on LA Times
