Thursdays are Karaoke nights at the China Clipper and I was already like five Fireball jello shots in when Doug the DJ called my name even though he knew I was still in the bathroom. I was teasing up my bangs again to get ready and he went and started the song without waiting for me to come back out cuz he’s dick, but I’m a local and a regular and half the bar was already chanting “SHOUT! SHOUT! SHOUT!” before I even got up onto the stage, so fuck Doug, and anyway I still made it out to the stage in enough time to grab the mic and drop onto my knees and scream out “SHOUT AT THE DEVIL!!!” right on cue, flashing the crowd the horns and sticking out my tongue as far as it could go. I jumped back onto my feet and flipped off DJ Doug. The crowd was amped. I was killing it.
Then I got pregnant.
Not like immediately right away, because after I did my song Michelle came up and she was, of course, doing Britney, again, and she looks like Britney and by the time I got to the bar everyone forgot how hard I rocked my song and they’re all watching Michelle. Or her fake tits. All except for this one guy, who I’d never seen before, in this black hoody.
I ordered a Bud Lime. Which is a nice way to kind of wind down the night and the guy in the hoody he turns to me and he said “Did you know you were singing my song?” And he had this like, really sexy voice, kinda like Sam Elliot with a little Liev Schreiber.
But I couldn’t see his face. Because the bar was dark. And his hoody was up. And I’m thinking, your song? no way! That can’t be! Vince Neil, at the China Clipper? can it? But Vince has like a really high voice and actually I think Nikki Sixx wrote most of their songs, but it wasn’t him either, because before I could say, “hey, are you…” he pulled the hoody back from his face and he looked over at me with these like glowing yellow eyes, like gold––maybe with a little hint of green, is that called hazel, like gold and green, or is it brown and green? Anyway I felt like he was looking right into my soul. And my soul had no clothes on. I spilled my beer.
He said, “do you want me to replace that Bud Lime or do you want to get the hell out of here?”
I totally wanted to get out of there.
At this point, I feel like I have to say that I did not get killed, nor am I in any way advocating ditching your friends for a guy in a hoody that you just met at the bar after like three maybe six Fireball jello shots as well as crushing the best Motley Crue song of all time. But his eyes, oh my god, and that voice. I felt like I was, like, mesmerized. I felt like I couldn’t say no. And anyway I didn’t want to. Honestly, it ended up being maybe the best sex I’d had in my life.
That’s not to say it wasn’t weird, cuz it was, or I mean, he was kinda weird, I mean he was great, but his body was, maybe not human. I mean he was hot. When he took off his hoody he was all like Brad Pitt in Fight Club, like smooth and like cut, and he had like Slayer tattoos, and he had that same kind of goatee. But also he had goat legs.
So I’ve been with hairy guys before, the guy I lost my virginity to was like straight up gorilla. This guy was not that. He had like coarse thick hair growing from just below his belt and all down his legs. Which is weird right? But everything was moving so fast and it was so good and I was already like all blissed out cuz, oh yeah. He had a forked tongue. Oh. My. God. When he went down on me. So good. But yeah I’m pretty sure he had hooves too. I didn’t say anything about it at the time cuz I didn’t want to be prejudiced. And I just tried to ignore all those clicking noises his feet made while he was doing me.
We like came at the same time, too. Which I’d never done before with a guy, or not for real. It was awesome! He totally roared. And I was like, screaming I was coming so hard, Plus, I was like hallucinating. The walls behind him started to crumble and then like turned into flaming caverns, and then he grew, like, horns and batwings. And maybe a tail. But mostly my eyes were closed.
I can’t say I wasn’t disappointed, I mean I guess I wasn’t surprised, but in the morning, he was totally gone. No number, no note, nothing, just a big old bloody pentagram scratched onto my back.
You can guess what my friends had to say. Not very supportive. Beth saw me leave the bar with him that night and she was of course super judgey about it. When I got sick and called her to come over a few days later, she was all like “you could have been killed, how do you know he didn’t give you an STD, are you pregnant, bla bla bla…” And then I projectile vomited all over Beth’s lap.
I am not one of those people that pukes easily. But I was puking like three times a day for more than a month. And then there were the dreams. Weird apocalyptic dreams. And voices. Or one voice. My baby, or I think I am supposed to say fetus, whatever, was talking to me. That started up the night after my first trip to Planned Parenthood. Beth had rushed me to get the abortion right away after I puked on her. But I guess there’s like a waiting period, so they told me I’d have to come back later.
Damien––that was the baby’s name, I didn’t pick it, Damien said his father named him and I’m all like, “hoody guy?” and he’s all like “yep, that’s my dad,”––told me that when he was born I would be a queen and he would be my little prince and that hoody guy would come back and the moon would turn to blood and the sinners would burn in a cleansing fire and we would rule over the end times. Which, you know, is kinda dark, but also like, totally metal. And anyway, I did kinda wanna see hoody guy again, so I guess I just let Damien talk me into skipping my follow up appointment at Planned Parenthood.
After that though, things got bad. I’ve never been like a morning person, but I started hating the sunlight. I didn’t leave the house in the daytime at first and near the end I didn’t go outside at all. I didn’t go to work. I stopped eating. And then Damien started talking about really scary stuff, like super violent, like torture stuff and dismemberment, kind of like that movie Saw and I was just afraid to sleep. And, oh yeah, he started kicking. At like seven weeks.
I knew that Beth was calling to check on me, but I didn’t even listen to her messages. Then one day she shows up with my mom and they drive me to the Planned Parenthood clinic together. I was so underslept and malnourished by then, I was just in a kind of daze until the nurse or somebody squirted this cold lube stuff on my belly and then my bible thumping mom decided to slip a crucifix over my head and all hell broke loose.
Sorry! Anyway, Damien, or the fetus, whatever, started like freaking the fuck out, like thrash metal in my belly, and my eyes rolled back in my head, and I started foaming at the mouth and cursing in some, like, foreign languages.
I guess they put me in an ambulance and sent me to the hospital. That’s where they ended up doing the actual abortion. Did you know that abortions are only like a tiny part of what Planned Parenthood actually does? Mostly they do contraception and stuff that prevents abortions, so all you pro-life assholes should go picket a hospital because that’s where most babies are killed. Or fetuses. Whatever. Not Planned Parenthood.
I was home like the next day though. I slept for almost 20 hours afterwards, but when I woke up I wan’t even all that sore. Then I spent like two days doing research online and I even DM’d this Catholic Priest on Twitter, and holy shit. I don’t even wanna think about what would have happened if I lived in Alabama. If I hadn’t had easy access to safe abortion, it could have been like, literally, the end of the world.
And so, ladies, don’t let an unwanted baby be the end of your world. Please help me support Planned Parenthood by clicking on the donate button below. I’m proud to #shoutmyabortion, and I hope sharing my abortion story on this website encourages others to have their own.