Why Don’t I Like the Smell of Babies?

I will answer your pressing questions

Q. Why don’t I like the smell of babies? Everyone says they smell good and I just don’t get it.

A. What? Who says this. I have never met a good-smelling baby. They all have a stink. They all have a galactic tang. And this is why we love them.

I mean, a good-smelling baby?? Can you imagine??? Ha ha no. Not for me. No offense, just not my thing.

Q. A coworker cheated on her husband with my friend. Now she’s pregnant, and her husband doesn’t know. Should I tell him?

A. Sweet hog in heaven! I am used to questions about frogs and cinnamon rolls and smelly babies. This one is different.

First, this little situation is what I like to call a case of BAD MAGIC. In other words: is it crazy magic that it happened? Yes. Is it bad news? Probably. Is there an answer to how to solve it? No. Will I try to answer anyway? Yes because you asked me.

I do not believe it is your responsibility to tell your coworker’s husband. No. Do not do that. He is not your husband. He is her husband. To use a Broadway musical metaphor: you are the audience, and the actors are in a freaking SLOP of a mess, but the actors? Must figure it out themselves. The audience leaping up on the stage to sort it out for them? Would be? Inappropriate.

Still, you feel weird. You feel racked with nasty vibrations! I understand. To ease that feeling, I would suggest telling your coworker and your friend how you honestly feel. Which is probably something like: “Hello friends, I am truly bummed out to be the bearer of this secret knowledge, despite the miracle of life represented by: the baby, aka the tummy walnut, aka the child, whom I love, and wish the best. And I don’t know what to do. Can you remove this bitter cup from me?” If they chuckle like a clown show when you say this to them, then just run away. You tried. They have wax in their brains.

Q. How do I move on from someone who doesn’t like me? It all feels so silly.

A. Yeah. It’s silly. You’re right. It’s all just one big nonsense, the whole of it.

You move on by remembering that the rotten, dungeon-y, dumpy feeling of “not being liked” is the only way that the earthy, rapturous, positively sublime feeling of “being liked” could ever exist. Without one we couldn’t have the other. This is the price. So, I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to pay it. We all take a turn. We all eat the pudding. But one day your cream will rise.

Q. My ex wants to tell me about her “future husband” over drinks. What should I do?

A. Uhhhhhhhhhhh obviously you should not do this! Absolutely not. It’s a trap. There’s something foul in the air. There is a chicken scent. Some sort of carrots, basil, putrid cream, a bone in a pot. The bone is your leg! Or your heart. Because why are you the audience for this sick, sick story? Why does she need to tell you about a future husband? I am so confused. I have to go. I am eating coconut cramble pie at a diner right now. I ordered decaf coffee too and drank it all but honestly I think it was not decaf! They screwed it all up! I think the coffee was caf! It is 9:03 p.m.

Q. What should you do (besides wait) when your little sister doesn’t want to be your friend?

A. I’m sorry. Rejection from a beloved runt is one of the worst times one can have on this Earth. It is not a jam at all. It is not even a summer banger. It is a complete sadness.

What makes life hard is that the people we love the most sometimes have their own journeys to take, on roads that are not our roads. And to do that, sometimes they have to steamroll us, making our heads pop off like a cork, because truth be told we are in the way. It is not our fault but we are in the way. So sometimes they reject us like molten fish. They crush our hearts to pizza crumbs. They ignore us. They call us mean names. They lick the sour powder off our candies. (Oh thanks now my sour patch kids are just regular patch?? Thanks.) They can do that. We have no control over that. Less than zero over that.

So, other than wait, I would suggest you find other warm foundations until your sister returns. Find something—not a human, parlez vous please—that you can lean on in your Times of Human Dread. Some people call this thing “God,” other people call it “A Photo of A Snail in Its House,” other people call it “Poem,” other people call it “David Bowie Dances Down Sunset Street,” other people call it “Grateful Dead” and those people are peabrains and we feel sorry for them. Just find an anchor point. Find a mountain hole to put your head through, to feel buried in a love that does not end. Your sister has something to do. She needs to do it. You will be OK while she becomes new.

Q. When will I be okay after my divorce?

A. It’s going to take longer than you think. Why? Because the first instinct is to love yourself again. To direct desire inward. But does this ultimately help you feel good? I think you know that it does not! Barking = up the wrong tree. Sure, “loving oneself” may be necessary for a season. A little self-care hot dog dinner, a little bedtime wine, a little latte in the morning, a little tenderfoot jog through the friggin’ scary Fresno fog. But this kind of love is a temporary fix. It’s true but also false. You know. Like the movie Titanic with the famous actress Keanu Del Rio.

The real stuff only comes once you start finding a way to project your desires outward, selflessly, toward the well-being of others (people, pets, ideas, roses). Ya corny huh. I know. Nobody tells you this cornball talk. In fact, whole social media empires are dedicated to not telling you this talk, and instead to telling you to focus on yourself, to find your sizzle, to find reasons to swoon like a vampire in a film. But this sizzle and swoon, while fine, and not bad, will never bring you back. They will never, in your sunset moments, make you okay.

Why? I will tell you. Because a big but sometimes invisible aspect of the trauma of divorce is the loss of one’s other-orientation, the loss of one’s deeply-cultivated habit of extending oneself and caring for someone close to you, for something other than your own face and body and dreams. In divorce the object of your desire—even if cruddy—disappears and your whole psychology turns to spaghetti. You lie down to sleep at night and look out the window and the stars look dumb and the moon seems dimmer. The aching sweet feeling of having a perpetually decentered self is gone. You have cared for nobody but yourself today. You have made no concessions, distributed no cakes. You have been a mere worm. And all of this, even if the divorce was right, needed, good. Because what is at issue is the structure of the mind. Does this make sense? THUS I say that once you find ways to reactivate this sparkling other-orientation to the world, you will start feeling better, and your life will again feel golden-blue and shiny with possibility.