On Fulfillment

One learns to live with one’s regrets. I bank on this, or I know it, I suppose, because I’m not dead yet and I spend a fair amount of time considering mine. They keep me awake in the dead of night, or weighed down and lumbering along when I’m in a rush to get somewhere, or feeling short of appetite when I ought to be hungry. What I mostly regret is my behavior. It seems safe to assume I have control over that—what I say, how I say it, how it gels with my body language—but you’d be surprised how often I fail.

I just spent a week with my family and have been feeling badly about my behavior. Generally, I just couldn’t fake it anymore. (You’ll always regret acting like an asshole; You can’t fake stuff anymore; Forget good sleep: these are items under “What I Know Now That I’m Thirty,” a running list in my journal.) I couldn’t pretend that I enjoyed an activity I wasn’t enjoying, or that my mind wasn’t elsewhere when it obviously was, or that a beloved but obviously shitty local restaurant was any good, or that the funny-guy family friend was not a feckless alcoholic. It would’ve been easier if I could have played along, to engage, not be rude, but I just couldn’t fake it. Maybe I've never been able to. I zoned out or wandered off, which I hope was better behavior than sharing my thoughts in confrontational, explicit terms. Still, what’s conveyed implicitly usually still comes across loud and clear, and that is the home of my regrets.

But I also threw myself into the fray. I turned to my sister-in-law, who’s a somewhat new mother, during an awkward lull in the conversation one morning and I asked, “So what is the most unexpected change in your life since you became a mom?” Why did I do that? I didn’t want to hear the answer, because I knew what it would be. But surely I could have affected curiosity at her response. I could have not pursed my lips and clenched my jaw, I could have not indulged in a long, single, audible by definition ujjayi breath.

Fulfillment. That kind of fulfillment, she told me, even if other new moms had told her about it, it still comes as a surprise. Every time she thinks of her child she’s reminded of how fulfilling an experience it is. The shock and gratitude of bearing, and bearing responsibility for, a living person. She didn’t anticipate that.

I think I knew how much it would weigh on me, that answer, which is why I immediately regretted asking for it. I took it personally. I felt wounded. It seemed tactical in that moment, a psychological attack on a freewheeling gay guy who lives in New York, spends his late mornings writing recipes and late evenings drinking with his friends—a gay guy who will very likely never have children, and definitely himself will never experience motherhood—from a new mom, two years my junior, who feeds, entertains, and changes the diapers of an erratic toddler that can’t care for herself—many times a day—and goes to bed at 8pm, usually not interested a drink because the pull of sleep is so alluring.

I wasn’t necessarily looking for competition, but I wondered what, if any, fulfillment I could claim that would ever measure up to that one. My books are achievements, so far they’ve brought me an odd mix of pleasure, pride, and anxiety, and they were a lot of work to write. But I see them as scenic viewpoints on the road to fulfillment, not the fulfillment itself. My friends and boyfriends have brought me comfort and satisfaction and something like fulfillment, for varying stretches of time, but these tend to get traded in or sent temporarily to the curbside as we trade up for other, more potentially promising forms of fulfillment. Most physical exertion brings me fulfillment—yoga, running races, swimming—but I sound like a crazy person admitting that. Being an uncle? That’s fun, but it has an inherent remove. The obvious conclusion is that lasting fulfillment is a total joke, but I’ll never know for sure since I’ll never be a mom.

I relayed this story to a group of friends last night—a group of gay guys who I met over the internet, who I only see a few times a year but who nonetheless I’ve come to think of as something of a support group—and one of them told me that the proprietary conflict between a sibling and a spouse, particularly a sister-in-law and a brother, is something that never really gets properly greased. That makes sense, that on some conscious or subconscious level we’re probably threatened by one another. My friends and I discussed (for maybe the five thousandth time) the chasm between us gays and the straights, the disparity in representation and mutually shared and understood experience. The interior lives of gay men just never seem to, maybe never will, capture the sympathy or attention or interest of the mainstream in such a way that we could say something like “motherhood is the ultimate fulfillment” and have it ring true in a widespread way. We digressed and considered how, of our siblings, we—the gay guys, without kids, without “real” obligations—will probably end up the caretakers of our aging parents. (I’ve thought about this many times and have already made peace with it.) But then another friend butted in: “What could your sister-in-law have said to that question that wouldn’t have irritated you?” And that is a good question.

Then again, there was a slight lift and lighting up when I asked her for her thoughts on motherhood: It was clear she’d never been asked before. She’d heard, as we all have, countless mothers on daytime talk shows, in movies, and celebrity profiles go on about the joys and pitfalls of motherhood. But she herself had never been the subject. She wanted me to know, was eager to share, how moved she’s been by the experience. It made me feel a little bit sorry. Our thirst for recognition runs real deep—hers, mine, and most everyone’s.

So many times over these vacations I fume inside. Civilization got us plenty far before the advent of organic baby food pouches and pack-and-plays, we really can't make due without just this once? And, Get your shit together, I want to scream: Just do that load of laundry when you wake up, rather than 5 minutes before we need to leave town for the weekend! Look up the number on the city’s waste management website and just order a goddamn recycling bin! Just put the dirty dishes in the dishwasher as they come—Jesus Christ, you have a dishwasher!—and then you won’t have to worry about all your baby cups festering with bacteria! 

But now, of course, now that there’s a baby, all these criticisms are moot. So I try to plan my family trips by anticipating the expiration date of my petty patience, and then I take pleasure and relief in returning home to my little studio apartment, where I have my functional galley kitchen, my welcoming little dining nook, my composting routines, and my cast of friends who get this shit. And as far as fulfillment goes, I lean on this comfort like a Truth. Even if it won’t burp or learn to drive a car or provide me one day with grandchildren, it’s as close as I’ll probably ever get.