Prison and Pregnancy is Not a Good Look

Illustration by Shan

Editor's Note: This post is brought to you by a married, adult friend of mine, who has previously appeared on this blog to voice her critique of our carrot-eating friend Bestie. After some thought, we have decided to christen her as the  D-Expert, as she appears to be the only voice of semi-reason on this site. Recently, the D-Expert called me, sounding as if she had just cracked the Holy Grail of female mysteries: "I know why you are still single! It's the PEOPLE in this city!"

Wow, no kidding. 

And so, below is the D-Expert's recount on being 6 months pregnant in the lovely, completely non-judgmental city of Paris! 

Prison and Pregnancy is Not a Good Look

I’m not talking about the metaphorical house arrest that some pregnant women are forced to endure.. No, no, no. Ladies, I’m talking about the standard issue, neon orange, XXL onesie type of incarceration.

Let’s backtrack for a second here and insert some context into this rant.

Last week I was feeling good. Better than in months. I had energy, spunk, and my face was no longer a semi-permanent fixture of the toilet bowl. In short, I felt that this was cause for celebration. My darling husband was off globetrotting for work, so my lovely, unsuspecting friend, know here as The Drama Magnet, decided to adopt me for the weekend. (Lets call this Mistake #1)

I wanted out! Dinner, dancing, the whole nine yards. Despite me being one rotund cockblock precariously balanced on Jimmy Choo heels, my poor friend still agreed to chaperone.So out we went to a lovely sushi dinner (I only ate the cooked items on the menu, don’t get your panties in a bunch), followed by a "drink" at a very hoighty toighty bar called Le Mathis, where the clientele is generally a mix of very upscale escorts and the 60+ year old men who endorse them. (Aaand Mistake #2)

On Cloud 9, with my virgin whatever in hand and gossip on lips, I felt like me again, albeit a slightly misshapen, more awkward version. That is, until a stick-up-the-ass, barely-legal double date from French wasp hell sat down next to us. Assuming that I was a dumb American who couldn't string a "Mon dieu quelle merde" sentence together in French, they commenced the bashing. "She is so BIG!", "I wonder how she even walks in those" and my all-time favorite "if MY wife was that pregnant, I wouldn’t let her out of the house". All I could do was idly stand by while this bunch of snot-nosed shitheads took turns commenting on the impropriety of my "situation".

Still in high spirits, I wanted to shake my belly like a bowl full of jelly. TDM decided that the best place to do so judgment-free would be the uber-trendy hipster (an oxymoron if there ever was one) lounge called Le Baron. (Mistake #3) Full of confidence and entrenched in peels of girlish laughter, we faced the bouncer, who quickly granted us admission.. Must be a good sign, right? RIGHT?

As it was still quite early by nightlife standards, we settled down at an  empty table and ordered bottles of the fanciest  bubbly on the menu called Perrier.. real high rollers. I looked around and actually began to feel comfortable amongst this group of misplaced misfits. An old-School Jay Z classic came on, ironically titled "It’s a hard knock life". I took it as a sign from the DJ Gods and began to shake my groove thang. (Mistake # infinity)

I kid you not when I say what ensued was straight out of a scene from a Road Runner cartoon. Heads turned in slow motion and bulging bug eyes popped out of sockets and landed directly on my gyrating belly. I was being JUDGED by a group of 30 and 40-something adult males ALL dressed in pajamas and beanie hats, stinking to high heaven of wretched BO left to fester days on end, without even the simple masking of cologne or deodorant.

Suffice to say that after this scene I went all Girl Interrupted, as visions of coming up to each pajama-wearing man-child and plucking those protruding eyes straight out of their sockets à la Kill Bill Volume 2 started to take over my mind.  Pai Mei has nothing on a hormonal woman scorned.

When the red spots began to fade and the neon orange ones took over, I realized that prison and pregnancy is NOT a good look. And so, I collected what was left of my shattered self esteem and proceeded to exit the premises before the gendarme had a reason to get involved.