Went over what I had.

Sheila, to me, was Jesus—her birthday, after all, was literally Christmas—meaning I was gonna fully consider everything she said, even if it ran counter to everything I’d been saying.

Which it did.

I’d been saying: All this self-cancelling renunciation of baby-having—under the guise of man-cancelling feminism—was a dark, dark nihilism.

Neoliberal feminism nothing more than a savage, ruthless careerism.

Overlooking how/why we were all here in the first place. Namely, those individuals, our parents, who’d chosen to procreate.

Overlooking the frivolousness of the money-making/power-grabbing/reactionary flex.

Like, OK, yes—dudes have been shitty for all time; but so, what, now the move was to…out-shitty them?

I don’t know, bro.

Didn’t know whether that was the move.

Whether that would provide long-term satisfaction, once that hit of reactionary ‘clapback’ power wore off.

Like, in a Nietzschean, ressentiment-type way.

Not that I wasn’t operating within Nietzschean-type ressentiment, thinking this.

Shoot, saying—writing—it.

But still.

I walked away from where I usually walked. Away from Wilshire.

Up the back, sloped parking area behind the ma’s, away from the Whole Foods back alley, to residential alleys north. Towards where seemed quieter.

Concentric spiraling outward, onto new alleys; then back inward, retracing them.

Rambling and riffing until the strangeness of hearing my own voice—of imagining how it would sound, later, on the internet—faded. Till I forgot that whatever I was saying would go on the internet.

But Sheila.

Sheila wudn’t tryna have a kid.

Wudn’t tryna be a mom.

Or, she had been. At first.

Then she no longer was.

Then she was again; only, this second time, pivoting momhood’s meaning.

Shifting her definition of ‘momhood.’

Momhood, eventually, meant being an art-mom.

Having an art-baby.

A book-babe.

Book babies.

I mean, I got it. For her, as a late-thirties woman, an established, late-thirties writer, this move was the different thing.

The counterintuitive/interesting thing.

Why limit parenting to the nuclear family?

Mad orphans out here.

She/me orphans! Lowkey. Her book seemed to imply.

This, essentially, how I justified all my fuckshit leading to ex bae dipping.

Why limit love to the monogamous pair?

I loved V like I loved editor bae like I loved side—along with ex.

It wasn’t ex bae personally, but the societal conventions of bae-hood, that said I couldn’t love them the same if I was to love ex.

An either/or thing.

Sheila’s take seemed to echo this—my initial stance that led to ex bae leaving. A love ethic that was pan-amorous, care-oriented, non-ownership-based.

Inclusive.

And counterintuitively, given it contradicted the stance I’d taken after—once ex bae left. Of wanting suddenly to procreate, do marriage, be the family guy.

That after-the-fact fidelity.

That much-too-late loyalty.

I’d been a ho; I hadn’t been, like Chris Brown says hoes ain’t, loyal.