BYOP Thursdays. Stuart hated bring your own pillow Thursdays.

Julia waddled along a few steps in front of him with a gigantic leather tote slung over her shoulder full of everything she hauls around wherever she goes. Extra clothes, hairbrush, toothpaste and toothbrush, shampoo, conditioner, tubes and tubes and bottles of lotions and creams, a nightgown, two pairs of pajamas, a bathrobe, winter socks, slippers, a sleeve of juice boxes, sugar-free candies, batteries in C, AA and AAA and candles. And matches. Waterproof just to be on the safe side.

His golf clubs weighed less than all that gear. Probably doesn’t have her golf spikes in there. Calls it her goody bag. He drew the line at carting around some fairy lights to go on the ceiling of the birthing room, a turntable and her favourite albums. He was lucky getting stuck with only carrying the pillows.

He imagined someone yelling at him from a passing car: You always take pillows with you when you go out?

Anybody who did that would be an asshole for picking on people just because they walk around with their bedroom pillows under their arm. It never really happened. But if it did, he was ready to yell back: Yeah your wife likes me to bring them because she doesn’t want me using yours.

He had no idea what he’d answer if it was a woman hassling him about the two large pink and blue flower pillows he shifted from one hip to the other as they slogged along past manicured lawns, neat gardens and rows of spectators.

Over the past weeks, he’d come to appreciate that even though there’s not much to them on a bed, there’s no easy way to carry two queen-sized pillows in your arms while you walk a block from the closest parking along a city sidewalk. They’re too squishy.

Taking pillows with you for a walk felt like a violation of the fundamental truth of pillows, a denial of the essential pillowness of the pillow. They were bred to be pillows not something to accessorize your outfit when you go out. They express themselves best in the privacy of the bedroom not in the public hullabaloo of a busy Toronto street filled with gaggles of the curious all stopping to ask you about them.

Oh what cute pillows you got there, are they twins? How old are they?

Taken out of their home environment, they’re probably terrified. That’s why they go floppy and limp, like misbehaving kids writhing on the floor as a tactical defense against being manhandled by an exasperated parent.

Pillows are like the cat. Best left at home relaxing on the bed until you return.

He once said this to Julia, and she rolled her eyes and told him to man up. They’re just pillows Stuart, she said.

The evening sun was sinking directly ahead of them at the end of the street and shining into his eyes when he looked up at the houses they were passing. He couldn’t see them but he knew the gawkers were there, sitting out on porches in deckchairs to watch them, the weekly march of the proudly pregnant.

Like penguins they were. Stuart’s mind wandered so he didn’t have to think about it. Just part of the breeding ritual of the shamelessly self-effacing as we seek enlightenment. Ok, that’s probably over the top.

Just something to get through. Like a quest. You do it to get it done. You don’t question it when they send you out on a mission. For the last six weeks, that mission has been to sit in a circle on the floor, a very hard floor, and talk about having a baby with a bunch of other pregnant people you don’t know.

More busy-bodies peeked out at them from behind curtains.

The sidewalk pillow fights he imagined never happened. Still he prepared for them in his head so as not to count the steps and not think of all the homework he’d not done and how much shit he was going to get this week.

He really hated Thursday nights.

A man watered his lawn. Same guy every Thursday. Four houses down from where they were going. Checking out the herd of pillow zombies shuffling down the street. If people want to air their bedroom laundry in public, the gawkers will gawk.

Julia said hello to the man with the hose. He said hello back.

They’re designer, asshole.

“You know, no one’s looking at our pillows,” Julia said. “They’ve seen other people come here.”

“Whatever.”

“Why does it bug you?”

He knew Julia loved the attention that comes with being pregnant and carting half her bedroom closet out with her everywhere she goes. Probably just wants to be prepared in case she pops out a litter of six.

“Maybe I don’t like traipsing down the street carrying the pillows from our bedroom like we’re going to a sleep over for thirty-year olds,” he said. “And why do you think it bugs me, anyway?”

“Because you said it does. And they’re not from our bedroom. They’re from the spare room.”

“Oh big whoop! I feel so much better now that you cleared that up.”

He turned back to the man watering his lawn and lifted up a pillow.

“Hey hoser, they’re from the spare room.”

He knew that was childish.

Tough noogies.

No matter that they’d been doing it for six weeks now, he didn’t like going anywhere he had to bring his own pillows.

Episode 2: Six weeks earlier, the pillow fight with the harpy

Certified Birth Experience Enhancement Agent – Lamaze. The words hand-written in large loopy letters on a flier Julia pushed at him over breakfast a hundred years ago. Stuart considered it then only an unreal possibility. Without giving it any more thought, he must have said yes.

And then suddenly, holy shit, it was the first Thursday.

A sign taped above the doorbell. Yellow printing on green construction paper: Ms. M. MacLennan-Colby, B.A.

In the same child-like printing as the breakfast flier: Parallel and Aspirational Life Advisor, Social Essence Optimization Architect & Colon Counsellor, 252-5571.

Stuart wondered how a child could get a B.A.

Julia leaned on the balcony railing hiking up her track pants, breathing heavy from the walk.

“Stuart, hurry up. Ring the bell.”

“I was just reading her bio. Nice printing,” he said wishing he was anywhere else.

“Crap. I forgot the pillows,” she said.

“How do you counsel somebody’s colon?”

Ms. M. MacLennan-Colby, B.A., caught him on the bell.

“Please don’t ring the bell.”

“Sorry.”

“No need to apologize,” she said.

“I wasn’t apologizing. It was just sorry.” He felt he’d been set up. He looked at Julia.

“I’m Margo,” she said. Then she turned and scurried away down a long hall.

“Are we supposed to go after her?” said Stuart. “Or is it over now?”

Julia pointed at the door. “Go in”.

And down the hall they went. Stuart heard other voices. He let his breath out slowly. His shoes were too loud on the floor as he hurried after Margo. He tried to step softly.

Not in the washroom, the door’s open. Must have gone through the curtain at the end of the hall where sparkly strings were swinging.

He let Julia pass him, motioning for her to go in first. She pushed through a curtain of miniature glass hearts carried by birds in their feet. Very hippie. A bead wacked him in the eye. The voices stopped.

“You didn’t bring pillows,” said Margo. She looked at Stuart.

“Yes, we’re without pillow,” he said, rubbing his eye. He made a sad face. “We’re pillowless at the moment.”

It was a joke.

Stuart had never met an actual shapeshifter before. Although Margo presented as a human female of indeterminate age, he saw another form begin to manifest itself before his eyes. An otherwise unremarkable battle-axe was becoming an evil hate-filled harpy of the sort generally roused into a killing rage by the merest whiff of expiating humour.

Some mutant harpies are particularly vengeful, driven to a frenzied madness in fact, when they come across a joke that is entirely innocent and offered simply to lighten the mood. Margo it appears was a full-grown daughter of that ancient line of harpy known for the gusto with which it takes to killing humans slowly, especially men, often over a period of six weeks, before removing their eyes and leaving them to bleed out.

Oh goody, he thought as he felt her talons walk up his rib cage towards his throat. She hates me already. That didn’t take long.

“Don’t forget them again,” said Margo.

Her tone made his stomach tighten. He’d had a bad day at the yard and now this.

He saw the scowl before she pulled it back. She was smelling him, probably sensing the anti-harpy. She would lend him pillows tonight—but only this once—thrusting a claw at his face.

Him? Why not them?

Why didn’t she shove that crooked pinkie into Julia’s face? She’s the one who forgot the pillows. And who points with her little finger? It’s a tell. Only harpies.

Maybe because Julia is so terrible at telling jokes harpies attracted to the smell of humour don’t detect her as prey.

Margo’s impromptu speech—to set the tone for our weekly sessions, she said—about how the mom can’t be expected to remember everything seemed rehearsed. She cocked her head at him like a crow examining roadkill. He got it. It was his fault, sorry for being the non-mom.

Margo clacked out of the room through the shimmering beads of what Stuart could now see was not at all a kitschy hippie love motif of hearts and feathers but birds tearing into human organs.

“I guess a chair would be out of the question,” said Stuart.

A woman giggled. The man with her tsked and she choked it off. She had blonde hair that lay soft on her shoulders.

Julia smiled at him. “Sorry.”

There was no furniture in the room.

Stuart whispered. “Oh more goody. No carpets. Love the hardwood splinters and nail pops vibe she’s working here. Maybe she’s waiting for the episode of This Old House where Bob Vila and Norm show how to fix a crappy floor with a rug.”

Margo came back and saw Stuart’s face.

“It’s so much more fun to sit on the floor, isn’t it?” she said. It wasn’t a real question.

He was fifteen the last time sitting on the floor was fun. Mary Ellen Campbell’s parents let her have boys to a party in her basement. Someone turned the lights off. The minutes were a sweaty darkness as he got two buttons opened on Mary Ellen’s shirt. He remembered listening for the steps of parents at the top of the stairs over her breath in his ear. And the thumping of In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida.

Other couples were there, their backs against all the available wall space. Already having fun sitting on Margo’s refinished splinters. They seemed around their age.

He was thirty. He liked being thirty because it meant he didn’t have to do much he didn’t want to do. Julia didn’t mind him going out with the guys every week, and they always went to the same bar to listen to Lou on the guitar. And the bar had furniture. Like chairs you could sit on. No one sat on the floor. Those bar nights were Thursdays and now he was here instead. For the next six weeks.

“We didn’t want to start without you.” Margo said it to him.

That’s a shot about being late. In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida. It wasn’t Cream. He wanted to check his watch and tell her it was only seven-thirty. Maybe Vanilla Fudge?

“Sorry, we got held up.”

Or Moby Grape?

“Next time, please call if you’re going to be late. It’s about collective responsibility to the group.”

Blue Cheer, Deep Purple, The Doors?

“This is our last couple,” said Margo to the others. “Julia and Steven Laurence.”

“Sorry. Stuart,” he said.

“Pardon?”

“You said Steven. It’s Stuart.”

Margo stared at him blankly, unwilling to acknowledge any fault.

Stuart continued. “You know, as in the kings of Scotland and England. Stuart.”

She frowned and looked over her glasses at the clipboard. She brought it closer to her eyes as if she was sniffing for a blood scent.

“Yes, of course. The writing on the form is illegible.”

He gestured at Julia.

“My wife’s. It’s her. She’s always been illegible. Even as a kid, she was illegible.”

He smiled to signal it was another joke. He was going for a laugh. No one got that it was a joke.

Maybe they’d gone to the wrong house and this was a reunion of the zombie class of 1969. He’d already taken the rap for the pillows.

It was Julia not being ready when he got home that held them up. And they weren’t late anyway. Everyone else was early.

Iron Butterfly! He whistled under his breath. He imagined a fist pump.

Margo jerked the clipboard away from her face, pointed it at his feet. She shoved her glasses up on her forehead and made her eyes small at something.

He looked down.

“Shoes!” She yelped it like she’d caught something in a zipper.

Was there dog shit on his shoes? He looked at the others. No shoes. Julia? She must’ve kicked hers off in the porch. And she wasn’t smiling now. Mad about calling her illegible.

He bent down and pulled at his laces.

In a gadda da vida, honey, don’t you know that I’m lovin’ you.

At the juice break, Stuart went out for a smoke. Dick came after him. Just to chit chat.

Dick told him he was in construction. Announced he’s a venture capital catalyst initiator.

“At your service,” he added with a little bow.

Stuart looked at his hands. Didn’t look like a guy you see on a job site.

“If I don’t go to work, nothing’s getting built,” Dick said. He flapped his hand in the air with a flourish.

He asked Stuart what he was in.

“Concrete” Stuart said.

Dick was impressed. “In spot market commodities or futures contracts?”

“Actually, in a truck. I back it up and put the concrete where it goes.”

Dick looked like he swallowed a bug. Stuart watched his cheeks bulge as he chased it around his mouth with his tongue.

Stuart dropped his voice for effect. “If I don’t go to work, nothing’s getting built.” Then he did Dick’s hand in the air back at him.

Episode 3: The fifth Thursday: oxblood loafers and the pregnant man

His knee cracked when he knelt down to untie his shoes. He knew they were clean because he’d had an apprentice with him all day, and he sent him out at the job sites when they were delivering concrete.

He liked training a new driver. All he had to do was back the truck up and let NewGuy do everything else: run the mixer, get the chute pointed where the customer wants it and then drop the mix. Then NewGuy cleans it all up while Stuart sits in the cab and fills out the paperwork. Try not to run over your apprentice, keep your shoes out of the mud and that’s a good day today.

Until he remembered it was Thursday.

He couldn’t believe they’d been at it for a month.

Through the front door, he saw Susan climbing up the steps. Looks like she’d brought Dick with her again. Too bad. Guess she has to because she needs someone to drive her.

Stuart thought how some people’s names seem perfect for them once you get to know them. You couldn’t imagine Sting being anyone other than Sting. Even though of course he’s really a Gord. But Gord just doesn’t fit Sting.

And then there’s Dick. Yep, that’s his name. He really is a Dick.

“Hello, Stuart,” Dick said.

Stuart picked at a wad of gum on the bottom of his shoe. Dick flipped off his loafers. Stuart looked at them. Tassels. How would you get mud out of tassels?

“Nice eh?” Dick said. “I know it’s sassy, but I like adding the pop of oxblood when I’m doing jeans. They’re bespoke. I can give you the name of my cobbler if you like.”

Cobbler? Is he talking about food now? Is that a crisp or a crumble? Who gets shoes from a cobbler?

“Yeah, I’ll let you know, Dick,” said Stuart. Dick’s jeans had a crease in them. He irons jeans? Maybe they’re new. He touched his chin. He couldn’t remember if he’d shaved this morning. He noticed a spot of concrete had dried on his left knee. He hadn’t seen it before.

Stuart smiled hello to Susan. He hadn’t caught Dick’s last name at the first meeting and it would be a defeat to ask for it now. It was two words and one of those names that comes from a job. Like brown-noser or ass-kisser.

How does a Dick get a great wife? Dick’s wife Susan would laugh out loud at the stupid stuff. By the second meeting, Stuart knew that she was resisting it too. Fighting it. The ideology. The four levels of breathing. The fake French words that Margo kept saying in her fake French so that when she said centi-meters it came out sono-meters.

Margo said the word cent is French so out of respect for the French she says it with a French accent. When she later told them to watch for ten sonometers he thought she was talking about a submarine in Lake Ontario.

Susan didn’t speak much but he thought she was nice. He noticed that she seemed to give Dick more space when he leaned forward at sharing circle.

And Dick liked to share. He’d say he was reluctant to say something and then tell us for the hundredth time something I just realized about my own personal journey as a pregnant man.

And more wide-eyed mouth-gaped farting about the personal contract he’s written with himself to support his emotional self-care. Dick’s had to dig deep, he’d say, to find the courage to love himself and praise himself and affirm himself through a self-acknowledgement of his feelings about being with child.

Stuart ignored Dick when he did his weekly monologue on the discoveries he’d made about himself that have brought him closer to himself. His wife leaned away as Dick got teary about getting closer and closer to himself.

Stuart felt sorry for her. He didn’t know how to look at her without feeling he was prying into something he had no business knowing. Like when he’d see a lost soul pushing a shopping cart down the street filled with bags and blankets and plastic tarps and winter clothes. He’s thought about how he’d say hello and introduce himself and ask them their name just so they know they’re not invisible. He wants to look in on that life and understand why it is the way it is. There must be family somewhere who miss them. They must once have been important to someone.

But at the same time, he worries about causing hurt by sticking his nose where it doesn’t belong. Or maybe he was just afraid of what he’d see if he opened the door to that life pushing the shopping cart.

Susan didn’t have a shopping cart full of garbage when she came on Thursdays. Just Dick in a Range Rover. Stuart wondered if she ever thought about Dick being so much more pregnant than her.

He glanced at her. Dick was at the part of his routine where he pauses for dramatic effect and wipes at his eyes. She was staring back at him. He heard her in his mind saying she was tired of all the bullshit. She smiled. Their secret. He smiled back. Secret knowledge. Like brothers under the skin.

An absurd idea. She had quite enough under her skin. Stuart understood now what he liked about her: she knew a Dick when she saw one. He wanted to help her with her shopping cart.

Episode 4: After the pillow fight, ass-kissing as a competitive sport

Stuart wondered if there’s ever been a comic book about a guy named Ass-Kisser? That’s Dick. If Dick’s got a superpower it’s ass-kissing. Bum sniffing first. Then right into ass-kissing.

Stuart saw him with one of those superhero utility belts that have a ridiculous number of pouches. In one pouch, a stick of lip balm to keep those ass-kissers moistly puckered up. And a can of aerosol nasal spray in another pouch to get his nose primed to go up Margo’s butt.

Dick started ass-kissing the first night. Stuart and Julia were the last couple to arrive, and there was nowhere for them to sit. With their pillows, bags, notebooks, and someone’s sleeping bag, the assembled communicants took up all space where a wall offered some support for sitting on the floor.

Dick scrunched the sleeping bag smaller. His wife Susan hitched over and smiled at Julia. Julia thought about squeezing in beside her but she couldn’t get down without help. She never was very flexible but the last month she’d begun to move around with all the dexterity and grace of a giant panda. And a fat one at that.

Julia turned her back to the opening at the wall and looked at him. He’d backed in fully loaded thirty-tonne concrete trucks up a grade that weren’t as risky as this maneouver.

Julia put out her hands, and he faced her with his feet spread shoulder-wide. She began to lower her backside down as he eased her into position. He thought about making the meep . . . meep . . . meep alarm his truck does when he’s backing in. Don’t want to run anyone over back there.

He grabbed the waist-band of her track pants and shifted her to the right a bit so she didn’t poke Margo in the head with her ass on the way down.

Margo had shoe-horned herself into the space the others had opened up for them. She sat cross-legged on the floor, her hippie dress hiked up to her knees. She sipped a mug of something you drink as punishment for a crime. In one of her we need to eat healthier episodes, Julia threw out all their coffee and had them drinking chicory root. Margo’s green sludge smelled much worse. Like maté infused with ashtray and decomposing grandpa.

Dick shifted over and Stuart squished himself in.

More goody. Dick’s got a smelly hair gel thing going. Remember the man that the Old Spice guy was always saying could smell like him? Well, Dick’s that man. Eau de burnt packing peanuts with a hint of paint thinner.

And Stuart gets to cuddle with him for the next two hours. He wondered if the cult had a pen out back where they kept the heretics. He’d be ok tied up to a stake with the rest of the non-believers.

Even with Margo’s pillow shoved under the side of his leg, the floor chewed on his ass. He saw the images of ancient hockey players printed on the pillowcase and wondered how Margo would even have such a thing. Montreal Canadiens. Jean Beliveau in his bleu, blanc et rouge, legs wide, his stick feathering the puck to Henri Richard in full flight. The disembodied face of a grinning Gump Worsley floating above them like an angel watching from heaven. That’s where he came from, another place, another time. The pillow seemed like a relic that had slipped through a tear in time to offer him some comfort.

He’d been in interrogation rooms that were bigger than this holding pen. Not that he’d had any first-hand experience, mind you. Like in Law & Order when the uniformed cop is sent out to get someone coffee so there’s no witnesses to what’s about to happen, and the perp nervously coughs up the goods on some bad guy just because they threaten to beat the crap out of him. He looked around for the one-way mirror.

“Julia, why did you choose to have a Lamaze baby?” Margo said.

Stuart didn’t like the sound of that, the way she said Lamaze baby like it was something you get at Abercrombie & Fitch. He tried crossing his legs the other way. He’d lost the feeling in his feet except for where the arches were beginning to cramp. He figured once they went fully numb at least they’d stop hurting.

Julia must’ve got the answer right because Margo said something that sounded a bit like yes that’s good. But it also could have been oh shit the human part of my mouth is dissolving from sipping snail entrails.

Margo was very excited and nodded mmm-mmm as she took another slurp of her eye of newt.

Stuart was in cub scouts when he first discovered that he wasn’t built for sitting on a hard floor for long without it setting his back on fire. Never did get his sitting on the floor badge.

He tried to cancel the ache in his back by pushing his shoulder into the edge of a chipped window molding. He could feel the corner of the window trim poking into his shoulder like the blunt end of a screwdriver. Then he’d lean forward, and the pain would stop. And then he’d push back again creating what he imagined was a dent in his shoulder blade. At least it was a torture that he could control.

“Stuart?” Margo looked at him.

He raised his hand. “Present.” Susan laughed.

Margo put her mug on the floor.

“Same question.”

He hadn’t heard another question.

“Sorry, could you give it to me again?”

She stared at him over her glasses and took a deep breath.

“Why did you decide to have a Lamaze baby?” She said it like she knew he was trying to be a pain in the ass. He wasn’t.

“I’m with Julia,” he said.

His stomach had a lump of cement in it when she didn’t move on to someone else. He’s got to stop eating on the outside tables at the yard. She went at him again.

“Yes, I know.”

He spoke slowly so she’d understand.

“I’m Julia’s husband.” He paused to let it sink in. “I’m with her.”

He pointed a gun finger at Julia, pulled the trigger and made a loud click.

“With her,” he said.

Margo didn’t laugh. Probably threw up in her bowl more than she laughed. Was this about the damn pillows? She’d already nailed him for the shoes on her fuckin’ shitty hardwood. She’d crapped on him because Julia had made them late for the frigging meeting.

“Julia told us why she decided to have a Lamaze baby,” Margo said. “I’m asking why you decided to have a Lamaze baby.”

Is she out of her mind? Because he wasn’t having the baby, Julia was. But you don’t say that anymore. You showed you’re sensitive and caring by saying everything like the guy’s knocked up too. She wanted to hear we’re having a baby and we’re pregnant and we’re puking our fuckin’ guts out to the lord our god in the toilet every morning.

“I don’t get your question,” he said.

He heard paint-thinner-hair-gel guy make a clucking noise beside him. It was too warm.

“Stuart, I’m simply asking why you chose Lamaze and not some other prenatal experience.”

So that’s it. It’s about Lamaze, not the baby. Honestly, he couldn’t remember anything about choosing Lamaze. Except it wouldn’t have been him because everyone knows it’s basically the wife who makes that decision anyway.

When Julia’d slip­ped him that flier months ago, she would’ve said she wanted to take Lamaze classes, and he would’ve said okay because if he hadn’t she would’ve climbed all over him. It would’ve been a death wish to tell her he didn’t really care whether they went to Lamaze or took up bowling so long as he didn’t have to spend the rest of his life talking about how excited he was about this wonderful thing that was happening to them.

But now he did care. Now he was thinking he would’ve looked good in a rockabilly leopard shirt with his name on the front, his smokes under the shoulder, getting ready to hook a sixteen-pound bowling ball down the gutter edge before bending it in and smashing ten pins to smithereens.

“Julia chose Lamaze and I said whatever.”

Margo made a bad smell face. Did someone slip out a silent fart? It wasn’t him. Maybe Dick’s Old Spice was getting to her too.

No. She was just pissed again. He knew it was the wrong answer. No one else said anything. They waited for her to kill him.

He had to say something.

“Look, it’s about Julia’s having a problem with the hockey wives. The guys I play hockey with, we play Sunday morning, right, in North York. Matty’s one of the guys—he’s got the plumbing supply in Oak Ridges—he and Lucia have six kids. The twins are theirs but she’s older than him and has four from her first marriage so there’s not much she doesn’t know about banging out kids.”

“And there must be sumthin’ in the water at the arena because weirdest thing, a shit load of the wives are all pregnant like at the same time, including Julia. So Lucia says she’s gonna do beer and eggs benny for everyone a few Sunday mornings after hockey at their place in Oak Ridges. That way all the wives can shoot the shit like we’re doing here, and the guys can watch football. But Julia used to date Matty way back in high school and Lucia—go figure—she’s sometimes a bit freaky about it, and so Julia doesn’t want to go there. So because she’s missing out on all the chitchatting about having babies, we figure we’ll come here instead.”

Susan laughed and then coughed into the back of her hand.

Margo picked up her mug and stared at something. Maybe she found a fly not dead yet.

Then Dick started ooh‑oohing and waved his hand, his elbow in Stuart’s face.

“If I may,” he said, and everyone looked at him because he stopped after he said that and hicked like a chipmunk. He made them wait for a few seconds, and then he cleared his throat. Like the guy doing the best man speech at the wedding who thinks it’s him everyone’s waiting around for, not the open bar.

“If I may. I chose Lamaze because I wanted to subtract the one of myself to rebirth the one of myself and be one with the birth experience.”

What an ass-kisser. He must have studied or bought the answers for the exam. Because he nailed it.

Margo dropped her mug in her lap and said shit and then yipped yes, yes, thank you Dick.

Dick signaled he wasn’t done. “I also know to wear comfy shoes so I can be at my best.”

Everyone laughed. It was Dick making a joke.

Then the rest of the herd took turns telling Margo they wanted to subtract the one of themselves to rebirth the one of themselves and be fuckin’ one with the birth experience.

Episode 5: The last Thursday (again): kegel then hit the brakes

Julia rushed in to use the bathroom. Stuart waited for her in the hall. Through the open front door, he could see the Range Rover pull up.

A few minutes later, Dick and Susan shuffled into the porch. Dick pulled his shoes off fast and squeezed up against him with his sleeping bag to get up the hall. Smells like a man, Dick.

Dick nodded at him. Stuart smiled, “Dick.”

The curtain beads clicked as Dick shouldered his way in, rushing to spread the sleeping bag and claim a good spot. Like getting your towel down on a beach chair before hitting the breakfast buffet.

Stuart watched Susan struggle in the porch pulling at her shoes. She kicked Dick’s loafers out of the way. He went back to help her.

“Hey, Susan.”

“So tonight’s the last night,” she said. “Not a moment too soon.”

Her pillow and goody bag slumped against the wall. Stuart picked them up.

“Thanks. So what’s on tonight?” she said.

“You worried about the test?” Stuart said. “No problemo. Tonight’s a review of  the personal birth plan, what to put in the goody bag, and the role of neuromuscular relaxation in laaa-maaa-zze condi­tioning.”

He said laaa-maaa-zze with the hissy zzzes the way Margo says it with three syllables.

Susan stood up and steadied herself. The toilet flushed. He dropped his voice.

“I think there’s going to be a spot quiz on the perineal massage, how to give them and more importantly, how to get them.”

Stuart went on. “I’m even ready to be group breathing leader tonight if Mother of Darkness asks me. That’s assuming I get my hand up before Dick. I’ve been practicing: slow, slow modified, slow transition and then screaming but also slow.”

Susan laughed. “Impressive. Now stop it or I’m going to pee myself.”

“And then there’s my personal favourite: hit the brakes then suck up a kegel. Or maybe the other way round: hit the kegel first then hit the brakes? Not sure.”

Susan looked at him to see if he was serious.

“Yeah, I was so kegeling and rocking my rig around the yard today the foreman wanted to know if I was pulling too many hours.”

Episode 6: The Thursday of the food fight over kegels

He remembered the morning Julia’d been up half the night, and then they slept in, and he was late. And she went off on him about kegels. He had to get to the yard and load his truck.

“How are you doing with your kegels?” she said.

He wolfed down some toast and bit his tongue.

“I’ll stop at Beagle Bagel later and get some. They’re open twenty four hours.”

“Stuart, be serious.”

He winked at her.

“I am. They’re open all night. You want some cream cheese too?”

“Stop it!”

She went quiet, watching him at the table. Then she lurched into half sobbing punctuated by breathless screaming.

“You think this is a joke. You haven’t done them! What could be more important than your kegels!”

The easiest way out was to surrender quickly. He took her in his arms.

“Sorry. It’s been crazy. We’re short drivers and we got a million orders.”

­“That’s no excuse. You’re supposed to be doing them when you’re driving.”

Her shoulders shook against his chest.

“How am I supposed to get through all this shit if you don’t kegel?” she said. “Stop laughing at me.”

“I’m not laughing. I’m smiling because you’re cute when you’re a lunatic. Remind me what I’m supposed to do.”

He smoothed the tears on her face. She pushed his hand away.

She recited it as if she’s explaining the words to one of those really long country songs that goes on and on, never ending, telling a story that no one could possibly care about. Like about a guy who gets murdered because he’s mean to some girl, and then the cops are trying to find out who did it, and it was her girlfriends who offed the guy but they’re really good girls who were just trying to save her from an abusive relationship, yeah but, and here’s the twist, she gave them the name of the wrong guy, and now they got to kill another guy. And then there’s a detective who’s sweet on the girl who ordered the murder.

Sort of like a story like that. Just without the guitar, the bass, the drum, the rhythm guy, anything to make it sound like an end so the band could stop singing.

He tried to focus on what she was saying. The next part sounded like she was getting to the end.

“An exercise that stretches and relaxes the muscles controlling the urinary, vaginal, and rectal openings, resulting in increased con­trol of bowel and bladder activity, improved awareness of vaginal opening during childbirth, and possible heightening of sexual pleasure,” she said.

He shoved toast into his mouth. Staying quiet was good right now. Don’t want to be one of those yahoos who claps before the end.

“You got something more important to think about than this, Stuart?”

When she says his name in that tone, he knew there was no sense putting up a fight.

“No. I’m listening.” He swallowed the toast.

“In men it may play a role in reducing the incidence of prostate cancer,” Julia said.

Then she went back to crying.

Kegel. The night they’d all kegeled together. Like trying to suck your asshole through your balls. Margo said they should do it when they’re driving and touched the brakes. Shit, he’s the only one who spends twelve hours a day hauling a concrete truck around town. He touched the brakes a lot. That’s a lot of asshole sucking.

Margo said if they did it while driving it would become a habit. A habit of what? Sucking your asshole in when you’ve got three minutes to back up and unload a thirty-tonne concrete truck on a site with the mix going hard. And maybe try not to take out the temporary power pole they’ve stuck too close to the site road.

Oh sorry, Mr. Foreman, for running over the trainee who’s too stupid to take his ear buds out and didn’t notice my truck screaming and honking and lights flashing that was backing down on him. I didn’t see him because I was concentrating on sucking my asshole up my balls.

Stuart didn’t know what else to do for her. He held her tight.

“I’ll do them in my truck, ok,” he said.

He kissed her on the forehead. No, he said, he didn’t want to get prostate cancer.

Episode 7: The Thursday it’s triggering to be a father

The men became coaches the night Dick announced that he was triggered by the word father. Because he was a feminist. And a pregnant individual.

“It’s sexist,” he said. “As a man and a pregnant individual, I find the prospect of being called a father problematic. ”

“You’re saying you don’t want to be called a father?” Stuart said. “Or you don’t want us to call you a man?”

Stuart couldn’t imagine what Dick’s wife thinks of all the stuff her pregnant individual says out loud.

“I’m saying there’s all kinds of father‑like family configurations where the parent persona is not actually the father. For example, my father was a step dad. “ Dick emphasized step.

“I get ya,” said Stuart. “Like my father was a deadbeat dad.”

Dick looked at him.

“Brilliant, Stuart.”

Dick made his appeal directly to Margo.

“Calling us fathers is gender limiting. It perpetuates stereotypical notions of masculinity and femininity. We should draw a line in the sand and reject the sexist patriarchal hegemony of a misogynist lexicon and its chauvinistic rhetoric.”

Stuart knew the sounds coming from Dick’s mouth were words. But WTF was he saying? Patrick? A hegi-what?

He got misogynist because he’d had girlfriends in college who’d already explained that to him. A lot. A misogynist is an asshole. But you don’t earn your “hi, I’m an asshole” pin just because you say someone’s a father.

Now Dick wants a line in the sand? Or else they’re chauvinists. He knew plenty about sand because without it you can’t make concrete. But he had no idea that you’re a chauvinist if you’re not building sandcastles with Dick at his weird beach where you don’t say someone is someone’s dad because it’s triggering.

Tell this to the guys at the yard or the hockey team and they’d tell him he was standing too close to the off-gassing from the cement hopper.

He looked at the faces around the room. The herd is staring blankly at Dick. Do any of them hear this? Cowards who just follow along. They won’t move until Margo tells them it’s time for juice and goodies.

It shouldn’t always have to be him.

Dick is up on his knees now with his arms out. Big ending coming.

“We should be known for what we’re really doing here. We’re supporting. We’re nurturing. We’re coaches!”

Didn’t see that coming. Sure beats walking around in zombie circles until the herd figures out where they’re going with this tonight.

“Sounds good. I’m good with coaches,” said Stuart.

Margo started clapping and everyone else joined in and so Stuart clapped too. Even Susan clapped and looked at Stuart and shrugged like why not?

And the word father was banned because it was all those things Dick said it was.

The men had nailed the fathering part by now anyway or the moms wouldn’t be sitting around on round asses complaining about loose joints, sore feet and how to turn over in bed.

Besides, being a coach was something Stuart understood. He’d known some great coaches in his time. There was nothing like a football coach to make a man of a pregnant woman. Sorry, pregnant individual.

He coached the Junior Yorkies. Julia came to see a practice once, and it was pissing out. She couldn’t believe they’d stay there in the rain, and it wasn’t even a game. The coaches all had their slickers on, and eighteen-year old boys who play football don’t care shit about scrimmaging in the mud.

He pictured Julia in shoulder pads and a helmet doing sets of jumping jacks and then on her back in the muck for crunches.

Knees to the shoulders, lardass, count ’em!

And then Julia starts. Ho . . . Ho . . . Ho!

Then back up for jumping jacks.

Legs wide, count them, I can’t hear you!

Ho . . . Ho . . . Ho!

And then back in the slop for more crunches. And then up again, and he’d grab her by the facemask and scream into her helmet.

Look at me, Julia Laurence! Think you’re man enough to have a baby?

­Yes coach!

I can’t hear you!

Louder. Yes coach. I’m man enough to have a baby, coach!

Then plant your fat ass on the forty-yard line and then pick it up and put it down on the goal line and then back on the forty and you keep doing that ’til I’m tired of watching ya! Ya got that?

Yes coach!

I can’t hear you!

Louder. Yes coach!

Then he’d smack her on the side of her helmet and aim her at the forty-yard line. After five or six sprints, he’d tell her to hit the showers.

Probably wasn’t gonna happen.

Stuart was close enough to see Dick had hair in his ears. So Dick just wants to be a coach. Who knew?

Episode 8: The night of the anti-harpy

Stuart had a charley horse in his leg. He hoisted himself up off the floor and slammed his foot down to make it release.

It seemed to annoy Darth Margo when he stood beside her, stomping his foot and slapping hard at the back of his leg. He wasn’t doing it to piss her off. It was some serious pain. Try driving a concrete mixer twelve hours a day and then sitting on a wooden floor listening to her tell them to breathe diaphragmatically.

“Find your diaphragm,” Margo intoned. “Find your diaphragm.”

Yeah, find your fuckin’ diaphragm, Stuart thought. Maybe it’s in the car with the extra pillows they’re now lugging around in the trunk. Just something else he’d was probably supposed to bring and is going to get shit for. Yeah, always in shit these days for forgetting something he didn’t know shit about.

Sorry, Your Harpiness, I forgot my diaphragm. Can I borrow one?

If Julia hadn’t forgotten her diaphragm in the first place, maybe they’d be bowling tonight instead of here having Margo trying to peck his eyes out.

Stuart remembered these two Clydesdale horses at the carrot festival when he was a kid. The mayor’s taking too long with a speech that’s killing everyone. The horses are hitched to a wagon filled to overflowing with carrots, and they’re waiting to go.

Then the horses start talking to each other about how bored they are just standing there, and one of them slams his hoof down on a wooden ramp that’s connected to the stage where the mayor’s waving his arms and going on about the love he has for carrots.

And when the horse bangs the ramp, the mayor’s music stand holding his speech shakes, and he grabs it because it starts to fall over. The other horse notices this, and he thinks it’s funny so he bangs the ramp too, and the mayor’s stand tips over, and the pages are all over the place.

Now both horses are into it. The mayor goes back to yakking about standing for carrots while the guy who’s supposed to keep the horses quiet is in front of them telling them to cool it.

Everyone’s laughing, and the mayor makes a joke about starting his speech all over because he’s lost his place. And one of the horses bangs the ramp again, and the mayor thinks about doing more of his speech. But the horses aren’t having it, and they’re glaring at him and banging hurry up. So he quits.

Stuart laughed to himself thinking about those horses when he hitched himself up with a grimace and said oh shit, sorry, and pressed his foot into the floor. Pretty sure Margo wasn’t going to stop talking just because of a little foot tapping.

He was smiling, and that’s probably why Margo must have thought he was doing it to be an asshole. He wasn’t. Or maybe just a little.

Margo had made it a habit—which Stuart was ok with—of not saying anything to him anymore except hello and good-bye. She was going on about transition breathing and the cleansing breath.

“In through the nose and out through the mouth.”

Stuart wanted to go for a smoke.

She finished transition breathing early but didn’t want to stop for their juice break yet. To kill time, she started a question going around the room and forgot that it would get to him.

“What’s one thing your mother told you about having a baby?” said Margo.

He was zoned out, trying to be invisible. He leaned back into his corner as far away from the herd as he could. She turned to her right and there he was. Had she’d forgotten their deal, don’t ask, don’t tell?

Her smile was fake. There was lipstick on her tooth. Or maybe blood?

The herd turned to watch them. Imagine finding a piece of meat in the forest and quietly minding your own business just gnawing on it, and then a soul-sucking vampire drops in and says how’s it going? Nothing good’s ever going to come from something like that. And that’s what it was like now.

He had bugger all to give her on this one. She was the one breaking the agreement and starting it up with him again on something she must have known he’d have diddly. She was the one poking at him.

Crap. He felt the charley horse grab his leg, and he pulled himself up.

His mother would never talk to him about things like that. It would be unnatural between a woman and her son. Especially his mother.

Standing above her, Stuart sneaked a glance down at the top of her head and saw her twitch. Then he scanned the herd for any sign of intelligent life. They were waiting for a signal to start eating someone. He repeated the question to buy time and make up an answer while he banged his foot, harder this time.

“The thing my ma told me about having a baby,” he said, “was if she’s got a bun in the oven, don’t admit it unless she can prove it.”

The laughing ran up and out of him and the cramp in his leg let go. The room began to spin, and he felt something lifting him up, making him dizzy. He looked down to see if she’d slipped a barbed claw into his leg. Nothing from his belt down.

When he was a kid he read everything he could on venomous spiders. He remembered that black widows inject you with poison right where the fangs go in and you get paralyzed. He could still feel his heart beating so still good so far.

And no movement from Margo so she hadn’t stuck anything in him.

But something was definitely happening to him.

She must have sensed it too. The anti-harpies? The ancient religious order of nice people devoted to eradicating bullshit‑spreading harpies throughout the universe. They had found her on this night of all nights. And they sent as their champion…Stuart?

Not what she had expected.

Around the room, Margo’s acolytes rolled over and knocked sideways into each other, hollered whooping cheers and slapped their hands on the floor. Were some of them crying? Or had they just had their minds restored.

Margo didn’t move, maybe she was disgusted. Her claws remained sheathed.

Dick started working up a good sneer and tried to get others going by showing it off.

Margo should have waited for it to die away, and everyone would’ve just fallen into line again.

She looked around and skipped over Julia who wasn’t to be trusted anymore.

She called on Susan.

“Susan, same question please.”

“Mom says geez louise, you don’t need to go to classes. You just lay back and POP. And try not to let it land on its head if it hits the floor.”

The laughing came back, a hot noisy wind that could blow doors off hinges. Stuart saw the beaded strings on the door shaking with laughter. He felt weightless.

You just had to let the moment go until it finished. Margo sat there still. To her credit she didn’t bite. She remained human throughout it all, just a run-of-the-mill angry old woman with a taste for blood. Stuart looked at Susan, and in his mind he gave her a kiss.

THE END

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Directed by
SpookyB

Screenplay by
SpookyB

Produced by 
SpookyB

Catering and food truck by 
SpookyB

Several episodes in Thursday Night at the Cult previously appeared in one of those artsy big‑name east coast literary magazines that publishes great stories. And parts of this one. That was at a different time by a different writer. The editor and publisher of that magazine and the agents and representatives of SpookyB have agreed just to move on.

Based on a true story

Thursday Night at the Cult is a true story except for the parts that aren’t true. It is based on real people, real events and a real concrete truck.

A month after the Battle of Margo’s Cave, Stuart coached Julia as she delivered six babies: two boys, two girls and two non-binaries. Major endorsement deals followed quickly. With their new found wealth, they relocated to British Columbia, Canada and founded The Kegel Bagel, the first chain of bagel coffee shops to welcome patrons who wish to kegel at comfortable tables with soft chairs and no limits with a minimum purchase. Floor mats available upon request.

Margo gave up the prenatal experience business and took a job as a helper in the pet food department at Harpies-to-Go in Bonita Springs, Florida. She also organizes local book burnings.

Dick was stripped of his license to work in capital markets after numerous securities violations as well as felony convictions for attempting to import exotic bird seed and beaded curtains into Florida, both items on the state’s restricted items register of cultural artifacts. He transferred all his assets to his wife Susan to avoid criminal and civil penalties. In a subsequent divorce, Susan took him for everything, including the Range Rover. Today Dick is the curbside pickup coordinator for a pet food store on Florida’s Gulf Coast.

After dumping Dick, Susan and her three daughters opened a not-for-profit horse rescue north of Toronto, Canada, which she operates with her current husband, a retired compliance investigator with a shadowy government intelligence background.

Julia’s and Stuart’s kids and Susan’s kids are friends and attend annual family gatherings for fellowship and superhero training hosted by their friend “uncle” SpookyB at an undisclosed location.

Warning: This story contains no product placement

Some brands have paid to ensure their products not be placed in this story. None of their products appear in Thursday Night at the Cult.