Kosher Eucharist / יוקאריסט כשר

KE II has been on an informal hiatus because the hairy, gassy love of my life (Michael is more like a Cairn terrier than you’d think) and I have been busy. We’re neither of us dead, yet - although I guess if one of us dies before you read this we’re left with a Schrodinger’s Misanthrope kind of situation - but KE will probably not get back up off the ground until late this year. We do, for real and for true, plan for it to, though.

That said, I’d like to open today’s frothing polemic with a quote by Leo Stein, brother-in-law of Alice B. Toklas: when asked his opinion of women’s writing, he said, “If you can get their minds off their wombs, you can help them to some kind of intellectual development.”

Certain American women have become medievalists. They can’t read Latin and they think “She-Wolf of France” is the sequel to “An American Werewolf in Paris,” but medieval they are. Ignorant of the deeds of Edward III, they emulate his wife. Philippa of Hainault can be regarded as the perfect template for a medieval queen - she was pretty in a subdued way, cheered for her kindness, and gave birth like a hysterical salmon. She’s one of the few royal women of history to have been inconveniently fertile: her five surviving sons’ descendents would, in coming generations, have a high old time throwing each other off the throne every few years.

Centuries passed, suffragettes shouted, and women gradually became people. Barbie’s tits remained impractically hard and high, but now they strained at suit jackets and lab coats in addition to ball gowns. Birth control expanded beyond crossed fingers. Jane Roe gained the freedom to furnish her womb as she saw fit, and proceeded to change her mind. (”It’s a woman’s prerogative!” which makes me worry that Ruth B. is going to backtrack on a few cases herself.) A woman who was not even particularly attractive ran for President! From the halls of Sarah Lawrence to the shores of Berkeley women, girls, womyn, grrrls, and others with cunts actual and theoretical proclaimed that they were more than a nagging hole to be used for men’s enjoyment and the propagation of the race.

Some of them missed the telegram.

A certain type of woman began to feel… like something was missing. Was it because they were uneducated? Was it because they were unemployed, or worked in a tedious, low-paying job? Was it because “Mama’s Family” stopped bring syndicated? Never-used synapses sparked. Helen Gurley Brown haunted their dreams like Fruma Sarah, screaming “fulfilment!” instead of “pearls!” Years of race memory came rocketing out of the past, spun around the Lifetime network offices three times, and punched these women right in the ovaries. They needed to reproduce. Hard. Now.

Then, one of two things happened. In the first situation, for some reason - a twisted tube, the evil influences of stars - the buckets of nervous, watery seed the women’s’ husbands dutifully discharged into them (every other day, under the covers, between 11:23 and 11:25,) failed to bloom. She rolled, she measured, she evaluated, she even came once, but her womb lay fallow. So she went to the doctor’s office, and in the waiting room she met another lady. This woman was amazing! She was a former Miss Western Auto Stores (Western Nebraska)! She and her husband ran their own greeting card business - from their home! In Kansas City! Everything she did, she did in a big way, which is why she decided to have a litter instead of a child.

Roil, boil, toil and trouble, the doctors mixed and tweaked and injected:

Oompa, loompa, doompety-doo
I’ve got a pile of zygotes for you
Oompa, loompa, doompety-don
Why simply whelp, when you can now spawn!

A child is a gift, a delight and a joy
Everyone loves a new girl or new boy
So after one little jewel, why go and stop there?
With our help you can now breed like a hare!

Have quad, or quint, or septuplets…

Oompa, loompa, doopmety-dense
Pay no heed to any consequence
So what if they have cerebral palsy
You and your litter will be on TV!

So, lo-and-be-fucking-hold, the blessed day arrives, and the labia are torn asunder… and asunder… and asunder… and asunder… and asunder… and asunder. CNN breaks in with a news story, everyone in America thinks “Oh, God, what have the Arabs done now?”, and it is announced that Miriam Biggs, of Attwater, Utah, has been delivered of seven children, named Melrose Place, Sherman Oaks, Peyton Place, Twin Peaks, Beverly Hills, O.C., and Dynasti [sic]. America coos, briefly, and goes back to watching CNN too see what the Arabs have done now. Bleeding-hearts with poor abilities to extrapolate and needlepoint samplers on the walls sends cases of formula. The father, whose genes are now spread more successfully than Borges’ (think about that), gets a soundbite in which he discusses being blessed, the Lord, being blessed by the Lord, and makes a nervous non-joke about having to care for seven infants. The mother lies in the hospital bed, surrounded by well-wishers, and with her swollen belly, gaping cooze, and beatific smile (from the morphine) reigns briefly as a parody of every ancient symbol of fertility. In the article, it is briefly mentioned that the largest baby weighed two pounds and nine ounces, and that all the infants will be in the hospital indefinitely.

The babies are necessarily premature, probably only a little over half term. Just because a baby can, with extraordinary effort, survive outside the womb at 22 weeks does not mean it’s wise to force them to. A medical professional who works with infants can recognize premature babies until they’re late toddlers. They’re that delayed. Even if you chart normal development from the proper due date, they’re still far behind. Did you know that very premature babies hate, hate, hate to be touched, because their skin isn’t fucking finished? We’ve all seen the stories of developmental delay in babies who aren’t given nurturing human contact - imagine extra months of that, at a time when, according to God, they are not supposed to be outside of a uterus. No part of them is ready for the world, and it shows in their subsequent medical histories - if they live. Multiples, because they were crowded, are even smaller and got a proportionally reduced share of nutrients.

So, depending on the hospital and health of the babies, we-the-people may be forced to listen to a grim “Seven little, six little, five little marvels of modern medicine” as the babies are carried off by the very opposite of the old age they should have been able to expect. The parents will weep tears that, though heartfelt, are still those of a crocodile. Because of their desire to have “a whole bunch a babies!!!!” peripherally desired children were brought into this world, passed a few difficult and neglected days, and made their exits.

Sometimes - usually, even - all or most of the litter survives. Do you think they get good care? Six, seven, or eight babies at the same time? How old do you think they get before their parents can tell them apart? Eight simultaneous teethings! Eight simultaneous puberties! Eight simultaneous goings-to-college, in theory! They’re all going to be in the same grade! How are these people going to afford braces, field trips, fucking piano lessons? They are going to be hard-pressed to keep food in the children’s bellies! But of course, “the community helps.” Why the fuck should “the community” subsidize your fucking personal Little League team? These people had more children they could afford knowing full well that they lived in a town, a state, a country, that had people who would fund their fertility because they wouldn’t be able to stand seeing the children underfed and neglected. This is the most astoundingly callous and selfish behavior imaginable, but since it’s about parenthood, that Holy Grail of biological imperatives, it’s allowed. The selfish and fecund are allowed to bet their children’s welfare on a roll of the dice of human kindness. Even beyond the financial issues, which are towering, can these people be good parents? Can they listen to their children’s worries and dreams and make-believe attentively? No, of course not, because one of the other children will always be screaming, vomiting, or trying to get on the roof. I suspect that the children in these situations seldom develop in their parents’ minds beyond being “the children,” a vast and ill-formed entity, a nebula of Family Fulfilment. Who can keep track of eight different systems of imagination concurrently?

I wonder if this isn’t actually the beginnings of a Huxleyan dystopia. Instead of incubation in vitro, as in Brave New World, we’ll simply cram the wombs of the venal and the simple so full of embryo that all the survivors will be born stunted. Deprived of adequate care throughout life, they will not have the gumption or upper-body strength to resist working in the mines. As humanity (ostensibly) evolves towards intelligence, we must ensure ourselves a steady supply of chimney sweeps and homeless schizophrenics. If this isn’t the case, it means something even more sinister: that the doctors who do this are doing it because they can, because they want residual fame, and so more and more couples will pay him to build them a fleet of tards. With no regard for anything except that this stack of fetuses will buy him a week in Vegas with a variety of hookers, he creates hopeless life after hopeless life. If we are determined to place a medieval value on fecundity, we should do the same to medieval justice, and burn these doctors at the stake. I bet your average doctor-bonfire is just round enough to allow eight children to sit around and roast marshmallows.