My Girlfriend Was Pregnant When I Met Her
a short story about trying to man up
I didn’t know Mona was pregnant when we first hooked up. I just saw a really cute girl, big brown eyes, caramel skin, slim body with generous curves begging to bust out of black fishnet stockings, a smile that made me smile, and a little bit of a pot belly. It just so happened I liked girls with a little belly. I know that’s rare for a teenager whose libido was shaped by plastic and photoshop, but there was something tempting about a girl with a little extra to me. And Mona did indeed have something extra.
Mona was 17 and I was 15, she was a junior and I was a sophomore. The first time we had sex, it was obvious she had much more experience. But she was okay with my awkward fumbling and took the lead in a way that made me feel like I was doing something right. She showed me where things were and what to do with them, and gave me a positive evaluation so that I would be encouraged to do it again.
My only two previous sexual encounters before Mona each felt like I was walking a highwire and fell off as soon as I thought I figured out a rhythm, to everyone’s disappointment. But with Mona, sex felt like a leisurely stroll along the beach with multiple orgasms along the way for me and at least one for her. I did wonder a little how she was so experienced for being only two years older than me, but I mainly put those thoughts aside. I was just happy to be in a real sexual relationship where I was developing a skillset that, I thought, was turning me into a sexual phenom - and I couldn’t wait to showcase my talents for more audiences.
In the breakroom at Target, where I pushed carts Tuesday nights, Thursday nights, and Saturday mornings, I made a move on Courtney, a hot blonde who worked customer service. I gave her a confident look, my chin high, and told her she looked good and maybe we can go out some time. She responded with a “yuck” and said: “Isn’t your girlfriend pregnant?” She said that as she jammed her finger into my name tag. Very intimidating.
“No!” I said. “And she’s not my girlfriend. We’re just hanging out.” I liked saying “hanging out” when I meant fucking. It made me feel really grown-up. I was really starting to nail this sex thing.
“Well, Mona’s pregnant, so you better get your shit together and stop trying to get in more pants,” she said, and walked off, her blonde ponytail swaying over her ass, her khakis so tight they looked like they were painted on. I admired the sight for a second before the panic set in.
Mona is pregnant?
“I thought you knew,” Mona said.
We were sitting on the steps outside her apartment where she lived with her mom. Her stomach looked bigger - like it doubled or tripled in size since the last time I saw it two days ago. Maybe it was always this big and I didn’t notice.
“Oh my god shit,” I said. That’s what I say when I feel like my heart is about to shoot up my esophagus and plop out of my mouth. Oh my god shit.
She laughed.
“Wait, you thought it was yours?” she said, laughing harder. “Don’t worry. It’s not yours.”
I didn’t know what to say. I waited for her to say something else, answer an obviously unanswered question. But she just looked away, a sad and tired look on her face that made me feel even more younger than she was. It was a look I could see, but didn’t understand. I felt immature and out of the loop.
“Why isn’t it mine?” I said. It was all I could manage to say
She told me the story. She was eight weeks pregnant when we met. The baby daddy was an older guy, 30 or so, who robbed a gas station and got sent up to Hutchins (she called the prison by its name like it was a friend’s house) for 10 years since he was already on probation when he was sentenced, and she wasn’t counting on him to be around much any time soon. She thought about getting an abortion, but couldn’t go through with it. Not for any religious reason, but just because she couldn’t go through with it and that I wouldn’t understand unless I could feel what she felt inside of her. And now that she was gonna have a baby, she figured she’d have a little fun before she can’t anymore. That’s what I was for.
“But please, please, please don’t think I’m trying to rope you in and be a daddy or whatever,” she said. “That’s not what this is. We’re just having fun. I’m gonna do this thing on my own. We’re just friends with benefits, okay?”
Mona kissed me good night and went back inside. I sat on those steps for a few minutes longer, just thinking about her, the baby inside of her, how she would handle all the responsibilities of motherhood, pay bills, create a future for herself - things I never thought about before. Big, serious thoughts that made me want to do big, serious things.
When I came home that night, I felt like I was a different person. I wanted to talk to my dad about this, just sit down in the backyard and talk about this serious matter like two men. I wanted to talk to my mom, ask her about pregnancy, what it felt like, what would she do if she were in Mona’s shoes. I didn’t do that, though. I did like I always did - answered their questions about my day, said as little as possible, and went to my room after finishing my food. But instead of listening to music and sneaking a toke, I just laid in bed and thought about Mona.
The rest of the night, I felt waves of changing emotions toward her: love, fear, protectiveness, lust, angst, anger, confusion, admiration, and maybe some feelings I just don’t know the word for. I thought about the baby daddy sitting in a prison cell. She never told me his name, so his name was Hutchins to me. I imagined Hutchins to a big man, muscle meat covered in fat bread, a long, scraggly mane o his head, missing teeth in his head, and a back covered in so much hair, he has to shake like a dog when he sweats.
I thought about that hairy back on top of Mona, pumping away, covered drops popping in the air and landing on her face, her loving it, him smelling like stale tobacco, hot feet, and cheap whiskey as he digs and digs, a whole lot better at the sex thing than me, more confident and animalistic, not needing directions like me, his dick twice as big, a winning personality all its own, hairy, too, why not, and his sperm shooting up inside of Mona like a geyser people say “oooohhh” when they see as she screams in ecstasy and a future gas station robber forms inside her belly.
I thought about the kid growing up and looking just like Hutchins, no resemblance to Mona at all, a perfect copy of his jailbird dad, whipping out a 45 in a 7-11 and shooting me, an innocent bystander just trying to buy some Cool Ranch Doritos and a six-pack of Shiner Bock.
Tired of thinking, I thought about Courtney at Target in her skin-tight khakis, blonde ponytail swaying above her ass, and jerked off. I fell asleep immediately.
The next day, it was 80 degrees by 8 am, but Mona showed up to school wearing an oversized Dallas Cowboys hoodie and sweatpants. She usually dressed in a sexy goth style, so the attire stuck out even more. When I saw her in the hallway, my first reaction was to turn around. But she looked alone and scared, not herself, like she needed somebody to help her find herself. I went to her, hugged her tight, put my palm on her belly, and said: “I want to be with you. I want to be the daddy.”
When I tell you that these words came out of my mouth completely involuntarily, I mean it. I had no idea that’s what I was going to say before I said it. And when I did say it, I didn’t really believe that’s what I said. It was like somebody shoved their hand up my ass and turned me into a puppet. I wanted to say “just kidding” to correct the mistake, but Mona’s big, beautiful brown eyes watered and the way she looked at me made my eyes water, too. She hugged me so tight she lifted herself off the ground.
“Thank you,” she said. “Thank you so much.”
I could tell something happened between now and when I saw her last night. I had no idea what, but the confidence she usually had wasn’t there, and she clung onto me like she was afraid of drowning. It felt good to be someone’s life raft. I’d never felt that before. And for a second I wondered if what I said was genuine, coming from a place inside of me that was wiser and more mature, more loving, not as selfish as I had always known myself to be.
I put my arms around her and hugged her tight, my chin resting on her shoulder. And then I saw Courtney walking in our direction. She looked better than ever. I saw her more at work than at school, so I was used to seeing her in her red shirt and khakis Target uniform. But today she was wearing a short summer dress with flowers all over it. Her hair was down instead of her cashier ponytail and she looked like a curvier Cameron Diaz. I wanted to push Mona out of the way and go over to Courtney, convince her I was a very sexually experienced stud with unbounded prowess, but she looked at both of us with pity and disdain. I ran those words I said to Mona in my head again - I want to be the daddy - and felt sick to my stomach.
What was I doing? Why did I say that? Was I ever going to have sex with Courtney?
Courtney walked past us without saying anything. I looked at Mona. Her eyes weren’t watery anymore. They were happy, grateful for me rescuing her from raising a gas station robber alone. Fuck it. I was 15. I was a man. I was ready. I knew about the world any my place in it. I was ready. I just had to ask my mom and dad.
“I love you, Mona!” I yelled it out so Courtney could hear it. “I fucking love you, Mona!”
Everyone in the hallway was looking at us now. One of my teachers came out of her classroom.
“Language!” she said.
I grabbed Mona and gave her a kiss like a 1940s soldier coming home from war.
“Let’s get out of here,” she said.
I couldn’t think of anything better. My head was going in fifteen different directions. I was embarrassed to be seen with my pregnant girlfriend impregnated by a 30-year-old felon, but didn’t want to leave her because I loved her. We got out of there before the bell rang.
We took the DART train to downtown Dallas, getting off at a couple stops when police came on board looking for truant high school kids. She told me her whole life story. She told me about how her father beat her mother, and sometimes her, and then left a few years ago, completely disappeared as far as she knew. She told me about her mom trying to make ends meet with various jobs - retail gigs, cleaning gigs, anything she could get. She told me about how she wants to go to art school, take up painting, even though she never used real paints before, just markers, but she was pretty sure she would be a natural at it.
Everything she told me was pretty typical of a lot of people I knew. It shouldn’t have had any effect on me. But the way she opened up to me made me feel protective of her. And the more she said, the more I wanted to do everything I could for her and the baby. The baby, the baby, the baby. Mona and the baby. Two of them. They made me want to beat up her dad for not being like the dad I most definitely will be. They made me want to give money to her mom for not having someone like me around to save her. I wanted to right every wrong in Mona’s life. And I wanted to be the father to her baby.
But I had no idea why because even as I thought of all that, I was fucking Courtney in the back room of my brain. And not just her, but a dozen other girls from school, from work, from music videos, some I just made up, all at the same time. But in the front room, I was taking a selfless, responsible man obsessed with the wellbeing of his Family. Which room was I gonna stay in?
We had lunch at a taco stand - a corner shack with two plastic tables and a few chairs in front. As we ate our tacos, a couple in their 20s or 30s walked up, the man pushing a stroller with an infant inside. The man looked tired, but happy, and he put his arm around the woman as they looked at the menu. And just like that, Courtney with the skin tight khakis and Courtney with the short sundress didn’t matter to me.
My newfound sexual prowess was no longer something I wanted to demonstrate on as many subjects as were willing to let me. I wanted to be that guy pushing a stroller with my arm around Mona - tired but happy and completely content to eat tacos with my family on a warm and sunny afternoon.
I now knew what I had to do.
I will get a job at the Kraft factory making Lunchables and barbecue sauce. My dad is friends with one of the supervisors there and he said one time he could get me in there part-time when I turned 16. Why not full-time, then? Lots of men work there who have families. I could be one of them.
I’ll work hard every day making products people love and supporting my beautiful wife and child who might end up looking like Hutchins, but I don’t care because being a father is more than just being a sperm donor an in a couple years Mona has one by me and now we have a big, nice family and we’re all happy and we laugh a lot because everything is good, everything is fine, I love my wife, kids, co-workers at the Kraft factory, I’m a good man, a responsible man, I even vote and go to church and volunteer to coach Hutchins Jr.’s little league team…but not a whole lot because I’m not one of those obsessed sports dads, I’m encouraging and nice, but not crazy, wouldn’t have the energy for that because I’m 23 now and tired and overweight and pre-diabetic, the doctor says I have to cut down on the Lunchables and barbecue sauce but they’re free and tasty, America loves them and so do I, my family loves them and I love them, high fructose corn syrup yes please dame mas ahorita porque mi sangre lo necessita and we’re all getting fat now, food makes us feel like none of this is happening…Hutchins Jr is a giant sloth, he won’t be like his real daddy after all, and the one who’s really mine is getting there, will be bigger than Hutchins Jr in a few years, they’re both really mine now because I did this to them…Mona the thinnest of us all but she’s also getting fat, still maintains her looks, though, especially compared to the other women in our vicinity, all heifers indistinguishable from their heifer-shaped husbands if you look from behind, but Mona still maintains her looks, shades of that shape that kept me up at night, kept me up for years, but that was a long time ago and now she is tired of my body, uninterested in anything about it, why would she since it’s all just one lump of flab, undesirable, unable to give pleasure, unworthy of giving pleasure to…and Hutchins just got out of prison, body jacked from prison gyms and dick starved for pussy, he has to see Mona to apologize for all those mistakes, many amends get made and they end up fucking, everything amended and then some, Hutchins any suburban woman with a factory job husband’s dream, so she leaves me to go off and start afresh with the now former gas station robber and now I’m stuck with two kids and a size 46 waistline, Chik-Fil-A and bottom shelf, dust-covered plastic jug tequila my only friends, the two kids, only one of them mine, the other one is what got me here…should I punish him for it?…it’s something I think about constantly now that Mona is off who knows where getting pummeled and dug out by a man with a fun, hairy dick twice as big as mine, maybe more so now, I haven’t seen mine in months, it’s smashed flat somewhere in my gut fat, the two kids, only one of them mine but cost me the same amount of money, they see me as a pathetic cuck, or maybe they don’t, and don’t care, but I do…every minute of every day my head swamped with those thoughts…so I assume everyone does, since I am, and it’s all I think about because I don’t care anymore about voting or church or little league or even Mona, wouldn’t care if her dead body plopped right in front of me…I’d just step over it because what do I care about her being dead because she already killed me and I have a job to do, yep, still doing the Kraft factory job despite everything because my brain has absorbed it, let it become a part of me, maybe all of me, I can do it in my sleep, sleep the only thing I like, I like it so much I take a lead pill and sleep forever.
I snapped out of that thought tunnel and felt stunned.
“Mona,” I said, my shaking hand folding my taco wrapper in little pieces. “I can’t do it. I’m sorry.”
She looked at me and then looked away with that same sad and tired look she had the other night, only now I really understood it.
Then she laughed. She was used to this kind of thing happening. And now I was just another one of those people doing it to her.
We finished our tacos and I took her home. She hugged me and said, “It’s cool. I understand.”
I went home, didn’t tell my parents anything, and jerked off to Courtney again. That was all I was capable of doing at the time.
God Ray, that last passage. Absolute gut punch. Fantastic writing
The scariest short story I've read in some time.