City of Milfs

I’m not quite sure why I see it, why I notice it so much. Maybe it’s because I moved from winter to summer, from girls bundled up and making me use the full power of my imagination to girls in flimsy summer dresses with their arms and legs and chests glistening in the death rays of the Australian sun. Maybe it’s something in my own biological clock that makes me notice all of these babies and my unconscious is trying to tell me to reproduce and create dozens of babies, my own babies, enough to create a Kyle Army that will take over the world one beard at a time. Maybe I just hate babies so I notice each one that I see—but I don’t mind babies so much as long as I don’t have to take one home with me.

On my way back from lunch today, I was stuck on the sidewalk behind a young woman who was walking particularly slow. I didn’t mind so much because she had quality assets that I could numbingly stare at until I reached the hotel. After following her for a few blocks, she turned down a street and I saw her pushing a stroller. Another one! I thought to myself.

A week ago I was strolling around the Broadway Mall, keeping cool and considering lunch. I settled on a smoothie and sat down to look at my fellow shoppers, everyone seemingly having somewhere to go, walking and eating with a purpose. I just plopped down at a table and spread my observational ooze. A family sat down at the opposite end of the long table where I had settled. After about a dozen glances in that direction, I picked up a stroller, two young looking parents, and a middle-aged set of parents. I gathered that the young baby boy had these barely 20-something parents and 40-something grandparents. The younger parents were cute and smiling, and I genuinely wanted to regurgitate my smoothie.

They are everywhere, these parents, these young budding families, or these seemingly single mothers walking in the warm afternoon with their little baby girl or their little baby boy. I feel that so many of them are younger than I am, and I feel that so many of them have tied themselves to a babbling, burping, barfing, crying, crawling, dirt collecting stake. They are in it for a good eighteen years and probably longer.

For the last decade or more, I’ve had textbooks and the evening news drill into my head that families were becoming smaller and smaller and couples were having children later and later in their lives—if at all. But that was in America. Is Australia really this much different? Is it just Sydney? Is it just a fluke of my observations? I’ve yet to ask any of my Aussie friends about this phenomena. Marshall, though, offered a guess, “I think they get tax breaks. And they only have like a tenth of our population. Nothing wrong with more babies and more population.”

“But it’s just a shame, Marshall. You know what these babies do? They stretch everything out. The stomach, the vagina, the breasts. They all get stretched out. Sure, they are in good-looking shape, I’m surprised really, but their poor tummies were stretched so far, too far. And even if they have a cesarean, there’s a scar on the tummy. I love the stomach so much Marshall, from under the breasts to above the pubes. They don’t have to be wafer thin or perfectly flat, but I really don’t want a hideous scar desecrating such a beautiful thing. If she has a child, fine, that’s not something I’ll complain about unless she wants me involved, but their bodies just aren’t as young as they look.”

“Oh, come on Kyle, you know you’d still hit it. Twice.”

“In all of your dualistic wisdom, you’re right. Maybe three times.”