My partners and I are having a baby in May, and I’m excited to be a mom, but I also keep returning to your story “Checking In” over and over. It feels like a chapter of my life is closing and I know that a new one is starting and it’ll have its joys too (including erotic ones!) but I can’t help but be sad to see part of me go, or at least some of the dreams that have animated the last 7 or 8 years of my life (sexual and otherwise).

I think you said one time that you don’t fuck with mothers because they usually have something in their life more important than you, and that speaks to me. My own mom told me that once you have a child, they’re the only thing that matters, and while I think that kind of ego auto-annihilation is probably maladjusted (and maybe explains why I felt like she resented me sometimes when I was a child) I do feel the possibility of worshipping at someone’s feet with a truly clear mind is being foreclosed upon, at least for a long time.

I’ll be 52 when they turn 18, and I remind myself that hey, I find 52 year old women hot all the time, but 34 year olds aren’t even exactly in huge demand now. It’s not like my sexuality will disappear between now and then either, but it’s hard to imagine what it’ll be like. Having an hour alone with my vibrator interrupted by a crying infant I have to go nurse has a weirdly erotic frisson of its own, but I imagine it’ll be challenging for a good while.

I told my therapist a version of this but I guess I wanted you to know it, too. I’ve sent you asks before and through your replies felt closer to, if not my God, then at least something I could pretend was for a little while. It’s not like I’ll stop cumming to your ouevre, either. I guess I just want you to know that although we only ever had cursory interactions, they mattered a lot to me, and will still matter a lot to me even though my relationship to it feels like it’s exchanging a feeling of absurd aspiration for a tinge of wistful regret. Maybe that’s selfish, I don’t know, but it felt worth saying. Thank you for existing.

First, that was beautiful. My heart somehow managed to make the sound “Awwwwwwwww”. Seriously. I’m actually worried. But until the ambulance gets here…

Second, I am touched like Beyoncé singing to a little blind girl… I mean, that a young lady in your condition keeps re-reading “Checking In”, well, that’s just hot. But more importantly, I’m not happy if the words can’t reach you wherever you are. I like that they keep finding their way to you —and you, to them— even when you wind up in the cultural primordial soup of procreation.

Think about how deep you’ve gone! Months of your life, taken by a creature that doesn’t acknowledge your humanity; your body reshaping itself against your will; your organs playing God between your legs. And from here, beyond the horizon of fear and pain and relief, lurks eighteen long years of servitude and struggle and half-completed, clumsily rendered “I ❤️ yuo mOm” cards scrawled on construction paper. You’re in the thick of it. And presumably, of you.

To reach you there? That’s high praise indeed. Thank you, kiddo.

RE: sad to see part of me go

You’re simultaneously tugging at my heartstrings and making me envious of whoever has the joy of putting you through this most exquisitely human of tortures. I am totally jelly.

So much is being inflicted upon you, so many choices are being made that you can never take back… and people on the street will congratulate you. They’ll infantilize you, and frighten you, and shame you, and tell you smiling lies, and touch you like your body no longer belongs to you. You will become both less and more than human for a few months, and then WHAM, back down into the dirt of life, only now all the rules have changed and something really smells around here.

(A fun example of how you can be both catered to and disregarded all at once: note how much effort I’ve put into this response.)

All of which I’ve said so that I can say this: go, my dear child? Are you kidding? That part of your life isn’t going anywhere. It’s in everything you do. It’s who you are. You’re just modulating your relationship with it.

RE: something in their lives more important than you

It’s just better for everyone. Sometimes sad and disappointing, yeah… but better. I like clarity rather than confusion, and while keeping a girl perpetually suspended between dueling interests sounds like something I’d enjoy, it’s really not in this case.

RE: truly clear mind

Do you need that with someone? I mean, really need it? You obviously want it, we know that. But being pregnant at all suggests you might not need it.

That’s okay, y’know. Having a mostly clear mind? It’s okay. It doesn’t have to be spotless and sublime. I know I seem perfect to a certain kind of girl because I am, in fact, perfect for a certain kind of girl… but I represent precisely one way to push all those buttons of yours. Maybe someone else can’t push them exactly the way I would, and maybe you’ll always wonder if it’s somehow… less. Maybe it will be less, but you’ve gained enough elsewhere to soothe the burn of loss. Life is full of trade-offs… make the most of the trades you make.

RE: 52

I won’t bullshit you and tell you that life for a highly sexual fifty-two year old girl isn’t tricky. Our cultural cult of youth marches on, and pauses for no woman. But it won’t be exactly the way you picture it. After all, there will always be cruel, possessive 75 year old men with viagra prescriptions and amended wills ready to give you a whole new perspective on your oldest desire.

RE: challenging for a while

Yup, it’ll be a challenge. But you can do it, soldier. It’s your goddamned job. And good girls do their jobs. If you do yours the best you can, as thoughtfully as you can, then I suspect you’re gonna be okay.

RE: if not my God, at least something I could pretend was

It’s important to remember that the aspect of me that owns women is extremely possessive and proscriptive, but the aspect that inhabits your imagination is really relaxed about that whole “no other gods before him” thing. He’s happy just to own a little plot of land between your ears, a place to set up housekeeping… a hearth to keep the fire burning.

Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen. You can lose your faith, but only when you stop dreaming.

RE: they mattered a lot to me, and will still matter a lot

There goes that heart thing again. I feel like it’s definitely not supposed to do that. Someone would have, y’know… mentioned it. “My heart just made a sound like a Pentatonix made of wheezing banshees leading a funeral dirge” feels like something people would talk about if it came up. Y’know, in passing.

Bless you, sweet person. I’m proud of you for bravely taking such a difficult path.

And you’re welcome.