Bruni in the City: My Choice Not to Have Kids

Bruni in the City: My Choice Not to Have Kids
A Column by Christina Bruni
Flouting White Middle-Class Rules About Childbirth
As a Lefty, I want to talk about a new 2018 book Trust Women: A Progressive Christian Argument for Reproductive Justice by Rebecca Todd Peters.
My own life narrative is atypical. A woman I hired told me my story was “unusual.”
I don’t think and act like a lot of people of my race and gender. I’ve always gone Left when everyone else goes Right.
Christian social ethicist Rebecca Todd Peters asserts: “The public rhetoric that insists women must justify their abortions represents a thinly veiled racial and class bias that does two things: It attempts to impose white, middle-class values about marriage, sexual activity, and childbearing on everyone. And it focuses on individual women’s behavior while effectively obfuscating the complexity of their day-to-day lives and the viability of their various choices.”
The feminist author proposes: “Public policy ought to focus on addressing systemic social problems rather than attempting to police and control the behavior of women and their bodies.”
In her view the real issue is that women who have abortions are told they need to take responsibility. The truth is that “difficult real-life moral decisions stand in contrast” with the prevailing white, middle-class politicians’ and anti-choice crusaders’ perception that women who terminate pregnancies need to take responsibility.
Trust Women tells a different story through statistics about women’s reproductive health choices:
• 91.6 percent of abortions happen in the first trimester;
• 73 percent of women indicate they could not afford to have a baby at that point in their lives;
• 74 percent cited interference with their education or job/career or responsibility for existing children or other dependents;
• 49 percent of women who had abortions in 2014 were living below the federal poverty line;
• 95 percent of women terminating pregnancies think it was the right decision for them;
• Between 50 and 60 percent of women who have abortions were using some form of contraception the month they got pregnant; and
• 60 percent of women who have abortions already have children.
According to Rebecca Todd Peters: “Women also face a host of barriers when trying to obtain birth control: cost and lack of insurance…difficulty accessing a pharmacy…challenges in getting prescription contraception…in scheduling appointments and getting to a clinic or doctor’s office.”
These barriers were greater for women living below 200 percent of the poverty line.
My Own Story
Let’s face it, doesn’t every woman out there have hard-luck romance stories under our Hermes-H or other belt?
One of the psychics I went to told me: “Love’s been up and down and all around for you. It’s been to the dogs.”
This waterfront fortune teller told me I’d meet a lot of turkeys along the way. Yes, she used the word turkeys to talk about the guys I’d meet.
Taken in this context I haven’t been so quick to drop my skirt to get into bed with just any guy that walked on by in my life.
As a woman with a mental health diagnosis, I didn’t want to get married and raise a family.
Yes—I’ve known without a doubt since I was 15 or 16 that I didn’t want to have kids—not even one kid.
This stance of mine doesn’t fit into the white middle-class heterosexual norm that prevails in American society.
It’s this world that I was born into that I so intuitively rejected as not being the right lifestyle for me to live.
Leading yet again to how I championed everything Left of the Dial in my memoir.
I still haven’t found Mr. Right nor have I found Mr. Almost Right either. And I definitely haven’t found Mr. Not-Right-Yet-I’ll-Take-Him-Anyway.
In this dry climate with no prospects does it make sense to risk getting pregnant by having sex just to prove you’re a normal woman?
This is the double-bind or double-standard women are held to:
If we’re not having sex we’re viewed as being screwed-up and that there’s something wrong with us.
If we’re having sex and, heaven help us, too much sex, we’re viewed as having a lack of morals.
What Do You Say?
Isn’t it time to give the boot to restrictive regressive political policies that make it harder and harder for women to remain child-free by choice?
Isn’t it time to stop judging women for the choices we make?
Isn’t it time to accept the multitude of expressions of what is “normal” in society?
It’s time.
I for one have failed at living a mainstream life.
I have failed to please the people who stand in judgment of me even though they haven’t met me.
I have failed to see the logic in overpopulating the planet.
More to the point: not only did I not want to have a kid: I didn’t want to go through the experience of being pregnant.

Pullout: “One of the psychics I went to told me: ‘Love’s been up and down and all around for you. It’s been to the dogs.’”

Bruni in the City: The Perfect Macaroons

Bruni in the City: The Perfect Macaroons

A Column by Christina Bruni

Stay True to Yourself and You'll Find the Right One

I've drowned myself in macaroons, courtesy of Cream, a new coffee bar in Bay Ridge on Third Avenue at 72nd Street in Brooklyn. My favorite is the wedding almond. I buy two and a hot chocolate with whipped cream, no marshmallows.

Cream has free wi-fi and a quartet of tables in the back, plus a restroom. I prefer going here to the Starbucks down the street. Donuts are also on offer, like the hibiscus or the chocolate with cocoa nibs. A standard variety of coffee, too.

The winter is not my favorite season. Late summer into early fall is when I have the most energy. Thus I decided to try to find a guy in the early spring or thereabouts. I bombed out on the Internet matchmaking services. Earlier this year, I decided I would never again be untrue to myself by trying to get other people's approval.

The guys online left a lot to be desired. That is, I wasn't willing to settle for one of those average guys. For a number of years, I've bristled at how sick people are praised because they hide behind a cloak of normalcy. You can be rude to customers. You can fail to do your share of the work at a job. You can be outright hostile. And you'll be celebrated because you don't have a mental illness.

The guys online were crackers. I was open-minded, so I sent a message to a vegan, and he didn't respond because I eat chicken and fish. I also sent a message to a psychiatric worker who specified he wanted to meet a "sexy" woman. No response here either.

Not only were the guys a few bricks short of a house, I realized I couldn't compete in these traditional dating arenas because 95 percent of the guys are only interested in finding out if a woman is "fuckable." If you're an intelligent, hip, socially savvy woman, you're expected to be grateful for the crumbs on the table that these guys deign to give you. You're supposed to overlook that they're unmedicated yet not normal.

As my efforts derailed, one after the other, over the last two years, I decided that I hadn't failed; it was my approach that failed me. I took myself off the market to focus on publishing my memoir, Left of the Dial, which went on sale on Amazon this past December 2014. After the book came out, I kick-started marketing it and selling it via my new website and my blogs and other channels.

The more I thought about things, the more I realized that changing myself to fit a mold of what other people in society deem acceptable is a no-win game. The self-doubt was replaced by a new confidence because it suddenly hit me: Do I really want to date a shallow guy who seeks a tarted-up, tatted-up woman? No, no, no.

Two real-life experiences cemented the truth in my mind that settling for any old guy who expresses an interest in me is not the way to live. I hold two truths to be self-evident. First, I have a best friend I'll call Josh. He has a female companion who collects SSI. He takes her to lunch. He takes her to dinner. She doesn't wear stilettos and a cleavage-baring, leopard-print dress.

This cheered me because I realized I might be able to find a great guy like Josh who doesn't immediately want to get under my skirt. I am not a bimbo. My great worry has always been that I would have to stuff down my personality and change myself to be in a relationship with a guy.

Have no fear. A free spirited woman I know wears cowboy boots with a skirt. She is always nattily attired in jeans and a t-shirt. She pulls it off with her own joie-de-vivre. And no, she doesn't wear stilettos on a date either or slit-up-to-there skirts.

That's how I realized there was hope for me. A psychiatric worker only wanted a sexy woman, and a narrow-minded vegan was critical of a woman's food and fashion choices. Since I couldn't compete online in this arena, I realized I would have to live my life and see who I met in person at a book talk I gave.

I saw the light at the end of the tunnel. I didn't have to get tarted-up or tatted-up to snare a guy. The equation is simple: Only by acting true to yourself can you find your true match. I'm convinced there's a guy out there for me. Right now, the macaroons sure are delish.

Bruni in the City: Love and Arrows By Christina Bruni

Bruni in the City: Love and Arrows
By Christina Bruni
I Struck Out on OKCupid
I've had a wackadoodle time online. I don't recommend any of the Internet matchmakers.  OKCupid is only for hook-ups. The six foot tall guy I contacted there responded by telling me since I was only five feet tall he couldn't have sex with me, so he wasn't interested.
Imagine that: I was too short and too skinny for a guy even though I'm beautiful: go figure.
With OKCupid you take a quiz. If it rates you as less kinky and less adventurous, no guy will contact you. The service is rigged for sluts and gigolos.
I had no great experiences with chemistry.com and eHarmony as well. eHarmony caters to conservative Christians. If you write in your profile that you like to attend and perform at poetry readings no eHarmony match will contact you. They're looking for church-going hausfraus, not left-of-the-dial indie girls.
The matches on chemistry.com were incompatible too. One guy wrote the love of his life must love animals. I detest dogs, and cats creep me out. Dog hair sheds all over and dirties your clothes. Take your animals, Jack, and open up a zoo. Or find a woman who's willing to vacuum the couch and de-lint your suits; she isn't me.
You can see why I'm skeptical of Internet dating services; they promise so much and deliver so little. The alleged matches aren't compatible if you're looking for the right person, not just an almost-perfect person. I don't think like the author of that book who proposes you should settle for Mr. Good Enough. I think you should aspire to meet and date a great guy.
No guys on OKCupid were reliable. I could tell they weren't on the level. Guys would send this message: “hi.”  Just “hi.” That doesn't bode well for their conversational skills on a date. Guys, you respond to a woman online. Refer to something she wrote in her profile. You say “hi,” and I'll say “goodbye!”
I took a dating break this winter in the polar vortex. As I write this, it's March 2nd and a snowstorm is on the way, even though there's only three weeks until spring. My goal is to resurrect the love search in June when the weather is warmer.
Any woman who is desperate to meet a guy because she doesn't want to be alone will only attract Mr. Wrong, a guy who's going to use her, or worse. My hardship is that I have other more pressing goals and it wasn't ever my number-one goal to be in relationship. Meeting my soul match would be the icing on a tasty cake. I already have the cake; it's time to frost it.
I wanted to bet my friend a wager that I'd meet Mr. Right-For-Me in the summer. “D” turned me down even though I offered him a free meal, not a monetary prize. So, I'm going to bet the readers of New York City Voices a friendly wager: If I meet the guy this summer, I get to tell you I told you so. If I don't meet a guy, you can smirk at me.
To the victor go the spoils. To the heartbroken go the Kleenex. I've stocked up on the tissues just in case.

Pullout: “Imagine that: I was too short and too skinny for a guy even though I'm beautiful: go figure.”

Bruni in the City: “Falling Out of Love”

Bruni in the City: “Falling Out of Love”
By Christina Bruni
Like a Bad “Air Supply” Song
I fell out of love with the Holy Cannoli guy. It just happened that way. I was all out of love, just like the singer sang in that bad Air Supply song from the 1980s. He couldn't live without her, yet he had no love left either.
I have a problem attracting guys who can only see me at certain times because they're unavailable every week. One guy was a Tiger, and I'm a Snake. That makes us mortal enemies, according to Chinese astrology.
How could someone, a woman no less, fall out of love with a guy, when it's usually the guy who doesn't return calls and does an abrupt fade?
I'm not proud of this break-up. I recommend you screw up the courage to tell the person gently, "The feeling I had isn't there anymore. We were romantic. Now I'm uncomfortable just being friends after we dated."
That guy asked me what was up. "I'd rather you didn't call me anymore," I told him point blank. "Okay," he said. And hung up.
Ladies, it's a crock of bull to want to remain friends with a guy after you've been lovers. I tried that with a guy who thought we could return to being good friends. Did I really need to know the intimate details of his current love life? He didn't get it, and I didn't enlighten him either.
The recent guy and I hit it off, and that was the problem. I realized that if I could get together with him, I could find another guy if I wanted. Oh, I wanted it to work out. He was a good guy.
Last July, I joined chemistry.com. About every two weeks I get a "Christina, you've been noticed by him" email message in my inbox.
A psychic told me I'd meet a guy I had never met before, and he'd be divorced and the attraction would be solid. Could it be possible "Mr. Right" was on the way?
My latest goal is to upload circa now 2013 photos to the dating website. I'm an eternal optimist and a hopeless romantic. Chemistry.com is much better than the dating website for people with mental illness.
A guy on that site almost 10 years ago told me in his second online message, "I don't want to be friends...I expect sex," like I was some kind of inflatable vagina-of-the-month play doll. We hadn't even met or corresponded.
I know two people with mental illness who met each other on chemistry.com. Neither of them knew about the other's pharmacological history when they dated until they decided to get engaged and spill their secrets.
The point is this: There's more to life than your diagnosis. I signed onto chemistry.com because it matches people based on four personality types. I'm a director, and (ahem), "Sparks fly in the bedroom between two directors."  I'm still waiting for that to happen with the right person.
To all the guys I've loved before: You deserve better than a woman who ends her column paraphrasing a Julio Iglesias song.
What is it about bad love songs? Does getting to the church on time terrify me like it does for the guy in "Modern Love" by David Bowie? And yet, I want to find my number one, not a one-hit wonder. When that happens, I'll gladly take down this column and keep things private.
I'll report back soon whether my Summer in the City sizzled or fizzled out. Ciao for now.