Reaching the Summit

Friday night I go to meet my cousins, Olivia and Charlie, and Charlie’s wife Samantha, who is eight months pregnant. They are all at a bar in South Kensington, the Admiral Cod, celebrating one of their friend’s departure to Australia. The crowd was a complete 180 from the previous night at Gazza’s, comprised of public school graduates (for all you Americans, “public school” is actually, confusingly, used to label expensive, exclusive, private, and usually boarding schools), most now in finance and wearing gold signet rings and clothes their grandparents would have been comfortable in. They all come with the usual smattering of interesting names and nicknames, including an appropriately tiny young woman who introduces herself as “Mouse.”

Now, Samantha is 24 and the first of my friends of our generation to be pregnant. I can’t overstate the effect that seeing her, chatting to Charlie, and taking it all in, had on me. After recently dealing with some ex-girlfriend issues/questions (the girl I might have had a child with, had things gone a little differently), seeing Samantha in all her glowing, girthy glory was quite a “thing.” And seeing her voluminous belly didn’t compare to when I actually touched it (the “Summit”, indeed). Though the boy (for they already know its gender) wasn’t kicking or moving in any perceivable way, the heat, the feeling, the very life I felt beneath my fingertips was quite awesome. So I handled the rest of the night the only way I know, by consuming a dozen pints and hitting on all of Samantha’s attractive friends.