I Got Kicked Out of My Sister’s Birth Cult

Whatever, I didn’t want to be in a stupid birth cult anyway

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We’re in a tepid, dim basement watching a scratchy VHS tape of a woman having an epic orgasm in a jacuzzi tub. I am flanked by a circle of women who have come together over a naïve belief that this twice-a-week meeting of the vaginas is going to change their lives.

Birthing People who drank the crazy juice.

I watch them watch the video. They are studying it, convincing themselves that they can be this woman in this tub, making these groans, experiencing her ecstasy.

Every Tuesday and Thursday evening I am forced to watch birth porn.

Each session unlocks a new circle of hell.

There are at least twelve billion other things I should be doing; laundry to fold, chili to batch cook, a baby to mother. I have a work deadline I’m not going to meet and an asshole boss who doesn’t appreciate that my evenings do not belong to him.

Or to me.

Twice a week, my evenings belong to my pregnant sister and this birth cult she’s pulled me into.

My thoughts are interrupted by a second eruption from the 1980s aqua-porn video.

This one seems less intense, though likely more pleasurable than what got these women into this mess in the first place.

One of the partners has spent the last 30 minutes sucking a poppy seed out of his teeth.

My sister got turkey-basted by a 70-year-old doc with a tremor.

These days it’s mint chocolate chip and the handheld shower for me.

My sister looks pale today. She’s reached that uncomfortable stage of pregnancy where sleep eludes you.

The space between her brows creases in concentration as the permed hyena in the pool finishes her second climax and reveals her placenta.

I swallow regurgitated hotdog. I’m half expecting her to eat it as a blood ritual.

My sister is five years my senior but I’m the older sister. I fooled around with boys before she did, smoked weed before she did, even got knocked up before she did.

She is brilliant, hoarder-level disorganized, and terrified.

And this is the stupidest thing she’s ever done.

Not the get-pregnant-on-her-own-part, that part’s badass.

I’m referring to the belief that she is going to voodoo hypnobirth the little parasite from her birthing palace.

And that’s why I’m here.

I am my sister’s person. I’ve been appointed to help her bring my nephew into the world.

But she’d conveniently omitted this hippie-dippy fuckery from the agreement.

As the tape — and orgasm — reaches its conclusion, the lights flash on.

“So, what did everyone think?” the leader asks.

She appears to be in her late fifties. Today she’s dressed in a baby blue farmer’s market hemp tunic and her armpit bush is impressively conditioned. A line of magenta streaks her otherwise gray hair.

She looks like someone who whispers to trees and dry humps crystals.

I appraise the women’s faces while they examine their shoes or the peeling paint on the wall.

This will make a great story one day.

This is my least favorite ritual of this basement womb cult. If my face isn’t already screaming I don’t want to be here, the words that exit my mouth usually do.

“I thought it was wonderful,” shares a blonde bob who goes by Jeanette. “It felt so primal, so natural.”

About as natural as her shade of platinum. And her eyebrows. And her lips. (And probably her other lips.)

“Keep doing the work and listening to the CD and this can be your experience too,” responds the Crystal Humper.

My sister is next.

“I agree, it looked natural…like her body intuited the entire labor and delivery.”

The corners of the Furry Granola-Muncher’s lips furl into a Cheshire grin. My sister has said the exact right thing, as she always does.

Brown Noser.

Now it’s my turn.

There’s still time to start a fire and pull a George Costanza.

Carpet Pits and Blonde Bob are squinting at me, daring me to take this seriously.

I take stock of my situation.

I am the only person in this room who has actually given birth. It was a 31-hour drug-free nightmare that ended with an urgent epidural and emergency C-section.

There was absolutely nothing natural about my natural birth and this hypnobirthing-breathe-your-baby-down quackery is setting these women up for false expectations.

They have learned nothing practical to prepare them — or their poppy seed-toothed partners — for what birth really is.

A G-spot-level double orgasm in a Jacuzzi tub.

My friend, a cop, once described the birth of his twins as more macabre than a homicide scene.

This commercial break is brought to you by Trojan — make love, not crime scenes.

To keep up this charade that my sister — or any of these women — is going to hypnotize herself into a trance-like euphoria while she pushes a boulder out of her vijayjay is insanity.

She nearly unalived our entire family when a daddy longlegs ascended her window while we were on the freeway.

On the outside.

I feel it brewing inside of me like a snowball gaining traction down a hill.

I’m reminded of that time in Grade 6 when Sam F. farted and then shifted in his chair to unsuccessfully recreate the sound and the harder I worked to contain my laughter the stronger the impulse grew until I was full-blown cackling during our math test and Mrs. S kicked me out of class.

I open my mouth, uncertain of what is about to come out.

No one loves this for me.

“I mean…”

My sister flashes me a sharp look and telepathically implores me to fall in line.

“Ummm.”

FIRE! FIRE! FIRE!

I can’t. I can’t do it.

It’s Grade 6 and Sam F. just ripped a fresh one.

It starts as a hiccup and then grows into a giggle. I cover my hands over my mouth as one does when one can’t control what’s exiting. The giggle grows into a chortle.

The tears begin to stream.

I’m laughing so hard I pee a little.

I can hear my sister repeating my name, willing me to get a hold of myself, but it has taken on a life of its own.

I present to you: Hypnolaughing.

I can’t stop. I am floating above my body watching me laugh so hard my abdominal separation domes.

These people paid actual money to learn how to orgasm their baby out when I’m willing to bet my life savings on the fact that most of them didn’t even orgasm their baby in.

Someone asks me to leave but I’m already gone. So far gone.

My sister collects her bag and mine, and the container of her famous three-ingredient date energy balls which are untouched because they are revolting.

I cackle all the way to the car.

The following Tuesday, my sister has a cold.

On Thursday, she’d rather go for ice cream.

The following Tuesday she finally admits it was a crock of shit.

A few weeks later my sister gives birth to my nephew. He’s born with minimal intervention and maximal swears.

And no orgasms.

The jacuzzi tub was out of order.

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This story originally appeared in MuddyUm.

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