Wednesday night, I attended my friend Joey's baby shower. She is about 5 months pregnant. She is absolutely huge -- but also, totally hot. I have never seen a sexier pregnant woman.

Joey has always been inexplicable -- and this whole baby thing is no exception. In her early years she was a star student at Weslyan. Then she moved to SF and became very involved in the dyke SM scene that was so prevalent at the time. Then she up and moved to NYC and became a hot-shot literary scene mover-and-shaker. She was producing this artsy-fartsy show called The Moth, traveling around the country constantly, and practically had a cell phone attached to her head. She was a bit unbearable. But she always kind of is, in a way. She has the energy of too many normal people and can therefor be so exhausting. But she's also great and loving and insightful and smart-as-a-whip.

She was living this sort of bicoastal, bisexual life -- dating both women and men, getting featured in Oprah magazine, hobnobbing with semi-celebrities. When she got heavily involved with icky Philip Gourevitch, I got concerned for her. Joey's from a working-class background, and Gourevitch and his ilk were sapping her of all her vibrancy with their buttoned-up, uppity, upper West side upbringings.

One day while flying out to SF (again) she sat down in the emergency exit row, to find herself surrounded by a group of muscular and plain-spoken guys. Thinking that they were a sports team of some sort, she became intrigued and started asking them questions. Turns out they were the San Leandro special ops cop unit returning from doing some post-9/11 follow-up work. One particular guy caught Joey's attention. Several months later, Joey left her job and apartment in NYC, and had moved back to the West Coast. She was spending all her time with him so it wasn't all that surprising when she announced that they were getting married. But actually it was and it wasn't. Joey marrying a cop? It was kind of incomprehensible. They got married in Yosemite this fall, and she got pregnant immediately after. Joey is 39. Jack is 32. Jack has lived in San Leandro his whole life and thinks that people that read books are pretentious. They are blissfully happy.

Joey said that she is so horny that they've been having sex everyday. And she said that she's been having at least three orgasms every time they do it.

I know that she'll be a great mom. I almost had to leave the shower myself, however, because there were so many babies and kids there. It made me feel anxious and irritable. Fragile-skinned babies crying and wiggling around. Big swollen tits protruding into tiny toothless mouths. Everywhere, diapers and little white pinafores, discarded plates, dollies and mommy reprimands made up the ambience. I sang a song of joy and relief when we drove back over the bridge to San Francisco.