The following is an excerpt from Asa Akira's recently released memoir Dirty Thirty Another year of wasted eggs because I chose to whore instead.“Do you wanna hold him?” I did. I wanted to hold him and squeeze him and kiss his tiny peanut forehead and pretend it was I who had given birth. I wanted to softly swing him side to side in my arms, like I had done as a child with my Cabbage Patch dolls. I wanted to put my nipple in his mouth and see if he would latch on with his perfect little lips, as he looked up at me, silently thanking me with his eyes for giving him life, love, and food. But I was scared. The reality was that I had never held a baby. It looked easy enough, until I had the opportunity to do it. Maya must have seen the nerves on my face. “Just hold him. You’re not gonna drop him.” Smiling, she held him out to me, one hand under his head, the other under his body. I positioned my arms into a cradle and thought how bizarre this moment was. At 27, Maya was my first friend to pass on an abortion. It seemed that while the rest of the country had been starting families and getting fat for the last half decade, the two coasts were busy making careers, experimenting with drugs and online dating, not yet ready to stop being selfish. When she first told me on the phone she was pregnant, my response had been not congratulatory excitement, but sympathetic apology. “Oh shit, that sucks. I’m so sorry. Do you know whose it is? How far along are you? Do you feel like shit?” “This Brazilian guy I met in Japan. It’s been three months. I’m throwing up everyday.” It wasn’t until I asked if she needed a recommendation for a clinic that I realized she was planning on keeping it. I flew back to New York and saw Maya a few times throughout her pregnancy. We had known each other since we were two years old, when our mothers enrolled us in a Saturday Japanese School in order for us to have some sense of our culture. Both of us being only children of Japanese immigrants in New York City, we saw each other more as family than friends, and we often pretended to strangers that we were twins. To this day I refer to her as my cousin, and her parents are my auntie and uncle. As I saw her belly grow with each trip to the city, I couldn’t quite believe she was going to be a mother. I was ready for her to give up at any second, go in for a late-term abortion, or maybe even reveal it had all been a joke—anything would be more believable than Maya having a baby. Even as I touched her stomach and felt the little legs kicking against my hand, I didn’t think this thing in her stomach would ever become an actual being. This was a girl I had done drugs with since age 13. We had shoplifted together. We had snuck out of our houses and gone boy-hunting at 3 a.m. together. We had spent hours constructing elaborate lies to tell our parents. And now — now, she was going to be a parent. This kid’s first word was going to be “fuck.” As a child, I was extremely drawn to pregnancy: my preschool teacher, Maria from “Sesame Street,” that girl from “Degrassi Junior High.” In kindergarten, my friend Sally had a photo on her fridge of when her mother was pregnant with her. I used to stare at that photo whenever I went over for a play date, using any excuse I could to go to the kitchen once more. I’d trace my fingers over the bump, and when I got home, I would go to my room and touch myself, imagining her announcing to me over and over, “I’m pregnant.” I don’t know where the fascination came from, or why it made me horny. At the time, I didn’t identify the feeling, or even masturbating, as sexual — but looking back, it was definitely horniness I was feeling. I had not yet learned how babies were made, but maybe it’s the kind of knowledge that’s ingrained in us on some sort of a primal level — at least, this is what I’ve told myself to make it less weird. Even now, nothing turns me on more than when Toni cums inside of me. When he starts picking up the pace, and makes that face he only does when he’s about to cum, it makes me orgasm instantly. “Cum inside me, make me pregnant!” I’ll yell, right before we orgasm at the same time, which is ridiculous, considering I’ve been on birth control since I was 15. Aside from getting cream-pied, though, I hadn’t given pregnancy much thought as an adult. So when Maya got knocked up, my questions were more scientific. “Are you afraid you’ll get fat?” She’d shrug and answer, “I haven’t even had time to think about it.” As shocking as the reply was, I believed it.