Felt Babies
2015-2018
Wet felting in the process of taking raw sheep’s wool, also known as roving, and through a combination of lubricant, heat, and friction knotting it into a solid mass or sheet. I developed and practiced a living process of making felt in my vagina using roving, vaginal fluids, condoms, and the friction created from walking or running. I would make them over the period of one workday, usually letting them gestate for 6 to 8 hours. A lot of times they would be delivered at school or work, and then placed in whatever container was available.
One of the display methods I have chosen to use over the course of making these felt fetuses is creating an amniotic sac for them to suspend in. This is achieved by melting plastic into two half-spheres and then joining the two with the fetus inside.
Letters to My Felt Babies
It was negative, and I should have known, but I didn’t. I couldn’t convince myself that I wasn’t pregnant without the reassurance of the pregnancy test. As I was pacing around the school bathroom, 20 minutes before I had to walk to work, waiting for those 5 minutes to be over I realized how far I had come from this clinical and removed understanding of the things that I had originally approached this whole issue with. I had been protesting the referral of them as my babies from the get-go, even after I started internally calling them MY babies. I hated it; I hated the thought that I could do this also meant that I could grow actual babies. That thought horrified and disgusted me. But I couldn’t help becoming attached to these things, I made them and they were mine. They went through my days with me: to my classes, to work, to the gym. And as I was on the stair climber and my calves burned and grew stronger they grew and changed too. When I walked around at work and my feet began to hurt they were becoming something new. They were always there with me and I started to feel a shared experience and understanding between us. It didn’t help that everyone around me was developing an attachment to them. Some people even started to name them.
Primrose
I put you in at 7:50 in the morning as I was rushing out the door. I didn’t have very long to masturbate, so your new home was a little dry. You were loose and didn’t ball very well. When I tied off your sac and inserted you into me you didn’t protest. We left the apartment quickly and proceeded to get on the train. We got off the train and walked to class. I had to install a piece so you got to witness me use power tools. As I squatted down and stood back up over and over again you began to change. When class finished we went and sat in the sun in the park. I went and got food, could you feel the weight of my stomach changing, going from empty to full? Your rebirth into this world as a new thing happened right before my art history class. I took you out and opened your amniotic sac and there you were. I put you in the Tupperware container that my sandwich was in earlier that day. I showed you to my friend Christopher, he is the one that named you. We got on the train to go home but this time you weren’t inside of me; you were in my backpack. I still felt attached to you.
As my attachment grew and their numbers multiplied I became more and more overwhelmed by these things. The strangest part to me is that they became part of my daily routine. Every morning at some point while I was getting ready I would have to get all of the supplies out, masturbate, tie off, and insert one of these vesicles into my body. In the beginning, this was a clumsy and awkward process, but after a while I got it down to a smooth science. The speed and naturalness that I began to be able to accomplish this task with really upsetting me. It worried me how normal it was becoming to complete this task.
Gene
You fought me from the beginning. I put you in right before I left for work at around 6:15pm. I couldn’t get all of your loose fibers into the condom and I ended up having to start over twice. Once you were in the condom and the condom was in me, I put on my pants and we left for work. I couldn’t get a seat on the subway so we had to stand, all of the bumping and bouncing around knocked you loose. As I waddled into the restroom at work before my shift started to right you, my coworker asked why I was walking funny. I told her she was making shit up. Once in the privacy of the restroom stall, I reinserted you into me. I would have to repeat this action 3 more times during my shift. It was Saturday so we were running around the whole night. I ended up giving up on you with 2 hours left in my shift. I took a to-go container from the kitchen and you were born into that in the bathroom stall of a bar next to a drunk woman crying on the phone and clinging to the sink. Not really the grand entrance you were expecting, was it? You spent the rest of the shift in my purse.
One of the other aspects that I was not prepared to deal with was taking them out and where I went from there. I have only been home for birth a few times. I am usually gone from my home for 12+ hours at a time, so the vast majority of the time I am out doing something when the 8 hours are up. And I never really thought about specifically bringing something to put the sac and the baby in once I pulled them out, so I always ended up rummaging through my purse or backpack looking for any kind of container to put it in. If I packed a lunch that day I would put them in a Tupperware or the plastic bag that I had originally packed carrots in. Other times I didn’t even have that and would use empty wrappers or food-to-go boxes. And most of the babies were born in restroom stalls, which felt wrong and right at the same time.
Maria
I put you in around 10 in the morning on a Monday. Mondays are the only days that I don’t have work or class so I knew we wouldn’t be doing a lot of moving, so I made you small. I used less roving than I usually do to make you. You are one of the sweeter ones, in your physicality and our interactions. I might be biased because we had a really easy day together, but whatever. We made breakfast and watched cartoons for a little longer than we should have. We did a load of laundry and walked to the corner store to buy toilet paper. You stayed perfectly in place and I did not feel hindered by your presence. You were birthed right after I ate dinner and you were put in a jar that used to hold saffron. You deserved somewhere nice like that.
If someone was to ask me if I was pregnant right now I don’t know how I would respond. I should probably say no, but that somehow feels like a lie. I can’t really say yes either. Is maybe even an appropriate answer? If I did say yes how would I answer all the proceeding questions? When they ask who the father is would I say me? If they ask when am I due would I say in 3 hours? If they ask me if I am going to keep it do I say yes, in a jar on my windowsill? I don’t know how to answer these questions to others or to myself. I don’t know what I am honestly doing this all for or why I didn’t stop when I started to become distressed by it. What is my compulsion to continue with this thing that I inherently feel disoriented by?