Hank Pellissier

“And I could give her some real milk,” Monica volunteers, jiggling her breasts. “I’ve got at least 3 ounces in my upper ducts.”

I demur and dive into my diaper bag. “Uh-oh,” I cringe. “I brought bottles, of course, but I capped them and now I can’t find any …”

“Nipples?” guesses Thea. “You can use one of mine.” She tosses an expensive beige sucker my way. Tallulah eyes the device thirstily before glancing at me with reproach.

Apprehensively, I empty the bag — horrors! I forgot her pacifier! But Agnes has an extra that she’ll lend us. I also forgot socks and extra pants in case Tallulah poops up the present pair, but that’s OK too; Nathan’s got triples of each. Diapers I did bring, but they’re …

“Disposables?!” the lesbians chorus. “We’re not judgmental, but why?”

I babble excuses about how busy Carol and I are. Incredulity blooms on their maternal faces.

“Hank, can I ask you a personal question?” inquires Ren. “Was Tallulah an accident?”

My humiliation is complete.

Carol and I discussed children for more than 10 years. But yakking is not preparation. Preparation is having time, brains, heart, finances and homes set in advance to accommodate the needs of squalling offspring. Carol and I are ecstatic to be included in this affordable lesbian-conceived nursery network, but we aren’t prepared.

Who is prepared? Today’s lesbian.

Lesbians have the best nipples. Lesbians have the best nonviolent toys and non-gender-specific clothing. Lesbians have the best baby showers. Lesbians know every remedy for infant gas because they relentlessly e-mail sisters from Tucson, Ariz., to Cambridge, Mass. Lesbians have carpeted homes. Lesbians have cute diaper-changing areas with mobiles flying above. Lesbians love their babies madly, boundlessly, placing this love at the forefront of their existence.

And who are their closest rivals in this race? Gay men with kids.

In the four scant years since Newsweek magazine officially announced the “Gayby Boom,” somewhere between 6 million and 12 million children have been blessed with gay parents, who, according to research, constitute an attentive and intimidating new species of parent.

It turns out that the jumbo skill gap reflected in our wee parenting circle isn’t a freakish anomaly but a familiar tableau: Studies worldwide reveal that today’s homosexual totally kicks straight butt when it comes to roosting and rearing — in categories of competency and nurturing.

Gillian Dunne, senior research fellow at the Gender Institute of the London School of Economics, recently unveiled her study indicating that queer British dads are more compassionate toward their kids than their straight stiff-upper-lipped rivals. She found that gay men are “interested in extending their masculine identity to embrace nurturing qualities … and they felt that one great gift they brought to the children was a sense of tolerance.”

Gay papas also had “homes organized around commitment to children, with 25 percent of those surveyed working less than 30 hours a week.” Dunne’s evidence duplicates the findings of one study in 1989 and two in 1990 conducted in the United States that commended gay dads’ abilities.

Dunne’s discovery arrives five years after the American Psychological Association published — upon review of extensive research evidence dating back 40 years — a finding that there appears to be utterly no disadvantage rendered to children raised by gays and lesbians, and several distinctive enhancements. Despite bigoted fear of “butches,” research indicates that lesbians are as maternal as heterosexual women, and, surprisingly enough, the children of lesbians exhibit more “psychological femininity” than kids with hetero moms.

Studies additionally assert that the sexual orientation of moms or dads has no impact on their kids’ sexuality, gender identity or any other aspect of their psychological and emotional development. Children of gays and lesbians form friendship bonds with their peers as easily as kids of straights do, despite the harassment and teasing that the former group is subjected to. A 1994 study conducted by Charlotte Patterson of the University of Virginia also revealed that children of lesbians exhibited “a greater overall sense of well-being” than kids of heteros, perhaps because their moms forced fewer “sex-typed” preferences upon them.

Recent judicial decisions, like the ruling by the Colorado Supreme Court that lesbian couples can put both their names on their children’s birth certificates, sanctify these findings and, at the same time, make it easier for gay parents to show the rest of us how it’s done.

My wife and I are the token straights in this nursery network. We slipped in because I’m the sperm donor for Nathan, the lanky son of Monica and Rachel, who is just 19 days older than Tallulah. We want our half-siblings to play together so we recruited additional lesbian babies — Agnes, who is 15 hours older than Tallulah, and Elizabeth, a precocious 4-month-old — to fill in the gaps in our complex two-tots-per-hour, 45-hours-per-week schedule.

Chinese Agnes was catalyzed by top-quality “stranger semen” that her moms purchased from a sperm bank for $150 per 1 cubic centimeter (more than 25,000,000 spermatozoa guaranteed), while Elizabeth was begat with beat-off assistance from a het pal named Dan. (A spokeswoman at Pacific Reproductive Services, a sperm bank in San Francisco owned and operated by lesbians, estimates that half of all lesbian-conceived babies are test-tubers, with the remaining percentile evenly split between gay and straight wanking donor-buddies.)

The four babies will congregate each weekday at Thea and Darcy’s house in the Castro District and be cared for by Consuelo, a nanny who, when told by the lesbians in the group that all their babies had “dos mamas, no papas,” replied: “God blessed them.” Carol and I are ecstatic to be included in this collective, but we’re embarrassed that we appear to be so completely outclassed.

Ren, who happens to be the author of “The Lady Mechanic’s Total Car Care for the Clueless,” addresses my humiliation and the supernatural adroitness of lesbian moms.

“For us to become parents we really have to want kids because we have to find sperm, sign contracts and then justify our decisions 20 times to everyone we meet. It’s never like, ‘Whoops, we got sloppy with the turkey baster last night.’ There is no such thing as an accidental child of a lesbian couple. If all children were as wanted as the children of lesbians, we’d live in a pretty fucking amazing world.”

Gay male couples tend to have even tougher, more wallet-wrenching hurdles to clear if they want to be double daddies. The cost of hiring a surrogate mother to carry one’s DNA for nine months is astronomical — $61,975 for traditional, bargain-basement artificial insemination is the price tag listed by the Center for Surrogate Parenting Inc. If the guys want a borrowed ovum plopped in from a friend or relative, the subsequent Egg Donation/Gestational With In-Vitro package jumps to $75,425. If hetero dudes had to fork out that much dough the population explosion would instantly reverse.

I borrow a bib from Ren as we proceed to spoon-feed our rebellious tots. The other lesbians are in the den patiently translating their do’s and don’ts into Spanish for Consuelo. I didn’t have a list for her, and my wife, Carol, was entirely absent because she couldn’t miss her company’s important board meeting.

I brood defensively. Carol and I wanted Tallulah. And we love her immensely. Our main parenting problem, though, is that we work too hard at our careers. I feel emasculated if I don’t log in 40 hours weekly, and my wife’s a power feminist, so she feels obligated to grind in at least 55. Lesbians don’t do this. I don’t know how they survive — “Beans and rice,” smiles Darcy — but none of our share-care dykes are working full time and they’re all prepared to call in sick if their tot has a sniffle.

When I tell my buddy Rachel about this state of affairs she nods affirmatively. “You heteros have to resist all those traditional Barbie and Ken gender roles,” she gloated. “We lesbians don’t have that; we can just figure out freely how to make things work.”

Judith Stacey, esteemed author, sociologist at the University of Southern California and a founder of the Council on Contemporary Families, confirms this observation in her research on lesbian parents. Coauthor with Timothy Biblarz, of “(How) Does the Sexual Orientation of Parents Matter,” Stacey (a hetero mom) reports that “there’s a very active ideology among lesbians that they should be sharing responsibilities equally. They’re the best at sharing household work and when they have kids they’re more willing to both reduce their work hours to be equally involved in child care.” Stacey also discovered, like Dunne, that “gay male couples are more egalitarian typically than straights.”

“Another advantage we have,” adds Rachel, “is our extended family. There’s this feeling that queer people’s kids belong to the whole community. Our babies are loved by everybody with a rainbow flag. We get enormous support, free baby-sitting and our children feel very cared for by numerous adults.”

Right again. Community — a human necessity that gasps near extinction in America — is another documented advantage enjoyed by homosexual parents and their kids. Lesbian moms and gay dads aren’t isolated like their het counterparts, lonely housewives and ridiculed male mommies. They garner an abundance of comfort and companionship from other strong women and sensitive guys.

The Family Pride Coalition, in San Diego, lists 133 lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual parenting groups in 33 states across the nation, with an additional 23 internationally from Saskatchewan to South Africa. The sum total of gay parents and gays who want to be parents in various support groups is 2,500 in New York City; 1,500 in Minnesota; 1,100 in Boston; and 400 in Chicago, says Jenifer Firestone in her essay “The State of the State of Queer Parenting at the Millennium,” published in “Home Fronts” by Alyson Books.

Stricken after much research with a severe case of lesbian envy, I am suddenly fearful that my daughter will grow up with a ghastly disadvantage because she has been plagued with “one mom, one dad.” There has to be something bad about having homosexual parents, right? Only a het would have to ask.

Homophobia is the answer.

Felicia Park-Rogers, the director of COLAGE (Children of Lesbians and Gays Everywhere), a national nonprofit that provides community to kids with lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual parents, is painfully aware of the impact of homophobia on the children of gay parents.

“Homophobia in the schools,” says Park-Rogers grimly, “is huge, it’s unchecked; many teachers turn a blind eye and it affects all kids no matter what their age. Recently we heard about a second-grader who did a show and tell about what her two mommies and she did on vacation. Her life became a living hell after that.”

The Gay-Straight Alliance Network, which serves 130 student clubs in Northern California, provided me with scary stats on homophobic harassment. Recent (1999-2000) surveys conducted in four San Francisco Bay Area high schools (2,227 respondents) revealed that 53 percent of the students frequently hear homophobic comments at school (one to 10 times daily). Sixty-seven percent said that they make such comments themselves; 84 percent said they rarely or never hear staff members intervene when anti-gay comments are made; and 48 percent said that they do not think their campus is safe for queer students.

I thought about Nathan, who carries my chromosomes. If any classmate ever teases that boy about having Rachel and Monica for parents, well — watch out! Pissed-off old Uncle Seed is going to windmill into the playground to bash up some brat heads plus their lazy-ass teacher. Gimme a piece of the principal, too!

Sweet little Agnes, who likes to teethe on my ears. Elizabeth, who plays with her upchuck. I hope the world changes quickly so they’ll never be harassed. I watch them fling things about, sleep, defecate, cry and nurse on their gentle mamas. Agnes’ nickname is “lovebug,” Elizabeth’s is “peanut,” Nathan’s is “that sexy young man.” Tallulah’s? My wife and I don’t have a term of endearment for her yet. Maybe when I cut back my work hours — I’m trimming them to 36 next week. My wife’s also talking about quitting her demanding job; she used to sleep with women, so maybe she can actually do it.

“Our House,” a documentary about kids with gay and lesbian parents directed by Meema Spadola, is presently circulating on PBS stations. The film depicts daughters and sons of gays and lesbians in five diverse families (Latino, African-American, Mormon, Jewish, rural, working class, etc.) frankly discussing their domestic situation. Maybe every homophobe will watch it and realize how “normal” their supposedly “different” adversaries are, and subsequently change their hurtful viewpoint. Maybe all the bigots will peruse Alternative Family Magazine’s benign articles on summer sunburn dangers and children’s Web sites, and tolerantly recognize how much they and their kids have in common with the rest of us.

Maybe they’ll even perceive the stress-inducing foibles and stereotypes that exist in hetero parenting, and work at changing them to become better parents, like queers. That’s what I’m trying to do.

“Hey, Hank,” says bushy-haired Darcy. “You should come to Camp It Up! with us next summer. What a blast.”

“Gosh. Isn’t that exclusively for lesbian and gay families? It’s like Lavender Hill and Rainbow Family Camp, right? Carol and Tallulah and I aren’t allowed in, are we?”

“Pshaw!” Darcy snorts. “You’re our friends. You’re invited. We’re all going to go next year!” The Momazons enthusiastically describe the idyllic lifestyle of the lesbian camp: free arts and crafts classes daily and “lots of doing … nothing! It’s wonderful! You have to come with us, puhleeze!” The giddy chattering of the moms excites all the babies. “YAEIAICK! YAIAIECK!” they shriek, watching us and clapping their pudgy pink hands together. We observe them happily. Nobody knows if the babies are gay or straight. Nobody cares. What’s important is that they’re all friends, like their parents.

My daughter, Tallulah. Squirming, like my heart. She’s my angel, delivered to me to illuminate and exonerate my measly 47-year-old life, which in retrospect seems to have been so shallow and devoid of integrity before her arrival.

“You are m-my ba-baby.” Sniveling, I introduce myself to the quizzical face swaddled in a cotton receiving blanket. “I am your daddy. Don’t be afraid. I will protect you.”

Glancing sideways, I examine with horror her mother, Carol, who is strapped to a horizontal cross with her abdomen eviscerated. Her uterus and other bloody organs are perched on her torso. Surgeons are hurrying to reassemble her. A furious hose is slurping an enormous quantity of blood out of Carol’s interior into an object that resembles a clear plastic pony keg. The pony keg is rising quickly with my wife’s crimson life fluid. Has the cesarean gone awry?

Facing my daughter again, I start lying. “The world is safe. You have nothing to fear. There is no danger on this planet. The world is safe.”

Glorious also is the newborn son: Nathan, parented by Rachel and Monica, his Jewish lesbian mothers. Baby Nathan Ezekial, whom I helped create with my seminal fluid.

“Nathan,” I whisper to the curly-haired tot with the wrinkled brow whom Rachel and Monica have escorted to our hospital room, K-224, on Day 3 of Carol’s recovery. “Nathan, I am your ‘Uncle Seed.’ The sperm-donating guy!”

I aim his worried skull toward my daughter. “Over there,” I instruct him. “See her? That’s your half-sister, Tallulah.”

“Let’s take pictures,” beams Rachel, waving her Polaroid. “Put Tallulah and Nathan side by side.”

My wife smirks a weary smile, but she’s game. Carefully, she picks up our screaming, gargoylish creation, who is enraged and half-starved from drinking only colostrum (pre-milk). Carol places Tallulah’s bellowing face next to Nathan’s angst-ridden visage. I stand behind everybody, my happy arms encircling Carol and Monica’s shoulders. Proud progenitor!

“Smile,” Rachel orders.

Carol gazes abstractly. Monica faintly curls her mouth. They’re tired; I’m not. I flash all my teeth, happier than the Cheshire cat. Why not? I’m bursting with cockiness because I’ve spawned two human beings in 21 days: Nathan Ezekial, born Dec. 19, 1999, and Tallulah Louise, born Jan. 10, 2000.

I’m the biological father of both. Did I say that already? ME! ME! ME!

My ego runs amok until Rachel remarks, “Hmm … they don’t at all look alike.”

Huh? The three women inspect the physiognomy of the infants and obliquely decide that I’ve had zero influence. Ears? Feet? Lips? Nothing resembles me. Round-faced, pinky Tallulah is the mirror image of my Welsh wife, and Mediterranean-complexioned, Moses-nosed Nathan is fashioned from the same clay as Monica.

My genes? Recessive? I didn’t expect clones of myself, but it would be nice if … something …

Finally, the discussion moves to bodily functions and it’s revealed that both tots are afflicted with ferocious flatulence. “Yes!” I exult, pumping my fists in the air like a Super Bowl champion. “That’s from ME! Absolutely. I’m a savage farter, thank God.”

I deluge Rachel and Monica with a monologue of my methane lineage, while my wife cringes.

“My mother is an amazing trumpeter, despite drinking Beano for 40 years and avoiding all legumes. And my 101-year-old grandmother can still blow up her skirts. I’m from a loud clan of wind passers; our butt barking is descended from the Mennonite branch of the family tree.”

“Enough,” snaps Carol.

I shut up, but for the remainder of the visit my chest puffs up whenever a squeak razzes out of a newborn anus.

Carol and Monica sit together like war veterans now to competitively compare the gruesome details of their labor. Although Tallulah was supposed to have been born first, on Christmas Day, with Nathan following on New Year’s, their nativities were reversed when the dainty 6 pound, 5 ounce boy cannoned out 12 days ahead of schedule, while the huge 9 pound, 7 ounce girl hibernated for an additional 17 days in an impossibly jammed posterior position. But was Monica’s “natural” delivery less painful?

“Nathan’s square head lacerated my vagina,” the slim-hipped lesbian boasts. “Three doctors spent two hours sewing me up; I needed 65 stitches. Gallons of blood all over the room.”

“Same here,” Carol retorts.

“I still haven’t bonded,” Monica confides. “I have to get over my own experience first.”

“Ditto.”

Rachel and I sit quietly and listen. I feel close to her because we’ve been through the same totally helpless feelings that all nonpregnant spouses endure. We know this, but we don’t want to talk about it. All we want to do is play with our kids. I grab Tallulah, who is napping sullenly; Rachel cradles Nathan in her warm, sweaty arms. We hover the half-siblings around each other for a long time, hoping they’ll intuit the shared DNA. No magic occurs. They snore, fuss and adamantly ignore each other.

“Let’s rub their faces together,” suggests Rachel. “Let’s make ‘em kiss.”

“Isn’t that illegal?” I worry.

Eventually, we trade tots. I hold Nathan, the fruit of my seed, in my arms. I stare at his face. With a shock, I realize that I don’t feel anything. No bonding whatsoever. I try, but there’s nothing. I don’t know him. I just met him. I love my daughter whom I carried tenderly to the nursery when she was five minutes old, my daughter whom I have changed the diapers of and worried about and fed formula to while my drugged and blood-drained wife recovered after her worse-than-routine surgery. I love my daughter, who does indeed resemble the woman I love, but Nathan? Sure, he seems great, but my heart is monogamous with love for Tallulah, not him.

Nurture — not nature — enslaves my sympathies.

After 10 minutes of groans, gasps and damp explosions, it’s determined that the two tots need their diapers changed. Rachel and I decide to maintain our switch for this chore; we’ll enjoy the experience of washing opposite genitalia. I rip off Nathan’s diapers.

“Watch out,” cackles Rachel. “He can pee all over you with his cute little penis.”

I stare at his organ, embarrassed. Sure, it’s far more like mine than Tallulah’s, but I’ve grown used to hers; his seems odd and obscene. Anger rises in me when I see the scar from the bris (circumcision) that sliced off his foreskin. “I wouldn’t have done that to you!” I mutter internally. “Dammit. I’m sorry.”

Nathan’s wrinkled, feces-drenched scrotum is trickier to clean than the simple grooves of my daughter, but I do my meticulous best while he lies there obediently. Afterward, I want my daughter back, so we switch again. Rachel is also relieved.

After a 45-minute visit, my wife’s face starts to fall with fatigue. “It’s time to say ‘Shalom,’” I suggest.

“Come to Nathan’s naming ceremony at the synagogue next week,” Monica insists as they exit. “It’s generally for baby girls, but we want him to have one. I know you’re exhausted, but please; you’re part of the ritual.”

“OK.”

The naming ceremony created by their radical Reform synagogue is a benign celebration unmarked by the intimate bloodletting of its bris equivalent, but I’m reluctant to attend because I’m allergic to religion and I resent the sissifying of Nathan in a girlie rite. Isn’t the poor boy receiving a confusing mixture of messages from his parents? They’ve already whacked up his weenie to honor a patriarchal barbarism and now they’ll sing effeminate hymns and coddle him like a princess?

Carol, Tallulah and I arrive late, delayed by my procrastination. We situate ourselves discreetly in the back pew until Monica and Rachel, on the temple stage already, make eye contact with us and gesture us into the front row. Oh no.

The ceremony begins with a passionate Hebrew roundelay that Carol sings joyously while I cynically lip-sync. Prayers and other songs follow, I imagine; I can’t remember because I was spaced out.

“You’re on,” Carol nudges me, eventually. “Hey! Earth to Hank: Forward.”

Reluctantly, I stumble onstage, like a convict to the gas chamber. People are staring, I realize. I should have shaved. I should have shampooed my hedgehog hair that’s sticking up like an oily haystack.

“We want to especially thank today,” announces Monica to the rapt, emotional, mostly homosexual audience of 250, “the donor, who performed long and selflessly to assist us. Hank Pellissier gave us the seed we needed to create our beloved Nathan.”

A wave of titanic affection rises out of the audience; it floods the stage like a tsunami, washing up my skinny legs, drowning me in its warmth. For 10 seconds, silence. Then the room explodes in applause.

“Bravo! Mazel tov!”

Speechless, I stand there, amazed. Gradually, I realize two truths: 1) Everybody here has been dying of curiosity, wondering who the donor is; 2) What I did is important to them. I didn’t just beat off for 15 months. I helped gay people become parents.

“Thank you! You’re wonderful! You’re so kind!”

I hear these phrases a hundred times each when the ceremony ends and the party ensues. Monica’s father from Brooklyn blesses me incessantly for providing him with a grandson. Rachel’s abundant relatives treat me to wine, cake and ear-to-ear smiles. I hug strong gay men, lesbians in sweaters, aunts, uncles, cousins. Carol is reverenced for her generosity in “sharing me.” Tallulah is flattered for cuteness.

When the celebration subsides, I try to slip out with my family, but I’m snared by a recent arrival, Rachel’s mother, Esther, who miscalculated the time it would take to drive up from Beverly Hills.

Esther holds my hand. She insists that I accomplished something heroic.

“It was fun,” I giggle. “No problem. Really. I’d do it again. Actually, I’d like to get your daughter pregnant next year.”

“Promise?” she gasps happily. “Will you do that for me?”

“Yes, yes, yes,” I vow. “I want to make all would-be mothers and grandmothers and great-grandmothers happy. I want to make lesbians and all gay people happy. I want to make everyone in the world happy. I’m drunk.”

Esther exhorts something in Hebrew or Yiddish that I subconsciously comprehend because I am like her now: I’m no longer young, but I have a daughter and already I want grandchildren. I am suddenly in alliance with all parents and wannabe parents who dwell temporarily on the face of the earth and crave tearfully, tenderly, a small chunk of their being that will survive into the mysterious future long past their own onrushing demise.

“It’s a potent pleasure,” I agree. “But doesn’t Monica get to be ‘phallic’ next? We want YOU pregnant, too, Rachel.”

Our tjte-`-tjte is interrupted by our corpulent partners, who enter the
dining room, waddling arm-in-arm. My wife is a tall, blue-eyed WASP, while Rachel is diminutive, raven-haired and Jewish. Tonight they look identical because their T-shirts are both cinched up, exposing big bulbous watermelon-bellies.

“I’m fatter than you,” remarks Carol. “But your boobs look bigger.”

“What did the doctor say your due-date was?” inquires Monica. “Mine is
January 1st — a millennium boy-baby.”

“December 25th,” replies Carol. “Our daughter is the antichrist.”

Rachel and I escort our partners toward their chairs. We shove their
portly frames toward their plates; we ladle them enormous quantities of
third-trimester protein.

“Yummy!” burps my wife.

“Oink! Oink!” agrees Monica.

Sheepishly, I stare at the two happy fertility goddesses who are
sprouting with my seed — my wife, inseminated by traditional
calisthenics, and Monica, enlarged by semen that I wanked into a
mayonnaise jar.

I feel like David Koresh.

“A toast!” crows Rachel. “To the tool who made this all possible!”

Carol and Monica hoist their teacups of neonatal brew. Materna tablets are poised on their lips, for swallowing.

“To our dear donor — ‘Uncle Wiggly’!” guffaws Monica.

“Polliwog Papa!” snickers Carol.”

“How did you do it?” Rachel wonders. “What super-sperm food were you
eating in March?”

“Cheetos?” I laugh. “Actually, I think we were all more fertile that
month because we were filled with hatred, stress and despair.”

Carol and Monica were fighting viciously seven months ago — they were
angry because their ovulation cycles were parallel for the very first
time. When the procreation plan started, their cycles were two weeks
apart; but a fertility drug ingested by Monica threw her off, directly
into Carol’s path.

A bitter struggle for sperm rights erupted on the phone; a screaming, hissing cat fight for dominion of my dollops. Eventually, Carol slammed down the receiver and whirled on me. “I get you first, every day this entire week!” she snarled triumphantly. “You’re my husband — she only gets what’s left over.”

Stupidly, I disagreed.

“Monica’s older,” I argued. “You’re young, and she’s 40 — her eggs are
getting astoundingly more brittle, every day. Besides, I promised my sperm
to her before you were even interested in having a baby — therefore, she
gets first dibs.”

“You’re insane!” snarled my headstrong spouse. “Your gunk IS MARRIED TO ME!”

“It’s my body!” I hissed. “I own my fluids!”

Doors slammed; saucers and forks were tossed; sobs ensued.

“OK, OK, OK,” I conceded, forlornly. “It doesn’t matter anyway.”

After 15 months of failing to inseminate either of them separately,
my meager reservoir was suddenly supposed to simultaneously satisfy both
thirsty uteri.

“I’m 46 years old,” I whined. “Double duty for five days? It’s
impossible. My tank will run dry.”

Never, ever in my rather degrading life had I ever felt like such a loser.
For 15 months I had tossed my offerings into Monica’s jars and Carol’s
loins without even a sprout to boast about. I ate icky health food, I
slept immense hours, I exercised strenuously — but all the glue I grunted
out desultorily refused to bond with their eggs.

My spunk IS alive — a sperm analysis verified this — but an emasculating
curse had rendered my intimate maleness absolutely deficient. Perhaps my
sperm was retarded — wandering lost in fallopian labyrinths. Perhaps
their whipping tails were too puny to paddle up the pubic path. Perhaps
their heads weren’t pointy enough to pummel past the crust of the ovum.

To emotionally survive my special burden in March, I began furtively
drinking beer with my “jogging” partner, Paul. I raced out my front door
in warm-up sweats, to delude my wife. Three blocks away, at the Treat
Street Pub, I guzzled ale with my chum, who also was in a procreating
dilemma. Together we commiserated about the anguish of being sub-male.
After an hour of jolly whining, we sprinkled water on our faces to
impersonate sweat and strode home to our respective lairs, to drunkenly
perform our testicular duties.

“That was a great one!” I lied to my wife, as I dramatically faked a
gigantic, multi-spurting orgasm.

“Really?” she marveled. “There’s a lot … coming out?”

“Pints!” I assured her. “Great gobs.”

“Uh … what about Monica?” She asked. “Is there much for her, too?”

“Nope!” I chuckled. “She only gets a teensy-weensy speck.”

“Oh honey,” cooed Carol. “I love you!”

My volume report regarding the lesbian drop-off was hideously,
embarrassingly true. In my wife, I could bury my pitiful discharges
out of view, but in Monica’s glass mayonnaise jar …

“Where is it?” she asked, polite but ruffled.

“Can’t you see it? Right there.” I aimed my trembling finger at some
shivering dampness in the corner.

“I’ll get it!” grunted Rachel, her syringe poised aggressively. “Don’t
worry; it only takes one tadpole!”

Adroitly, she snagged the minuscule smudge as I hurried, crimson-faced,
out of their home.

When my five days of stud service finally ended, I collapsed into an evil,
despairing funk.

“This will never happen,” I decided. “It’s a fiasco, a joke. I’ll never
get Carol pregnant, or Monica, or Rachel” (who wants my semen when
Monica’s offspring is 6 months old; that way, their kids can be
half-siblings).

My fantastic queer-friendly family plan seemed only a chimera; an
illusionary dream impossible for a middle-aged man like me.

“Hank, my period’s late,” Carol told me three weeks later.

“Don’t tease me!” I implored her. “Really, my ego can’t take it.”

Three days later, she came home with a pregnancy kit that she had
purchased from a local Thrifty Drug store.

“I’m not splitting the cost of that,” I grumbled. “What a waste of money.”

Carefully, she urinated on the stick.

“If the lines appear with the same thickness,” she said.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

Two minutes later, I heard her call out my name in a tremulous tone that
I’d never heard before. I ran to the bathroom. I stared at the technological appliance that promised a miracle. We screamed.

“AH GAH AH HA HA HA! WE DID IT! OOOWEE! YABBA-DABBA-DOO!”

After shedding plenty of impending parent tears together, I remembered my other responsibility.

“This means,” I blubbered obtusely, “that I can concentrate on Monica now,
without interference.”

“You’re so rude,” hissed my wife.

Sprinting to the phone, I dialed the gal pals.

“Guess what?” I gushed. “Carol’s pregnant.”

A pause.

“You’re serious?” said Monica.

“SO ARE WE!!!” shrieked Rachel, in the background. “WE’RE GONNA HAVE A BABY!”

“Hooray! Hooray! Hooray!” I laughed.

“Hooray for all of us!” yelled Carol, grabbing the phone away from me
for some serious girl talk.

“I’m finished!” I exulted. “No more sex chores! I don’t have to ejaculate
again for the rest of my life!”

I felt sorry for Monica when she got morning sickness, because of course I’m responsible. I felt annoyed when I found out that she was still
drinking coffee — what’s she trying to do, abort my son? I felt
frustrated when she said she was “still in denial” — what’s wrong? Is she
embarrassed about the product of our chromosomal union?

Tonight, with the rock cod and tofu, is the first time that Carol and I
have socially mingled with Rachel and Monica since the pregnancies ensued.
Why? Well, one reason is because I’m afraid of appearing too interested.
Or not interested enough. I’m confused, really, about how I feel. I’m
glad, of course, that they’re getting what they want. And, usually, I’m just focused on the daughter that Carol is carrying.

But when Monica’s boy emerges, I’m worried. I know I’m going to bust loose with some wacky emotions. He’s a boy?! Like me?! Will he look like me? Will he act like me? Will I love him? A son? Son? Is he really my son?

Monica and Rachel are embroiled now in a complex legal procedure that will
allow Rachel to sign the birth document as the boy’s “father.” They need
my signed consent for this, and they’ll get it. I’m honest, and I’ve promised — no interference. The child is theirs. I won’t have any parental rights whatsoever.

But still.

“Wouldn’t it be fun?” proposes my excellent wife, who always vocalizes the
secrets hidden inside everyone’s minds. “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if our
children played together all the time, and got to know each other well?
They’re related, after all; they’ll be half-brother and half-sister.”

Rachel glows with happiness — a broad grin splits her round face.
Monica’s eyes soften; she’s touched by Carol’s profusion of friendship.

“Yes,” Rachel says. “Yes.”

“We can alternate baby-sitting,” suggests Carol. “Or we can watch them
together. We can celebrate their birthdays together. It takes ‘community’
to raise happy children, and the four of us together have a natural
bond.”

“Let’s do it,” whispers Monica.

The talk turns now to names. Carol and I are going to call our daughter
Tallulah Elizabeth, but Rachel and Monica are undecided.

“An Old Testament name, because you’re both Jewish?” I guess.

“Yes,” Rachel agrees, “Maybe Ezekiel, or Jeroboam, or Abimelech, or Zechariah.”

“You could name him ‘Onan,’ after his masturbating papa-lineage,” I cackle. “Har har, har har har!”

No one else laughs.

“Maybe Amos, or Obidiah,” suggests Monica. “Or Nehemiah, or Ephraim.”

“Those are all excellent names,” I lie. As a Neo-Pagan I’ve got ornery opinions on the subject, but I don’t say anything. He’s not my son, after all. He’s not my son, he’s not my son.

Then again, he is, at least sort of, and hard as I try, I can’t stop the horrible and sweet emotions bubbling inside me already about this tiny life — these tiny lives — coming into the world.

“No,” Monica corrected me, “I’m first, because I’m older. Rachel will
wait two years. But we are in the mood. Absolutely.”

“Adoption is out?” I asked. “You could get a Chinese girl, like
everyone else.”

“That’s a generous act, but we want to be pregnant.”

“Sperm bank?”

“No,” she corrected me again, “we want to know exactly what we’re
getting. Plus we want to tell our children who their father is.”

“So some guy-friend will masturbate in an empty mayonnaise jar,
Rachel will slurp it up in a turkey baster and squirt it inside you?”

“Precisely.”

Monica paused before asking in a soft voice: “Do you know any men
who would like to be donors?”

“Some gay guy?” I replied. “Like Bruce, my racquetball partner?”

“No, no, no!” Monica corrected me, for the third time. “We asked our
gay friends already — it’s impossible. They’re too promiscuous. We don’t
want to take chances.”

“A lesbian nightmare,” I gasped. “First time sperm gets inside you, and
it’s poisonous. Ironic.”

“Exactly,” she agreed.

“So you want a monogamous Jewish guy.”

“Wrong again,” she retorted.

“What? You’re Jews. Rachel teaches Hebrew, for Chrissakes.”

“It’s better to mix up the gene pool. There’s Tay-Sachs disease, plus
tribal neurosis.”

“A goy. Wow, this opens it up.”

“We also want someone who won’t try to get custody or see the child too
often. He has to understand that it’s our child, not his.”

“A deadbeat dad. That should be easy!”

“Not really. You’d be surprised.”

“Anything else?”

“He must impregnate both of us, so our children will be
half-siblings.”

“Fascinating. Of course.”

“And then, well, this is embarrassing …”

“What?”

“It’s so ‘lookist.’”

“Tell me.”

“We want someone tall and skinny to balance out our roundness.”

I stared down at her. I’m 6-3 and 159 pounds.

“M-M-Monica,” I stammered, “I’m perfect!”

I felt vulnerable and naughty, like I was coming on to her.

“Really?” she gushed. “What about Carol? She’d let you?”

“Maybe. I’ll ask her.”

“I’ll ask Rachel. She likes you. We’re ready to move on this.”

“I’ll start eating pumpkin seeds!”

“I’m ovulating in two weeks!”

“Cool!”

I continued shopping then, super-conscientiously, to butter up my wife,
Carol. Later, as I unpacked her favorites (huge seedless grapes, Manhattan
clam chowder, pygmy carrots), I casually mentioned the unusual proposition.

“You want to do it?” she exclaimed,
visibly startled.

“Maybe,” I shrugged. “Seems like a nice thing, you know, to help them
out, right?”

Truth is, I desperately wanted to impregnate Monica. The situation
seemed perfect: I could breed without financial or emotional cost. My
lineage would be reared at a distance, by doting lesbians. Excellent. I
began thinking, maybe there’s more — maybe I can get all the lesbians in the world
pregnant.

- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – -

“What about me?” bellowed my wife. “You’d rather get her pregnant, is
that it?”

For five years, Carol and I have been discussing parenthood — discussing, but procrastinating. Carol’s excuse is her skyrocketing career;
my reasons involve sloth, fear and an immaturity that is apparently chronic,
since I am 45 years old.

“If Monica has your kid, I get one too,” she continued.

“OK,” I mumbled, “but I thought you wanted to adopt?”

“No! I’d worry that you’d love Monica’s child more than ours if you were
only related to hers.”

“Golly, I wouldn’t do that. Carol, if you’re gonna freak out
about this, maybe I shouldn’t. I just thought, hey, this is the
politically correct, gay-friendly thing to do, right?”

I had her there and I knew it. Carol is an ex-LIC (Lesbian In
College) herself, with three Sapphic trysts under her belt: a poli-sci professor, a
linguistics classmate and a drummer. She’s still dyke-identified,
embarrassed about her hetero marriage. Ideologically, she has to do anything
to assist her lesbian friends, including loaning out her husband’s gonads.

Her face was rippling with confusion.

“Will they sue us for child support?” she asked.

“No way. We’ll sign preconception papers in front of a lawyer. They
want me to send birthday cards, that’s all. Visitation rights will be
completely controlled by them.”

“I don’t know. I’m worried.”

“Carol, it has to be OK with you. Otherwise it’s off.”

She paced the room like a lawyer, looking for loopholes.

Monica telephoned early that night. “Rachel’s ecstatic,” she chirped. “Green light on this end. How’s Carol?”

“Weird,” I whispered. “Uptight.”

“Oh dear.” Monica paused. “Let me talk to her.”

“Uh, why? I mean of course, sure.”

Reluctantly, I handed the receiver to Carol. I walked down the hall but crept back, stealthily. I crouched in the next room,
eavesdropping, of course. I had to. It’s been a long time since two women
fought over me — maybe another lifetime.

Their conversation was absolutely appalling, worse than anything I
imagined. Instead of a cat fight, they spent the next two hours chatting
amiably, laughing uproariously on numerous occasions. No evil brawls, no
sobs or tears — they were snickering! I was crushed. My wife was
lesbian bonding with the rival womb. I hated them both!

With extended coos and giggles, Carol finally said goodbye.

“What was that about?” I snarled, emerging from the shadows.

“Oh,” she answered, laconically, “they want us to come over for
dinner on Thursday.”

“Why were you laughing? What’s so funny?”

“Nothing,” she said. “Seriously.”

The meal was organic pasta and vegetables, and more wine than I should
have drunk. I thought everybody would be tense but me, but the inverse was
actually true.

The first hour was conversational “foreplay”: chit-chat minutia about
miscellaneous female things. I could have been a place mat. I had nothing to
say. This didn’t bother me, though — I reassured myself that the two hopeful
receptacles of my miracle goo were just softening up Carol so they could get
what they needed.

Finally, Rachel sighed and announced, “Well, Carol, this is great fun,
but I suppose it’s time for us to discuss the possibility of using your
husband for our babies. Monica and I are deeply appreciative of your
generosity in even considering this. We want to listen now to all your
hesitations regarding this situation and we, of course, have our own
concerns.”

Beaming with self-possession, Carol dived skillfully into the ensuing
three hours of convoluted “processing.” Once again, I was completely lost.
The myriad questions and analyses and sharing of feelings was an alien
tongue to me. Sure, I occasionally leaped in with a filthy joke; they
acknowledged this with patient smiles before returning to the mysterious
depths of their trialogue.

Three hours of processing! Laborious questions like: “Carol, how would
you feel about Hank’s feelings if he wanted to spend time with our child,
against our wishes?” Followed by the reverse: “Carol, how would you feel about Hank’s feelings if he didn’t want to spend time with our child, when we wanted him
to?”

There were, I believe, only three questions directed at me. Even then,
my answers were immediately deemed invalid if Carol refused to back them up.
For example:

Monica: “Hank, how would you feel if your sperm was unable to get one of
us pregnant after repeated attempts for, say, six cycles of ovulation?”

Hank: “That won’t happen. Hey, two women had to get abortions after one
night with me. I’m potent for sure, ha ha!”

Carol: “Truth is, Hank is very sensitive about all of his sexual
inadequacies, although, of course, he lives in denial of this. Furthermore,
despite his boasts about past exploits, I can testify that he produces very
small volumes of the needed ingredient. He will be depressed about failure to
attain conception immediately, but I will keep his spirits up with B
vitamins and I’ll make sure he doesn’t quit this job, like he’s quit so many others.”

After three hours of interrogation, it became clear that I had failed but Carol had succeeded, and that was all that mattered.

Monica and Rachel were rapturous with delight; they hugged my wife and
told her they “really wanted her to be part of the event.”

“Of course,” she replied. “As you wish.”

“What’s going on?” I asked, for the hundredth time.

“She’s going to assist you,” replied Monica. “Together the two of you
will … extract the sperm.”

“I can do it myself,” I growled. “God, it’s easier that way.”

There was an awkward pause. Finally Rachel spoke up. “Please, Hank, try to understand. Monica and I are not comfortable with this if Carol
isn’t an essential contributor. We insist.”

“OK, OK,” I muttered.

“I’m Auntie Handjob,” joked Carol.

Monica and Rachel howled with laughter. Nothing, it seemed
to them, could be more hysterical than acts of hetero sex.

“What’s my name?” I asked petulantly. “I want a nickname too.”

“Hmmm,” thought Monica, “how about Uncle Seed?”

“But it’s not funny enough,” I whined, “and besides, I’m
the daddy, not an uncle.”

“Oh no,” grumbled Monica. “Carol, what do you think?”

“Well,” she replied, “I think ‘Uncle Seed’ is just perfect.”

“Great,” crowed Rachel. “I’m glad that’s settled.”

The rest of the evening was occupied with logistics — Rachel and Monica
would pay for my physical exam, my blood test, my sperm analysis and the
lawyer’s fees to draw up the contract between us. They promised there would also be more discussions to air out any new feelings any of us might have.
Looking back on the proceedings, I have to admit that I had hoped for a bit of phallic worship. Instead, it felt more like two farmers were borrowing a shovel from Carol. But I realize that every question, every
precaution, every decision that Monica and Rachel made was well-considered
and justified. Our arrangement
may seem eccentric to some, but to us it makes perfect sense: We’re helping two women who
want to be parents.

By late December,
the four of us, as a team, are going to be doing some serious baby-making.
Happy Hanuka, Rachel and Monica! I hope my polliwogs
swim straight and true!