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!

| H A N K |

Sylvia, in a panic, tried to salvage the training. “I didn’t know they would say that,” the Adoption Recruitment Coordinator said, smoothing her hair nervously. “None of the other guest adoptees have ever talked like that.” But it was too late. They had made their point. If blacks and Latinos didn’t want me raising their kids, how could I dismiss their wishes?

In 1972, the National Association of Black Social Workers passed a resolution characterizing transracial adoption as “cultural genocide.” The NABSW’s claim that any black child “kidnapped and placed in a foreign environment” with a white family would become a “psychological mongrel” with “chronic schizophrenia” resonated deeply with many African-Americans. The NABSW’s strong stance successfully spearheaded 25 years of subtle policies and overt regulations discouraging the practice.

Over the decades, the NABSW had lobbied for a federal law forbidding transracial adoption commensurate with the 1973 Indian Child Welfare Act that granted Native American families and tribes preference in adopting Indian children. But with the signing of the Multi-Ethnic Placement Act (MEPA) in 1995 (a federal bill prohibiting all organizations receiving federal funding from “delaying or denying” the placement of a child on the basis of race), the NABSW’s official voice of dissent went underground. “We’re done with the adoption issue,” said NABSW spokesman Howard Babson impatiently. “But our position has not changed.” Many African-American adoption leaders I spoke to refused to be interviewed — as if stating their true opinions might jeopardize their funding.

Jill Jacobs, the executive director of Family Builders by Adoption in Oakland, Calif., cautiously expressed her general skepticism: “There’s concern that African-American children are being taken out of their community.” When asked to describe an unsuitable white parent for a black child, she did not beat around the bush. “People who say they really want a light-skinned child, but they might be willing to ‘settle’ for an African-American — that’s a red flag!” Jacobs also asserted that many potential black parents were being discouraged from adoption by the racism and cultural ignorance of the agencies. Her own organization, she says, has greatly increased recruitment of black families by attending to details that demonstrate cultural sensitivity. “We provide food at meetings for potential parents,” she explains. “Eating at gatherings is intrinsic to black culture; without this they do not feel welcome.”

Jacobs’ analysis echoed Julia’s exhortation that behind every unwanted child there are many social ills that we could work to heal. “Instead of adopting a black child, you could work to change the racism that prevents blacks from retaining their children within their community, you could do outreach to black communities or help change adoption laws. Then you might be able to save 20 children.”

The viewpoint expressed by Jacobs and Julia made absolute sense to me, but Carol remained skeptical. She argued that since blacks make up 12 percent of the U.S. population, but over 40 percent of the adoptable children, that this meant that three and a half times as many blacks would need to adopt as other ethnicities. She cited polls that report that 50 percent of the black community approves of transracial adoption. But the fact that half the African-American population denounced my parenting decision hardly felt reassuring.

I don’t want my act of raising a child to be overwhelmed by political controversy. If it’s unpleasant for me and confusing for the child, why do it? To satisfy Carol’s Ghanaian nostalgia? No way. Isn’t using the child’s race to make a political statement the worst possible display of liberal selfishness?

| C A R O L |

As Hank pored over his stacks of research papers, I realized he was confirming his opinion by compiling statistics on “the black consensus,” while I sought the answer I wanted in personal narratives about colorblind love. I put books featuring blond ladies holding black babies on his desk but he barely glanced at the covers. “I don’t buy it,” he would mutter and return to his number-crunching.

His data can only be defeated by stronger information. Seeking academic wisdom, I telephone the black Harvard Law professor Randall Kennedy, who tells me, “I applaud people who adopt children, and people who adopt across racial lines I give more applause to since our society looks askance at that.”

Kennedy even dismisses transracial adoptees who complain about their upbringing: “Almost everyone I know is alienated about their upbringing. What’s news about that?” When I ask him how white parents can deal with black-aimed racism, Kennedy replies, “What is the white parent going to do when the child is called ‘nigger’? My mother told me: ‘Disregard it.’ My father said, ‘Get a brick and bash their head in.’ I listened to two black people with diametrically opposite advice!”

Encouraged by the call, I work up the nerve to schedule an appointment with Julia, the half-Nigerian woman who had so eloquently carved up my heart. When I meet her in her African art-filled Berkeley apartment, she fixes me a cup of proper British tea and launches into her subject.

“Nobody asks what transracial adoptees really feel,” she exclaimed. “Instead they analyze our thoughts as if we don’t know our own minds. It’s very patronizing.” Her analysis stems from her own sense of “racial isolation,” growing up in an all-white neighborhood, seeing black people only on occasional trips to London. “As you grow older it’s difficult to reenter your community of origin,” she explains. “You don’t feel comfortable around black people — you’ve taken in all of these stereotypes from the television. When you meet your birth parents you say, ‘God, I can’t relate to these people.’”

Julia herself is a successful adoptee. She has good relationships with both adoptive and birth families, a career she’s passionate about, a partner who shares her cultural and intellectual interests. But she’s aware that for every transracial adoptee like her, there’s one who just never makes it — who kills him or herself or needs long-term psychiatric help. “I get calls from people all the time who are in real pain,” she says as I wince. No matter how theoretically justifiable transracial adoption may be, none of it matters if the children are miserable.

She explains that her own relationship to her adoptive parents has evolved since her mother made an effort to educate herself on black issues, but that even now there are racial tensions between them. “We have a close but painful relationship, whereas a lot of adoptees have a distant but not-so-painful relationship. But I don’t know anyone who has a close and unpainful relationship.”

Evidently Julia has never met Erin, a 27-year-old black visual artist raised by a single white mother in Hawaii. Standing 5-foot-11, with a mane of black dreadlocks, Erin might seem formidable if it weren’t for the inner calm emanating from her face. “My mother is a very special person.” She laughs, searching for the perfect words. “She’s … very inquisitive, always learning new things. She just got a black belt in aikido.” As I try to steer the conversation toward issues of racial isolation, she resists. “It felt normal,” she says, describing growing up in a family of three adopted children. “I never thought we were different.”

Her mother wasn’t perfect. When Erin consistently got beaten up at her white-Hawaiian school, her mother never understood the racial component but instead asked, “What did you do to provoke it?” Still, Erin resists Julia’s anti-transracial conclusions. She wants to talk about her mother’s views that parenting should have little relationship to physical likeness. “A family is whoever sits down and has a meal together,” she says, her husky voice rippling with self-possession. “If someone hands you a child on the street, you can become that child’s parent. People who don’t get that are somehow lacking.”
Before we leave the restaurant she turns to me and smiles. “I think you should go for it.”

A chill goes up my spine, followed by weary fatigue. “I want to,” I say, “But Hank … he’s only been talking to militants who tell him it can’t work. He just wants to be politically correct.”

| C A R O L & H A N K |

“Politically correct?!” Hank cries. “You’ve got me all wrong.” It is 3 a.m. We are sleep-deprived, cranky and the notion of long-term domestic bliss seems like a bad joke. “Parenting is about trust and intimacy and fun — not some bumper-sticker slogans about diversity. Your social utopianism makes me sick!”

“But all parenting is political. People raise their kids to believe in God or science or the Republican Congress. Why not be aware that the kind of parent you become is, in part, a public act? Why does everyone think that your personal life is somehow sullied if it is tainted by enthusiasm about improving the world as a whole?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re too cerebral about this. It’s a child — not an essay!”

After the marital melodrama, we make up and wax enthusiastic about what we’re learning — tiptoeing around our underlying differences. We agree that we don’t know what the hell we’re embarking on but we decide to attend “Dream Weavers: an Adoption Gathering,” where we’ll meet more children and fewer ideas.

| H A N K |

I feel shy and nervous, like a teenager going to a high school dance as I walk through the door. Real adoptable children. Scary. A lavish buffet is spread out, balloons decorate the room and, best of all, there are toys everywhere: face paint, crayons, bouncing balls and plastic tricycles. Soon I forget about the world of political controversy and hunker down for some naughty fun.

The only white child present, a nervous blond boy, runs up to me and stares intently into my eyes. When I continue playing with the little African-American toddler in my lap, the white boy begins emitting ear-piercing shrieks and destroying things. No matter what color the child, adoption means bargaining with complicated forces. These children have all been through so much — race is only one piece of the puzzle.

| C A R O L |

I sit on a kindergarten chair and watch silently. I know this is the time I am supposed to be falling in love but I remain surprisingly aloof. Children mill around me, consumed with their serious play. Mariana, the black adopted daughter of our black social worker, is painting my face purple. “Where’s your husband?” I point to Hank, who is in the center of a large horde of giggling toddlers. He is showing them how to make fart noises with a balloon.

Mariana’s jaw drops. “How did a mature woman like yourself get together with a big kid like him?”

“She fell in love,” explains Tabitha, a chubby dark-skinned girl leaning on my leg. The two girls inspect each other carefully. Tabitha asks, “Are you adopted like me?”

Mariana nods happily: “Yep.”

“By white people?”

“No!” Mariana exclaims. She points across the room at her black adopted mother. “Where’s your Mama?” she asks Tabitha. The chubby girl points cautiously toward the buffet table at a middle-aged white woman.

“Ha!” teases Mariana, her face animating in mock horror.

“Don’t make fun of me,” Tabitha snaps. She pushes herself from my leg and stands on her own. The girls glare at each other over my white lap as if I were a gulf between them.

| C A R O L & H A N K |

We now reside in the no-go zone known as ambivalence. We don’t know if we have the gall or the guts (depending on your politics) to adopt transracially. Meanwhile, the 120-page adoption application sits mutely on the shelf awaiting our confessions of no credit and high school drug use. One of these days, when the smoke clears, we will either open the binder and begin writing or throw the entire sheaf in the recycling box.

While we have been contemplating our theoretical child’s navel, the world has moved on without us. Our public agency has lost all but one of its social workers. Nationally, the unraveling social safety net has unleashed a flood of children into foster care: over 500,000, a number that has doubled since 1985. More children, less services and potential parents adrift in hesitation.

Thinking about transracial adoption has forced us to confront a basic question: What does the individual owe to society — and what does she owe to herself?

If we could just move close to one child’s face and whisper the question into the whorl of its tiny ear — What do you need? Who do you want? — our choice would be so easy. Instead we must argue, guess and act in the face of uncertainty.

The therapist blinks and opens her mouth. Nothing in her family counseling training has prepared her for debating the finer points of race relations and child welfare policies.

Parenting, we are raised to believe, is personal. Learn active listening, emotional expressivity and limit-setting and you are on your way. But when we embarked on the road to public adoption, we stumbled into a political minefield — only to realize we were fighting on opposite sides of the battle.

| H A N K |

In college I attended a lecture by Dr. Paul Ehrlich, the proponent of “Zero Population Growth.” Terrified by his statistics (human numbers have quadrupled since 1900), I vowed never to add to the dilemma: I would refrain from siring a child.

As an outcast in a family that I am wildly dissimilar to, I know that shared genes do not create intimacy. Besides, I’d feel guilty passing on my dim eyesight, chronic backaches and excessive nostril hair. Also, given my wife’s low pain threshold, I have little desire to watch my dearly beloved hemorrhaging on a hospital bed as she expels “the sacred miracle of life.”

Adoption, I believed, was the answer. With thousands of orphans yearning to be loved, how could I ignore them? Wasn’t it better to make a choice based on the question a lonely toddler’s eyes burned into my misanthropic soul: “Will you be my Daddy?”

Together we ventured into the web of adoption. Cyberspace was our first destination — we cruised the Worldwide Web for data on international orphans. Children are listed here with photos, biographies and price tags attached — like used automobiles, except that the cost variation is largely based on color. A paraplegic Bulgarian tot with a cleft palate costs $30,000, whereas a mobile and dentally normal Chinese or Guatemalan urchin runs only $15,000. And black children? Absolutely nothing. Drop in and take a dozen. The Caribbean islands of Martinique, Grenada and Barbados offer free black children to anyone who wants to fly there and pick them up.

Regional markets duplicate this scenario. The price of the few Caucasians available is preposterously steep (up to $50,000), and the bidding is intensely competitive (only one-third of would-be adoptive parents ever receive their white Baby X). Meanwhile, dark-skinned babies and children languish in hospitals and foster homes, often virtually free, but unwanted.
Chief Justice Richard A. Posner of the 7th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals has argued for experimenting with a less regulated adoption market that would allow agencies to pay mothers not to have abortions. “People have suggested that I’m advocating a system in which people buy babies to harvest their organs,” the mild-mannered Posner said from his Chicago office. “But I just think that with a pricing system, we could make the process more efficient by allowing more first-quality children to be born. Moreover, I believe with a little financial incentive, more parents might choose second quality because there would be financial pressures. Now adoption agencies can only appeal to the parents’ altruism.”

Posner admits that “racial pricing categories” would naturally evolve with “white babies demanding higher prices than babies of other races.” His sterile economic approach to adoption earns him ridicule from liberals and leftists, but the laws of supply and demand have already largely enacted the judge’s dystopia. Instead of Posner’s harsh term, “second quality,” describing unwanted kids, adoption agencies now use the sweetly vague euphemism “special needs.” We assumed this meant children had mental or physical handicaps (like those in the Special Olympics), but soon we discovered that all black, Hispanic and Asian children fell into this category, as do all boys and any child over 3 years old. Blackness, maleness and toddlerness get the same assignation as blindness, fatal diseases and pyromania, because they are all “difficult to place.” Already adoption works off the human equivalent of the gold standard: the healthy white infant.

We decided that squandering our meager life savings on a white infant was both ludicrous and unethical. Better, we determined, to set up a college fund and adopt a black toddler.

| C A R O L |

In the myth of childbirth, the mother and father fall in love with the baby in the womb. The blood ritual of labor is followed by euphoric, sleepless weeks of eye contact, dripping nipples and sweet-smelling feces. In the myth of adoption the parents see the child and feel destiny seize them with the mystic realization: That is our child! A child shouts “Mommy?” across a crowded Burger King, or a screaming baby miraculously falls asleep in your arms at an adoption agency. For me, the idea that strangers could create a family in such unromantic circumstances has always seemed every bit as miraculous as childbirth. If the child and the parent come from different races, so much the greater wonder.

To friends and family I extolled the virtues and societal necessity of adopting children from foster care — which, given the percentages of non-white children, probably meant raising a child of another race. Secretly I gloated over the notion of having a multiethnic family. Hank sneered that I suffered from “Uhuru bake sale complex” — referring to the white hippie women who sold “Black Power Cupcakes” and “Nation Time Cornbread” for Uhuru house, a black organization that raises funds through eternal bake sales at the local flea market.

He had a point. Ever since my family moved to Ghana when I was 6, and I began complaining to my mother that the sun did not make me black, I have identified with non-white cultures. After Ghana I grew up in an all-white town where my Uhuru bake sale complex was allowed to fester untainted by real cross-cultural interaction. I played Stevie Wonder’s “Love’s in Need of Love Today” 15 times a day, scrawling poems about multiethnic utopia in my journal. As ridiculous as it sounds, part of me saw adopting a black or brown child as a way to reconcile myself to a childhood cultural crush I’ve never really recovered from.

I began reading everything I could get my hands on, certain that the authority of the written word would quell my lingering doubts. I learned that while transracial adoption is relatively rare, it’s a hot topic because it leads to numerous social conundrums. Many of the articles described well-meaning but self-righteous middle-class Caucasians raising black children amid a flurry of opinion. Depictions ranged from tenderhearted confessional essays to remarkably unbalanced reportage — pro and con. Each side had its own passel of sociological studies “proving” its perspective. Depending on how one stacked the facts, transracial adoption could look like the most miraculous solution in the world or a cure that was worse than the disease.

I tested the waters by talking to friends and family who often struck bizarre, cautionary notes.

“Don’t you want to see how your genes combine?” said one close friend of mine, depicting biological reproduction as a do-it-yourself genome project.

“All adoption is cruel to the child!” cried a masseuse. “They’ll never know who they are!”

My political poet friend bit her lip sympathetically, before she interrogated me: “The mothers are in jail because of the war on drugs — do you really want to support that?”

“Oh no, you’ve got to have kids!” a suburban mom cried. “White people aren’t having babies anymore.”

Ironically, my black and Latino friends voiced the loudest support, while my blondest friend argued on behalf of her “friends of color,” who she said disapproved of transracial adoption. I fielded questions on the cranial development of crack babies, the possibility of recovering from sexual abuse, the meaning of racial identity. (These were not rabid, racist assumptions, but responses to the fact that the vast majority of the children available through our agency were either drug- or alcohol-exposed and/or abused.) I resented my friends’ lack of enthusiasm, but I also knew that it was, in part, this confluence of intimacy and politics that attracted me to adoption. Everything was debatable, nothing given. Becoming an adoptive parent wasn’t a move toward nesting in a private wonderland, but a move outward where you were expected to answer to larger societal forces.

| H A N K |

Our reasons were different, but the consensus that adoption was what we both wanted created harmonious joy between us. United, we took the next step: We contacted a local public adoption agency. After a brief interview, we were accepted into the 30-hour training.

I endured dreary psychological lectures, “role-playing games” and the warm-and-fuzzy confessions of my classmates. The only respite came when Sylvia, the Adoption Recruitment Coordinator, brought out a huge scrapbook, containing photos of smiling adorable children — available now! Although I didn’t coo audibly, I must admit that I was drawn to a bespectacled, huge-toothed 8-year-old who looked remarkably like me at that age, except for his darker skin tone.

The children were mostly black, with a few Latinos, and one exception: a 12-year-old white boy with “mental problems.” Everyone in our class accepted this racial ratio, although only five out of the 22 students present were people of color. All of us were eager and willing to adopt a black or brown child, and everything Sylvia told us encouraged us in this quest.

From Denise, our African-American social worker, we gleaned that our area has an especially acute problem finding homes for African-American children. Despite San Francisco’s small black population (8 percent), 70 percent of its adoptable children are African-American. Of these children, the ones hardest to place are those with the darkest skin: Not only do many white couples prefer part-white children, many black couples — regardless of their skin tone — prefer to adopt light-skinned children as well. When she grilled us about our racial preferences, we said we didn’t care, but asked, “What about the child? Will they care?” “They don’t care if your skin color is green,” said Denise. “As long as you love them and give them a home, they’ll be happy.”

The sum total of our instructions for transracial adoption involved educating the child in his cultural heritage. Easy enough, I thought. I’m knowledgeable about African and African-American history, art and literature; Carol is an avid fan of hip-hop music, black cultural studies and Spike Lee. Carol and I live in an “integrated” neighborhood where Hispanic, black, Asian, Arabic, Indian and gay and lesbian subcultures exist in relative harmony. I operate a theater on a predominantly African-American block. We have friends from all ethnic backgrounds, though most of our oldest friends are white. True, there are things I am ignorant about, like how to take care of black skin and black hair, but how difficult can that possibly be?

The final two hours of our training promised some desperately needed excitement. Real adoptees telling real stories about their lives: a welcome change after 28 hours of theory.

| C A R O L |

When the three adult adoptees entered the room, I began fantasizing that they were my grown children. Giddiness rushed through me as David, a stunning African-American man working toward his Ph.D. in urban planning, commended us for our altruism. But his adoptive parents turned out to be black, so his happy experience seemed irrelevant.

Then Andrea, an angry 31-year-old Chinese lesbian social worker with numerous piercings and an impressive psychological vocabulary, recounted being raised by Jewish parents in an all-white section of St. Louis. “Let’s just say I’m going to be in therapy,” she said, her eyes glittering with resentment, “for a long, long time.”

Finally a young woman in a gold satin shirt and waterfall of braids began speaking in rapid-fire queen’s English. Julia sent my maternal fantasies into overdrive. Here was a woman for the new millennium — half-Nigerian, half-British — with kind eyes and a keen mind. With a gentle bow of her head, she asked us to consider some hypothetical situations. How would we feel if our adolescent daughter didn’t want to walk with her white father because people thought she was a prostitute? What happens when our child is tormented at school with racial slurs that they’re too afraid to tell us about? How would we feel about our daughter bringing home a bunch of black teenage boys in gang attire? What happens if our child moves away to an all-black neighborhood and pretends we don’t exist to their friends? What if they resent us for ever adopting them?

“Don’t imagine that you’re doing a child of color a favor by adopting it, because you’re not,” Julia said quietly. “The suicide rate of transracial adoptees is higher than the national average. The children grow up alienated from their own race; they’re not accepted by blacks, or whites either. If you sincerely want to help parentless African-American children, then work to change the laws so that it’s easier for black people to adopt.”

When she said that if she could have chosen who raised her, her “wonderful” white adoptive parents would have been third (after her biological parents or an adoptive black family), Hank whispered, “I’d feel betrayed if my child grew up to denounce me in meetings like this.”

My response was less coherent. I rushed to the bathroom, where I blubbered loudly in a stall.

I could make more black friends. I could join an African-Methodist Church. I could surround the child with African-American esteem-building objects, relationships and history! I was wracked by a humiliating case of weepy white-girl syndrome. For weeks after that class I found myself in a feverish, imagined dialogue with this woman whom anybody would be proud to have as a daughter, but who had decided her mother was third best because of the color of her skin.