Unholy Birth Read online

  “I thought you disapproved of everything about me, detested me, and made fun of me behind my back.”

  “I should have,” she said.

  Willy wasn’t exactly the romantic type. Squeezing affectionate words out of her was as difficult as squeezing juice out of a dried, old orange, but when it came, it was sincere, so sincere, it took my breath away and made all the frustration and waiting worth it.

  About six months into working at the restaurant, we had been with each other long enough to consider moving in together. Once she saw how well I cooked and how our friends raved about my gourmet meals, she came up with the idea of our starting our own catering business. We didn’t have enough money saved, but one of our still-in-the-closet bisexual friends, the wife of an attorney in town, convinced her husband to capitalize us so we could rent a small warehouse, equip it with stoves, walk-in refrigerators, dishware, etc., and rent a delivery vehicle and we were off and running.

  We advertised a little, but it was truly word of mouth that built our business until we had to take on some help. Our service area expanded, and we even began to prepare dishes secretly for a Palm Springs restaurant. A number of magazine write-ups, some television exposure, and a few celebrity testimonies made it necessary to find a bigger warehouse and hire more employees.

  Soon after, we bought a home in the Indian canyons of Palm Springs for over a million dollars. We could now service the mortgage. It had a drop-dead view of the mountains that boxed in the canyon, and at night we could see the light of the Palm Springs Tramway nearly 11,000 feet high. With a sizeable income, valuable property, and continually expanding business, I found myself thinking more and more about having the child.

  Willy was right about my feelings concerning adoption. I never seriously considered the option even though most other gay couples we knew who had children had adopted. Our child had to be part of me. Maybe she was right in saying that was the heterosexual longing in me talking.

  Willy was certainly right about the aftermath for these gay couples with children. They had so many new interests and demands that they moved away from our circle of friends. But I couldn’t think of a friend with whom we were so close or upon whom we were so dependent that I wasn’t willing to risk that friendship in the name of our own child.

  However, up until relatively recently, I wasn’t fully convinced gay people should have children. There were so many arguments against it. There wasn’t a father figure, or in the case of gay men, there wasn’t a mother figure. The children could suffer later when they went to school and other children found out who their parents were. They could grow up with all sorts of deep psychological issues. If they weren’t gay themselves, they might feel they were betraying their parents or deeply criticizing them. Because gay marriage wasn’t recognized as legitimate, they’d feel even weirder. On and on, the arguments rained down around me in books, on television, in news columns, as well as out of the mouths of other gay couples who vowed they would never adopt or have a child.

  And after all, considering how my parents had reacted to my sexual identity, I was living through most of this myself. Willy loved to remind me about it.

  But I was driven more and more toward having a child until I began to think Willy was right in saying my high femme stuff was just a psychological security blanket. Maybe I was trying to be more of a heterosexual female than I would care to admit. In the end I concluded that none of it mattered, however. I should do, we should do, whatever makes us feel more complete as people, not as gays or women or whatever we were. We should give something back to the world that was being so good to us, although whenever I said that aloud, people would look at me with eyes that said, “Please, stuff the bullshit.”

  Later that day, after she had risen, had her breakfast, and come out to the living room where I was watching a show on modern new house design, Willy plopped on the sofa, drew her legs up, and asked the question I was asking myself.

  “So how are you going to do it, Kate? You going to get laid or what?”

  “I don’t know. I think it’s a decision we should make together,” I said.

  “I already said I don’t want to do this.”

  “You also just said do it. What I do, you do. Remember? You’re the one who came up with that.”

  She smirked.

  “Look,” she continued, sitting up straight now, “I will admit I’m not going to be happy if you’re not happy. The bottom line is if you feel incomplete, I’ll feel incomplete, so yes, I said do it. If I had my druthers, I would rather you hated kids, period, but I’m not going to turn away from you, and besides, sometimes you’re right,” she added, which brought a smile to both our faces. “Rarely, but sometimes,” she added quickly.

  “Well, I suppose we could make a list of men we know who we’d both approve.”

  “That’s going to be a short list. The last man I approved of was my father and that was only until I was five,” she said.

  “Would it bother you if I did it that way?”

  She was silent, thinking.

  “Maybe,” she admitted.

  “You’re afraid I might enjoy it?”

  “If you did, I’d kill you,” she replied. “And him,” she added.

  I smiled and turned off the television. Finally, we were going to have a substantive conversation about this.

  “The only reason I can think of doing it with a man we know is there is something we definitely think he adds positively.”

  “Maybe. It’s just as much of a crap shoot the other way, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t know, Willy. I haven’t really gotten into this yet.”

  “Well, then why don’t you do that before you work me up about it, stupid. Do some research.”

  She rose and then paused in the doorway.

  “I’m going for a hike with some friends. I know you don’t want to get any calluses on your precious feet, so I won’t bother asking you to go along.”

  “Who’s going?”

  “Paula, Arlene, and maybe Janet.”

  “Janet has a thing for you,” I said.

  “Just like you to say something dumb like that. You want me to curl up on that sofa with you all day and comfort you and soothe your worried mind about this baby thing instead of getting some fresh air and exercise, which you, a prospective mother, should have anyway?”

  I shrugged.

  “I know what I know. Janet drools when you walk into a room.”

  “Maybe she’s coming down with rabies, Kate. I wouldn’t do her with your dick,” she added, and went to get ready for her hike.

  She shouted her goodbye twenty minutes later. I was still on the sofa, soaking in the muck of my own thoughts. I shouted back and then I rose and went to the computer. If I really was going to do this, I had better do what she said. I had better get all the information I could about it so we could make a sensible discussion.

  Otherwise, as Willy would say, I was just mentally masturbating.

  In minutes I knew about the various sperm banks that existed and were approved in California. I saw that there even were banks that specialized in inseminating gay people, the sperm donated by gay men. I also found sites formed by individual men who were advertising their sperm and were willing to send it to a recipient at no cost. They all claimed to be motivated by the urge to do something good for other people, but I thought they were driven by swollen egos because every one of the sites by individual sperm donors I viewed described a man who was a genius if not near genius, wonderfully athletic, healthy with a perfectly balanced temperament and excellent family history. All claimed they would produce the necessary medical screening and tests for the sperm delivered.

  I printed it all and organized the information for Willy to peruse when she returned from her hike, but as I sat there reading the material, I heard the “You’ve got mail” signal on the computer and returned to the monitor.

  How odd, I thought, one of the sperm banks had contacted me, but I hadn’t asked any qu
estions or left any messages. I opened the e-mail and read.

  Dear Prospective Mother,

  Thank you for contacting Genitor. Genitor is licensed as a Tissue Bank by the State Department of Health in California. These are the strictest standards in the nation. We are eager to provide for your needs and invite you to interview the manager of our company, Dr. Lois Matthews. Dr. Matthews will come to you for the interview and will explain in detail how we screen donors. Please call 555-440-0001 and go to extension 100.

  I recoiled in my chair and stared at the monitor. It was one thing to begin to investigate the idea, but another to have someone out there, someone other than Willy, aware of my intentions. I actually felt myself tremble with the shock of how easily someone on the outside could enter the sphere of your most intimate thoughts and actions.

  My second reaction was indignation, anger. How dare whoever this was think he or she could contact me? I wasn’t inquiring about furniture, clothes, a vacation. It was truly as if there were invisible antennae out there just waiting for you to move in one direction or another or even think aloud. Instantly, they picked it up and you were exposed. The walls of our homes were rapidly turning into glass, and it wasn’t a deterrent to stop other people from throwing stones either. All your actions, your blood, your very DNA, your essence was easily on display. Technology and purveyors of Patriot Acts were battering privacy into some ancient memory. The word would soon disappear entirely from our vocabulary.

  When I calmed my reflexive indignation, I reread the invitation. Wasn’t this what I was really seeking after all? This particular company was just more aggressive than others, more entrepreneurial. In many ways Willy and I followed the same path to develop our catering business. We pursued prospective clients, leaping on every indication one might do business with us.

  My annoyance gave way to curiosity. How did they manage this instant pursuit? Should Willy and I be using their techniques and doing something as obviously productive with our business, too? I was still sitting there thinking about it when she returned, hot and sweaty but invigorated. Before I could say a word, she was raving about the hike, the pack of coyotes they had seen, a hawk with a wingspan that was nearly as wide as a car, the cool breezes at the top of the hill, and the way she had left the others panting behind her.

  “I thought I was climbing into the sky,” she said.

  I was jealous of Mother Nature. Nothing I could do with Willy or say to her would bring such ecstasy to her. She truly fed off her physical stamina and her health, sucked on the energy around her to feed her hunger for life. It was insatiable. Would our having a child in our midst add or detract from it? Was I about to destroy or build our relationship?

  “What about Janet?” I asked.

  “She might have died on the mountain. She was moaning and groaning, struggling to breathe like some beached whale. I didn’t wait around to see.”

  “You just left them?”

  “Hey. They knew from the start I wouldn’t slow myself down to let them keep up with me. It wasn’t exactly a social tea.”

  “I don’t know how you keep any friends.”

  “I’m taking a shower,” she said. “And I’m starving so think of lunch.”

  “I have some of that information to show you,” I called to her. She was already on her way to the bathroom. “And something very interesting happened!” I added.

  I waited.

  She returned to the doorway.

  “Okay, what?”

  I described what I had done and nodded at the monitor. The e-mail was still on the screen. She approached slowly and read it herself.

  “You did nothing but go to their Web site?”

  “I didn’t even go to it. I did a simple search of sperm banks and a list came up of which this was one. Almost instantly, the e-mail came from this one called Genitor.”

  She thought a moment and then shrugged.

  “Hey,” she said, “you knocked on a door and someone answered. What’s the big deal? Forget it.”

  “I don’t want to forget it. First, I was indignant, but now I’m impressed. This company is on the ball.”

  “So call the doctor at that extension and make an appointment,” she said slowly. “Do they bring it in vibrators or what?”

  “Stop it,” I said, laughing.

  “Hey, it’s not as farfetched as you might think. Remember when girls thought they could get pregnant sitting on dirty toilet seats?”

  “No.”

  “I do. They thought they’d have to tell the kid his or her father was a Kohler or something.”

  “Go take your shower,” I said. “You’re about as much help as a toilet.”

  She nodded at the computer.

  “Too bad you can’t just do it all over the phone. Then you could tell him or her his or her father was Alexander Graham Bell. Or if it were done over the computer, you could tell the kid his father was a Pentium.”

  “Any other brilliant comments?”

  “Naw. I think I used up today’s quota. Let’s think about lunch,” she said. “Unlike children, you make it, eat it, and forget it,” she added, and walked off.

  At least she was being humorous and relaxed about it, I thought. I looked at the e-mail. The invitation seemed innocuous enough. There were no demands for down payments or anything to be signed. It simply said, “Hey, you want to find out more about this? We’ll be glad to tell you.”

  I wished I could be like Willy about it, I thought. Once Willy made up her mind about anything, she put all the tension and the anxiety outside and forgot it, but something was lingering under my heart, some small, instinctive alarm.

  It was too easy to shut it off or consider it just simple nerves.

  I understood that I wouldn’t know if that was a good or bad thing for some time, and by then, it would surely be too late to matter anyway. It was a lifetime commitment. You just don’t give a child away the way you could give away a puppy or a kitten.

  Could you?

  I made the call.

  2.

  AS WAS TRUE FOR MOST of America in 2005, the real estate boom in the California desert communities was still well under way. The promise of overnight wealth had shifted from dot com companies to housing investments and that included developments, more gated communities, and expansion of existing ones. Palm Springs was the most famous desert community in the Coachella Valley. It wasn’t the one developing with as much of a frenzy as the other communities farther east, but it was well into an economic growing pattern that included development of its famous Main Street. With its variety of restaurants and music, it began to resemble the French Quarter of New Orleans before the hurricane.

  During the height of the season, the weekends were jammed with tourists walking the streets, eating on the outdoor patios, dancing, and enjoying the perfect weather, especially the clear and sharp night sky with stars and a moon that truly looked closer. It was romantic and exciting, injected with a joie de vivre that turned it into more than the simple water oasis the Indians had first discovered and settled. Now it was an oasis of pleasure in a desert of turmoil driven by the winds of war, terrorism, and corruption. For twenty-four to forty-eight hours, visitors could step into an adult Disneyland in which the sun seemed to always shine and the rains of turmoil and trouble were prohibited from entering. More than once, I heard people remark about how when they came east from Los Angeles toward Palm Springs, they could literally see the sky clear as if God had wiped his hand across the blue and declared this to be the safe haven.

  Would it be that for us, always? If we permitted ourselves any fantasies, that was surely one. Where else would we go to enjoy this sense of well-being and protection? Willy would say we’re with our own kind here. We don’t have to be afraid of the eyes that turn to us. We could hold hands in the street, kiss, embrace, be ourselves.

  And yet somehow the openly gay segment of the community didn’t drive away the straight people from the resort. Willy hated the word straight more
than I did. I admit it bothered me, but it enraged her to hear heterosexuals called straight.

  “What does that mean, we’re crooked, off-kilter, twisted? What?”

  Even gay people referred to the heterosexuals as straight.

  “You know what that’s like?” Willy told them. “That’s like black people using the word nigger to refer to their own kind. They accept the term. When you accept the term, you generate all the negative imagery about you that follows,” she lectured. “You contribute toward it!”

  Some agreed. Some just chalked her remarks up to the perennial chip on her shoulder.

  “Relax. Forget it,” she was advised. “Who cares what they think about us?”

  “It’s what we think about ourselves!” she would shout back over the chatter and music.

  It most always came close to blows. Something had to redirect the conversation.

  “I’m warning you,” she told me at work the following day, “don’t ever use or let anyone use the term straight in reference to our having a child. It’s not a straight thing. It’s our thing or else don’t do it,” she said.

  “Okay,” I said.

  “If that Dr. Matthews uses that word when she comes to see us, we call the interview to an immediate end and ask her to get her ass out. Agreed?”

  “I’ll sign a paper so stating and have it notarized,” I said.

  She relaxed and we didn’t discuss it any further. Dr. Matthews was coming on Wednesday night. According to its web site, Genitor was located just outside of Irvine, California. If she avoided the usual rush hours, she would be in Palm Springs in about an hour and a half. The fact that she would come that distance and spend so much time with us encouraged me about the company, but Willy was her usual skeptical and suspicious self.

  “They might be desperate for business,” she said. “Maybe because they’re not that good.”

  I had a different view.

  “Maybe, knowing our community, she thinks if she gets us, we’ll tell others and she’ll get more gay clients. Ever think of that? If any two people should know the value of word of mouth, Willy, it’s you and I.”