February 25, 2000 GAY PEOPLE'S CHROI CHRONICLE

bigtips

We found a sperm donor, but he wants to name the child

by M.T. "the Big Tipper” Martone

Last time we were talking, I was telling you about the lady and me deciding to produce a kid. Decision having been made, we were still one critical cell short of a zygote.

Choices? Fresh or frozen. Frozen offered different levels of anonymity, testing, and a fun catalog of listings to choose from. Fresh was free. We starting mulling over the men in our lives. Our criteria were pretty simple.

I wanted smart, girlfriend wanted tall. We're both white, so we decided to look for a white donor, because we thought it'd be easier to deal with learning about and teaching the child about racism if we have a similar set of experi-

ences.

One by one, all of our pals were eliminated. Most of my chums were of the East Coast, European-immigrant type profile: shorties. Health issues eliminated some gems. Logistics were also a problem, since

they were all in different cities. The Designated Vessel didn't know anyone we could use either.

So, as prone as I am to privacy around things like trolling for sperm, we started to tell people we were looking. Surprisingly, several people we knew had a friend ostensibly ripe for the milking.

Sitting at our dining room table with a notebook in front of her, my girlfriend was jotting down notes as we asked Johnny about his family's health history, and what sort of level of involvement he would feel comfortable with. Everything was going just like the perfect first date or annual checkup.

So we asked him what sorts of issues were important to him. He took out a small notebook from his back pocket.

"I know this may sound dumb, but the night I met you two, I

BIG TIPS

Candidate number one, Johnny, emerged at a barbecue. We were admiring his large, fresh tattoos and discussing genital piercing, and suddenly I started eyeing his hands; and his teeth, and his eyes. This "objecto-vision" had started pretty recently. On the bus I'd catch myself raking a man with my eyes, appraising him. Nice legs, strong looking and tall. Curly hair.

Handsome nose. I was just discretion shy of asking if he'd mind if I looked inside his mouth. I'd never even looked at women this way, favoring instead the sidelong glance. But I was now a hunter. No man of impregnating age and capability was safe. And Johnny was looking good.

The next day, scrawled across a scrap of a brown paper bag taped to our front door, was

a note:

"Call me right away! Donor possibility. Ella."

A hasty phone call later we knew that Johnny had told his housemate, who told Ella, who told us, that he had heard us talking about looking for a donor, and that he'd be willing. We got his number. Then we went to a friend's yard sale, and sat on her porch trying to figure out what to do.

What do we ask him, besides the obvious STD routine? Do we tell him we want him involved in the child's life? (I was all for minimal contact, Girlfriend was pro-involvement.) What did we say when we called him? What if he decided he didn't want to, or changed his mind? What if he was weirder than the barbeque interactions had revealed him to be?

She made me make the call. I prayed for an answering machine, but no luck. He picked up the phone as my girlfriend and her pal watched me and giggled. I used my very best phone voice, and told him how happy I was to hear that he might be interested in helping us out, and the best thing to do would probably be to get together and talk about it. He didn't have a car, so I said I'd scoop him up in about a half an hour. I hung up, as a flush crept up my neck, and I felt for all the world like I'd just picked someone up. Which, I guess I had.

started writing down

some of my thoughts about being part of this."

We assured him that it wasn't dumb, in fact it was sweet, and we liked that he was being thoughtful about the process.

"First of all, I won't be the donor, if the child was a boy and you were going to have him circumcised."

We're definitely on the same page there, and of course it

was his right to make that stipulation, but I bristled a little at his tone.

"And I would really like to be at the birth." I felt my girlfriend's hackles going up. She'd already been carefully planning the slim list of people invited to view her at her most vulnerable. I didn't even know if my name was on that list in ink yet.

"And I have some names I've selected that I'd love you to consider. Oh, and I think its ears should be pierced, boy or girl, when it's an infant."

We all sat back and looked at each other. I thought, we could make this work if we have to.

A week passed, during which we three exchanged phone calls and information, and my temporary insanity retreated. Yes, he was monogamous, and had tested negative for HIV recently, but his boyfriend lived out of town, and by recently attained (not from Johnny) reports, was very likely tarting around.

Was Johnny using condoms with his boyfriend? No. I didn't care, since everyone has their own acceptable level of risk, but the girl and I weren't into using iffy juice. As the days went by, and Johnny was no doubt out shopping for tiny piercing studs, we realized we had to nip this in the bud.

We invited him over for dinner, and stuffed him with meatballs and strawberry shortbread. I kept waiting for the girlfriend to bring it up, but we were down to our pink biscuits and I couldn't take it anymore.

"Johnny, we went to the nurse practitioner this week, and she was very concerned about us using sperm from someone who wasn't using condoms with his boyfriend." (Right. This has nothing to do with your desire to name our child.)

He looked confused, so I continued. "Since she's gone through this process with lots of couples, we've decided that it's probably best not to use you as a donor. We're so sorry. At this point, the girlfriend picked up the ball, and went on about the nurse practitioner's insistence.

He seemed crushed, and I felt like a tease. We were breaking up with him. And no one had even had an orgasm.

John R. O'Connor, LISW ACSW of D.L. Dunkle and Associates Practicing in Two Locations!

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