April 7. ·

bigtips

An acclaimed dancer might be our perfect sperm donor

by M.T. "the Big Tipper" Marione

When we parted last in our story, I was regaling you with the details of finding a suitable hit of man juice for Heir Force One.

Having broken up with our first possible donor, we were back in the market. Guys on the bus were still looking good, but remained tantalizingly unknown to me. As willing as I've been to pass a note to a pretty girl on the bus, I just couldn't suck it up and do it to a guy. So I was relieved when my e-mail "in" box bore fruit. "Hi goilz! Have you found a donor yet? I know someone who is interested who you might like. Call me."

Alan sounded great. He was in his early 60s and had no children, and didn't want to parent, but wanted to pass his genes along. He was a dancer who had received great critical acclaim in his early career, but had decided to teach instead of performing. I snooped around, and he was actually in all of the books about his scene in the 1950s: "Brilliant. Eccentric. Enigmatic."

Perfect.

We met in a café: me, my sweetie, our mutual pal, and Alan. When they arrived, there was much handshaking and sincere eye contact all around. He had all the right things to say, and a lot of them.

He had been thinking about being a donor for a while, and had actually started the process with another lesbian couple, but that had fallen through. He just felt that he had been fortunate enough to get a set of smart, talented genes that he thought some kid could really benefit from.

Of course, this would be our child. He'd understand if we wanted to limit his participation in the process to the donation itself, although he'd love it if he could have a photo of the child.

Barely five minutes into our conversation, Alan leaned down and started going through a plastic grocery bag at his side. He came up with a manila envelope of photos. He showed us pictures of his relatives, and told us about the extensive genealogical research he'd been doing recently. He also gave us a video of a film of him dancing, and a packet of some writing he'd done.

He wanted us to make a decision about using him based on a knowledge of who he really was. The overwhelming impression,

besides just being overwhelming, was that he was a nice, healthy, cute, talented guy with a good attitude, who didn't need to be talked into squirting in a cup for us.

(An aside: Once, when I was much younger, I broke up with someone because she loved me when I was able to reciprocate only with a deep affection—and an abiding gratitude for the mind-blowing sex. When she showed up at the bookstore where I worked and said she'd do anything if I came back to her, including not loving me in such an overwhelming way, I thought, okay. People can change. The result of that ill-advised page in my bio was this shocking insight: Desperate people are not the best source of objective or selfless information.)

Alan went on. He also wanted the child to have some articles of his, because he was the only one left of his family, and he wanted someone to have them.

into Too Much Information country. The ol' boundaries seemed to be a little thin, but I figured he felt he needed for us to know him, and we didn't have much time.

So, the girl and I headed off to the lawyer to get a donor agreement drawn up. I imagined an index card that said, "You don't take our baby, and we won't take your money." Of course, a lawyer can make that sentence much more baroque, and in this case, took eight pages and $200 to say it. It was boilerplate text, and having had all the vagaries explained to us, we wrote a check, and dropped a copy off at Alan's house for him to approve. Well, it wasn't okay with Alan. He took the contract to be a slap in the face, particularly the part about him not having any rights to contact with the child. He wanted such extensive rewrites that our lawyer was leery about our legal rights being maintained.

BIG TIPS

He emphasized that he had no money to leave to the child, and we assured him that the lack of financial ties would be firmly established in the legal donor contract, along with our role as the sole parents. He talked for a long time about his sister, who had died without having any children. He thought she was wonderful, and said that part of his desire to donate was in honor of her, and to keep her memory alive.

What was not to like about this guy? Except for the fact that he talked and talked and talked about himself, which could be explained away by nervousness, he looked like our man. Hours later, as my sweetie and I sat in our car, we looked at each other, and said, "What's not to like?"

The next day we called him, and told him we'd enjoyed the conversation and would be interested in talking some more. Over the next several weeks we talked on the phone and met again, and he became, if possible, more forthcoming with information about himself.

During the requisite conversations about his sexual health, he spun a few melancholy tales of love gone awry that definitely veered

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rd Certifica

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Having encouraged frankness as necessary for a successful working relationship between the three of us, Alan now took full opportunity to share his opinions on everything. He thought it would be a great idea if we would name the kid after someone in his family, most of whom seemed to have stunningly unappealing names. Of course my girlfriend would have to stop being so active when she got pregnant: no more running or sports.

What? I was getting pissed off. When he said that if it was a boy, we had to get the kid circumcised, because he couldn't imagine having to go through life with that kind of physical stigma, my girlfriend had had enough, and told Alan so.

And then Alan basically demanded to have custody of the child if we both died.

Guess what? One day after dropping off $30 worth of prime porn magazines at his home, we were looking for Bachelor Number 3.

Burning questions? Contact me at the Chronicle, attention Big Tips, P.O. Box 5426, Cleveland 44101, or fax to 216-631-1052, or e-mail to martone@drizzle.com.

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