update

I haven't been blogging a lot lately. Funny, my last post indicated I needed to reduce the stress level at home, but that really wasn't what came to pass. Jen's been working very long hours and I've been wrapped up in work bullshit as well. Things are calming down now though. Jen's also nearing the end of another cycle, and her luteal phase seems intact at about 12-13 days, which is heartening.

I got into grad school - all the ones I applied to accepted me. I'm planning to attend the city school, which is the cheapest, but also where I felt most comfortable, most excited. I think I'll probably go part time and keep working full time. Ideally, Jen and i want to be able to save $750 a month, which we think we can do when Jen gets her raise, but only if I keep bringing in at least as much as I make now.

I think really, I should stay at Atlantic. I have a pretty sweet deal going on there, I like the people, I know how to do my job, I could probably get a raise, I have a ton of vacation this year, I could probably eventually move into doing some archiving work there...It could all work out neatly. But much more money, if I can get it would be very tempting. There is one possibility I'm looking into right now which involved more money AND less hours. That could be ideal...but at the same time, I'm reluctant to leave a job I pretty much dig. I just feel I should earn as much as I can before the baby comes.

We're planning to inseminate during Jen's next cycle...so that would mean that 17 days from now, we'd give it a shot. We're very excited - the only thing is we don't really have a ton of sperm to pick from at this point in time. One of the banks we'd like to use just moved, and haven't updated their donor list as they're reoorganizing. But there is one guy we like at another bank - a puerto rican college kid with dimples who studies theater and likes baking. He sounds like a small puerto rican homosexual, which endears him to me.

luteal phase

The charting continues. We've honed in on when Jen ovulates, and all seems properly in place with that phase of things. Next worry - the luteal phase. That is the phase in between ovulation and menstruation. This is the countdown clock on how long the fertilized egg has to implant itself and start growing into an embryo. If you have a short luteal phase, you might fertilize the egg, but not be able to sustain a pregnancy.

Jen's luteal phase decided to fake us out. She saw spotting and thought it was ending after 10-11 days. Shorter than 10 days is a sign of trouble. This may mean low levels of progesterone, which is fixable, with pills that make you crazy. But the luteal phase was just playin', and the indicator - a sustained high temperature, has not dropped, and she has not actually started menstruating. So her luteal phase is probably more like 12 days, which is in the range of normal. 14 would be best. Jen is very stressed right now due to work concerns, and stress makes adrenaline which basically eats up progesterone. So a new job for me. Bringing down the stress level when she's home.

wedding

life has been hectic for the past few weeks. I was the maid of honor in a friend's wedding. The wedding was lovely and featured the biggest buffet I'm likely to ever see at a private function, but there were those inevitable minutes of feeling left out of the hetro revelry. Smarda wasn't trying to make me feel left out or awkward, quite the opposite, but a straight person wedding (unless the straight people are extremely understanding...whatup frank and laura!) is a special hell, full of those moments. At a wedding, straight married people LITERALLY GET PRIZES for being married. Its just a million little jabs. The first romantic couples dance. Of course I wanted to dance with Jen. But would that make anyone else uncomfortable? Lets not draw attention to ourselves. We wanted to kiss, but didn't. Let's not draw attention to ourselves. Just like on the street, in the subway, best not to draw too much attention to ourselves. Its their day. Their celebration of heterosexual love. And great for them. I really had a terrific time. But it just sucks when you can't kiss your girlfriend when all the boys are kissing theirs.

Which makes me wonder about how it will be in these situations when we have a child. Easier because we'll be a family? Harder because we'll have to defend our family? My intern was raised by a mom who was in relationships with women for most of her young life, and she said no one really cared as much as you'd think. I wonder. And even if they don't care that much, even if just some people care a little, I'll still feel it. And what a peculiar feeling it is. The sting of a wet slap. Then a little woosh of breath, someone pushed hard on my sternum. A pinprick sting finishes it off. All different little hurts, and I'm a little sad and a little angry cause now I've got a sharp pain, a dull pain and lots of little scars that don't show.

Jen and I had a conversation with Kevin and he officially withdrew his offer to ejaculate into a cup for us. More than that, we had discussed some sort of co-parenting option, but Kevin just doesn't feel ready for a child right now and I totally understand that. We weren't surprised by this news, but it seemed necessary for everyone to get things out in the open. The way he dealt with this, the way he's dealing with other emotional issues these days, all show me that Kevin is a great man, and will one day be a great father, if he chooses to become one. In the meantime, he's a fabulous friend, and will be a great male role model for the kids that Jen and I have.

Jen and I have been enjoying putting the horse before the cart and obsessing over baby names. We feel good about girl's names, but boys names are harder, especially considering we're going to saddle the child (and ourselves) with a 14 letter hypenated last name. We went to MOMA recently and drooled over the Stokke Tripp Trapp Chair, a vast improvement both functionally and aesthetically over traditional high chairs. Stokke makes a bunch of other awesome children's furniture but the chair is the only thing we could realistically pay for. I played Mega Millions, attempting to win the record high 370 million jackpot but didn't manage to do so. How will I ever afford all the things my theoretical baby needs?

getting to know you

Jen peed on a stick this morning. This is a new addition to our charting routine. She has to turn on the incredibly expensive ($200 is the usual price for the machine, the sticks you pee on are $50 a pack) Clearblue Easy Fertility Moniter and when it tells her to, to pee on a stick that the machine then reads. The machine can understand your pee, and tells you when your days of low, high and peak fertility are. Today was the first time it asked for a stick of pee, and we were excited to see what it would say in response, but didn't expect to see a high fertility sign, since its not even near time for Jen to be ovulating. Reading the manual, we learned that the first cycle, the machine might give you tons of high fertility signs, until it learns what the baseline levels of hormones are for that particular user, and can read changes in those levels accordingly. So basically, my girlfriend and a machine have a little get-to-know you date every morning. I'd be jealous, but although she is indeed Easy, I know I'm way cuter than Ms. Clearblue.

a conceptual art

Making a baby is part of our life now. We're not planning it or thinking about it, we're working on getting it done. Since we've internalized what we need to do for the charting phase of this work, most of our adjustments are now smaller and more incremental than they have been in recent weeks.

We've called sperm banks and made preliminary decisions about which ones make us feel comfortable, but since we're not inseminating for months yet, we can't pink a donor right now; his sperm might be sold out by the time we needed it. If there were someone we absolutely loved, we could buy now and have it stored, but the only one we were obsessed with - a Peruvian/Italian/Chinese donor who enjoyed magical realism - was too crazily perfect. I am a Peruvian/Italian/Tunisian who enjoys magical realism; we would have been absolutely thrilled with this donor, and hearing the depressing news that he's no longer available made us skittish about getting attached to sperm before we know what's really going to be on the market when we need it.

We chart, and hope other Peruvian/Italian/something or others find their way to the sperm bank. We've got time to wonder where a baby would specifically, physically fit in our home, in our arms, in the space between us. Its good and exciting and the pace of things seems reasonable. Having envied straight people for their ability to just happen upon pregnancy, I now realize that this time for thought and conversation and planning is a true luxury.

How long will this luxurious period last? And will it stretch far beyond what we need, or what we can bear? I do not let myself think about this possibility. My imagination acts on me very strongly. Once, reading about girls with a psychosomatic rash gave me a psychosomatic rash. I honestly believe my imagination may have unintentionally played a small part in the death of Rose Kennedy. I cannot imagine we will experience a prolonged failure to conceive. I will not.

Instead, my focus is on doing my part to the best of my abilities. I take Jen's temperature every morning at the same time. If I am 2 minutes off schedule, I resolve to improve. I read up on how to defrost a vial of frozen sperm, exactly how fast or how slow the ideal release of sperm should be, exactly how close to the cervix, exactly what role an orgasm plays in conception, exactly when in relation to that orgasm sperm should come on the scene. These are things I will be mostly in charge of and in doing them I will most fucking definitely do everything I can to make conception as likely as possible.

Conceptualization of conception is an unexpected turn-on. I'm gonna fuck my girlfriend until she's pregnant. I find that insanely hot.

things speed up

Suddenly the process is on fast forward. I'm terrified of turning my back on Jen for a second, only to turn back and find her nine months pregnant, in labor, holding our 2 year old child.

And yet, all that we've increased is the rate of information gathering. While we've talked about sperm, placed phone calls regarding sperm, read frequently asked sperm questions, priced sperm, and argued about sperm, we still have no sperm. There is no way in hell Jen could be pregnant. But we're indisputably closer to being pregnant than we ever were before.

Jen's told me about a language that had lots of words for women in different stages of pregnancy, but no one word for pregnant. Women were one thing when they had just concieved, something else when they were a few months in, something else nine months in. I always thought that sounded nice becuase it seemed less horrible to miscarry. You didn't do it wrong, you didn't lose a baby. You were x but not y. You were truly x. Not simply a failure at y.

Now I realize the way this works. Acknowledging conception and pregnancy and birth as a process and not some unfathomable chunk of a woman's life ruled by fairy tales or miracles.
It is work that takes a long time and is difficult to do properly.

I hate that I can't just make sperm or magic some out of an orifice I never noticed I had. I hate that we'll have to save lots of money and spend it all buying sperm that will never be as likely to make a baby as sperm fresh from the source. I hate that we can't just fall into bed and wake up a family.

But I love that I get to learn what this really is. I love that instead of just magicking up a family, we get to really build one.

Its hard. We're charting Jen's fertility. Part of this involves recording her temperature every morning before she has gotten out of bed. Before she's even sitting up. Which means I have to be up even earlier and able to locate the thermometer and pen. I don't mind getting up early, I usually do anyway, but now its not a choice.

We're also charting fertile mucous. Jen doesn't like to talk about the mucous, but it's important, and she's monitering that on her own. The mucous is actually not even the most disturbing possible thing to chart. Some people actually break out a speculum and look at their partner's cervix on a regular basis. That sounds horrible on an immense amount of levels and I know I've chosen the right girl when she says that I will never fucking ever under any circumstances come eye to cervix with her.

We'll also chart some results that the extremely expensive clearblue easy machine Jen ordered will give us. I don't exactly know what that is supposed to tell us, but all of this together should give us some picture of when she's ovulating. After a few months of this, we'll be able to decide what days are appropriate for inseminating.

INSEMINATING!

Its not time yet, but Jen's kind of gotten obsessed with picking sperm. I'm sort of obessessed too, but not AS obsessed. Its the fun part of all the data collection. What is the other half of this baby?

Sperm selection is fraught though. Jen and I are pretty good at communicating, good at working through problems instead of attacking each other with them. But even for us, this is a tough one. What do we each want our baby to be? Why do we want these things? Do we even know? Can we talk about those reasons aloud? Without revealing parts of ourselves we've worked hard to keep hidden? Its sort of like the drama that comes from being in a prom limo with someone, but like, if you were going to be in that prom limo for eternity. SHOULD WE GO WITH THE SUV LIMO? WOULD A PARTY BUS BE BETTER???!!

My line in the sand is skin color. I am brown. Olive toned. Tan year round. I often get comments about my skin color, ranging from the complimentary "You have such nice a skin color" to the disturbingly ignorant "How did you dye your skin that color?" Being a person of mixed race is a big part of my identity, and very much affects the way I am able to move through the world, and informs my world view. It is something I am proud of, and I feel I have a lot of information to share regarding this subject. I think being multiracial is something that marks me as part of my nuclear family, and I'd like my child to have that signifier too.

Jen is sympathetic to those things, but MUCH more concerned about motility. She wants the sperm most likely to get her pregnant, with appearance taking a backseat to that issue. She thinks it will be ok as long as the baby has dark hair and dark eyes. She's worried that some donors I like for their olive toned ancestry will actually end up producing a baby that looks nothing like either of us. I remind her that as half the child's genetic material belongs to her, it can't help but look like her at least a little...but she's still wary.

These are difficult conversations to have.

moms

Jen feels that she can't tell her mother that we are going to be trying for a baby. Her mother loves her very much, and is a very intelligent woman, but she has a lot of feelings of anxiety, and she wants to keep Jen very very safe, and it all comes out sometimes as painful criticism. Jen thinks that if we tell her mom, her mother will discourage us and insist that we are too poor, that Jen is too old, things that wouldn't be helpful at all, especially considering we are NOT broke and Jen is NOT old.

I feel terrible though. Of course Jen wants to share this with her mother but not if its going to be demoralizing. I told Jen her mom would probably say the same things if she were with a man though, which made us all feel better. Still, we're so happy about this. It hurts not to be able to share that.

Which isn't to say I've told my whole family. I did tell my mom that we were considering it. She says things like "When you guys have a baby..." usually the sentence ends with "you're not going to be able to do this anymore." I'm glad she's conceptualizing it, even if its in a way that means I'll have no life ever again after the baby comes.

The superlesbian ob/gyn gave us the go ahead to officially start trying.

In the past few weeks, we've been researching sperm more and more. None of it has thrilled me yet, but I think in part that's because I've been looking at it accepting an unknown man into my family, and into my girlfriend, but really, I have to think of it as information we're using to build our baby, a baby that I'm putting into my girlfriend. That makes it better. I'm actually very excited to put sperm in her now. VERY EXCITED.

our friend.

Our friend, who we hoped would be our known donor, is having some heavy thoughts that don't seem compatible with being prepared for baby crafting. Last time we hung out he said that heaven must be finite, and there isn't space enough for all the physical bodies, implying that then heaven must either be a lie, or a very very selective VIP club. I argued that of course heaven in infinite and not physical, but spiritual. And there we will be free from the bounds of our bodies, ageless and enjoying an existance that far surpasses what we understand now. Heaven is the opposite of the limitations we experience as humans. That conversation in and of itself does not seem to preclude making babies, but the reasons we were having it do. A friend of his committed suicide a year ago. He does not trust this world anymore, or apparently, the next either.

When I was a kid I used to get Zoobooks, a magazine that features a different animal every month. They'd talk about the animal's environment and what it ate and who ate it and basically just give you all you ever wanted to know about koalas or tree frogs or whatever. Every month there was one page that scared the shit out of me, a page where they did cutaway diagram of the animal, revealing its muscular structure and bones. Every time I tured to that page I would get chills up my back and in my hands. It never failed to startle, even if I had read the magazine several times. The New Essential Guide to Lesbian Conception, Pregnancy and Birth is a little like that. The information is fascinating, but sometimes you turn a page and suddenly your nose is a photo of someone's cervix. Unlike Zoobooks, the New Essential Guide is in black and white. Good thing too. If the drawing entitled "A Woman Using A Desk Lamp, a Hand Mirror, and Speculum to Look at Her Cervix" was in color, I might just have to rip it out and frame it.

I'm learning a lot about the cervix though. I'm also learning a lot about mucus and breast milk and all sorts of other fluids that I never spent much time on previously. Especially sperm.

If our chosen donor doesn't work out for one reason or another, we've decided that we'll go to a sperm bank. We had no idea what sperm costs or how you get it or anything, so we went online and started crusing sperm. Information abounds. Nordic people apparently love to jerk off into a container. There are sperm banks that specialize in Norse sperm, and even ones that don't have tons of Nordic donors listed. Latinos apparently DON'T like to jerk off into a container, which sucks for us if we do end up going this route since I'd prefer a baby that ends up a little olive toned (like me) instead of a little Viking toned.

If I weren't getting so invested in this process, I'd have a lot of things to say about the way the sperm donors are classified. Often there are three tiers - sort of a bargain basement grab bag where you have less information and older sperm, a general everyman pool, and then an elite section of people who've earned PhDs or distiguished themselves in some other way. I find myself revealing odd predjudices. I could give a shit about a PhD, but a Master's Degree is very desirable. I refuse to let Jen get inseminated by anyone who is a chiropracter, or a dentist. A vet would be better than a medical doctor. No one exclusively science or math oriented. Columbians over Mexicans. Cubans over Columbians.

Weight, height, ethnicity, eye color, hair color, blood type, career, education are the basics you can find on most sperm bank websites. But reading the essays is most revealing. Does he write in full sentences? Does he start his essay with "My most memorable experience is when I saw a UFO?" I think if we found someone who knew how to use a semicolon, he'd shoot to the top of the list even if he was 2 feet tall and 800 lbs.

Its all just information now. Hopefully our known donor will work out. But if he doesn't, I'm going to have to spend more time thinking about men than I ever have in my life. Learning about them. Imagining them.

the future comes apace

More activity, more excitement, more nerves. Jen has lined an appointment with the superlesbian ob/gyn. When she called the superlesbian, she was asked if she was currently pregnant or trying to concieve. The superlesbian will only see people engaged in babycraft. Jen answered that yes, she was trying to concieve, and was granted an audience. I guess we are, but now that its checked off on a form somewhere that sounds quite factual and immediate, when before it was a plan we were working on making a reality.

I understand its not like she'll go in there for a visit and walk out with a toddler, but these doctor visits definetely signals the start of the physical baby making, which will hopefully eventually result in a physical baby.

I begin to see that this process is really about information. Deeper into it, I'm sure I'll lose this perspective and become terribly emotional, but right now I feel like I'm mapping out the road ahead in terms of how much we know and when we know it. Moving ahead depends upon us organizing the information correctly, putting the right codes together at the right time. We didn't know a doctor, I had to request information about who to request information from and now we do. We don't know if how likely it is Jen will be able to concieve, soon tests will be done, results will be gathered and we will have that information. And assuming that information is favorable, we'll have to chart and time and record until we have the information that indicates to us it is the right time to attempt to join the information encased in egg and sperm to create a new body of information, a new body.

Maybe I'm high on library science fumes but I don't think I'm wrong. If I'm being too unpoetic, I suppose this could also be configured as a quest story. Which would give names and voices to all of these people, the kind witches that help us with spells and talismans, the inevitable evil trolls that will mock us or stand in our way. But even told in a fanciful manner, its still a story about exchanges of information, who has it, who wants it, when we get it, if it is used for good or for evil, if its enough to help us solve the puzzle, beat the sphinx and win the day.

We continue to begin.

Things are starting to happen, slowly, slowly but surely. Jen has set up a GP appointment to make sure she's in general good health and we got a recommendation for a fabulous gyno who is some sort of superlesbian and delivers 30 babies a day. Ok, maybe a month. Regardless, she loves pussy in both a medical and romantic sense, which means she has both knowledge and empathy for us and that's the important thing.

I said this felt like being told to climb a monolith. I was being dramatic. And isolationist. Tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of women have gone through this process, and there is information, but you have to reach out and find it. I've never been much of a joiner and neither is Jen, and words like "prospective lesbian parents support group" make us both cringe. But we need help from people who know how this happens. So I've reached out online. We actually found the superlesbian ob/gyn through my postings to several LiveJournal groups. People with info were more than happy to share and people without info enthusiastically congratulated us and wished us good luck. In real life, I hang out with straight girls and gay boys and my girlfriend. The lesbian community in NYC has always struck me as cliquish and shallow and not a little predatory. It was such a pleasant surprise to find that another lesbian community in another place...well, in many places at once...might be helpful to us, might hold some some relevance in my life.

Meanwhile I've sent off my applications to librarian school. I'm very excited about this, but I'm getting concerned about what this will do to our financial situation. No matter what, I'm not going to incur any more terrifiyingly large loans. I'll go to a private university only on full scholarship, and I'll be equally if not more thrilled to go to city college, because it is dirt cheap and a great school. But thinking beyond tuition, the idea is, if I go full time, I can put my previously held student loans on deferment and maybe save some money and get somewhere with my credit cards. But the money needs to be coming in from somewhere, which means I'll also need to work as much as possible. Atlantic is fun, sometimes, but mainly really hideously annoying. Its also a job that requires a lot of focus for not a great deal of pay-off which is really just the opposite of what I'm looking for if I enter into a full time school situation. If I had my druthers, I'd like to make the bulk of my money through tutoring. It requires very little focus for basically the same hourly amount as Atlantic. Or, if I hustle and get myself a raise, then a better hourly rate. But I've had trouble getting Kaplan to give me jobs lately. I think, I hope its just my lack of seniority, but it makes me worry about leaving my now-full-time job to depend more on income from them. The solution I've decided on is to cross train for two other tests, the LSAT and the GMAT. Hopefully, by increasing the amount of tests I am able to tutor/teach, I better my chances of actually landing some assignments. The other solution is to scrap Kaplan, scap Atlantic and just look for the most lucrative possible job I can get. But while the money is appealing, I have no idea what that job might be and it makes no sense just jumping into a new field for the cash when I'm just starting in school for something else. While I'm getting paid, I need to leave my options at least somewhat open to avail myself of library related employment opportunities that I'm sure will come my way once I start school.

I've never thought this strategically about my future before.The pitiable state of my savings account is evidence of the fact I've never thought seriously about saving money in my life. It's always just be a question of whether I could pay my loans, pay my cell phone bill, pay my rent. But we're doing this, we're starting to do this, and we need money to keep doing it. From a sustainer, I need to become a provider.

envy

I've been away from this project for a while. Jenstill hasn't gone to the doctor. She works late, the holidays intervened. We mean to, but we haven't. I think part of it is just scheduling, but I think another part of it is looking up at what a monolith and being told to climb it with no equipment or prior experience or guide or money to acquire any of the above. Just go ahead, climb it. You want what's up there? Climb.

Its daunting.

Most of the time, I feel it is a priveledge to be gay. Sure, there's predjudice and lack of equal rights and hate crimes and funny looks. But that doesn't hurt as much when I realize how much I've learned about myself and other people as I have processed all of those negative things. One example is that personal homosexual life experience lets me know for a fact my family actually loves me for who I really am. Not to mention that I love me for who I really am. And I get to love and be loved by Jen, which is the best part of all.

So, yeah, most of the time, I think its cool and lovely and exciting and interesting and perfect and great to be gay. But I am really really really jealous of heterosexual people right now. I am jealous that a heterosexual couple can decide to have a baby and without paying for anything or involving anyone else, just go ahead and make that happen. Of course there are infertile people who have to seek outside assistance. But I mean, assuming everything is ok...its just them and they get to make a baby. I AM SO JEALOUS.

I will get over this. I'm just frustrated right now because we want to have a baby but instead of just sexin' one out, we have to think about involving a lot of other people at what I'm sure will end up being considerable cost before we even have an embryo on our hands. It is stressful and daunting. I just wish we could make a baby ourselves, simply because we love each other so much.

But like I said, lots of other queer hurts have turned into experiences I treasure and relish. I hope this will too. I'm sure it will. I'm just not at that stage yet. Right now, I'm at the stage where it fucking sucks.

If we don't look good, we don't look good.

Today at work they handed out these one sheet calendars. Looking at all the dates that will comprise 2007 and 2008, I first looked to see where my birthday will fall (monday, labor day, nice! and wednesday, eh.) and then I thought "Hey! If all goes according to plan, my theoretical future baby's birthday will be one of these days I am looking at right now!"

That slightly scary. I mean, all of these dates fit on an 8.5x11 sheet, with room left over to advertise 18 musicals and the Broadway.com phone number. It isn't that much time. But mostly, it was thrilling, in a positive way. As much as I have no idea what I'm doing, no savings, no home equity, no property at all, no car, and no idea how I'll be able to deal with life if Jen can't pay attention to me almost constantly, I really do want us to have this kid.

There was an article in the New York Times Sunday Magazine yesterday - about gay men and lesbians redefining nucler familes. The main cases they focused on were lesbian couples who went with a known donor. Basically, the article attempted to explore how the known donor - be he friend or acquaintence - fit into the life of the child. Although the article didn't put any thing radically new on the table as far as my knowledge of these things goes, it was interesting to see how people tried to organize themselves ahead of time, and how things inevitably turned out differently than they expected.

Mainly the differences between expectation and reality fell into three categories:
1. The donor reacted differently to having a child than he anticipated - usually on the side of wanting more and more consistent contact with the child than was initially agreed upon.

2. The mothers reacted differently to having the donor in the child's life than anticipated - usually wanting him around less, or possibly actively disliking him, or possibly breaking up and having to deal with a third parent or quasi parent i the visitation schedule.

3. The child is the real wild card. The main thing that threw one family for a loop was when their son was diagnosed with cancer at the age of 5. With a seriously ill, possibly dying child, the donor became more of a dad. The kid got better and the donor dad wanted to fade back to his old, less active role. The non-bio mom was upset. The donor dad's partner was upset. On the cover of the magazine, the kid looked pale, but fine.

For several reasons, I feel that my child, and my child's life, should be exemplary. Some of it has to do with how I was raised, how my family views achievement, but much more of it has to do with the fact that I am queer. Lots of queers that I know have implicitly and explicitly agreed. We have to be better than everyone else.

Coming out is a process whereby you recognize that you are different than the majority. Whatever you think at first or have been taught about your difference being a liability has to go out the window. In order to combat self loathing, you instead enter a period of intense and gorgeous and extremely annoying self love. Worship even. And you're hideous. But you have to do this to break away from the conventions of society. You can't allow yourself hear anyone else, or think that there's even the slightest possiblity youd' be wrong or you'd never come out. You'd hate yourself and hurt yourself, which may be what you had been up to before. To stop that you have to come to a point where you say say "I am special, I am not bad or evil or sick or wrong or mistaken. I am excellent. And SO right."

It fades. But a part of it has to stick. Or else every time someone voted against gay marriage or ambushed a poor fag and beat the shit out of him or looked sideways at you on the subway for holding a girl's hand or asked you why you didn't have a boyfriend, it would totally fuck you up. And as you build a life as a queer person, and become sucessful in a relationship or in your career or in your social circle, the feelings of worth come less from an inflated sense of self, and more from an actual sense of self - pride in your accomplishments, evidence that you are worthy and normal (as far as anyone can be) and you were right all along.

So once you've proved it to yourself, you have to go on and prove it to everyone else. Because as much as you know you're right, the bashing and the slurs and the fact that people openly hate and are frightened of you really hurts. So you have to be better than everyone else. For some people that means earning more money. For some people that means being as non-mainstream as possible. For me, that means raising the best, healthiest, smartest, funniest, funnest, most creative, high tech, down home, retro futuristic traditional queer family I can manage.

You know that all along when I was saying "you" I meant "me" right?

So. Now that we've decided on a known donor (assuming he has enough sperm. A tale for another day) and know that I know dealing with a known donor can be a complex, shifting proposition, we've gotta do it, not just well, extremely well. With legality and panache. With witty banter and wry observations falling out of pretty mouths at every step. With everyone looking hot and making their parents proud. If MY queer nuclear family is on the cover of the New York Times Sunday Magazine in 10 years, we will not look like four John Goodmans (2 male, 2 female) and a cancerous child. We will be slim and genius. We will glow with organically grown good health.

Ironically enough, I think the key is being mutable. All the people in the article had lined up a life and were surprised when they didn't get to live exactly that. I am not opposed to changing my vision of the future. As long as we all continue to excel the hell out of everyone doing whatever the fuck it is we end up doing.

our family

Jen's (recently) 21 year-old brother is living with us at the moment. He is a nice enough child, but a giant child nonetheless. I am perfectly comfortable with him feeding and walking our dogs, watching our apartment, even keeping his area of it fairly neat. He holds down a job and an internship, does his own laundry, and pays for his own drinks.

I am decidedly less comfortable with his ability to do things like make plans, follow directions to arrive at a location, or choose a television program that doesn't make my skin crawl with loathing for the likes of someone with such as ridiculous name as Zach Braff.

The point is, having him here is more hands-on than I anticipated when Jen asked me 9 months ago if this arrangement would be OK. He can support himself, but he would eat only macroni and cheese and cupcakes if left to his own devices. He isn't terribly messy, but he has no idea that the back of a dining room chair is not the appropriate location for his sweaty t-shirts to "air out." And most of all, he has a few friends in town, but he really really really really likes hanging out with his family. Which apparently includes me.

Jen is most certainly family. And I love her mom and get along fine with her father and stepmother. But I never really said, ok, well, this whole bunch of people is my family now too. I thought about it in vague terms, christmas presents were exchanged, holidays visits were made. But in the months that lil' bro has been in town, in home, this vague academic notion of joining the clan has become a day to day reality. When the "Nagle!" rallying cry goes up, I am called upon to respond. With enthusiasm!

the beginning (cont.)

Over the past few years, we've certainly discussed having children. I've known for quite some time that Jen wants to be pregnant and give birth to a child. We've even talked about possible donors. We've agreed we'd prefer it to be someone we know. We agreed on who, of the people we know, we'd most like it to be. We, well, mostly Jen, have had conversations with this person. Most of the time they've had these conversations, I haven't been around for the serious part.

At first I was touchy about the idea of a known donor being active in parenting. In the state where we live, for me to be a second parent adopter, the donor would have to sign away all parental rights and I felt it should end there. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized I was being extremely selfish. I know that however we concieve or recieve a child, I will be extremely involved in its upbringing. Ideally, I want to be a stay-at-home mom, at least until the child reaches school age. And if I am, on a day-to-day level, parenting, then how shitty of me to say well, no, no one else is allowed to love my child. Technically, our child. If we end up with a known donor who wants to parent, on any level, as long as its something consistent and positive in the child's life, I think it would be a great thing. There's plenty of things a man...especially a gay man (and all the men we're considering are gay)...can teach I child that I have no fucking clue about. Mainly about penises, of course. But I'm sure there's other stuff.

So, we've talked about it. But its all been talk. We have no money and many goals. We'd like to be more stable, buy a house, at least a car, at least have some money in the bank. There are career goals, schools and certificates we'd each like to earn, positions to jockey for, and back to money again, more of that too. Since we're in a position where baby making cannot happen spontaneously, we, or at least I (but yeah, I think we), feel required to prepare for this at least as hard and as well as I prepared for grad school.

And then, at the annual Halloween party the other day, my friend Amy, who is an OB/GYN, asked how old Jen is. "34" I answered guilelessly, unleashing a torrent of information about what insurance will or will not do for a 35 year old woman and why. With drinks in everyones hands and me dressed like Michael Jack and Amy dressed like the Muppet Swedish Chef, I got intimately aquainted with the reality of a 35 year old woman's eggs.

I didn't know if I should tell Jen, but of course I fucking did. Because I love her and because she wants this and because we do want a family so we might as well face facts. And so, we begin. We've had a conversation and the idea is to take things one step at a time.

Step One. Jen goes to the gynocologist. She's going to the glbt medical center, which is awesome and needs our insured support. She'll get a checkup and talk to the doctor about our intentions. I've been slightly irked because she's put off making an appointment for a few weeks now. I know she's busy at work and she's concerned about hearing potentially de-railing news, but a)she needs to go anyway and b) we need to know if we should be investigating other options. This week and again today, she did finally call, but they weren't open for making appointments. I'm impatient for the first step to be taken.

the beginning

First, the situation.

I am 27, she is 34. We are both women, and we love each other, have loved each other for over three years now. We met because she read my blog. Well, to be honest, I posted excerpts on craigslist, hoping to entice readers, some of whom would hopefully be cute. She read the cl post, and came on over. But she remained a quiet reader for a month or two, finally commenting in response to my scintillating (seriously, I think it was) review of the final episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I wrote back, I thought she was smart. Her comments were complimentary and thought provoking and based in social theory we were both reading in graduate school. After a few rounds of email, I invited her out to see my friend Julia do standup/storytelling at a lesbian bar. She accepted. I thought she'd be ugly because she was so smart and funny. I figured I'd make a friend.

She was so gorgeous I literally could not believe it was the girl I had been writing to. So much so that I turned and walked out of the bar, saying to myself, "we'll I'd hit on that cute girl, but I'm supposed to meet someone else. That'd be rude. But if I go and get pizza and come back and that hot girl is still there, I'll buy her a drink." Thankfully, she had my number and called me. Once I realized the hot girl and the smart funny girl were one and the same, I was back in a jiffy.

Julia was performing as part of an open mike night and the rest of the performers were entirely hideous. But the girl was sticking by my side and I was whispering in her ear and it was all extremely exciting. Mixed messages again when she literally ran for a cab, calling goodbye over her shoulder. No kiss? No future plans? I was confused. "She liked you." my friends assured me. "She has a GREAT rack." Julia said. And Julia isn't even gay.

When I woke up in the morning there was an email from her. Apologizing for the dash and inviting me out to dinner. I accepted, we had a six hour first date, a 24 hour second date and things continued on apace.

We don't fit too many lesbian stereotypes. No one is butch, no one is femme, while I do household repairs, she deals with mice. But we did move in together soon after we began to date. We met in June and moved in together in November. 5 months. If you stretch it. My thinking was, "I'll know if this works. If it doesn't, it wouldn't have anyway. If it does, we'll be together forever."

And it turned out to be the latter