Playing it by Ear

*** A special guest post from Mac's dad Andy the special guest star ***

            First of all, sorry for my indolence. I owe Mondays with Mac about a gazillion posts at this point, including the one I promised I’d write while waiting out Sandy this weekend. With all that free time, you’d think I could have gotten a lot of things done, and I did. Things like buying batteries and wine and moving potted plants inside and watching endless live reports from the beach about how people shouldn’t be at the beach right now. Writing somehow didn’t factor in - I should have known myself well enough to block off my calendar for GENERAL ANTICIPATION.

            But even before superstorm weekend, I didn’t have a good excuse, except to say I’ve been busy. When Tracy and Kristin first met me,* I was a single, freelance, jet-set, bon vivant Special Guest Star. *And yes, I know, I haven’t yet gotten to the ‘When Tracy and Kristin first met me’ part of How I Met Your Mothers – but current events have me jumping ahead in the story to this very special update: I’m getting married.

            So for the moment, I’ll skip over the part where I get fixed up with a Park Avenue friend-of-a-friend who was thinking about squeezing parenthood into her busy schedule of Wall Street law and Transatlantic on-again/off-again love affairs with Mr. Maybe; we’ll get back to the part  where I binge traveled to Eastern Europe and the Middle East before New Year’s Resolution-ing myself into a winter of book writing; I’ll breeze right over my cyber courtship with Kris & Tracy, and how when we first met I had to ask them “Do you like me?” because they liked me so much they could barely speak to me; I’ll fly right by my Porter flights to Ottawa for our home science project with the artichoke jar and the Big Lesbian Handbook to Being Fertile & Getting Pregnant; and get right to the part where I completely, unexpectedly, fell in love.

            When people ask how Raff and I first met, the short answer we usually give is “on the beach in Rio.” It’s the perfect cocktail-party answer, being about all the explanation a typical light conversation can handle, and it’s entirely true, just leaving out the four months of online courtship that preceded it.

Backing up to September of 2010, I was in the midst of a fertility-focused regimen every bit as intense as what I imagine med students go through before entrance exams, or how athletes must train for the Olympics (even curling). The Irelands and I had made two attempts already at baby making, and between ovulation windows, I followed all the advice the Big Lesbian Handbook had to offer. I worked off the extra empanada weight I’d put on while writing (excess pounds slow sperm production), took a daily dosage of zinc and L-vitamins (count uppers), and - very importantly - abstained 100% from sex, for the safety of all concerned.

Now, nothing’s more charming and popular at the gay bar than saying, “I’d love to go out with you, but I’m saving all my sperm for a nice lesbian couple in Canada.” So I took a break from even worrying about boys and dating for a while. It’s amazing how different the mind works, how relaxed a person can feel when the pressure is completely off. Somewhere inside, I think I took this time to prepare for all the changes that were on the way, that I was setting about to make happen.

Still, I’m a social person, not a total monk. So I took to chatting online, and that’s how I met a tall, lanky Mormon surfer who was taking time to ponder the sky in Santa Cruz, California, while his friend attended school there. We shared an interest in modern surf music, the Drums and Hacienda in particular, and let the sparks kindle from there. If absence makes the heart grow fonder, abstinence turns it into an avid suitor, a good old-fashioned gentleman caller. We enjoyed a proper long-distance courtship, complete with playlists (the modern “mix tape”) and Valentines and a glossary of private nicknames, enough to make even Charlotte York gag in a cloud of floating hearts.

By January, my Olympic Event (baby making) was over, and like a gold-medalist curler, I was back to eating French fries and wearing underwear that hugs. Mac was the size of a chick pea, making his moms up in Canada deliriously happy (and nauseous), and my very minor role in helping to create him was complete. I left the zinc behind and flew to Ipanema, where Raff and I pretty much kicked things off with a honeymoon. Drinking coconuts together at Posto 9 was our way of bringing a U-Haul on a second date (if you don’t understand this reference, Kris will explain).

For the next year and a half, we dated long distance. Neither Raff nor I is a Skype person, or a phone person or an instant-chat person – we prefer email, several times a day. It’s the closest thing to writing a love letter in the modern age without having to go through the ridiculous wait endured by a Gabriel Garcia Marquez character. Then, whenever I booked a freelance job, I’d also book a ticket to Brazil to see him afterwards, both of us content to do what we had to do in the meantime, to go with the flow, to “play it by ear.” This was a new phrase for Raff - “PIBE,” he called it for short, and being someone who’s grown up between Brazil and Iceland, drifting off to pass a summer surfing in Spain, or to breathe the air in Greenland or feel the majesty of India, he’s a natural at PIBE.

Our new year’s resolution for 2012 was to bring our dashing LDR to an end and, one way or another, get married and live together in the same city. But where would we live? How could we both work? Should I learn Portuguese and move to Brazil? Should we go to Italy and get green cards for the EU, taking advantage of Raff’s Italian heritage? Would now be the time to settle in Toronto or Montreal, closer to Mr. Mac? Or was there some way Raff could get a visa to stay in New York, where my job opportunities are the best? (Marriage in the US still doesn’t count for these purposes).

PIBE.

So when I landed a full-time job at an ad agency in New York, Raff moved up to join me. While I was busy working on “Go Olive Garden” commercials, he was busy becoming a New Yorker, deciding on a favorite neighborhood (Soho), discovering bagels, bumping into the likes of SJP, Lucy Liu, and Glenn Close walking her dogs. On weekends, we flew off to meet my family, meet my cousins, meet Kris and Tracy and Mac, to see Fire Island and Mason, Ohio, and loll around the Hamptons and the North Fork. I’ve never been more pleasantly exhausted in my life. By the end of September, we moved to the couples’ paradise that is gentrified Brooklyn, and a very new chapter of life is well under way. Special Guest Star has his own show.

Admittedly, some people are better at PIBE than others. Last weekend, as we prepared to leave for Brazil, Sandy made her way up the coast, threatening to crash our wedding plans. I stressed, completely forgetting the wise advice my mom has had taped up on her refrigerator since her days as a school nurse: “Worry is a misuse of the imagination.” Would our flight be canceled? Should I call TAM airlines, which is every bit as laidback and Brazilian as Raff, and try to pre-arrange a back-up plan in a race against other canceled passengers? What if there are no buses to JFK? Will we miss our wedding in Brazil entirely and have to swim to City Hall instead?

Andy and Raff's location during Sandy 

As the wind howled and I paced, anxious that the windows would blow in, Raff lounged on the sofa, surfing Youtube and making a honeymoon playlist. “Relax,” he kept saying, agreeing with my mom’s advice. “We’ll leave Wednesday.”

Not much ever stresses Raff out, actually. In fact, I can think of only three things that get his cuecas in a knot: the closing credits on a TV show (too long!), multiple hashtags on a tweet (decide!) and ‘noisy sheets’ (I can’t sleep with this sound!). Otherwise, he’s about as easygoing as it gets, always one to take time and appreciate the power and beauty of a walk, or a nap, a bath, an apple, the sky. “I’m a simple boy,” he likes to say, while spreading imported caviar on his breakfast bread.

Sure enough, we left Wednesday. As I took a deep breath, too tired to figure out our bus route across the outer boroughs to the airport, a gypsy cab spotted our luggage and pulled up to offer us a ride. Rolling through Queens, four hours early for our flight on a beautiful fall afternoon, I took Raff’s hand and smiled. “I told you,” he smiled back. “Relax.”

The next morning, we were already relaxing at his mom’s house, visiting with the family and drinking mango juice. In a few days we’ll marry at the local Cartorio, where earlier this year, Raff went in to consult with a woman, dressed head to toe in vintage Chanel, on what we’d need to make it official. “Passport, birth certificate, a Brazilian tax payer ID number,” she told him. “Just that - and the desire!”

Raff’s mom will be our witness, and his father, Octavio Candotti, who used to say, “a family without a gay is not a family,” will be watching over us from above. We’ll take his mom to lunch and then leave for our honeymoon at the beach. At Christmas, we’ll toast our nuptials with my family, and think about what to do for a reception in the spring in New York. We’ve talked about getting married four times in total, once for each element, on four different continents, and having four different rings, one for each occasion (Raff believes in accessories). We can celebrate as often as need be, bringing the party to our friends and family wherever they are, hopefully starting with a visit to the Irelands in early December. There are no rules or expectations, really. We are free to PIBE.

Chapter 4: Lobster Ties

This is chapter four in a series written by Andy (Mac's dad). To catch-up on the previous chapters please click here. 

One thing I love about living in a city of 9 million plus people is the feeling of conspicuous anonymity, of hiding in plain sight. No one has any idea what you’re up to. The man sitting across from you on the subway might be coming back from a show at Lincoln Center, or on his way to a Cyclones game. The lady next to him might be heading home from yoga class, or heading out to see her drug dealer! And that guy over there, the one with the silly grin on his face – maybe he’s a graffiti artist who’s inhaled too many fumes, or maybe, just maybe, he’s a wanna-be dad who’s just gotten the call to bring his balls over to Bay Ridge. Pronto.

Katy had texted me that her ovulation math was all adding up. Since I was leaving the next day for my brother’s wedding, tonight was the night. I had run out of the apartment with my lab results and the co-parenting agreement that we had printed out and talked about but never signed. The co-parenting agreement is nothing legal, just a list of our intentions – things like no money will exchange hands, that I won’t seek custody, and that we all intend for me to be a part of the child's life. It gets more in-depth than that, but the idea is to remind us down the road what we were thinking at the start.

As the train emerged in Brooklyn, I wondered how this would work – the actual sperm donor-ing part. For starters, their apartment was cramped if not cozy, with a frosted-glass bathroom door that didn't really close all the way. Should I have done my duty before I left home and, I don’t know, brought it over in a Ziploc? I could feel the grin plastered across my face – how embarrassing, already. Hopefully Katy and Emilce would have some sort of plan. In the distance, the late-evening dusk glowed behind the Manhattan skyline. I felt like I was floating.

I arrived at their building sheened in sweat, dabbing at my forehead on the elevator ride up. Katy answered the door. Instead of the usual ponytail, she had worn her hair down in loose curls for the occasion. I greeted her, shyly, all smiles, and strode in to the living room where Emilce sat waiting, her hands shoved deep into the pockets of a Members Only jacket.

"I brought this,” I said, plopping the co-parenting agreement down on the coffee table. Emilce picked it up, flipping the pages back and forth. She studied it, as if for the first time, and a strange silence filled the room – just me catching my breath and Emilce flipping those pages back and forth.

"We'll have to read this over and get back to you," she said finally, without looking at me. Her voice trembled with a restrained anger, like I was trying to pull something. It was as if instead of a co-parenting agreement, I had handed her my plan to skip town with Katy on the next freight train passing through.

I was stunned. Completely caught off guard. This agreement had been part of the plan for months. And Katy had just texted me to come over not even an hour ago. Where was this coming from?

I looked at Katy, lingering on the sidelines in the kitchen doorframe. She wouldn't look at me either.

How would my nieces have put it? That awkward moment when your wife cockblocks the sperm donor.

Andy's nieces

Riding back into Manhattan, all I could think was, what is going on in that relationship? How could one partner be taking her basal body temperature and cheering her eggs on while the other sat back and quietly plotted to pull the plug on the whole operation? I laughed to myself, the hollow laugh of the burned and baffled, realizing that whatever had gone down in the 40 minutes between Katy texting me to come over and Emilce sending me packing, it must have happened while Katy was curling her hair.

The next morning I woke up early to pack and leave for my brother’s wedding. But first, I wrote a quick email to Katy and Emilce. I kept it chipper, saying that I certainly wasn’t trying to rush anybody, and I hoped we were still on, that the co-parenting agreement was the same thing we’d been talking about since the beginning, and to please let me know.

I held onto my cellphone all the way to the airport, waiting for a beep or a buzz in reply. Nothing. When we landed in Ogunquit, still no word.

It wasn’t until I arrived at the hotel and saw my mom and dad, sitting with my brothers and nieces and brother-in-law, our high school friends and their wives, all having lunch and thrilled to be together on the beautiful coast of Maine, that I finally said, screw it. I switched off the phone and left it in my room. Nothing puts things in perspective like being with your family. 

Andy and his aunt

 Between the whale-watching and the lobster rolls, the poolside lounging and some fine moves on the dance floor, I realized what a mistake I had made by not yet letting my family in on my plans. I guess I was afraid of their reaction – I have a history of surprise announcements. But this wasn’t some scheme to bike across America or teach English in Japan without knowing Japanese. This was about adding to our family. They deserved to know, no matter how nervous I might be about the response. And the truth is, my family has always been very supportive, no matter what. Were we not, this very weekend, wearing ties with little lobsters on them for Steve and Kathleen? 

Andy with his mom and her twin sister (good genes right?)

Andy's brother and sister-in-law on their wedding day

On a drive to the airport, I had a chance to talk with my sister. I told her about my big fatherhood plans, and how I’d met a nice couple six months ago and it had almost happened – almost. And how I had wanted it to be a surprise. She melted with that kind of warm understanding that sisters radiate, that tenderness and an encouraging smile that is the best a guy could ask for in a situation like this.

Andy with his niece and sister

"Well first of all, it's wonderful that you want to be a dad. But if they were having a change of heart, it's much better you found out now than after a baby's on the way."

Yeah, I told her, I guess it’s for the best. Maybe I was trying to see us as more compatible than we really were. They did tend to think all men were shady. And Emilce had this weird eye thing where one of her eyes kind of looked off over your shoulder while she was talking to you. And once they had invited me over for brunch and served this bacon substitute stuff that looked like something from a Soviet prison – could I really stand by while they fed that to a child?

I was joking, of course. Well, mostly. But if you can’t rip on the people you are no longer going to be having a baby with, who can you rip?

The next day, the message finally came. Emilce didn’t trust that I would be content with just a ‘fun uncle’ role, and they had decided to go ahead with a sperm bank after all. “I have to protect my family,” she wrote.

Fine, I thought. Go and have your Gattaca baby. Just send me my stuff back. They still had my pounamu necklace, the one they’d never gotten around to finding a string for, and my new stud detector. Send it all back so I can get on with my life and forget I ever met you! (I’ve learned from an ex or two that sometimes it takes a little drama to get results).

It took a few weeks, but Emilce did mail everything back, along with a new string for the necklace. I thought about leaving her hanging, but the truth was, she had done us all a huge favor. I didn’t have faith in them as co-parents. I didn’t respect their decisions, I didn’t even respect their Facon. While Katy and I glossed over potential problems, Emilce trusted her instincts: I wasn’t going to be content in a ‘fun uncle’ role  – not with them. And they didn’t really want a known donor, as good as it had sounded on paper. She alone was brave enough to stand up and call it off, even as her partner lit candles and curled her hair.

I wrote Emilce an email to say I’d gotten the package and thanks for the string and good luck with everything. She wrote right back: “good luck with everything too :)” And somehow that made all the difference.

*[Ten months later – just after meeting a wonderful couple from a strange place called ‘Ottawa’ whom I had a great feeling about and fingers crossed that it would all work out – curiosity got the best of me, and I peeked at Katy’s Facebook page (long-since de-friended). I’m happy to report that the very fertile Katy must have conceived the next month, because beaming from her profile picture was a beautiful newborn girl who looked just like her.]

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Chapter 3: Team of Three

This is chapter three in a series written by Andy (Mac's dad). To catch-up on the previous chapters please click here. 

I can't imagine what Katy and Emilce must have thought, arriving in the blank light of dusk to a room full of wanna-be dads, all turning to stare back at them at once. But I can tell you what the wanna-be dads were probably thinking: jackpot!

"Sorry we're late," said Katy, all golden-brown hair and radiant sparkle, with a figure like the Venus of Willendorf. I've never seen a more fertile-looking person in my life. Emilce was darker and more petite, preoccupied with a whimpering dog she had brought in a soft travel case.

We quickly made room and decided to go around the circle and introduce ourselves, in what I dreaded was going to be a recurring theme in this process. One guy used his hello to share horror stories of the years of "dating" he'd already endured with various women and couples, and to remind us of everything that could possibly go wrong, from break-ups and custody battles to miscarriages. Charming. Another couple – who mirrored each other in every detail, from the gum chewing to the sweaters knotted loosely over their shoulders – used their introduction to complain about the high cost of surrogates. Delightful. A third candidate took this opportunity to share his strong belief that a child should be raised by a man and a woman. Unexpected.

By the time it was my turn, Emilce had quietly slipped out of the meeting. Katy remained, looking hopeful, polite, undaunted. Rather than try to explain ‘Special Guest Star’ in an introduction, I offered that I was hoping to be a dad by name, but play more of a ‘fun uncle’ role. Katy perked up. "That's what we're looking for," she said. Her enthusiasm was all the go-ahead I needed. When the meeting ended, I gave her my email and biked away quickly, lest it turn into mingling.

Our emails were filled with smileys and exclamation points, and soon we were making a date to meet on the weekend. They would be coming in from Bay Ridge, the Saturday Night Fever neighborhood (Realness!) to shop for jewelry-making materials. (Creative!) They worked for the same special-needs adult care facility (Nurturing!) and had both grown up in New York – Katy upstate (Friendly!) and Emilce nearby in Dyker Heights. (Authentic!) We met at a restaurant near my place, and together they couldn't have been more than 10 feet tall combined. (Petite!)

My head swelled when they told me that they had spotted me right away. Emilce explained that she'd only left early because of the dog. We ordered iced teas and had a laugh about the guys with the knotted sweaters. I already felt like part of the team.

Like me, Katy and Emilce were completely surprised and thankful to find out about the Center and the Co-parenting group. Before this they had been thinking Sperm Bank, but found the reality to be too cold and impersonal for their tastes. "Choose your donor's desired eye color. Choose your donor's desired height," Emilce mocked in a fake computer voice. "It was like Gattaca." (For those of you who don't remember Gattaca, it’s a movie about a society with such high standards that it rejects Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman for not being perfect enough.)

They liked my height (Tall!) and they loved the fact that I was a train ride away, (Manhattan!) a fun-uncle dad who was a writer and loved to travel. (Special Guest Star!) Their plan was to each carry a child with the same father, Katy first since she was a little older at 33. This all sounded great to me.

The next week I made my first visit to Bay Ridge. Their apartment was in a beautiful old building filled mostly with women living on their own, who kept each other informed about a shady neighbor they all feared would climb in through the balcony. “I think he’s running a meth lab!” and other such speculation greeted us in the lobby and on the elevator with each visit. Katy and Emilce’s place itself was cozy and cluttered with books and boxes of Emilce’s research for her dissertation, Katy’s sprawling house plants and beta bowls, and furniture draped in sheets to protect it from a spastic chihuahua and a tired old cat who just wanted to sit in the sun. 

Beautiful Bay Ridge and the Verrazano Bridge

At brunch, Emilce told me about her close-knit family. Her mother wanted grandchildren desperately, and was thrilled to discover a home insemination kit in one of their boxes while helping them move. Katy asked me about my family, and I told them my heritage was Euro-mutt, and that I mostly took after my mom’s Slovak/French side. “Oh, you’re Slavic too!” 

Andy's grandparents on the French/Slovak side of the family

She told me that her last name – which looked like a typo, or maybe a phylum of jellyfish – was actually pronounced something like ‘Smudge.’ 

This took me a moment. Her name started with a string of random consonants, and ended in ‘y’. I come from a family of sound-it-outers.

I smiled, sparing a thought for what school might be like for a child called ‘Smudge’. Maybe totally normal. Cecilia Smudge. Nope, she’d run off to get married at 13. Jeff Smudge. Last to be picked, for sure.

I shook it off. It was fine. Maybe they’d want to use my last name, anyway.  I hinted at it, with the story of how no one ever just calls me “Andy” in New York – always “AndyHall.”  New Yorkers love saying it. I think it reminds them of Annie Hall.

They laughed at my cute story, but that was it. I left it at that, and switched to something much more important. Every time Katy looked at me, it was with something like a schoolgirl crush – not romantic, but an “I’m ready to be pregnant” look, and all her charms were in full effect. Emilce, the quiet one, the Brooklyn native, was much harder to read. It was important to know that she wanted this, too. I asked her, “How do you feel about all this?”

It was a sunny day in April, and she waited while the waitress cleared the plates before answering.

“I feel ready. I mean, ideally I’d like to be finished with school, but...I just know she’ll be a great mom.” With that, she took Katy’s hand, and the way they looked at each other, all my doubts were put to rest.

We all smiled and kind of stared at each other like, now what? I told them I would ask Skyler, the woman in charge of the meetings at the Center, for advice on what newly matched co-parenting partners were supposed to do next.

Skyler was thrilled to hear the news.

“That’s wonderful! Have you all worked out a co-parenting agreement?”

Umm...

“Did you decide who’s names are going on the birth certificate?”

Uh...

“How are you protecting yourself financially?”

Whoa.

Skyler said not to worry, but not to rush things either. She said she would send me a sample co-parenting agreement to download, and also a set of useful questions we could discuss together to help us align our vision for the arrangement. “Let me know how it goes!”

I started hanging out with Katy and Emilce more often. I tagged along when they went used-SUV shopping. Ever wary of getting ripped off, they were happy to have a big, corn-fed boy at their side who could talk maintenance and engines with those ‘shady’ salesmen (I faked it). 

Andy being oh-so-helpful at the car dealership:

Another time, I brought over my new stud detector to help them hang the posters and paintings they had propped around the living room. I was careful not to overstep any bounds, but guys like to be needed, in even the smallest ways – we like to feel like we’re useful. They returned the kindness by offering to find a better string for my pounamu necklace, which was constantly slipping off my neck.

It is still missing a string

In June, I joined them for their local American Cancer Society’s Relay for Life. We were there to support Katy, whose mom had passed away several years before. It was a big family event, and as we circled the track, I couldn’t help but smile thinking how one day soon it might be our teen out here, walking tirelessly with his Bay Ridge friends to defeat ‘can-suh’.

In order to be absolutely sure I was HIV-negative, I had to wait six months since my last possible exposure before getting tested. By July, my six months of abstinence was almost up (thank goodness!) and if all went well, soon we’d be able to begin.

Abstinence makes the heart grow fonder

 I suggested we fill out the co-parenting discussion questions that Skyler had sent over, and meet to compare answers over margaritas. I filled mine out on a lunch break. Circumcision? Probably not likely in the all-gay family of the future. Religion? As long as you’re not pageant moms, I don’t care. How often should the dad visit? I’ll only be a train ride away! I looked forward to another fun date – it would be like taking a Cosmo quiz at a sleepover.

When we got together, Emilce hadn’t filled hers out – just Katy, and she’d be answering for both. Already not as fun as I’d imagined, but OK. First question? Circumcision.

“Definitely! I don’t want to have to clean it,” Katy said.

I was shocked. I looked at Emilce. She was Puerto Rican, surely she’d jump in.

“Studies show that circumcision reduces the chances of transmitting HIV.”

Wow. Not the answers I was expecting. I thought about mentioning female genital mutilation in Africa, but these weren’t those kind of lesbians. They just didn’t want to clean it. Period. I had never thought about it from a mom’s perspective before.

Deal breaker? Certainly not, but...maybe we’d have a girl.

We skipped down to a fun one. Names. I’ve always loved the name Josie, short for Josephine.

“Josephine? Isn’t she a harlot in the Bible?” said Emilce.

“We like the name Alessandra,” said Katy. “With two ss’s.”

Oh great, I thought. A first name no one can spell, to go with a last name that sounds like ‘Smudge’ and auto-corrects to ‘Crazy.’

I took a deep breath. These were just discussion questions. But suddenly everything they said was ‘we,’ as in, “we’ll need three months to bond before you can see the baby.” I thought the three of us were the ‘we.’ We were a ‘we’ at the car dealership, and at the walk-a-thon. I had felt it.

I was confused, but stayed calm. “It’s good we’re discussing these things,” I offered.

Later, I had time to think about things more clearly. I reminded myself that this was the plan. Two Parents and a Special Guest Star. I had gotten so excited about the prospect of becoming a dad, so happy to fit in to a little family and community, to be needed, that I’d forgotten that I was only signing up for a #3 roll.

So, OK, expectations adjusted. But something about our first-ever awkward afternoon together made me wonder just how distant that #3 role would be.

By the end of July, I went to have my blood work done. My favorite astrologist, Susan Miller, had already announced in her forecast that a series of eclipses was upon us, and Capricorns and Cancers were about to enter a period of profound changes in their lives over the course of the next two years. “Eclipses are capable of bringing significant, life-changing events that you long remember,” she wrote. As I waited for all my test results, I hoped that wasn’t what she was talking about.

Thankfully it wasn’t. When everything came back fine, I texted Katy to let her know I had a clean bill of health, and to say ‘hi,’ since I really hadn’t spoken with them since the questionnaire day. She texted right back – she’d been tracking her ovulation and could I get over there now, tonight?

Heart pounding, I ran to catch the train to Brooklyn. It looked like the profound changes were already under way.

To be continued...  

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Parent Shopping in New York

This is chapter two in a series written by Andy (Mac's dad). To catch-up on chapter one please click here.

The elation I felt as the families shared their co-parenting stories quickly morphed into dread when the host took back the microphone and announced that she'd like each of us to stand and tell a little about him- or herself. Or, as it turned out for the female couples, the one whose idea it was to come could do the talking while the other sat arms-folded deciding whether to be resentful or appreciative for being dragged to a Sperm and Egg Mixer, depending on how it all turned out.

Row by row, the mic made the rounds, but I was too nervous to hear anyone else's introduction. I had no idea what to say. After 12 years in New York, I was still quick to point out that I was from Ohio in these situations, as if to excuse myself for not being a polished New Yorker. I’d have to wing it, and follow the advice of every sitcom I had ever seen, each drilling home the same Jan-Brady lesson: just be yourself. 

I stood up, and started with the usual basics: name, age, neighborhood and profession. But then, something like this came out:

"I'm from Ohio, and my family is very close. One of my brothers is getting married this summer, and we grew up with a lot of cousins, so I thought now would be a great time to start a family so that our kids could grow up with cousins, too."

Andy and family, 2010

A collective sigh rose up from the seats around me, in a sort of Oprah moment. I watched as heads tilted in unison, and at least one hand clasped to a bosom. Sensing that I had just made a few shortlists, I quickly passed the mic and sat down.

Soon the actual mingling began. A woman in business attire with dark curly hair rushed right over to me, her biological clock ticking on her sleeve. "Hey, I like what you said. You live in the Village? I live nearby in Murray Hill." She was direct and confident and had a nice smile, and she reminded me of someone – a lawyer I had met through my Turkish friends named Cynthia. Cynthia had sued a muffin shop over nuts in a muffin she hadn't even ordered, just for the fact that it was on sale without a little sign to say "contains nuts." Never mind that the shop was owned by our mutual friends’ cousins – she sued, won, and shut that muffin shop down. Not exactly the person you want to come to mind when shopping for moms. We chatted politely for a minute, but the red lights were flashing: WILL END IN COURT.

Next, a very joyful couple introduced themselves as Jenna and Moonseed. They were almost half my age, giggly and roly-poly, a feather earring here, a pierced this-and-that there. I had the idea that maybe they’d cut class at Bryn Mawr and hitched a ride into the city, with no plans for what’s next. "We love cousins!" said Jenna, as Moonseed wrapped her arms around her. They told me that they’d actually taken the train down from upstate. The psychedelic lights were flashing: WILL END IN A TOM ROBBINS COMMUNE.

It was quickly sinking in that this would be tougher than I had imagined – or more precisely, tougher than I hadn’t imagined. I hadn’t really thought about what it would be like to search for co-parents. And the last time I’d chatted up a lesbian was at a “Xena: Warrior Princess” Night at Meow Mix. Would I even know what to look for?

I reminded myself that this was only Day One of my search. There would be another co-parenting meeting each month, so I joined the mailing list and left, knowing it’d be good to have some time to think before mingling again.

A few days later, I met my friend Patti for a Meat-n-Greet, something we like to do when her vegan girlfriend is busy. I told her about my plans and the Sperm and Egg Mixer, and her reaction was a mix of surprise, encouragement, and just the right amount of concern.

Andy and Patti

“That’s amazing. Have you told your family?”

“No, it’s a hard one to explain. I was going to wait until I met someone, or maybe even until the baby arrives. It might be easier with a visual aid.”

“So you’d share a baby with strangers? How would that work?”

“I’d have to get to know them first.”

“Would you have sex?”

“I’m pretty sure it would be artificial insemination.”

Patti took her time chewing a bite of currywurst and thinking. I knew I had confided in the right person.

“Just make sure you find the right couple. That’s a big one. Wow, it’s so weird you can just...make a baby.”

Patti, telling it like it is.

When the next month's co-parenting meeting rolled around, the vibe was completely different. This time there were far fewer women. None, in fact, as even the group leader had called in sick. The wanna-be dads who had shown up decided to make the best of it, and we sat in a circle to share the hopes and (mostly) woes of our quest for fatherhood.

Just when the prospects were looking as bleak as the March sky, the door squeaked open with some latecomers. And that’s when I first met Emilce and Katy. (And no, those are not code-names for “Cagney & Lacey”– I mean, Kris and Tracy.)

Stay tuned for chapter 3!

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