Answers to questions nobody asked, part 2

An essay that uses the word 'sperm' 17 times

Welcome to part 2 of a small series of essays about baby-making as a queer couple. Ash and I were so touched by your response to part 1. Thank you for that.

I had intended to send out the essay that follows last week, but I instead took a last-minute flight to Maine for the funeral of my uncle Arnold, my father’s only sibling. Arnold was an early subscriber to this newsletter. He would often email me his thoughts after reading, whether the topic was Call Me By Your Name (“Oh, that scene is SO gay”), my 44th birthday (“I am glad to be your uncle, but I am ecstatic to be your friend”), or an author (“Thank you for bringing Emma Straub and This Time Tomorrow into my consciousness,” and then, two weeks later, “Son-of-a-gun, Emma Straub's This Time Tomorrow arrived. If it wasn't you that brought her to my attention, then who the hell was it? It was you. It was you, I think”). He signed off as Unc Arn, or just Arn. If you’re interested, I found a nice tribute to him online — on Substack, of all places — and you can read it here.

Arnold was loving and wise and complicated — an intuitive cook, doting father and uncle and spouse, doer of crossword puzzles, socialist, and the self-proclaimed patriarch of our family, a title he claimed immediately after my father’s death and it drove me fucking nuts. Arnold was also a tireless cheerleader for me and Ash, whom he unfortunately never got to meet. This past January, as Ash’s due date approached, he texted every few days: “How are you, how are they? About a week to go? Lovelovelove” and “Well, any news yet? If I bit my nails anymore I would only have knuckles left. Let us know, love you.” It is right that the memory of Arnold should sit here amidst these essays.

In case you missed it, in part 1, I wrote about our (long) process of deciding to add a new baby to our family and the choice to have Ash, who is nonbinary, be the gestational parent. Part 2 is about our experience of working with a known sperm donor and planning for an at-home insemination. I hope these essays will be of use to someone — maybe to you. Please share them as you see fit.

Though this series is for paid subscribers only, I understand that not everyone can afford to pay. If you cannot, email me. (If you’re reading this as an email, just hit ‘reply.’) You don’t have to explain. Just ask. And if you are a paid subscriber, consider donating a subscription to help fund access for others. Thank you.

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After we’d recovered from the gleeful shock of our donor offering himself up unprompted, there were logistics to sort out, legal and interpersonal and biological. Our donor is a longtime friend of Ash’s, though I had not met him in person. I had spoken with him on FaceTime, maybe twice. I knew he was warm and direct, easy to talk with, and a fount of dirty jokes. Now, over the course of several phone calls, we would get to know each other in a very particular context, navigating the weird waters of known-donor sperm donation.