By Andrew Roe
It was the summer of conception. Friends kept showing up at our house, unannounced, with bottles of champagne or chardonnay, beaming like celebrities. “We’ve got something to tell you!” they all said, using the same voice, that universal coo of the soon-to-reproduce. First Scott and Kim. Then Phil and Jackie. Then Evan and Kendra. And even friends of friends, relatives of friends, too. The circle of fertility continued to widen at an alarming rate.
I guess it shouldn’t have come as such a surprise. We were all of the age: twenty-eight, twenty-nine, even thirty. Out of college and/or grad school and/or law school/business school for a few years. Married or heavily coupled. Working regularly. Amassing nest eggs, putting down payments on first homes, taking eco-vacations to Costa Rica. Things were progressing as you’d expect, and so why not the advent of children. The chronology made total perfect sense.
But maybe the rash of pregnancies had nothing to do with that. Maybe our friends’ sperm suddenly went Olympian and swam with more determination and vigor than they previously had, or perhaps their ovaries reached new levels of contentment and receptivity. Or maybe it was because of the Memorial Day weekend barbecue where everyone got too drunk too fast and slogged home early. And if that’s the case, then the blame for the whole ordeal rested with us: the party was at our place, and I’d been the one who had concocted the potent watermelon margaritas.
So Jane stopped taking the pill and we had more sex than we’d ever had. Morning, night, then morning again. During the day when Jane was ovulating we rendezvoused at home or wherever we could find a suitable horizontal space—and there were times when we didn’t worry about that. Once in my office, even. There I was, running a development meeting and sifting through files and collated documents that only an hour before had been pressed underneath the rhythmic throbbings of my wife’s sweaty ass.
For months we soldiered on like this, the bursts of strategic intercourse followed by periods of celibate recovery time, until the act itself was drained of any pleasure. And much to our dismay, the heroic humping produced no results. Barry White, Frank Sinatra, k.d. lang, Nirvana—we tried them all as our accompanying soundtrack, and they all let us down.
We stuck with it, though. Did some research. Jane put pillows under her hips after I came and didn’t move for half an hour, sometimes longer, while I stopped riding the LifeCycle at the gym. We monitored Jane’s cervical mucus. “Your cervical mucus doesn’t lie,” we read in one book, which also suggested that Jane take Robitussin (which she did, two teaspoons a day, starting four days prior to ovulation), because it not only thins mucus in the lungs but also does the same for cervical mucus, thus potentially assisting the passage of my sad, searching sperm. Another book recommended that we refrain from oral sex (bacteria in saliva can “degrade” semen and decrease the chances of conception). Foreplay options were therefore significantly reduced. But again, we had nothing to show for our efforts. Nada. Switching from tighty-whities to boxers didn’t help either.
The holidays were approaching. We thought: wouldn’t a special Christmas or New Year’s announcement be nice? So we labored onward, our respective organs resigned to the entrances and exits, withdrawals and deposits. If we hadn’t known the difference between making love and fucking we did now. Another month, another ovulation cycle wasted. A long-planned trip to Catalina was canceled. We grew to hate the sound of our bodies slapping futilely together, the sheer defeat of our genitals.
“It’s like porn,” said Jane one night, or morning, or afternoon. By then it had become a coitus blur. You could see the blankness in our faces as we fucked.
* * *
The efficient hum of the garage door opening filled the house, a sound that was practically Pavlovian for me, since it signaled the arrival of Jane. I liked being the one who usually got home first, having the place to myself for a while, knowing that she’d be here soon, and that after nine hours apart—Jane was a marketing analyst; I worked as a marketing consultant—we’d be together again, the rest of the evening open and free, ready to recap what had transpired since we departed in the morning and ventured out into the world, savoring the security and solace of owning a house that was steadily increasing in value. But that was before. Before we’d become slaves to our bodies, slaves to biology. I flushed the toilet and headed downstairs.
We lived in Aliso Niguel, in Phase Four of Ocean Song, a tasteful though admittedly somewhat generic Orange County sprawl of three and four bedrooms that used to be called Ocean Vista, that is until a new development (Shore Breeze) was built, which blocked most of the views of the water. They had to change the entrance signs and everything, and there was talk in the community newsletter about lawsuits and vigilantism and calls to consumer reporters at TV stations, but nothing ever came of it. And so we slowly, silently, lost our precious paid-for glimpses of the Pacific Ocean. Even though that was what—more than a year ago—people talk about it today with reverence and wonder, the time of the ocean views, like it’s already part of the long ago past, evidence of a purer, better time.
It was just beginning to get dark. Downstairs, I opened the blinds and curtains and let in the day’s remaining light. This, besides the proximity to the beach and gourmet market up on Camino De La Plaga, was what I liked best about living here: twilight, that elapsing hour or so when the sky starts to smudge and swirl with purples and blues and reds, and becomes a living, pulsing presence. That’s when Jane and I take our drinks out on the patio and I think: I am happy. Life is good. This is what I’m supposed to be doing. Sure, I’d wish that we didn’t have to hear the freeway, and that our portfolio of moderately aggressive mutual funds hadn’t been tanking so bad as of late, and sometimes I’d even get down on myself and dwell on the one time I slipped, only once, and how it was stupid and fucked up and clichéd and no way even worth it, and how it would kill Jane, literally kill her, if she ever found out. But otherwise there are few regrets, really. I have very little to complain about.
The procreation curse, however, changed that. It was a bitter addition to our previously fine-tuned, well-oiled existence. It dominated our lives the way I imagined a terminal illness would, consuming everything—our present, our future. Performances at work suffered. Missing workouts was no longer a rare occurrence. The twilights weren’t as enjoyable, somehow tainted. We went out less, no doubt causing a wave of whispery phone calls among our friends. We ended our Thursday night Blockbuster rental ritual. Sitting through an entire movie was impossible. We were terribly, terribly behind.
As soon as Jane entered the kitchen I knew something was up. She made her crappy-day face. Without even setting down her purse, she collapsed into my arms. I had to put down the marinated Mahi Mahi that I’d taken out of the refrigerator.
“What?” I asked. “What is it? Is it work? The baby thing?”
“Everything,” she confessed. “It’s everything.”
I pulled her closer, smelling, tasting tears. It would be another intense night spent on the sofa, trying to figure out what to do next. According to our most recent calculations, Jane would start ovulating in three days. That meant in two days we’d have to resume our sexual regimen, which loomed ahead of us like a tax deadline, like April 15th itself.
* * *
No one used regular names any more. It was all Daria, Brick, Trace, Glendon, Siena. It had to be special; it had to be distinct. If not, your kid was doomed to a life of tragic anonymity. The name had to stick. There had to be impact, resonance. Immediately. The moniker had to provide its recipient with a spotlighted place in the world. Otherwise, what’s the point?
“Let’s name our kid Frank,” I announced post-coitally, a particularly frustrating session because my erection failed me repeatedly and it had taken forever to come. “No one names their kid Frank anymore. That would really make him stand out.”
We were in the bedroom that served as our office, that one day would be our child’s room. Jane sat at her computer, online, checking email. I was at my computer doing the same. I’d just explained my name theory, which wasn’t so much a theory as a passing thought that I found halfway clever and wanted to share with my wife; Jane didn’t appear too impressed.
“You’re joking,” she said, mousing, clicking, scrolling.
“I don’t think I am.”
“We’re not naming our son Frank. Keep trying.”
“Sherman,” I offered. “As in Hemsley.”
“No!” she said, laughing, and it was good to hear her throaty laugh, an artifact of our former lives.
* * *
Jane: with her newly cut hair, short like a boy’s. At first she cried but now she loved it. And I loved it too. I loved it because I had unrestricted access to the back of her neck, which was punctuated by a milk chocolate-colored beauty mark, which I found incredibly sexy. I often thought of that beauty mark while stuck in traffic or eating lunch at my desk, picturing coming up from behind her (she’s in the kitchen, doing kitchenly things), kissing it (the beauty mark), then branching out and covering more territory (shoulders, back), working my lips lower, lower, and then turning her around and feeling the meant-to-be-ness, the Lego-like snap-together fit of our bodies as we meltingly embraced. Jane, it probably should be pointed out, was the kind of prototypically beautiful Southern California woman who would look good bald. Friends, co-workers still approached me on a regular basis, placing an awed, conspiratorial hand on my shoulder and saying: “You’re a lucky man, William.”
This I know.
Part Two
When the sound and fury of the unfertile holidays came and went and we were unable to make that special announcement, Jane and I visited our respective doctors. My wife was fine, her blood pressure a tad higher than normal and some slight vaginal tissue scarring (due to the frequency of the Mr. Roboto sex), but otherwise very healthy and certainly capable of reproduction. My news, on the other hand, wasn’t so good: low sperm count. Abysmally low. My spunk didn’t have any spunk. Oligospermia, is what it’s called, the technical name. A common enough male affliction, to be sure, but understandably I took the news poorly, staying up late, alone, eating pistachios and playing Nintendo and watching DVDs. I brooded. And I’m not a brooder.
But we did have options, namely in vitro fertilization (expensive, uncertain) or adoption (unsettling).
“Adoption kind of creeps me out, and I don’t know why exactly,” said Jane as we walked through the nearby dog park even though we didn’t have a dog.
I agreed. No on adoption.
“Well according to Dr. Santiago in vitro takes time and it can be expensive,” I said. “I mean we could probably do it, financially, with some help from our folks and cutting back here and there and not going to Cozumel this summer and a few other nips and tucks, but the house payments are like killing us right now. And plus the success rate isn’t so great. There’s no guarantee. And it’s going to take time, babe. More time.”
Jane made her crinkly face. A sea of red-tiled roofs floated around us. Somewhere, one of the leaf blower guys fired up his machine. Time for some levity.
I said, “We could steal one, like in Raising Arizona. And there’s always the turkey baster option. That’s what the pilgrims did, right? What’s a turkey baster go for these days anyway? Do they even sell them at Crate and Barrel?”
Jane made her icky-funny face. I loved her faces: the little expressions and shared intimacies that passed between us, that only we knew about, much of it unspoken, the beautiful mundane day-to-day stuff that balloons your heart and makes you think (albeit fleetingly) that maybe things like Valentine’s Day aren’t just manufactured occasions created for the purpose of profit.
“There’s this other option, that I remember hearing about,” she said. “On a talk show. About this company. It’s crazy but. I don’t know. Everything is crazy now. The reason I remember it is because they’re based in Santa Monica and we’d just been up there and there’d been all that traffic and we swore no way, never again, no more L.A.”
We both ignored the man (with chocolate Lab, with baby jogging stroller and sleeping baby) who trotted past us. It was late February and close to eighty degrees. I had a birthday coming up. So did Jane. More and more I was returning to the question of what, if anything, you leave behind in this life. See: brooding.
“Talk show,” I ribbed.
“I was sick. That nasty cold after Thanksgiving, remember?”
“So what did Sally Jesse have to say?”
“It was another one. The one with the chick who used to be on ‘Entertainment Tonight.’ Anyway, it was about this company.”
“What kind of company?” I asked.
* * *
Against our better judgment but in order to maintain appearances, we invited Phil and Jackie over for dinner. Spinach salad with a Dijon-walnut dressing, angel hair pasta with a spicy basil marinara sauce and capers and caramelized onions. Plus garlic bread, plus wine. But Jane and I, currently on a sex furlough, were the only ones drinking the wine, as Phil had taken a vow of abstinence from alcohol in honor of Jackie’s own deprivation. We guiltily sipped our cabernet—boozers, drunks, childless losers.
“They say it changes everything, and it’s so true,” said a bubbly Phil. “So fucking true.”
“Phil,” Jackie snipped. Several seconds elapsed before I realized that she was admonishing him about the cursing. Phil was a prodigious curser, and apparently such R-rated language could seep its way into the growing, impressionable fetus.
After we ate and moved into the living room, the conversation, naturally, turned to babies and the pregnancy, or should I say returned, as, with the exception of the brief interlude of Phil relating a story about a guy at work who’d just gotten his third D.U.I. in the last year, the talk had been about nothing but babies and the pregnancy. We commented on all the celebrities who were pregnant: Madonna, Lisa Kudrow, Will Smith’s wife. Jackie requested that I put something “more soothing, preferably classical” on the stereo, not wanting to risk damaging the baby’s hearing or budding genius with the likes of Stevie Ray Vaughn. Phil passed around an ultrasound picture, which he carried in his wallet. The baby struck me as alien looking. It was all head.
With no prompting whatsoever, Jackie, six months now and fully waddling (overdoing it, in my opinion), hiked up her DKNY sweatshirt and invited us to feel the smooth, hardened expanse of her stomach, the miracle of life brewing only inches beneath our envious fingers.
Later that night, in bed, we wept. Again.
Less than a week after that I was on a plane, a short work trip to the satellite office in Atlanta, boarding a midweek flight during the middle of the day. I figured the plane would be relatively empty, the only other passengers being laptopped, cell-phoned travelers like myself. But it wasn’t like that at all. The flight consisted mostly of families. A baby—so tiny, so miniature, so dictionary-definition of delicate—was a few rows in front of me, being passed from mom to dad, back and forth, and that poopy baby smell settled throughout the back of the plane and I didn’t even mind. In fact, I liked the poopy baby smell. It brought something alive in me, and for the first time in months I actually looked forward to the prospect of having sex with Jane, of trying again and making a John Travolta-like comeback and somehow miraculously overcoming my inadequacies (I knew I could, I knew I could) and triumphantly impregnating my beautiful Southern California wife.
I got so worked up that I couldn’t read the in-flight magazine (cover story: Sean Connery’s Scotland) and I couldn’t watch the in-flight movie (something with Nicolas Cage and lots of explosions). Behind me sat a family of four, parents and two little girls.
“Daddy, there’s no smoking on this flight,” announced one of the girls. She said this as if dispensing very important information, the secret of life itself.
“Daddy doesn’t smoke anyways sweetie, but thank you,” answered the mother/wife.
“Daddy knows,” chimed the other daughter, younger, an endearing cartoon squeak to her voice.
Daddy didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. Although I couldn’t see his face, I imagined him smiling, the most contented man on the planet, sure of his life, his place, his sperm. Tom Hanks would play him in the movie.
Once I checked in at the hotel, I called Jane and she informed me of the bad news: her sister, Emily, was pregnant, the first of her siblings to successfully conceive. Jane played me back the message Emily’s husband Nathaniel had left on our answering machine. It was horrible. Majesty, if it was a girl; Sterling, if it was a boy.
Something had to be done.
Part Three
They gave us three-ring binders full of statistics and photographs organized by ethnicity and age. We scanned the sculpted faces in the “White, 25-30” binder (by far the largest), and tried to locate one that was at least similar to mine. Next they took us into the viewing room where we watched videotapes of our three finalists, who spoke of their lives, their families, their hopes, their dreams. All three wanted to be actors.
This was One Shot Wonders, the company Jane had remembered from Leeza. We called the show and talked to a producer who worked on that particular episode (“My Husband Can’t Get Me Pregnant and I Want a Baby Now!”) and provided us with a toll-free 800 number. Soon we had sent away for their brochures and infomercial tape. We bookmarked the company’s web site, clicking through the testimonials of satisfied customers, people just like us. Over and over we read/heard how this was the natural way, a man and a woman, no tubes or tinkering, the way our own Personal Higher Power had intended it to be. That the miracle of modern science was a wonderful thing, but that sometimes the old-fashioned methods worked the best. That the chances of conception were far greater than if we chose artificial insemination or in vitro. That this fact had been scientifically proven in several tests. That it was cheaper than in vitro. That, first and foremost, it produced results. And that we could always get our money back if not, guaranteed. So what did we have to lose?
It was absurd, we knew that, we absolutely knew that, but the longer we allowed ourselves to consider it, the more likely it seemed possible that we’d abandon ourselves to such a ridiculous, drastic scenario. All the while the clock was ticking, days and weeks skidding by, each expiring month a defeat. Neither of us said anything too specific about One Shot’s intimate “procedure” (silence bred plausibility), and so there we were, sifting through family genealogies and IQ tests and the results of recent physicals, including, yes, sperm count. These guys were brimming.
Once we’d made our selection, Dee Dee, the chin-pierced receptionist, led us to the office of Reggie Dobbs himself, One Shot’s CEO, founder and infomercial host, who greeted us with hugs. He wore a white lab coat and sported neatly trimmed George Michael-esque facial hair. He wasn’t that much older than we were, maybe thirty-five, but boyish and tiny. Apparently he’d been a child actor. There was a prominently hung picture of Reggie Dobbs with Alan Thicke, Alan’s smile bright and alarming. The overall decoration motif was nautical, and a large aquarium occupied most of one wall. On each side of his desk identical tropical-looking plants (real? fake?) framed him like bookends. Sunlight bladed into the room, causing Jane and I to have to squint at Reggie Dobbs as he spoke. If you craned your head enough, you could catch a sliver of the Pacific Ocean outside the window, to the left. The traffic on the 405 had been murder.
“I see you’ve chosen Sebastian,” Reggie Dobbs enthused as we all sat down. “A very good choice. One of our best and busiest Inseminators.”
“He almost looks like William even,” said Jane, placing her hand atop mine.
“Yes,” Reggie Dobbs agreed. “Yes he does. I can see the resemblance. Definitely. A definite resemblance. That’s all to the good.”
“And it works, you say. It really works?”
“It really really works. It’s the natural way. It’s nature’s way. And you can’t argue with that, Mrs. George.”
I had a question. Actually, I had several but I settled on this one:
“Is it necessary to, you know, have them come and live with you?”
Reggie Dobbs smiled in anticipation of his answer. He’d obviously heard this concern before. “Good question, Mr. George, good question. You’re worried—you’re worried about the inconvenience, the disruption of your daily lives, the fact that the man engaged in regular ‘round-the-clock reproductive activity with your wife is sleeping under your own roof, in the next room no less.
Completely, totally, one hundred percent understandable. But think of it this way, Mr. George: timing. When your wife is ovulating you don’t want to have to worry if Sebastian is out doing his laundry or stuck in traffic or his cell phone dies and he can’t be reached. Timing is critical. Literally an hour, or less, can make all the difference. And that hour, or less, might be the hour that leads to you two becoming the parents you want to be. Our bottom line at One Shot is results, and the groundbreaking program we’ve created here does just that. Conception guaranteed or your money back.”
“What’s the next step then?” asked Jane.
“Brass tacks, eh, Mrs. George? Good, I like that. First, first we get clear with Sebastian’s schedule. Like I said, he’s very popular, so it might be a while before he’s free. Then we sync up with your female schedule, Mrs. George. Once we put that to bed—sorry—there will be a pre-visit meeting where we go over the logistics of how everything will work. Then Sebastian moves in and the sessions begin. We have that five-day window, remember, that crucial five-day window, and that’s usually all it takes. And before too long you’ll be celebrating with friends and family and picking out a paint color for the baby’s room. Now.”
Reggie Dobbs paused, shuffling papers, documents, doing his best to portray a doctorly demeanor.
“There are several places,” he continued, “where I’ll just need your signatures. For starters, as you probably noticed, many of our Inseminators are trying to make a name for themselves in the entertainment industry, which is a little something I know about. There’s a waiver you’ll need to sign that says that should your Inseminator go on to fame and fortune—and it has happened, believe me, swear, although I’m afraid I can’t name names—that if he becomes a big star, you can’t go running to the tabloids or profit from his success in any way. That just wouldn’t be fair now, would it?”
No, it wouldn’t, we agreed.
“Fame can be a bitter pill.”
We agreed with this as well. Reggie Dobbs leaned forward in his chair, ready and very willing to confide something.
“Are you familiar with the 1980s situational comedy ‘Diff’rent Strokes’?”
Yes, we were.
“Do you remember when Gary Coleman was having contractual problems toward the end of the show’s run and they brought in a little red-headed kid as a replacement?”
“You were that kid?” I asked. Reggie Dobbs’ hair was black—jet black, cartoon Superman/Clark Kent black.
“No. But that part came down to me or him. Either me or him. And he got the part. I bet you don’t remember that kid’s name.”
No, we didn’t.
“Danny Cooksey. A bitter pill indeed.”
That night we hardly said a word until we climbed into bed and conversation seemed more appropriate, the topic more suitable to darkness and anonymity, lying next to each other, afraid to touch yet, listening to the tidal splash of freeway traffic.
“Are we really doing this?” Jane started. “I mean here we are, about to do this crazy insane thing, and it just doesn’t seem real. What are we doing? What are we getting ourselves into? What’s it going to do to us?”
I sensed a rising anxiety in her voice, an escalation that would only get worse. Time to be the levelheaded, reassuring, let’s-calmly-put-everything-into-perspective-here husband.
“It’s going to give us what we want,” I said. “And the less we talk about it the better, I think. The guy shows up, does what it is he has to do, and it will all be over. You’ll be pregnant and we can get on with our lives. Let’s just view it as a temporary situation, a means to an end, nothing more, nothing less. I don’t see what other choice we have.”
“He was a communications major. That kind of worries me.”
We talked for a while longer, then Jane rolled over and fell asleep. Jane always falls asleep first. And then I’m left alone, wondering what I always wonder about before it’s my turn to drift off to sleep: where are all those cars going so late at night? The sound never stops, like a heartbeat, like the errant 24/7 tumble of thoughts in your head. Thoughts such as this one: I deserved this. For cheating on Jane. This was my punishment, to stand by as another man (a much better-looking man, a hunkier and no doubt more sexually skilled man) tried to impregnate my wife, which was something I wasn’t able to do. This was my penance. Even though it was just once, that one time.
* * *
We endured weeks of nothing and then weeks of phone calls, e-mails, faxes, checking and re-checking of schedules, but finally we were set. Sebastian was flying into L.A. from a commercial shoot (cologne) in Barbados. We finished preparing the extra room, we stocked up on groceries and sodas. Jane was ready, reproductively speaking. She was taking time off from work so there could be MCP (Maximal Conception Potential), as Reggie Dobbs put it. The day before Sebastian’s arrival, a Sunday, we braved the traffic and drove to Laguna Beach for lunch, hoping to get away from the weirdness that was about to descend. The sky turned cloudy, Jane’s salmon was slightly undercooked, and we got a parking ticket, but we tried to remain upbeat. Our new life was about to begin.
The next morning the doorbell rang. Sebastian was late, over an hour late. Punctuality, we thought. We will be cursed with an unpunctual child. Which wouldn’t work at all. Jane and I both have what almost amounts to a punctuality fetish. To pass the time we had been watching The Food Network because that was about all we were capable of doing. I answered the door, as we had previously discussed, thinking it would be best if Sebastian encountered me first. But it wasn’t Sebastian who rang the bell.
“Hey,” said the guy who wasn’t Sebastian. “I’m Ray.”
“May I help you?”
“I’m Ray,” he repeated, as if that should be enough explanation.
“I’m sorry…”
“From the company. One Shot.”
“You’re not Sebastian.”
“I’m Ray.” Again, as if that clarified everything.
“I think there’s been a mistake.”
“Are you…” He consulted a crumpled piece of paper. “William and Jane George? Ocean Song, 17 A-va-nee-da Day La Ven-tan-a?”
“Yes.”
“No mistake then. I’m Ray,” offering his tanned hand. I shook it, and at this he entered the house. He carried a suitcase and backpack, which he promptly plopped down in the entryway. He looked ready for a Hawaiian vacation: tank top, shorts, Tevas, Terminator sunglasses reflecting everything. He was an Inseminator after all. Close enough.
So we had a situation on our hands. And Jane and I did not like situations. In fact, we did whatever we could to avoid situations.
We quickly glanced at each other and saw the panic pooling in our eyes.
“Excuse me Ray, but I need to talk to my wife for a minute.”
“No prob, bro,” he said.
In the kitchen we analyzed the data. There must have been a glitch, an error. Somebody gave Ray the wrong crumpled piece of paper. The only thing to do was call Reggie Dobbs. Jane started dialing. The sun shined relentlessly on all our appliances, highlighting them with an almost celestial glow. Everything was so very clean.
“Sweetie,” I said.
“Yeah?”
“I don’t think…” I stopped myself but then said it: “I don’t think he’s white.”
“Really? I figured Italian or something.”
“I was thinking Hispanic.”
Dee Dee said that Mr. Dobbs wasn’t available, but when Jane mentioned lawsuits and sicking the Better Business Bureau on his ass, she tracked him down on his cell. He was in line at a Starbucks. Jane put him on speaker. We could hear the emphatic suck of the cappuccino machine, the background babble of the customers. The news was not good. Sebastian had gotten a pilot for a mid-season replacement series, playing a bisexual neighbor in a sitcom. (“The gay neighbor thing has really run its course,” Reggie Dobbs added.) It was all very last minute. At this point it was either Ray or nothing. At least nothing for several months. One Shot was booked solid. Sensing our desperation and uncertainty, Reggie Dobbs launched into a recitation of Ray’s credentials, confirming his ethnicity as Caucasian (Scottish-Dutch, specifically) and mentioning that he’d done an episode of Walker, Texas Ranger, among other projects. His potency level was in the top 10 percentile. What else could we do? We’d come this far. The baby shower invitations were piling up like bills. So: we took Ray.
Part Four
Then, suddenly, there was another presence in our lives. And not just any presence, but Ray, the man we were paying to fuck my wife and do what I couldn’t do. You can just imagine the resentment and the questioning-of-my-manhood issues as well as the annoyance and uncomfortable nature of the whole setup. Although it didn’t seem to phase Ray all that much. Maybe he was a professional, maybe he was just oblivious. Either way, he had no trouble making himself at home, commandeering the sofa and mastering the intricacies of the universal remote. He was good looking in a nonspecific, forgettable way (or so I consoled myself), and he had one of those bodies that you could tell was gym-chiseled and protein-supplemented. He spoke in short, grammar-challenged sentences and seemed to be under the impression that Baja California was part of the United States. This helped me cope with my humiliation, somewhat.
That first day I left for work not long after we got off the phone with Reggie Dobbs. I kissed my wife goodbye, told Ray that it was nice meeting him and that I’d better get moving so I wouldn’t be “in the way.” (And here I tried to laugh, show that I was, you know, cool about it, but what emanated from my throat sounded like some kind of wounded animal wheeze.) In the afternoon I called to check in, but I got the answering machine. I didn’t bother leaving a message. I had my assistant, Ruth, redo the monthly expense reports just because.
Of course part of me wanted to ask the normal questions that a normal guy would ask when faced with such abnormal circumstances. Like: How was it? Better? The same? Worse? Bigger? Smaller? More time? Less time? Could she sense the difference between his superhero sperm and my meager jizz? But I preferred to remain ignorant. I preferred not to know. I thought of that short story everyone had to read in high school, the one where the character keeps saying he prefers not to whenever he’s asked to do something. That was me. I preferred not to.
For instance: when Jane finished her first night session with Ray, and she wanted to talk about it after, in bed. She wanted to process. She wanted to debrief. I preferred not to.
“Let’s not go there, hons. All right? Let’s not even go there. As far as I’m concerned this isn’t even happening. We’re going to edit all this out. You’ll be pregnant, we’ll have the kid, there’ll be play dates with all our friends’ kids, we’ll complain about daycare and the lack of quality children’s programming on TV, and this will never ever have happened. I’m erasing and deleting as we speak.”
And I forced myself to look over at Jane, my wife, who made a face I didn’t recognize. This worried me greatly.
* * *
Ray sauntered into the living room and stood there like he couldn’t decide if he wanted fries with his order or not. That was his verb: saunter. His whole body and being moved with a sloth-like, slightly bemused plodding. He sauntered everywhere he went: into the kitchen, the backyard, the guest room, my wife’s vagina. Or maybe that was the one thing he displayed some enthusiasm for. Like I said, I tried not to think about it too much because otherwise I’d think about it too much. But I did. I’d stew upstairs in our bedroom while downstairs in the guest room the recently purchased Sealy Posturepedic mattress (with memory foam) was getting broken in. I’d pace. I’d do push-ups. I’d contemplate my shame and hear the voice of Reggie Dobbs saying the chances of conception are increased if the woman has an orgasm, and boy, do my guys know which buttons to push.
“This carpet it’s really really thick,” Ray said, still standing, barefoot, scratching the dark stubble on his chin. It was Day Two and I had been home for less than five minutes and already my stomach was calling out for more Gas-X. Ray added, “It’s almost like floating when you walk almost.”
He then beached himself on the sofa like a moody teenager would, the burdens of the adult world far away and stupid-seeming. The more I thought about Ray (and how could I not), the more I considered him the wrong man for the job. (Sebastian! We still pined for the great Sebastian!) I didn’t think I wanted my son or daughter to inherit his genes and DNA and such. In a way, I’d be living with Ray for the rest of my life. The reality of this was sinking in.
“Can I get you anything Ray? You comfortable enough?”
“I’m cool.”
He looked around as if expecting that at any second someone else—a producer, a casting director, an agent—would walk through the door and discover him. But it was just the two of us, defeated husband and Inseminator, the air conditioner churning contentedly in the background.
“Everything’s so white in here,” said Ray. “White carpet, white sofa, white furniture. Doesn’t it hurt your eyes sometimes?”
“The carpet is actually bone,” I corrected him.
“Looks white to me.” He smiled. “Hey, there a gym nearby?”
“A couple,” I said, sensing that my body fat percentage was rapidly climbing. “Gold’s is the closest. And the best.”
“Think I could get a guest pass or temporary membership or something?”
Ray worked his chin some more, the light from the bay window shining directly on his Hollywood face. I could picture him in a TV series, cable, maybe USA, a hunkster rookie cop chasing a leather-jacketed punk down a deserted alley.
“Here,” I said, digging out my membership card from my wallet and tossing it to him. “Use mine. Just pretend you’re me.”
* * *
It didn’t get any easier. Later that night I was staring at a scented lifestyle magazine in bed, feeling twice, three times, my age. Dwelling on a scissoring pain that had recently deployed in my lower back. Wondering if my blood was thinning, if being a fake father would ever truly suffice. Imagining what it’s like to be old and not have children to take care of you. (The brooding was now officially out of hand.) Jane emerged from the bathroom, wearing her robe and a towel wrapped tightly around her head, swami-style. She showered afterwards, washing off Ray’s sweat and smell. I had been pretending to read an article about the George Clooney mystique, but I was ready to pounce.
“Did I hear Marvin Gaye in there?”
“What?”
Jane slipped into bed, the sheets soft and warm. I was on my side, she on hers.
“Marvin Gaye,” I accused. “I thought I heard Marvin Gaye in there. Specifically ‘Let’s Get on It On,’ which has to be one of the most sexually blatant, most erotic songs ever recorded. I mean, is that really necessary?”
“Were you spying?”
“Sound travels in this house. You know that. When I take a piss the neighbors practically know about it.”
“Ray says music helps. And frankly it helps me too. Although I’m sure you don’t want to hear about that either.”
Ouch. Okay, so I deserved that one. I contemplated a close-up of Clooney, the graying of his hair rendering him with undeniable character and worldly maturity. You could tell just by looking at him: he had seen things, felt things. The look suited him perfectly. It was hard to imagine him any other way.
So I apologized and Jane apologized, and then it was quiet for a long, long time, and then Jane extended a conciliatory hand, probing optimistically. Against my skin, however, her fingers felt cold, metallic, like chilled tongs. Jane made her everything-is-going-to-be-all-right-in-the-long-run-because-good-things-happen-to-good-people-and-we’re-good-people face. Next she started with the kisses: my neck, my chest. Each one a little stab, pricking my skin. I expected to see tiny dots of blood when she pulled her lips away.
“Sweetie,” I said. And she knew by the tone of my voice. She stopped.
* * *
The sessions continued. Ray further staked out his claim on the sofa and tunneled deeper into the world of digital cable, although he was supposed to be reading a script for a new syndicated sci-fi series called “Desert Planet” (or was it “Planet Desert”?). The part he was up for had only one line, and he kept trying it out on Jane and I: “The G force alone will kill us.” It all became increasingly intolerable. We were living in a dreamy stupor. It was happening and it wasn’t happening.
At work I was an automaton. I’d come in, cancel meetings, lock myself in my office. At home I was equally useless, a tiptoeing, stomach-grinding mess of a man. Once it became clear I still couldn’t bring myself to participate in any nightly wrap-up reports on Ray, Jane retaliated and withheld pretty much all conversation from me, the way you’d withhold sex. For the first time in our marriage, we weren’t talking much.
And everywhere I went in the house, it seemed, I inevitably encountered Ray. If I walked into the kitchen, he was there foraging for leftovers in the refrigerator. If I had to get something in the garage, he was there rummaging for a screwdriver to fix his Discman. If I had to use the bathroom, he was there shaving his chest. And if I sought escape in the backyard, he’d be out there as well, on his cell phone, shirt off, soaking in the sun without ever depositing a drop of sweat.
One time, when I turned into the driveway after another wasted, wounding day at work, I was horrified to come upon the scene of Ray chatting up our next-door neighbor, Gil Glaus. Laughing, joking. What were they saying? Was Ray detailing my deficiencies? Did Gil know why Ray was here, what he was doing?
Then later, while I was starting on dinner and Ray played with his GameBoy at the kitchen table, I asked about it, his conversation with Gil, whose wife, Danielle, was due next month.
“Dude, don’t worry. I was totally discreet. We’re trained for that. It’s not like I’m some amateur. Beer?”
“No thanks.”
Ray slinked over to the refrigerator and retrieved one of my Samuel Adams. He hopped up on the counter and removed the bottle cap with a burly twist. I wanted more confirmation.
“So he doesn’t know anything?”
“He doesn’t know shit,” Ray answered. “I told him I was your cousin. From England.”
“England?”
“Yeah.”
“But, you don’t sound English, Ray.”
“Oh I got the accent thing down, man. I had to do it for a role I was trying out for once. Want to hear it?”
“Okay.”
He took a swig from his (my) beer. “Check it out: Would you like some tea and crump-its? We’re having tea and crump-its for lunch. Would you like some?”
Which sounded like a bad imitation of a bad imitation of Spinal Tap.
“That’s—that’s good,” I lied. “Very realistic.”
“It’s one of those things,” Ray explained, “where you’re either born with it or you’re not. Maybe the kid, you know, maybe he’ll have it too. You know, be able to do accents and stuff. He might want to be an actor. He might get the bug.”
“Maybe,” I said. “First things first though. Let’s just get my wife pregnant.”
“Working on it, dude,” and he smiled, and smiled, and drained the rest of the beer in one long, statement-making, alpha male gulp.
Part Five
“I think Ray’s a dud,” said Jane, lifting her shirt, rubbing her flat stomach. It was now Day Five, the first few days of optimal fertility long gone, and we were talking because we had to. “I just don’t feel pregnant. Kim said she knew right away, she just knew. Her body told her something was different. My body isn’t telling me anything. What are we doing? What the fuck are we doing?”
This being only the third time I’ve ever heard Jane use the word “fuck.” It echoed in my ears like a firecracker.
We called Reggie Dobbs. He was in Sedona, Arizona, filming One Shot’s latest infomercial.
“Breathe,” Reggie Dobbs counseled. “Remember to just take a step back and breathe every now and then. This isn’t easy. This is very hard. Just be patient. Take a break. Get out of your heads. Go to the movies. Ray is incredibly potent. He’s a g.d. volcano. He has one of the best first shot ratios of all my guys. One time, boom. That’s his M.O. It’s like a Zen thing. I’m sure fertilization has occurred. Remember: Conception guaranteed or your money back. Hang in there. Mrs. George might still be ovulating. Give it another day or two. You’ve come this far. Be strong for the sake of your unborn child.”
What else could we do? What other choice did we have but to follow this through to the very end and hope for the best? Reggie Dobbs said to keep Dee Dee apprised of the situation. Then he said he had to go. The sun was striking a ridge in a certain way and if they didn’t get this shot now they’d have to go over budget and stay an additional day to get the same light tomorrow.
But Ray didn’t last much longer anyway. After our phone call with Reggie Dobbs, Jane and I decided to heed his advice and lose ourselves in a movie. So, once the evening’s session was completed, we drove to the newly built megaplex in Irvine. The movie we wanted to see was playing on three different screens. But the starting time had been misprinted in the paper, and the movie was already in progress. We’re both the type of moviegoers who can’t handle missing the beginning of a movie, even if it’s just the credits and not relevant to the plot. Even missing the trailers throws us off. The bowtie-wearing box office guy told us the next screening wasn’t for another hour. We said forget it, it wasn’t meant to be, and we headed back home, where we found Ray out on the patio smoking a Bob Marley-sized joint and listening to my Eagles Greatest Hits Volume II CD. The sliding glass door was wide open, and “Hotel California” blasted from inside the house. It was at the part about pink champagne on ice and being prisoners of our own device.
“Someone’s back early,” he said, sucking in, amused. He was nursing one of my Pete’s Wicked Ales too.
“What’s this?” I demanded to know. Jane crossed her arms and did that thing where she jutted out her jaw, to indicate anger, shock, general disbelief.
“The Eagles,” said Ray, an undeniable cannabis smile glazed across his face. His mouth had melted into a consuming the-world-can’t-touch-me grin.
“Part of the agreement you signed, Ray, is, if I’m not mistaken, is that you’re clean, you’re not supposed to be taking any drugs or anything so you don’t potentially fuck up our kid.”Our kid: Ray’s smile melted even further. The slowness, the dudely mellowness, the admiration for Woody Harrelson—it all made sense now.
“Come on, man. It’s just some pot. A little tokey-toke. Don’t tell me you never. I seen your CD collection.”
“Look, chum.”
“Chum? Who says chum anymore?” His grin widening again, if that even was possible—about to waterfall right off his face.
“Get out. Now.”
“Hey, man. Chill. Don’t get all fascist and shit on me. I’ve got rights. You signed stuff. It’s all in writing. My lawyer is Dean Cain’s lawyer. You know, Superman.” And here he stretched out his arms, as if to simulate the Man of Steel in flight.
“I know. Now get the fuck out.”
I guess I was yelling. That’s what Jane told me later. Each word a sentence: Get. The. Fuck. Out.
“What, like now? Right now now? I gotta pack. I got a pizza coming.”
“Then pack and get the fuck out. We’ll FedEx you the pizza.”
“Fucking yuppies,” Ray mumbled. I heard him, knew what he’d said, but I pushed it, asked, “What did you say?”
“Fucking yuppies,” he repeated, louder. “Fucking Orange County yuppies. This isn’t even L.A., man. Just who do you people think you are? And just because, man, just because you can’t do what you’re supposed to, you take it out on me. Blaming your like inadequacies on others. That really makes sense, amigo.”
Ray was sputtering. I kept waiting for him to sling the beer bottle at a window, or spew some comment to Jane, or spew some comment to me about Jane, and then I’d attack like a fucking ninja. But he didn’t. The drama of the moment passed. He set his beer down and massaged his chin like he wanted to say something more, but didn’t, as if he’d forgotten his lines.
* * *
Ray did in fact turn out to be a dud, just as Jane had predicted. Every morning I watched Jane pee on a plastic stick and we hoped for two lines instead of one. A week-plus of negatives later, she went to her doctor just to be sure. Negative there too.
We left multiple messages for Reggie Dobbs before he called us back. We told him the news: five days of sessions and no sperm had successfully docked in Jane’s uterus. He was apologetic, empathetic. He tried to convince us to try again. It would work. We could use another Inseminator. He wouldn’t charge us for the second go-round. We said no. We couldn’t go through that again. We just couldn’t. We asked for our money back.
The next weekend it was supposed to rain. It did in Los Angeles, some, but it didn’t reach that far south. I simmered in bed all night, Jane tossing and turning too, cursing all the people out there who don’t even want babies and have them anyways, waiting for a storm that never came.
* * *
The miscarriage was Jane’s idea.
“We lie,” she said. “We bring over the champagne and everyone will be ecstatic. We milk it for a couple of months, as long as we can, and then we say I had a miscarriage. It’ll buy us some time.”
Jane made her what-else-can-we-do face, one that had become part of her permanent repertoire. Outwardly our lives were getting back to normal. We basked in the Ray-lessness and the joy of having our home to ourselves again. We rented movies on Thursday nights and upgraded our cable service. We made a concerted effort to spend time out on the patio again, to witness the sky’s nightly light show. Which was where we were now. But something wasn’t right. With the sky, with us.
“That’s genius,” I said. “Clever-genius. But then what? What do we do after that?”
Jane looked very sad, like she’d just sat through a weepy movie on HBO. She was maybe crying.
“I don’t know,” she said.
Because the sky wasn’t as amazing as it had been in the past—there was haze, there was only a hint of the usual color cluster.
Because there were disappointments to be had, endured. It was entirely possible. Luck, sometimes, didn’t last.
“Do you think we’ll be able to get back to where we were?” Jane asked.
I didn’t know. I really didn’t know. But I said, “Yes. After a while, sure, it’ll take some time to readjust, we’re already doing that, really, but eventually I think so, yes.”
“What if we can’t ever, you know, have one, have a child?”
Again, I didn’t know. I really didn’t know. We watched the compromised sky in silence. Clouds spreading now. I noticed that we’d been letting the backyard go: the grass needed fertilizing, the patio furniture was rusting.
“I’m an only child,” I said. Which Jane, of course, knows. But I felt the need to say it out loud, to have it out there, on the record, stated at this particular point in time.
“Have you been thinking about that a lot?”
“Sometimes. Lately, yeah.”
This was my wife. This was our house. This was our life. These were the facts, I told myself. Jane falls asleep first. And then I’m alone.
“It’s getting cold,” my wife said.
It was. Cold and overcast. June gloom, they called it in Southern California. But we continued to sit and mourn the sky, as it grew dark, darker, until there was nothing left to see and it was finally time to go inside.