We ordered $14 glasses of wine and a small plate of “sour olives” that was as expensive as an entrée would have been in 1998. And because financially I still live in 1998, I quickly scanned my head to see whether my debit card could survive being gored of $60 for a dining experience that contained zero nutritional value. Then Caroline popped the question:
“Pat and I want you to think about being a sperm donor for us.”
This was the last thing I thought she was going to say to me. A donor. For one of my closest friends and her girlfriend. This was not something I had considered, ever. I was flattered and frightened, and, confronting a new paradigm, I was also speechless, like a 1500s Portuguese Marquis trying to get his mind around the concept that the world is round. Me? A child? A family? That stuff people have who wake up early in their heirloom apartments for their six-figure-income jobs?
As usual, I joked to cover my nerves. “The idea of having a baby freaks me out. I mean, what if it comes out shaped like a fin?”
“Then I’ll call it Fin,” Caroline said.
-From The Cut’s excerpt of Mike Albo’s funny, touching, all-around excellent new Kindle Single, Spermhood, about his experience helping a lesbian couple start a family. This is Albo’s second Kindle Single. In 2011, he released The Junket, which is loosely based on his experience being fired from his freelance job as a columnist for The New York Times for accepting a free trip.
Back then I got to speak to him at The Rumpus about his choice to publish with Amazon, and to playfully fictionalize his experience (in the introduction to Spermhood, he says he only very lightly fictionalized this time).
I personally hate reading books on a tablet, but I’ll make an exception for anything written by Albo, who always makes me laugh and think, and moves me.
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