by Jackie Clune
The front door was open, and Amy tiptoed into the hallway. A variety of worthy footwear was laid out in two neat rows along the length of the hall, and Amy paused momentarily, trying to decide if she should take her own shoes off.
“We should start,” said a female voice from inside the front room.
“There’s someone else coming,” said the nervous woman.
“We should start,” reiterated the first woman. “She can catch up. Well, welcome to the first meeting of MO—Man Optional. I hope you like the name—I think it just about sums us up!”
There were a few nervous titters from within. Amy held her breath and listened on, teetering on the verge of tiptoeing out again.
“I’m Pam, but then you all know that from my advert. We are all here because—for various reasons, some by choice, some by necessity—we want to conceive a child outside of a quote/unquote normal heterosexual relationship. Some of you, I know, have already tried to conceive in the old-fashioned way some time ago, some of you are conception virgins, so to speak, some are single women, some are in lesbian relationships. But what we all have in common—am I right?—is the fact that we want to have a baby via so-called quote/ unquote artificial insemination by donor.”
There were various sounds of assent. Amy stood stock-still, wondering whether to enter or not. This was a curious portal to be teetering on, and part of her was compelled forward by nosiness alone. Another part of her wanted to put her sneakers back on and slip out before anyone spotted her. Without consciously making a decision, she began forcing her foot into her left sneaker. The laces were still done up, and she had to shove her foot in while pulling at the heel. She was panicking and wanted to run for the hills. What had she been thinking? Without warning, she lost her balance and crashed straight onto the living-room door, which the nervous woman had thoughtfully left ajar.
“So let’s start by—”
“Hello,” said Amy, facedown on the ethnic rug, as a room full of thirty- and fortysomething women peered down at her.
“Ah, you must be our latecomer,” said the leader, a large, assertive-looking woman with aggressively hennaed hair and dangly earrings.
“Yes. Sorry. Amy.”
“Shoes, please, Amy,” said the woman, who appeared to have taken an instant dislike to Amy. “We leave shoes in the hall.”
“Yes, I was just trying to get them off—”
“OK,” said the woman, pressing on. “Where was I?”
“You were saying that we all want to find alternative ways to get pregnant,” offered the nervous woman.
“Yes, yes. Now there has been a lot of press lately about certain groups who use the desperation of women to conceive as a way of making money. I have set up this group to counteract that kind of cynical exploitation of a woman’s need to have a baby. You all responded to my website, and here we are. What I would like to do is set up a network of donors who are willing to contribute their sperm as a philanthropic gesture.”
“Envelope provided—please give generously!” quipped Amy. Nobody laughed. Pam frowned and plowed on.
“But before we get stuck in, I should say that although I have set this group up—devoting a considerable amount of time to research, collecting a database of likely donors, looking into the legal aspects, and publicizing the service for no financial remuneration at all—I should in no way be considered the leader. This group is for all of us, and I want this to be a quote/unquote safe space for us all to share the ups and downs of the process. So please feel free to chip in whenever you want and let me know how you want things to be organized. OK?”
Several of the women nodded.
“Great. But I should perhaps mention that on the skills front, I do have a City and Guilds basic counseling certificate, and I did my project on effective group dynamic management. So we’ll begin with a round-robin. Everyone give your name, your quote/unquote marital status, and say why you are here. Starting with you,” said Pam, picking on the nervous woman.
“Oh. OK. Erm, phew, well, I’m Sara. I’m divorced from my husband. Just quite recently actually, erm, so still a bit raw,” tittered Sara.
“You’re doing really well,” said Pam, resting a bangled hand on Sara’s shoulder. “Go on.”
“Right, yes, so we split up a year ago because he was very unsupportive of the whole IVF process, actually. We tried for three years, and then he wouldn’t pay for any more. I don’t think he really wanted children anyway. In fact, I think he was quite relieved every time it didn’t happen. He denied it, but I caught him almost smiling once when the consultant said it hadn’t worked.”
The group murmured their support and a few clucked their disapproval of the man.
“What I’m hearing you say,” said Pam portentously, “is that you feel your husband was pleased that you didn’t conceive.” Pam fixed Sara with a piercing, insightful stare.
“Yes. That’s right,” said Sara, confused by the repetition.
“Good. OK. You?” said Pam, moving on to the next woman in the circle, a very centered-looking woman in her early thirties who was sitting next to a gray-haired woman in her late forties. Amy noticed that they were wearing matching pink socks with double women’s symbols printed all around the elastic.
“I’m Lyn, and this is my partner, Cheryl.”
“We want to have a baby, but for obvious reasons we can’t have one between us, so we are looking for a donor.”
“We feel quite strongly that we don’t want any involvement on the part of the man.”
“Apart from the obvious.”
“So we can’t ask anyone we know.”
“Because we feel that they would want some control over the child.”
“And we don’t think that would work.”
“Because we both have quite strong views on how children should be brought up.”
“And in our experience, men try to take over.”
“OK,” said Pam, trying to reclaim the floor. “You?”
“I’m Louisa. I’m forty-five and I’m single. I never thought I wanted children until a year ago, and although I think it’s probably too late—unless you’re Madonna—I would like to try for a child before the menopause kicks in.”
“Hey, never say never,” said Pam.
It was Amy’s turn. She hated this kind of thing, and Louisa’s story had sent a shiver down her spine—forty-five? Thank God she hadn’t left it until that late.
“I’m Amy, I’m thirty-nine—big four-oh next, how did that happen? —and a bit like you, Louisa, I’m single and I’d like to try for a baby.”
The group smiled thinly at her. There was a lot of sadness in the room, and it was all Amy could do to stop herself from getting up and fleeing. She felt as though she were at some kind of grief clinic. It wasn’t what she had expected at all, although she wasn’t quite sure what she had expected. Women with their legs in stirrups, holding turkey basters while queues of men snaked around the block guiltily clutching porn mags?
“Great. So. Let’s talk a bit about what brought you here. Who has already tried to conceive? Sara, you mentioned IVF. Anyone else?” said Pam, who had produced a flip chart from behind the sofa and was now brandishing a marker pen. She scrawled “IVF” in the top left-hand corner of the chart.
“We tried self-insemination.”
“We had a gay friend who said he would donate with no strings.”
“We used a syringe and a pillow.”
“To prop her bottom up for twenty minutes afterwards.”
“It was horrible. Sticky.”
“It didn’t work.”
“And then the next month, he said he didn’t want us to call it Lola if it was a girl.”
“So we stopped with him. He wanted control.”
The group nodded again. Pam wrote “Self Insem” alongside “IVF.”
“Louisa?”
“I’ve not been trying. I had two abortions, though. One when I was seventeen, and one when I was thirty-two. They’d be
twenty-eight and thirteen now. If I’d had them,” said Louisa brightly. Nodding seemed inappropriate, but nobody could think of anything else to say or do. It was as if Louisa had plonked the fetuses down in the middle of the room like a cat delivering a dead sparrow.
“Am I right in thinking you feel some sense of regret now over your past decisions? You mustn’t beat yourself up about it—that was then and this is now. You shouldn’t put yourself through this hell,” said Pam passionately.
“I’m not. I’m fine,” said Louisa.
“Grief has a funny way of surfacing, Lou,” said Pam darkly. “Amy?”
What to say? Nothing for it but the truth—it was the Catholic in her. She always felt the pull of the confessional.
“I found a baby on the street and handed it in and then all my friends suddenly got pregnant and there were these three magpies on my roof and then I ran over my dog and it just seemed like someone was trying to tell me something so I started trying to sleep around to see if I could fall pregnant but it didn’t work, mostly because I had real trouble finding men to sleep with—not that I couldn’t get the dates, I got the dates, but none of them would do the deed, I mean, the first one, he was what you’d call a habitual shag-dodger, all come-ons but no follow-through, what you’d call a clit tease, I suppose, and the second one just didn’t show up and the third was a nanny and had to babysit—hah! The irony! Then I finally got to go for it but turns out, wouldn’t you know, he’s had a vasectomy!”
The room was silent. Pam stood, pen poised over the flip chart, not knowing what to write. There was no column for this method.
“And to top it all, I think I’ve fallen in love with him,” blurted Amy.
Now it was her turn to be gob-smacked.
. 2 .
It had been two weeks of hell. Ever since that night with Joe, Amy had hardly slept a wink, and she had mostly got by on Diet Coke and fun-sized Bounty bars. At first she thought she must be sickening for something—the ache in her stomach and the fist in her throat could easily have been the onset of a nasty bout of gastric flu. Amy had had it before, although never with the accompanying tearful episodes during soaps. Love scenes were especially problematic at the moment. She put it down to her hormones. Brendan had another theory.
“You’re in love, you silly bitch,” he had scolded the night before the MO meeting, as they sat picking at a pizza. It had gone cold and rubbery. Neither of them seemed to have any appetite tonight.
“Who with?” asked Amy, wide-eyed.
“The man you’ve been on about for months now. The one you had a passionate sperm-free night with the other week. The man you should really be—”
“Stop! Don’t say it! Don’t do that thing you always do, telling me what I feel, what I should do!”
“Ooh, excuse me. Touched a nerve, have I?” said Brendan, smirking.
“No. You haven’t. And I have so not been going on about Joe for months. I’ve only seen him twice.”
“Three times if you count Harrods.”
“I don’t. And I am, as we have established over the past twenty years, incapable of falling in love.”
“Not incapable, just massively resistant to. Hence your current inability to realize what’s happening to you right now. But I see it.”
“What makes you the expert all of a sudden? Had a rush on Diamonique pavé eternity rings at QVC, have we?”
“Now don’t get nasty, lady, just because you’re in denial.”
“De Nile is a river in Egypt. And anyway, people over thirty don’t fall in love. It’s unseemly.”
“Oh, don’t we? What do we do, then?”
“We make lifestyle decisions. And mine is to have a baby.”
“Oh, right, yes. Sorry, I forgot. The fantasy baby. You know, you used to be fun. Now you’re just Ally McBeal with cellulite.”
“Thanks for that, Brendan—I know I can always rely on you to cheer me up.”
“I’m just feeling smug.”
“Why? Did you manage to bag that pasty teenage barista in Starbucks? Spare me the details. People are going to start wondering how you’ve got all these nephews when you’re an only child.”
“You mean Skinny Latte? No, not him, I’ve given up on him.”
“Blimey. Did he get the police onto you? Did you lose control and grab him by the muffins?”
“Ha, ha. No, I’ve . . . met someone.” Brendan looked down at his beer glass shyly. Amy hadn’t seen him do shy since 1986 when he bumped into Boy George on Old Compton Street.
“Who? When? Where?” said Amy, glad of the diversion away from her own angst.
“You don’t know him,” said Brendan, stalling.
“So where did you meet him?”
“At a charity dinner. For Stonewall. We had a QVC table because we donated some tatty baubles for the auction. He was on the next table.” Brendan was actually looking quite coquettish.
“Oh my God! Who is he?”
“His name’s Oscar. Oscar Wodehouse.” At this, Brendan glanced up to get her reaction.
“Not the Oscar Wodehouse—that weird gay Tory foxhunting city bloke who’s always on the telly, banging on about gay mortgages?” Amy laughed at the very idea. There was no way Brendan would fall for anyone remotely right wing—not with his impeccable gay credentials.
“Yes. That Oscar Wodehouse. We just really hit it off and he wants me to move in with him—he’s got this fantastic flat in Soho, but he wants us to move to the country soon, Somerset, and he’s so, so not what you would expect.”
Amy blinked in astonishment.
“Are you taking the piss?” He must be. There was no other explanation.
“I’m deadly serious. We spent the whole night talking, and he’s really a Libertarian, but more than that, he’s really sweet and funny and clever, and I’ve never met anyone like him. He took me on—we argued politics for three hours when we got back to his place, and although I didn’t change my mind about anything—I never would—he just did something to me, I don’t know, stood up to me, challenged me. And I fucking loved it. I am completely, deliriously in love with a toffee-nosed conservative bastard!” Brendan let out a whoop of joy so alien that Amy could only assume he was channeling Graham Norton.
It had been a shocking evening. Through all her trials and tribulations in life, Brendan had always been a reliable touchstone—always ready with a world-weary aphorism to keep Amy down with him in the depths of cynicism. Why get too involved with anyone or anything when it always ends in tears had been Brendan’s take on life ever since he realized that his best friend at school didn’t love him in quite the same way. Heartbroken at nine years of age, he’d resolved to keep his heart to himself forevermore. Until now. It was deeply unsettling to see him like this. How could he leave Amy all alone on Sneerer’s Island? But here was the rub. Although she hadn’t quite hopped over to the Loved-up Mainland, she was definitely offshore and all at sea. Perhaps Brendan had unsettled her mostly because she too was feeling an unfamiliar loss of control over her heartstrings? Damn him for seeing it, as if having his veil of cynicism removed had enabled him to see everyone else’s love aura or something. But worse than that new age flimflam—what if he was right? The thought had been pushed violently over a cliff in her mind and she had gone to the MO meeting with renewed baby focus. She would not let this diversion get in the way of her greater purpose. Despite her resolve, however, there was one thing she just could not, for some reason, let herself do: start the whole dating process again. The idea of going to bed with anyone now seemed absurd. It had nothing to do with Joe, she told herself, and everything to do with getting real and not behaving like a tramp. Surely she’d be better off at least trying some other avenues?
She’d heard about these websites where you pick a donor from an online catalog—you could choose hair color, personality, even the blood group of the father without ever having to meet him. Within minutes of ordering, a motorcycle courier would pitch up at your door carrying a fresh vial
of the selected sperm and the rest was up to you. It cost a fair bit, and although money was not an issue for Amy, she could not bring herself to do it. It had somehow seemed so Nazi, ordering a bespoke baby from an Internet site and waiting for a leather-clad storm trooper to deliver the ingredients to your door. And also so comical. How could she order sperm just like she had ordered pizza? Amy wondered if, like the pizza business, you got your money back if they didn’t get it to you within thirty minutes of ordering. Perhaps they did special offers on multiple purchases—a free side of sleepless nights and bitter regret with every tub of salty gloop delivered.
MO had seemed different—the chance to find a donor, but by referral rather than by catalog. She hated the idea of blokes wanking into a yogurt pot for a few quid and then some maverick dot-com millionaire making a mint out of it by selling it to desperate women like Mrs. Cummings. She did not want to be bracketed with Mrs. C, nor did she want to line the pockets of some faceless middleman—or woman—while she lined her womb. But it had been awful—not just the sad little group led by the boorish Pam, but the outpouring of truth to which she had fallen prey. It wasn’t until she said it out loud—“I think I’ve fallen in love with him”—that she knew it to be true. So just as she felt incapable of playing the dating game again, she also found it almost impossible to entertain the idea of getting intimate with any other man’s excretions. It just felt wrong, even if it was via a syringe. She’d left pretty soon after that—MO was obviously not for her at the best of times, and this was not the best of times. Amy wondered how it was possible to want two mutually exclusive things so badly at the same time. Not for the first time, she questioned her own motives—was she falling prey to the old “wanting what you can’t have” syndrome yet again? Here she was, pushing forty, single and childless, trying her hardest to find someone to inseminate her and at the same time falling in love with a neutered but wonderful man. Maybe, she thought to herself now, she was just being contrary. She’d been accused of it so often in her life that the label had ceased to have any currency for her, but perhaps they’d been right all along, and perhaps all her hard-nosed political years, her cutting-edge artwork, her maverick business acumen all boiled down to this one single personality tic—Amy always wanted to be on the outside of things, looking in. She’d backed herself into a corner. If only she hadn’t accepted that second date! She could be out there now, free and at liberty to sleep with whomever she liked. She could even be pregnant by now! The thought fired her up. She would get over this. She would stop this silly mooning about over Joe—he hadn’t exactly fought her, and he hadn’t been in touch since, so it could hardly be described as the love affair of the century. It was obviously all one-way, so she should just do what she’d always done—get over it and get on with it.
