We Also Like the Name Oliver

The first positive OPK came in around 5:30 at the Fishermen’s Wharf. It was dusky and the neon signs were flashing. We were eating over-priced seafood sandwiches and I was waxing poetic about how grateful I am for this one perfect week without work and without in-laws, so full of beautiful friends and beautiful sights and my beatiful wife that I have been given to experience this amazing experience. 

And now, on to the strategy. I called Le!land and he said that I should come in tomorrow at 3:30. He also said it was only worth inseminating once, tomorrow. He made it sound like Thursday and/or Friday just wouldnt be worth it. What do you think? Is it worth it to try to inseminate tomorrow *and* Thursday?

Friday’s just totally dumb right?

 

Never Again-ness

Right now, the beagle is sleeping next to my right foot and Wifebian is sleeping next to my left thigh. In the hopes of having enough energy to clean the basement, do laundry and pack, I drank a coffee and now my guts are in a tangle. Yesterday, someone somewhere got pregnant. Tomorrow, me and the Wifebian leave for San Francisco.

At 7:00AM. I have yet to lift a finger in the service of this most important mission, probably because I am feeling thoughtful and reflective. I’m thinking about first times, since this will be our first time trying to get pregnant. I first got into thinking about first times when I was 23 or so. I was dating a woman named Sasha, but not really named Sasha because this is my anonymous blog and no one goes by their real name in this blog. Sasha was gorgeous and trans and Texan. A very compelling persona she had crafted for herself. She listened to Peaches and drank SoCo and owned a gun. One night, she played around with it after we had sex and pretended to aim it at her head. She was dramatic and exotic; everything I hoped I would be able to say about as many of my lovers as possible by the time I found myself where I am tonight: chubby, married and on the verge of motherhood.

But back then, in my fleeting youth — le sigh — I was adventurous. Sasha was a sadistic top and we had decided that caning was next. Ever intellectual, I read a lot about it. When I got to her house that night, I asked her if I could take a few minutes to write. And we sat there, at the same desk, tap tap tapping on our respective keyboards. She was writing work emails — she worked at pro-choice advocacy org, or maybe she was moderating some message board. I was writing about the virginity before the caning. I was savoring the innocence, the naivete, the not knowing but almost knowing, the about to knowness — turning it over and over in my head. Imaging, predicting, stating the facts about my fears and expectations, delighting in the person I only had a few more minutes left to be.

I have a thing for firsts. (I like lasts, too, but it’s harder to know when they’ve happened.) I love being someone’s first, at anything, really — first sex, first particular sex act, I even love being the first person to tell someone something they have never heard before. I love to be the person you are with when doing something for the first time, like trying a new food or meeting a new person. I also love knowing the moment before *I* do something for the first time and become something, or someone, new. I love realizing my own never-again-ness. Virginities of all stripes are something to get excited about. Maybe it’s because I feel, and have always felt, so old. Maybe it’s because I feel, and have always felt, stuck with so much knowing, or the pressure to know, that these moments of not are just so great.

For example, I don’t know what it’s like to have a female lover put sperm in me. I dont’ know what it’s like to have a stranger’s sperm in me. I don’t know what it’s like to hand a debit card to a man to pay for sperm that’s not his. I dont know what it’s like to lay on a table in a clinic and have sperm put into me. I don’t know how to thaw sperm, I don’t know how to suck it up into a syringe. I don’t know what it feels like to wonder if I am pregnant. I don’t know what it’s like to look into someone’s eyes as they are wondering whether or not I have conceived.

I don’t know what it’s like to tell someone I got pregnant or that I didn’t get it.

I should tell you that Wifebian is trying to keep me off the computer for the next week, that she’s saying terrible things like “off-line” and “just you and me” and “promise”, so, of course, I am hoping totally to outsmart her or convince her or otherwise get my way, but just in case I am unsuccessful, I just wanted to write to say, before I sort the laundry or lug the suitcase out to the car, that I am going to San Fran tomorrow to get pregnant on my honeymoon. And isn’t it so cool that I have never done that before? And can’t exactly ever do it again?

Dexter. Phinn. Rue. Ginger. Charlotte. Cybil.

Those are the names we play with.

Middle SIL had a 4D ultrasound on Monday. She is having a girl. First name rhymes with Shmarlie, but starts with a “Ch”. Second name rhymes with Geese, but starts with an “R”, like the cup or the pieces. I am highly approving of this name.

The whole thing about trying to conceive is that I could take it or leave it. You know, I was just too cool to get all tied up in birth and biology cause I’m like, all sensible and abandoned and what not. But man, that was kind of before I saw a 4d sonogram.

Geez Louise!