Confidential(10)

“Complicated age.”

He had no idea.

Unless he did.





CHAPTER 7

GREER

Donor Profile #1017





Interview Notes


Donor 1017 was tall and handsome, with an infectious smile. His blond hair was short and neat, and his green eyes matched his polo shirt, which was tucked into jeans. He wore a matching brown belt and brown sandals. He laughed easily and was quick to joke, but he didn’t shy away from uncomfortable topics, either.

Donor 1017 grew up in the Midwest, and he’s proof that what they say about Midwesterners is true: he’s just so nice! His parents have been married thirty-four years, and he grew up in a stable, loving home. He climbed more trees than he could count!

Donor 1017 was a high school soccer star. He was also on the debate team. It was important in his family to be well rounded . . .

Q & A

Describe your personality.

Fun-loving. Achievement-oriented. Hyphen-prone. :)

What are your interests and goals?

I love being outdoors. I hike a lot. I’m learning to sail. I’m interested in becoming an architect. I just started the coursework and so far, I love it. I want to have a family of my own someday, and I’ll coach soccer for my kids. My dad was an amazing role model. But until then, I’d like to help other people have the families they’re dreaming of.

Was this kid for real? A sweet, handsome Midwestern future architect with an incredible genetic profile and sperm that he just wanted to give to a good home. The interviewer was clearly smitten. All those exclamation points! I’d always disliked pairing “infectious” with anything except “disease.” Made me think his smile could give me bubonic plague.

Donor 1017 had to be a plant. He was a test to see if you’d become too jaded and therefore were willing to turn down the perfect human.

If so, I’d failed.

I couldn’t help but think there had to be a catch. No one could be that wholesome, or if he really was, I wouldn’t want to hang out with him. Maybe his smile wouldn’t give me the plague, but it would give me cavities. If I chose Donor 1017 and was successfully inseminated (ugh, what a word), then I would wind up hanging out with him, in a way. I’d be raising a child that was half Donor 1017, and someday that (boring?) child could go looking for him. Would that child be disappointed in Donor 1017 and, by extension, in me for making a substandard choice? Or would the child be infatuated with Donor 1017 and come to hate me?

I’d never been a neurotic before, and I would have thought that it was too late to start, but apparently, you were never too old to learn new tricks.

Part of my problem was that the majority of donors were quite young. No wonder they sounded so facile, so callow. Donor 1017 was a junior in college. He hadn’t been seasoned by life yet, peppered by mistakes, failures, and letdowns. Reading the profile couldn’t show me his true measure, who he would become. If I ever got a dog, I wouldn’t pick a puppy; I’d pick one that was fully grown so I’d know what I was really getting. This decision was far more monumental, and what I had on my hands were puppies.

Not to mention that even though there would be no sex involved, it felt wrong to spawn with someone who was barely legal. I was no cougar.

If I were to use the sperm of men my own age, it seemed like it should come through normal channels. When I saw a profile of a donor in his thirties, the inevitable question was, “What’s gone awry in your life that you’re selling off your DNA?” Sperm donation was a young man’s game. It was beer money.

Reading those profiles, I felt my eggs wrinkling, imagined them inside my ovaries like tiny shar-peis.

Enough about the dogs.

There was a knock on my office door, and I minimized the window where I’d been cyberstalking the future father of my child.

This wasn’t me. When I was at work, I worked. From seven in the morning until at least seven at night. No breaks. Salads or sandwiches at my desk, unless it was a business lunch. That was how you got to helm your own headhunting firm in a market as competitive as San Francisco.

If a baby was this distracting now, when it was just an idea, what was going to happen when (if) it was a reality?

“Come in,” I said.

My assistant, Chenille, pushed open the door. Chenille was an absolutely gorgeous woman, with ebony skin, long dark hair, and an hourglass figure that engendered rubbernecking. I once witnessed bike-versus-car when neither could keep their eyes off her. I knew nothing of her life outside work and vice versa. Boundaries were paramount, and Chenille got that, which was one of the reasons she was the best employee I’d ever had.

“I have some documents for you to sign,” Chenille said, placing a folder on my desk and then stepping back gracefully, the admin version of ATM distance.

“Amazing that we still need to use actual ink.”

For me, this qualified as chatty, and Chenille looked ever so slightly surprised. As always, she recovered well. It was another reason I valued her so highly. We were in a never-let-’em-see-you-sweat business. “I have to make myself useful somehow.”

I gave her a quick smile as I bent to my task, grateful not to make eye contact. Even though I knew Chenille couldn’t tell what I’d been doing just prior, the embarrassment persisted. It was like being caught seconds after masturbating.