Getting Her Back

2

Unfortunately, the morning doesn’t come with much more clarity than I had last night. I thought that I would wake up knowing exactly what I wanted, that the answer would fall into my brain overnight like a golden miracle.

That didn’t happen because things like that never happened to me. I’m not the luckiest of people—no matter what I seem to do, there’s always something that goes wrong. It’s how I ended up here in the first place.

I try not to think about what happened three years ago, but now that I’m trying to have a baby, it’s on my mind a lot. Maybe it’s because I never really got closure from that night. Who knows? I can barely make sense of it, let alone my therapist who’s been trying to guide me through it.

I’ve always had health problems, and I’ve always wanted kids. I knew that getting pregnant would be difficult, but it never scared me. And when I finally found Christian, I thought I found my perfect partner with whom to fight that battle. Apparently he didn’t feel the same way.

So now I’m here, talking to strangers in the hopes that they’ll give me their sperm. I’m not rich enough to afford a fertility clinic or a traditional sperm bank.

I applied for a study a few months ago—an experimental research study involving endometriosis and pregnancy and the correlation between them. The study wanted people who were trying to become pregnant and were aware and willing to take on the risks.

That would’ve been my first choice, but I never heard back from them and I can’t just sit around waiting in vain hope that Christian will suddenly change his mind, that I’ll find a new love of my life, or that the study will accept me. I am ready to be a mother, and if I want that, I have to make it happen for myself.

By three o’clock in the afternoon I’m no closer to deciding whether or not I should get to know this man. So I text Ellen and see if she wants to meet up for the wine she wanted to have last night.

She responds immediately with an enthusiastic yes, and soon I’m out the door to our favorite bar, a corner place in Queens just down the street from my apartment. It’s an eclectic mix of antique furniture and modern convenience, that somehow maintains a vibe of a speakeasy. A little illicit, a little edgy, a little romantic.

I get to the bar first and sit down, ordering a glass of white wine. Ellen is probably going to make fun of me for ordering the wine, but I don’t care. White wine is my favorite drink, it’s always been my favorite drink, and it will probably remain my favorite drink for the rest of my life.

I only have to wait a few minutes before she arrives, bursting through the door like the chaotic, lovable hurricane that she is. She practically collapses on the barstool next to me, out of breath, and orders a glass of red wine for herself.

“Why on earth are you so out of breath?”

She gives me a look. “You don’t ask to go out for wine unless something serious has happened. I practically ran here. What’s going on?”

“I have a dilemma…”

“Spill,” she says. “Right now.”

I take a sip of my wine. “I matched with someone.”

Ellen is in the middle of a mouthful of wine and she practically spits it out squealing, “Tell. Me. Everything.”

There’s honestly not much to tell, but I tell her what I can and show her the pictures. He has a good profile, his body is very clearly hot, and so far, he hasn’t been creepy in any way. That still feels like I’m evaluating him in the light of somebody who I’m going to date, but I don’t have much else to go on right now. Then I tell her my dilemma about whether or not I should get to know him first. “What you think?”

Ellen thinks for second. “I’m honestly not sure.”

“Helpful.”

“Well,” she says, “I can see both sides of it. On the one hand, it might be nice to make sure that this guy really is who he says he is. And on the other hand, what if you happen to really like him? Then suddenly you’re in a relationship instead of having a sperm donor.”

“Yeah,” I say. “That’s what I’m kind of afraid of.”

Ellen crosses her legs, still full of energy and practically bouncing on her barstool. She raises an eyebrow at me. “I think you kind of just answered your own question.”

I sigh. “I know. This is just harder than I thought it would be. You know I don’t really do the one-night stand thing.”

“It won’t really be that,” she says. “I mean, unless you’re really lucky you’re not going to get pregnant the first time you sleep with this guy. If you sleep with him at all.”