The American Family

The New York Times offers a headline today: "Baby Makes Four, and Complications."  The article is blurbed as "A woman, her son, her sperm donor and his lover are bridging two households in Brooklyn and redefining the definition of the American family."

I don't want to read it.  I'm just not ready to look at it.  I know it's all relevant and whatnot, but honestly I'm sick of reading about what kind of family we are or should be and what that means.  I'm sick of the politics and what petitions to sign, sick of seeing "LGBT."  I want to have a baby and make a family, and I don't need it to fit into a demographic, socially significant or not.  The articles become repetitive and have always been condescending in some form or another, like we're lucky the Times or whomever else is acknowledging us almost as though we were real families.  It's exhausting to be a subset.

Heather and I decided to skip a cycle to rest up and get finances in order, so we're just floating along with real life until July.  I want to enjoy it, but there's this quiet desperation underneath: we're losing daylight!  Each time Heather gets her period, it means we have more inseminations ahead of us, whether we tried or not.  We promised ourselves 12 tries and have gone through 6, so there's potentially a huge number of tries ahead; I want to get them over with.  That hyper-consciousness, even in a month-long off-season, brings with it a flash of sadness and resentment when I see another couple with a baby, and a sense of isolation when it's a gay couple.

It's not very friendly or generous of me, but it's there.  A "non-traditional" family made up, apparently, of a lady with her baby, sperm donor, and sperm-donor plus one, is still a family with a baby; it reminds me that we're not.  Our friend Tricia, handicapped with ambivalence and undependable periods, is trying to get pregnant-- or anyway talks about how she's going to try to get pregnant-- and I hate her for it.  Fuck you, I think.  It's our turn.  I can't waste any energy on being happy for her, or hopeful, when she's hetero and married while Heather and I can't get married and have to spend $1000 for half of what she can get for free.  She says people will be super-excited when she gets pregnant because her health issues will make it difficult, but I could never forgive her for getting pregnant before we do.

The New York Times can suck it.  Father's Day can suck it.  We're going to pick a new donor and do this next month, and I'm going to remember to think positive.