Title image Happy to See Me by Tina Berrier, Acrylic on stretched canvas, 36″ by 36″, 2021.
Your Sperm is Showing
by Jayanti Tamm
Disappearing in New York City is easy. Multitudes fill the spaces, and a single person present or gone makes no visible impact. Yet, Anya searched for him. A few times from across the subway platform, when she spotted a lanky figure with uneven shoulders, she yelled his name, but it wasn’t him. She’d texted but received no reply. When she emailed, it bounced back undeliverable, and when she phoned, a robotic voice declared the number was out of service. Her expansive online searches for him, even on the Listserv where she had first found Byron’s posting, now resulted in a broken link.
Byron vanished right after Kino’s birth. In those early days, her head was a thick fuzz of sleep deprivation, and her achy body wanted nothing more than for Kino to latch properly to her engorged breasts. Anything beyond that felt too overwhelming. Eventually, she settled into an exhaustively predictable single-mom routine of rushing from the restaurant to pick up Kino before the daycare’s evening rate surcharge. After trudging up the five flights of stairs to her overstuffed studio apartment, all she could muster the energy for was cocooning for the night with Kino.
Fourteen months later, on a random Tuesday in March, Anya received a registered letter with no return address:
Recipients—
I’m addressing you to inform you of my decision. As you know, the binding
contract signed for the donation stipulated that there was not to be any
contact after the donation process was completed. However, my lawyer
and I have decided to make myself available at a public gathering for all
prior recipients for one singular occasion on August 12th at the Embassy
Suites in Santa Fe, New Mexico. This will be the one and only public forum
I am willing to attend.
The sterile language felt like a subpoena. She read and reread it, scanning for any sign of personalization—a doodle, sticker, or scribble stashed in a corner, but there was none. No signature or need to RSVP. Just Bryon marshalling a clan in Santa Fe for those who can or dare.
She decided to ignore it, tucking it into her shelf of clean towels. Yet its odd mystery gnawed at her. Byron had simply been the missing ingredient she had needed to achieve Kino. End of story—except it wasn’t the end. One morning as she waited for her shower water to heat, the insincerity of her posturing struck her as absurd. She had been searching for Byron, and just because she’d received a form letter, didn’t mean there wasn’t something real at the other end, and she grabbed both a towel and the letter.
♦ ♦ ♦
Kino slept the entire flight. A smooth taxi ride to the hotel meant that they were able to check in early to a sunny room facing the parking lot. After setting up the complimentary pack-and-play that served as a crib and placing Kino inside with a few toys, the cumulative exhaustion collapsed on top of her so quickly, she slept without even removing her shoes.
The blare of the hotel telephone woke her, and for a few seconds, she couldn’t remember where she was and what was happening.
“You coming down?”
“Hello?” Anya said through a haze of sleep.
“We’re in the lobby.” A woman said then hung up.
Still tightly asleep, his tiny body respiring the heat of thick dreams, she scooped Kino into the baby stroller with its shade drawn. Spraying a frizz tamer into her hair, she pinned her black tangles into a low bun, then changed into a stretchy leopard print maxi dress and flats. Purse, phone, and room card in hand, with Kino’s carriage leading the way, in the elevator, Anya promised herself that at any point she felt she wanted to bail, they’d hop the first flight out. Simple as that.
Kids weaved through the crowded lobby as crowds of ladies huddled in clusters comparing photos. Moody tweens, engrossed in their phones, lurked by the parked strollers that caused full gridlock. Where to begin? Unlike an industry conference, there was no official registration table replete with a lanyard and a welcome packet.
“And who’s that one in there?”
A woman with a white bob and black roots spreading from her center part, bent to peek in at Kino.
“Precious!” she exclaimed. “Ready for the big meet up?”
Anya nodded, assuming the ‘big meet up’ was what it was being called. No need to fling insults by casting this get-together in the wrong way.
“Isn’t this crazy fun?” the woman continued.
“Crazy,” Anya said.
“I came from Marble Falls, Texas. Tiny town. Believe me. No one’s heard of it but the locals. I’m Jillian,” the woman said, and shook Anya’s hand as her wrist full of gold bangles applauded. “Boy or girl?”
“Boy. Kino.”
“Aww. Boys are the best. I’ve a boy too. Frankie. My little butterball. He just turned three and is… ” She turned toward one of the side fountains, “Over there by the fountain. He’s found a couple BFFs already. They’re like a little wolf pack; they instantly smelt each other and recognized the familiar scent, and they were off”.
Anya turned to watch the four toddlers, yelping in happy circles, dizzy with the thrill of chasing and being chased; no formal invitations required, just little people who instinctively sensed their compatibility. Beyond them, portions of the lobby transformed into mini-soccer fields where boys and girls raced to kick an inflated beach ball toward no distinct destination; the floor by the side couches was now a full-on picnic area where pudgy babies crawled atop a rainbow quilt in search of new toys to gum as their mothers swapped stories.
“We’ve totally taken over the place.”
The ‘we’ caused Anya to retract. Anya politely explained she needed to go find someone, and wheeled Kino’s carriage in the opposite direction from Jillian. She scanned the lobby, jammed with parents and hyper kids like it was an on-site hotel at Disney. The enormity of the gathering loudly evident in all directions. All of these people are entangled in this. All of them swapping parenting tales and healthy snacks are present not because they had booked the time-share for the same weekend, but because they were all directly connected to Byron. It wasn’t ‘six degrees of separation’; it was all one-degree of Byron. Skimming to check if he was suddenly milling about, it felt impossible that he was here. Or was he? She couldn’t imagine him chatting up the lobby crowds; high-fiving the kids, passing out lollipops, then posing for selfies like a quirky actor in need of relevance. Always dressed monastically in strict monochrome, he seemed to be consciously striving to steer away from any gleam of light and instead remain hidden in the shadows, where he could move without being spotted. She remembered the odd emptiness of his residence and his perpetual minimalism–no bags or belongings. Veiled beneath a baseball cap, plain t-shirt and jeans, he appeared non-descript, a person who quietly moved in and out of frame.
A stuffed giraffe nearly pelted Anya, landing on the ground beside her.
“So sorry!” a blond woman in a hot pink sweat suit said, dashing over to retrieve it. “Krystal-Anne! You stop throwing things!”
Could there be any way that this was some sort of ‘gotcha’ moment, a reality TV show culmination, a grand catfishing? And if he did suddenly appear, striding into the lobby right now, then what? Would she line up behind the crowds of families here to ask him what happened, where did he go? In this jam-packed space, rampant with the results of his own rampant procreation, where his genes overflowed, she imagined him not even recognizing her.
An announcement declared the venue open. Parents, grandparents and older siblings collected their belongings as though boarding a sightseeing tour. Anya lifted Kino’s cover to reveal he was still asleep. All the commotion, the multitudes and the oddness, and Kino remained happily oblivious. Atta boy. For a second, she wished she could wheel him outside and pretend to be a regular tourist seeking southwestern antiques. But then what? She couldn’t duck for cover indefinitely. Eventually, Kino will want to know, and she couldn’t sustain the lie to him forever. In fifteen years when Kino spouted endless questions about his birth story, would she want to admit she’d hauled them to a hotel in Santa Fe and then, just as they were poised to understand the key to all of it, she flaked out to rummage through old silver and turquoise belt buckles? No. Kino deserved better than that, and so did she.
Settling in, the stalled babies created a massive parking lot. Unlike regular industry conferences where the front rows inevitably remained vacant as no one wanted to be pinned into attention during a drab presentation, here, every seat in the entire front section immediately filled. Not wanting to be stuck standing, Anya found a single seat on the aisle. She stationed her carriage beside her, with the wheels aimed toward the exit as though ready for a quick escape.
“Kinda like a megachurch meeting, right?”
“Never been to one,” Anya said to the woman seated beside her with a purple bandana that fastened thick dreadlocks.
“Me neither. But I bet you some minister could start ‘Amening’ and then pass a donation bucket in here,” she said.
“Maybe that’s what’s going to happen,” Anya said.
“Damona. Nice to meet you,” she said, extending her hand. After Anya introduced herself and the still-sleeping Kino, Damona explained her daughter, Violet, was sick at home in Philadelphia with her wife. They had planned to travel as a family, but the night before, Violet had howled with a double ear infection, so she had to voyage solo.
“I’m not the kind of mom who shows pictures, but this is a different situation, right?” she said, opening her phone to an array of gorgeous shots of what resembled a mini-Damona, with ringlets and deep dimples.
“Turned three last month. Violet. She’s magic.”
Anya scanned the photo to hunt for bits of Kino. And there it was–shape of the chin; they matched.
“Did you have any idea about all this?” Anya asked, while still combing the photo for other overlapping features.
“Nope. Not until we got that letter. That was insane. We knew the do-it-yourself approach might have been risky. His website for free sperm, though, looked good because there was no middleman, no bureaucratic bullshit. Just those willing to donate and those who needed it, you know? It was the sort of, purity, about it. Nothing bought. Nothing sold. Biology minus capitalism,” Damona said.
When Damona didn’t question Anya as to how and why she had needed Byron, Anya understood that everyone in that ballroom had a Byron backstory whose plot line had all lined up to this current point as they waited for whatever it was next to begin.
Then, as if a director had shouted action, the lights disappeared and Byron appeared. The sudden shock of his entrance, even just seated center frame on screen, felt alarming. Now you see him, now you don’t. Yet there he was, a person who had not been available for months, unresponsive and unobtainable, had casually manifested. Like it was no biggie, like calling together a ballroom of people to travel thousands of miles was normal.
Without his signature baseball cap, his hair framed his head in mostly gray frizzy curls. The few remaining sections of black hair looked like thin shaded outlines in a comic strip around the gray ringlets. Still lean and lanky, he looked mostly the same, but his cheeks looked thinner and his eyes appeared slightly sunken in with slight swollen half-moons of a darkened shade beneath them. But it was Byron, still dressed in a plain black t-shirt and jeans bearing no logos. The same man who had vanished, disappeared totally, from contact, unreachable in a society addicted to constant contact and GPS proximity. Now he sat stiffly, staring slightly off to the left as though he hadn’t placed the camera in the center, and rather than making any adjustments, he was just going to leave it as it was.
Anya had expected some type of cinematic spectacular, a curtain would lift and there he’d be. Live. A real person. But that wasn’t it. This wasn’t even a high-tech hologram. This entire elaborate scheme to which they’d journeyed cross-country was to watch a recorded video. They could have stayed home and watched it on their phone. She rocked the ever-sleeping Kino, in his carriage. Her grip tightened on Kino’s carriage; she felt foolish all over again. She imagined now, having to tell him one day, yes, we then went all the way out to Santa Fe and sat in a basic ballroom to watch a video. That’s just the kind of decision maker she was.
The women in the row ahead of them, noticing that something was happening, shushed the talkers. A few people cheered and clapped at the order to start whatever was meant to be started. A baby wailed as though it had already seen enough.
Anya studied the amateurish composition of the video and wondered from which random outpost it was being filmed. The blank room didn’t look like the odd domicile that she’d once visited. It was some other empty space, devoid of personal artifacts—as if not to slip and reveal even a hint of selected décor. Nothing was being given away, all insights had been neutered.
“Thank you all for being gathered this afternoon. I understand that for many of you who travelled from various cities and states, this was a large undertaking to make it today. To be very frank, I was not certain how many of you would come. As you can tell by me talking to you on video, I was unable to attend this gathering. Luckily, through this video, we can still communicate. After all, that is the purpose. To communicate.” At this he paused, as though he was in a classroom lecture and needed to flip the page of his notecard. His voice sounded dusty, like this was the first time he’d spoken all day. From what she could tell, it didn’t appear that he was reading from a script or teleprompter, yet he had the stiff manner of an uneasy public speaker. The awkwardness, in some ways, felt like another prop, a costume of humility. Around her, Anya heard snack bags of goldfish and gummy bears torn open. Video game alerts buzzed, and joyful shrieks burst from the back of the room, where the kids, once again, like on some open wild game reserve, herded their way to resume the chase. Some mothers around her texted updates or snapped general pictures while others whispered with those seated around them. This place, unlike the vacant canvas boxed around Byron, pulsated with the buoyant chaos that comes with children. Needy, loud, demanding, blissful, it was all going down where they were.
“As you know from the letter that was sent, I decided to make myself available to all of you. This will be the one and only time that I am prepared to do something like this. The legal contracts that have been signed in the agreement between donor and recipient was very clear in that I am under no sort of obligation to retain or maintain any type of relationship between myself and the children. This binding contract is non-negotiable. Yet, over the course of the last few years, there have been some who have made it their purpose to attempt to harass me and invade my privacy. Living under these conditions has made it difficult to maintain freedom and independence. It has also made me expedite my decision to cease being a donor,” Byron said, then adjusted his shoulders with a shrug. He then cracked his knuckles. The limbering of the body, Anya imagined, was something he did without even realizing that for most people, that was a personal act, akin to self-grooming, done in one’s bathroom or bedroom in private. The shading between private and public was where he existed. The personal realm of reproduction, in all its proximity to one’s body and beliefs, had been engrained as a locked-away and remote process. Questions were not supposed to be asked, and only when the public needed to know—when a pregnancy advanced into being visible, for example—would it spill out into public knowledge. But with Byron, the service that he provided was found through the Internet, through the public portal, and that in and of itself set it on a course that meant it was out there, permanently, beamed into condos and yurts worldwide. Could he have expected total privacy?
“From film crews to TV reporters, to religious leaders sending their congregation after me, to donor recipients stalking me, this was not what I imagined would happen to my life. It’s been a constant barrage, and it’s negatively impacted everything. Even my ability to earn a basic income. These were never the ramifications that I imagined when I first set out to help.”
He paused as though this were a poignant moment to let his words settle.
“Spare us the martyr act,” said a voice from across the room. Some applauded. Others loudly shushed. Byron blinked a few times toward some vague location before seeming to find the energy to continue, as though asked to recount a bruised tale of woe.
“That was more than twelve years ago when I read about a woman who lacked health insurance and was unable to afford the process of paying for corporate sperm, but longed to experience the journey of creating life. I’m a believer in creating life. I knew after reading her story that I’d found my calling. I knew that this could be my way to be of service and to make an impact that would continue. It was clear that I had the ability to do something extraordinary,” he straightened his legs, like a giant cricket, then crossed them and mildly swung his top foot.
The room quieted considerably, although there was still the general swarm of shifting kids and parents reaching for the next item to distract and pacify. A few babies erupted with wails and were hoisted upon a bouncing knee for consolation. Despite the theatrics of the video address, the mundane wants and needs of the children continued, and that superseded all else.
“Numbers are not concepts, of course, but what we assign to a number certainly is. Two-point-five children is the current average of children in a family. Under one roof. That number, of course, is very much a product of a certain society in modern times. To me, these judgements are irrelevant. They are a product of groupthink and the normative smothering all else. The attention that the primary care giver can dole out to each child depends on the person. Since I have been donating, the most I have ever added to a single family is two. That’s it. Most cases, it was one baby to a family. These are not mothers birthing babies by the vanload. These aren’t government-supported babies. Each one is deeply desired, as I don’t need to tell you,” he paused to tousle his hair.
“Over the course of the last two decades, I’ve assisted in creating 4,546 healthy lives.” He rubbed his palms against his jeans as though smoothing out sudden wrinkles.
4,546?
Anya scrambled to visualize that number. It was more than in her current checking account. But what did that look like in people? How many airplanes would be needed to fly 4,546 people? How much office space would be needed to employ them? A skyscraper? Maybe a few? And what about schools? For 4,546 children, an entire school system would be required—all for the same biological father, an entire family tree from the same seed.
Chatter erupted from a cluster of parents to the right, some adjusting their chairs, while others held up their phones, recording for perpetuity.
“Today, I’m announcing that I have officially ceased being a life-creator.” Again, he stopped, as though expecting dramatic music to drench the room before a quick cut to a commercial. Life-creator? The term felt saturated in sticky self-righteousness. Who would ever call himself a name like that —which sounds like it was a title swiped from a shrine to Jesus—with a straight face? The gall of it, the piousness alarming. Had he ever said anything at all like that when she had known him? She mentally scanned through their various meetups but nothing registered at all like that, and, if that had slipped out, even during a hot and heavy screw session, that’s not the type of kink that she’d have understood was just bedroom banter; she would have sat up and taken note.
“I’m ceasing any and all donations. No matter the circumstances. There will not be any exceptions. This decision,” Byron said, shifting his gaze to somewhere higher, and even more remote, “was one that I contemplated for a long while. Today, I wanted to make it public to you all so that I will not be contacted by any further parties regarding past or future donations. I have come to the decision—as a result of needing to end the endless chase of me by various parties, as I’ve mentioned prior, and, as a result of a milestone birthday, forty.” He stopped and turned quickly as though someone had entered the room off camera.
Anya waited for him to proceed and pick up from where he had stopped as though he’d forgotten that he was live before a packed ballroom. The camera flickered and stalled, creating a static shot, before unfreezing. Byron was mid-sentence.
“…irresponsible by not following the medical studies about the risks of paternal age on pregnancy outcomes or risks to the offspring’s health. The notion that only women have a biological clock has been disproven. Sure, some men, as you all know, have their first, second or even third set of children often in their forties, fifties, or up, but that often comes with all sorts of documented problems, including miscarriage or still birth, certain rare birth defects, autism, schizophrenia, and lymphoblastic leukemia. These risks are grave and counter to my entire mission of being of service to produce healthy babies. It’s really the only responsible thing to do, and I would encourage all other life-creators to follow this lead, understanding that the hope is that a new generation will be behind us to provide the same service and help to make the dream of bringing a healthy baby into the world a reality,” he said, now leaning forward with his forearms resting upon his knees like he was either about to tell a children’s story or reveal a big secret, or maybe both.
“This has been,” he said, then nodded deeply to confirm his own idea, “the biggest honor of my life. This. All of this. I achieved my purpose. Their legacies will surely fan out to impact the planet in ways one can only imagine. Nothing could be more important than having been able to do this. These were children who were desperately wanted. They have that great advantage, and the advantage of coming from the healthy genes of this life-creator. It is my hope that what has been accomplished will be celebrated. This accomplishment lives and will live on, and from that, I know that I did all I could to leave a legacy and shape the world. There’s a weird suspicion of those who give too generously, isn’t there? It’s like our society has decided that it’s not normal.”
Giving too generously was not normal. Anya agreed. Kino woke and sputtered his cranky cry. She hoisted his chubby body where he curled like a koala upon her chest. She smoothed his sweaty hair that stuck to his scalp, his perfect warmth emanating onto her. The thick wonderment of his every need making him heavy; she inhaled his sleepy scent and kissed his hair. There, there, beloved boy. Everything is wonderfully fine. Someone handed over a teething biscuit, while a man in a LA Lakers knitted cap passed a bunny rattle. The totality of their support was unified. The entire audience was comprised of people united in purpose.
Giving too generously was not normal—but abnormal enough to be wondrous. This was, Anya realized, a most bizarre family reunion.
Amidst the rows and rows of worrying and adoring parents, Anya and Kino indelibly belonged. For what they shared in common, there was no doubt—they were literally, in the purest definition, family; this was permanent and consistent. This, she understood, was blood; familial ties abounded here. The possibilities of what that might mean, just beginning to take hold. Their connection so singular, how could it not serve as a permanent fortress of belonging? Staggering and astounding, Kino had a ready-made family so extensive and massive that it occupied nearly the entire hotel; there were half-siblings everywhere: from the courtyard, to the restaurant and lobby, the hotel was replete with brothers and sisters. Endless options, endless safety nets. From major metropolises to tiny townships, they were there. And that felt like she had provided him, her son, with a rich power. He had support and backup beyond what most could ever dare to imagine, as though Kino and all these other children were part of a sentinel, expansive and immersive.
Maybe, in the years ahead, when Kino was old enough to skateboard to the East River or wait for autographs outside the cast door after a Broadway matinee, he wouldn’t be interested in exploring beyond the boundaries of his young adult life. But maybe he would be intrigued to search for others across America, to meet with some of these siblings. At what age would she really explain this to him? When was the right time to reveal what might not appear evident to him? She imagined that at some age, he would pout and bemoan that, unlike other kids in his class, he didn’t have a dad or any siblings; he’d blame her for them being all alone. Perhaps then, Anya would just gently remind him of the enormity of this. If he wanted it, this was an endless fount of family, a never-ending source of playdates and birthdays and recitals and graduations and weddings—if he wanted it; if they wanted it. How incredible to have that option. The possibility of delving into this massive sea of family or, if he preferred, of keeping it untapped. That could work as well. There were options that Kino and she could parse through as Kino grew and decided how much or how little of this crowded ecosystem he wanted.
This was the gift.
In this ballroom permeated continents of possibility and love. From the shortcuts of having DNA matches for receiving organs and blood type, to the convenience of having family in every state, to the summer reunions where all the kids could gather to size up their respective growth over the year while the parkgrounds filled with parents celebrating another year with sangria toasts. She thought of what she had, up until this point, thought that family was—a tiring and disappointing tiny circle who demanded her justification with boundaries and fencing. This felt liberating—an entirely new option and route.
Anya turned and for a second, she noticed that Byron was no longer seated in the chair facing the camera. Whether a technical glitch had occurred or he’d purposefully exited or perhaps someone here had told him to go away, what was clear was that his absence hadn’t mattered. No one seemed to care. The master puppeteer was irrelevant; his role had been reduced to the invisible. His motives and movements wouldn’t be chased by her or any of these families. They were far too preoccupied by all that lay before them, the promises of a series of firsts, of watching the little ones grow, of aging together in this collective, the thrill of so many playmates, so many options, of the stupendous thrill of being in the middle of the place where you never knew you belonged.
Jayanti Tamm is the author of the critically-acclaimed memoir, Cartwheels in a Sari: A Memoir of Growing Up Cult (Crown.)
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