As we lay in that post coital exhaustion, having done to one another all the things we had promised we would over text messages and randy phone calls, she sat up and made an unusual proposal. She told me that she had been trying to get a child for the past three or so years, but not successfully, and because she was nearing 40, time was running out. Her gynecologist had said she had about three years to be sure, but if the stories of the bible are anything to go by, miracles do happen. If it happened to Sarah and Hannah, it could happen to her in God’s good time.
But however good God’s time was, she would’ve preferred to use her own time. The person she had been dating had not seemed too interested in making this baby thing work. He had been serious about her – even met her family and everything, and accompanied her to the doctor to get her calendar dates straight.
Only that when the goddess of fertility visited her, the dude would be shifty about having sex. A headache here. Work pressure there. Travelling this month. A debilitating malaria the next.
“That one is not interested in having a child with you,” I told her, leaning in to listen to her story.
“And what about you?” She asked.
“What what about me?”
“Are you interested in making me pregnant?” I was taken aback, as you would imagine.
She was smart in bringing this up right after sex, because had she mentioned it before, I definitely wouldn’t have got into those sheets with her. In panic, I checked to see if the condom was in the bin and – you know – used.
It was, thankfully. See, I did not know her too well, first of all. We had met online and exchanged numbers and started talking, and all this time I had imagined that she was attracted to me for my looks or even this blog, but now I wasn’t so sure. Was she only interested in my, uhm, tadpoles?
“That is a big ask….and, why me, even?”
“It is a big ask, I understand.
And I am not even asking you to be a father if you do not want. Just like a sperm donor. I will raise the kid myself. No complication to your family in the future.”
I kept silent, pondering over it.
“And why you?” she continued,
“well, why not? You look like you have good genes. Unless there is some weird thing that runs in your family that I have no idea about?”
So she was also interested in me for my looks. Just not for her, but for her kid.
She wanted us to choose like a hotel room in town where we would meet every month to hook up. She’d pay for everything – from the venue to the food to the transport, the prenatal and post-natal and raising the kid. All I had to do was show up and perform.
In the end, I was flattered, but I declined the offer. Because I could imagine that I would make a child with someone and just walk away from it. I thought about the idea of some little kid who has our family nose from my maternal bloodline, growing up fatherless. I knew I would want to be in his life. To, among other things, explain to him that the nose which occupies too much space on the face is something we are proud of. Also, I wasn’t going to marry that lady. And that means that in case I ever got married in the future, I’d have two families to take care of. Too complicated.
I felt so bad for her, though, and how desperate she was to get knocked up, and how I wasn’t the man for the job. How I denied her this body fluid we men have been throwing away for nothing since puberty. My trash was her treasure, and I couldn’t give it to her. On occasion I stalk her social media pages to see the announcement of a baby bump, but nothing so far. Hopefully, there is a God and miracles do happen.
