Donorboy (3 page)

So the long and short of it is that I spent an hour picking up garbage from Sandy and Eva's lawn simply because I couldn't stand the sight of it. I filled two big garbage bags by the time the elf decided to put Mjolnir down and start banging away with just a standard-issue sledgehammer. I went back inside with a bag over each shoulder and found Sandy and Eva at the kitchen table.

They were pleasantly surprised that I had undertaken some cleaning and were only too happy to supply me with some baking soda as a reward.

I mixed myself a nice antacid shake and enjoyed the rest of the morning reading the paper while the rest of the overnight guests gradually staggered into the kitchen.

So this was our first real social contact, and the beginning of our friendship. Looking back, though, I think this may have been a key event in my path to donorhood—yes, I was, like everyone else at the party, completely inebriated, but unlike anyone else at the party, I also cleaned up first thing in the morning. I may well be delusional, and they never really went into detail with me about their rationale for choosing me, but they certainly knew many men, and I am the one they chose, and perhaps it sounds strange and pathetic that I am proud of that fifteen years later, but I am.

More to come.

Thanks for listening.

—Sean

To: [email protected]

From: [email protected]

Subject: Re: Why me?

Do you ever work?

Dear Grief Journal:

Her name is Jen and I guess I'm gonna have to start smoking if I'm gonna hang out in there but anyway I went to the bathroom at lunch not to cry but just because I was hoping to see Jen again and that sounds kinda gay but gay in a lesbian way not in a grief journal way. I don't know if I have a crush on her. I guess I'm scared I do. Which I thought I wasn't scared of being a lesbian anymore but I guess that survived anyway. Hooray.

Still not crying. Haven't cried since lunch yesterday. I don't know if that's good or not. I feel like I'm full of concrete.

So I went in and peed and she was there again and sitting on the windowsill smoking Marlboros and not lights because those are girly, Sara's mom smokes those. I kind of can't stand my so-called friends anymore because they were friends with somebody I'm not, some goody-goody girl which I still dress like but don't feel like inside. And which I guess has something to do with me not doing my math homework and not even trying to scam anybody like boo hoo my mommy's dead can you give me an incomplete, which is totally what Sasha would do, but in the end I just kind of don't care if I fail everything because what's the point, so there's no use trying to scam people into letting me get over because like I said I don't care if I get over.

I'm trying really hard not to think of Mom or Mommy during the day, but then even at night when I try to think about them I can't cry. I am kind of writing here to see if I can cry because everything I write always comes back to Mom or Mommy and I can hear their voices, no wait that's Sean playing Metal Gear Solid 2 in the living room because I'm pretty sure Mom never said, “Snake? Snaaaaaaaaake!” Hey Sean that is a video game joke which I think you might get since you are playing that video game now. Dork.

Anyway, I was talking about Jen and I did ask for a smoke because like I said I wanted to hang out with her not Sasha and stupid people at Our Table, I think I used to think of it like that with capital letters, but now it's Their Table because I'm not part of any Our except maybe for Our Window Ledge and Our Marlboros though I didn't pay for them and when I went to buy cigarettes after school I bought some Camel Reds because I thought I should at least have a pose if I'm going to smoke, plus I didn't want to look like this dork freshman trying to be like the junior girl even though of course that is what I am.

The cigarette was gross and I did cough like it was my first one which it was but it did feel cool kind of to sit on the window ledge and blow smoke out for one thing because you could totally fall out. Also when I got out Sasha looked at me all prissy and worried and was like “Oh my God, Ros, were you SMOKING?” like I just killed somebody. I lied and was like “no there were like random druggies smoking in there.” Which I guess means I am not as much of a smokin' bad girrrl as I thought I was, not yet anyway.

Jen says her mom is a drunk who hits her dad a lot. She says school is wack and that is certainly a point of view I am coming around to as everything that used to seem important to me is now kind of amazing in its wackness.

I told her right away that I had these two lesbian moms who just died because I thought if she was going to be a bitch about that like some people are then we should get that out of the way. She said she was sorry but not in that “Oh My GOD” way like she was psyched to know someone tragic because it was good drama which is I'm sorry the way all my “friends” are and probably what I would have done if Sasha's folks had been crushed by foodstuffs.

I am tired and how dumbass is this but I am going to smoke a cigarette because I don't want to look like I don't know how in the bathroom at lunch tomorrow.

To: [email protected]

From: [email protected]

Subject: Why Me, Part Two

Dear Rosalind,

I do occasionally work, though given what they pay me around here, I should probably cut down. That is a public-interest lawyer joke.

Speaking of cutting down, I realize that I am not exactly in a position to be very parental with you at this point, so I will not tell you that you shouldn't smoke, but I will ask you to please not do it in the house. The entire house smelled like an ashtray last night, and I am convinced that the olfactory disturbance was key to my lack of success at Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty.

Having said all that, I am glad that what you are smoking is just tobacco. Or should I not tell you that because that will make you go roll a joint just to spite me? I am very new to this parenting thing, and my coworkers with teens have a great deal of advice to share with me, but given the uneven results they seem to be experiencing, I don't really put much stock in their advice. Furthermore, I do not know if I occupy an important enough place in your life for you to want to do something to spite me. Is this something I should aspire to? (Sorry—that is a rhetorical question.)

In any case, this is my second and final attempt to explain how I made sense of why your moms chose me.

We now fast-forward to my third and final summer at Future Dreams. I never really kept in touch with your moms during the year, because I didn't really feel comfortable calling up because I thought they'd think I had some big crush on Eva. This of course was correct and will be my final reference to this fact because I know it's icky. Also, I was a college student and they were adults with real lives.

I returned to Future Dreams every summer while I was in college, and Sandy was always my best work friend. We sat together at meetings, and I went to the big party at the end of each summer. I was supposed to do the Future Dreams end-of-the-summer gigantic blowout trip to Lake Paradise Amusement Park with this woman Helen, who was this incredibly uptight English teacher who carried around both the student and staff handbooks, and would always quote from them extensively and who got me in huge trouble because I let the students use their Walkpersons walking to the cafeteria.

I got Sandy to switch with Helen, so the two of us were the chaperones for the Lake Paradise trip. I should say that this was an impressive gesture of friendship on your mom's part, as everybody hated this trip because of the two-hour bus ride there and the two-hour bus ride home as well as the impossibility of supervising middle-schoolers effectively in an amusement-park setting.

I will spare you most of the details of this trip, though they are permanently engraved on my memory. Here is the relevant part: at the end of the day, both Nick and Andre vomited copiously after their fifth cotton candy and seventh ride on the Eliminator, which, by the way, is a fantastic roller coaster. Perhaps we should go sometime, if you wouldn't be too humiliated to be seen in public with me.

Please refrain from comment on that last part.

When Nick and Andre vomited, they managed to cover most of my shirt and shorts in pink vomit. I took them to the bathroom and cleaned them up, and I heard Sandy yelling for me before I could clean myself up.

She was in a bit of a state, which I am sure is a state you have seen her in, and she announced to me that Kadeem and Kyanna were missing, and the look on her face also pretty much reviled me for making her come on this trip.

Since Sandy was freaking out, I felt the need to stay calm. Since I was with the kids during all their free time, I knew that Kadeem and Kyanna couldn't keep their hands off each other and had probably gone off in search of a place to make out. Still covered in vomit, I went from ride to ride asking the operators if they'd seen the happy couple and we eventually found them inside the carousel.

In any case, I proved myself competent in a crisis. A week later Sandy invited me over for dinner, and after a bottle of wine, she and Eva told me how they were eager to reproduce but were missing a key ingredient, and they asked me if I'd be willing to supply what was missing. I agreed, and here we are.

Gotta go. I actually do have some work to do.

—Sean

To: [email protected]

From: [email protected]

Subject: Re: Why Me, Part Two

Aunt Karen says they picked you because you were smart and because Mom had found out over three summers that you didn't have any serious diseases in your family.

Dear Grief Journal:

Sean is a goober. He is also a pathetic goober with no life and no wife and no girlfriend that I can see. Now here is another conundrum for you: would it be worse for me to be a lesbian like my mom and have somebody who loved me who I could die next to (trying, but can't make myself cry even by writing that) or to be a straight loser like Sean who I still don't think of as my dad, who probably has lots of porno here somewhere because there are no live women.

I guess Sean could be gay but he made such a big deal of saying how he had this crush on Mom, so even though the house is really clean I think he is probably straight.

I had an okay conversation with Aunt Karen because for once she didn't talk about how she was sad and she kind of agreed with me that Sean is a goober and said that she would take me in a second but she doesn't have the money for a custody battle and anyway his name is on my birth certificate as my father which I don't really understand why Mom did it if he was just supposed to be the donor.

School is still wack. I really think I might skip every day if I had any idea of what I could do that would be any better or more fun. I am totally not afraid of getting in trouble because who gives a shit if Sean is mad or disappointed in me, and anyway he didn't even seem to care that I was smoking which just shows he is no kind of parent anyway. And also, what could possibly happen to me for skipping school? Am I suspended? Expelled? I can't imagine that any of those things would matter to me because what's worse than losing both your parents in an accident that people snicker about when you aren't in the room because it involved stupid foodstuffs?

I am already sick of Denise. I told her about school and about Jen and about being afraid of being a lesbian and about how I'm not crying and all she ever does is ask me questions. How do you feel about that? Why do you think that is? What makes you say that? Why don't you shut the fuck up, Denise? I am totally skipping my next appointment. Why do you think you want to skip our next appointment? Because this isn't helping, because I can't cry anymore which I thought I didn't want to cry anymore but now I feel like it means I am a bad daughter or something and you can't give me any advice or tell me anything about how to do this. What would you like me to say? I'd like you to tell me it's okay, or it's not okay, or I shouldn't smoke, or that I should do my homework, that I am wrecking my life, tell me something!

Do you think you are wrecking your life? I think I'm going to kick your ass. I don't know if I have a life to wreck, but I know that the house sold for six hundred and fifty thousand dollars and that that money is mine when I turn eighteen, and so it's not like I really need to bust my butt to make sure I get a good job or anything, and anyway I could die tonight, but I don't think I will. But if I did die tonight and I had my nose in a geometry book, wouldn't I think I'd wasted my life? I don't know. What do you think? Why do you think you keep mentioning geometry?

Because I fucking hate geometry, Denise! Arrrgh! I am totally skipping next week.

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Subject: Over My Head

Dave—Don't worry: It's not “Over My Head” like the Fleetwood Mac song, but, rather, over my head as in I don't know what the fuck I'm doing here. Rosalind appears to hate me, which is, I suppose, normal, or to be expected, or something. She was smoking in her bedroom last night. I did nothing but write her some ridiculous e-mail about how her moms chose me because some kid vomited on me at Paradise Lake.

No, that's not a joke. It's actually what I wrote. I wanted to unsend it as soon as I sent it, but of course you can only do that on interoffice e-mails. So she wrote some snide response fueled by Karen, who also appears to hate me, though from what I have seen of that woman she is in no emotional shape to take care of a grieving teen.

Of course, I am hardly winning awards in this category myself. Other than hooking her up with Denise and pretty much making her go, and providing a large stock of frozen vegan burritos (they are actually surprisingly good, and I recognize that coming from Mr. Bachelor Cuisine that recommendation might not mean much, but they really are tasty), I am just exactly the kind of dad to her that my dad was to me, which is to say none at all; I am simply the roommate who happens to pay 100% of the rent.