Part 3: About 12 months before the bath

It wasn’t all pretty, no, it was this up and down within the bounds of normal – whatever that might be. One evening, sitting on the sofa, a definite feeling came over me: I want a child. More precisely: my body wants a child. Now. Soon. No, right away. The mind also quickly agreed and my girlfriend saw it the same way.

Only how should we go about it? We discussed a few days and then a few and a few more and at some point it was clear, we wanted a father to the child. At best, the biological one. There were men in my circle of friends who were eligible – but they either had families of their own or were very likely to start one someday. The thought that our child would then possibly always remain number two with his own father made us turn away from heterosexual men. So we needed a man who had to go on a search just like we did and for whom there would then also be only this one exclusive family. A gay man.

So now take a woman who is interested in women and a man who is interested in men. Where is the common intersection in everyday life? Nowhere. So we, at least, had no one in our immediate vicinity. So we searched the Internet. We found flashing and flickering please-click-and-pay pages with itty-bitty columns listing hair color, height, weight, and high school diploma, plus any photos with muscles or straight parted hair. There was inevitably the feeling to be nothing more than a mammal and that was somehow too little for me. We researched further and found a fertility group, even close by. Only we were usually too tired, had headaches or budding hay fever as soon as the appointment approached. But one day there was no more pardon. Red-cheeked and with sweaty hands we sat in the round of other homosexuals, those who had committed themselves to becoming parents. And what happened: it was nice. But a suitable candidate was not there.

continue to Part 4: “Emergence of Familyship