Karma is a sum of all that an individual has done, is currently doing and will do. The effects of all deeds actively create past, present and future experiences, thus making one responsible for one’s own life, and the pain and joy it brings to others. Karma is not about retribution, vengeance, punishment or reward. Karma simply deals with what is. Chapter 5 Almost six weeks had gone by since Justin and Daphne had met for breakfast. Daphne had just returned from a visit with her ob-gynecologist who had confirmed that everything was back to normal. The doctor had told her that she was ready to try getting pregnant again, if this was something she wanted to attempt once more. Daphne wasn’t sure she wanted to start the nightmare all over again. Alex had reassured her repeatedly that a child was not a necessity in his life and that she should just accept the fact that they were never going to have children. Daphne wasn’t sure she was ready to do that either. What she needed to do was talk this out, she thought to herself. She had to go through everything in her mind, one step at a time, before she could arrive at a decision which would ultimately affect her life forever. This wasn’t an easy thing; she knew it would take her a while, but once she decided, it would be done. Daphne wanted to call her best friend and use him as a sounding board. This had always helped her in the past. She and Justin routinely talked about their problems and more often than not, would arrive at very good conclusions. However, she had no idea if Justin would want to meet with her after that bombshell she dropped on him. He’s probably scared to death, she thought, thinking I meant every word I said that day. And maybe I did? If not, it certainly was some Freudian slip that came out at a most inopportune time. She picked up the phone and dialed Justin’s cell. “Hey, Daphe,” Justin answered on the second ring. “How’s it going?” “Hi, Justin. Are you in town? I was wondering if you’d like to have lunch with me today.” “Yes, I’m actually at my studio today. That would be great! Where and when?” “What about that new Thai restaurant across the street from me? I’ve heard it’s pretty good.” “That fine,” Justin replied. “I’ll meet you at twelve-thirty.” “Okay,” Daphne answered. Justin hung up and stared at the phone for a long time. He wondered where this lunch meeting was going to lead. Ever since that morning when he had breakfast with Daphne he had thought about nothing but her statement to him. Maybe you can donate your sperm? At first he brushed it off as some kind of twisted joke. Later on though, in the privacy of his own home, lying in bed beside Brian he thought about it, a lot. What if she was serious? Would he do this for his best friend? It wouldn’t just be a question of donating sperm. That part would probably be a piece of cake, he thought. He remembered how Brian and Michael had, at separate times, gone through this same thing; jacking off into a container and having the little swimmers injected into the girls by their respective partners. He supposed he could endure that humiliation. The problem was he didn’t think he could just walk away from a human being that he helped create without so much as a backward glance. The big difference between Daphne and Mel and Linds was that she would not want Justin to be acknowledged as the father of the child. He was pretty sure of that. In that case, Justin would have nothing to do with the baby. His biological child would be raised by Daphne and her husband. Justin would be known as ‘Uncle Justin’, a family friend. He would never have a say in any decision that was made for his child, nor would he ever be able to participate in anything the child did in the future. He was sure that it would be that way, if in fact Daphne was serious about her proposal. And Justin knew he would never allow it. For years he had berated Brian for not being a more involved father, for giving up his parental rights. Fortunately, circumstances had allowed for Brian to make up for that and he and Justin had become a big part of Gus’ life, in spite of the piece of paper that Brian had signed over to Melanie. Things had all worked out for the best and the time they now had with Gus was wonderful and rewarding and such an important part of their lives. Justin couldn’t imagine having a child of his own out there and not being able to hold or love it or teach it anything. He just couldn’t do it. That being said, he had to face that fact that he would have to say no to his oldest and dearest friend. Someone who had been there for him through thick and thin, someone who would pretty much lay her life on the line, if needed. How could he do that? This moral dilemma was literally making him sick. He had lost weight over the last few weeks and Brian had even mentioned the other night that he was starting to look rather peaked. Brian had worried about it, asking him to go see a doctor and find out why he had lost his appetite, a sure sign that something was wrong. Justin had never pushed away a plate of food in all the years he and Brian had been together, however lately he just hadn’t been interested. It was worrisome and Brian was always watchful of any changes in Justin. Justin couldn’t tell him what was really bothering him because he wasn’t sure what Brian’s reaction would be. Or maybe he was sure of what Brian would say, and he didn’t want to hear it. That was closer to the truth. Brian would probably tell him to get over it and donate the sperm. What the fuck, it was no big deal, he would say. But it was a big deal, a very big fucking deal, and Justin didn’t want to make any decisions lightly. He picked up his phone again and dialed Brian. “Hey,” Brian answered immediately. “Hi. I just wanted to let you know I’m having lunch with Daphne today so I won’t be stopping by Kinnetik.” “Shit,” Brian said. “I was so looking forward to having you for lunch today, Sunshine. I haven’t had any blond-boy ass in a while.” “Oh right, Brian. It’s been at least six hours since you last had that delicacy.” “Well, I was sitting at my desk thinking about it and getting ready for lunch, which you promised you were going to share with me, remember?” “I know I did. And it was really nice of you to sit there and prepare everything for this luncheon of ours but you’ll just have to complete the meal without me.” “You know it won’t be as much fun,” Brian said seductively. “Stop talking like that Brian, you’re making me hard.” “Precisely, Sunshine. I’ve been sitting here with a woody for the last thirty minutes and now you’re telling me that I’m going to have to resort to a do-it-yourself lunch? Not fair, Mr. Taylor.” “God,” Justin groaned into the phone. “How about taking a little stroll towards the restroom, Mr. Kinney, and let’s see if I can’t walk you through this problem over the phone?” Brian laughed, “I’m heading there right now.” “Good,” Justin said as he too headed towards the bathroom to take care of the rather large problem that had suddenly come up. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Daphne stared at the menu for at least five minutes before making a decision. Justin had come in a few minutes ago and after hugging her and greeting her warmly he sat down and started reading the menu. After ordering, Justin looked at her and said, “So, how have you been?” “I’m much better, Justin. I saw my doctor today and she said everything is back to normal. How about you?” “I’m fine, Daphe. Gus is arriving at the end of the week for his summer stay with us, so that’ll be nice. We haven’t seen him since Christmas.” “That will be wonderful for you guys. What does he do when he’s at Britin?” “Not a whole lot. I try and spend a couple hours a day with him in the studio, teaching him new techniques and letting him paint whatever he wants to. After that we pretty much let him do his own thing. We try not to keep too tight of a schedule since he’s on summer break and needs to unwind. The kid’s life is regimented enough as it is. Everyone needs to be able to relax for a few weeks each year.” “That sounds like fun,” she said. “It is,” Justin replied. “Brian is planning a few side trips with him, I think I heard talk of New York and Las Vegas. I’m not sure when, or how long, but we’ll probably make a few trips with him before he has to go back in late August.” “Does JR come too?” “Not always. This year she’s staying in Toronto.” “Oh,” Daphne said. Justin put down his chopsticks and looked at Daphne. “Are we going to talk about this or shall we beat around the bush forever?” “There’s nothing to talk about, really. I should never have said anything to you. Alex was furious when I told him that I had mentioned the problem we’d been having.” “Look,” Justin said to her, “It’s not like I’m going to take out a full page ad somewhere and announce this to the whole world. He needs to know that I won’t discuss this with anyone.” “You’ve told Brian, haven’t you?” she asked. “That’s different, Daphne, and you know it. Of course I’ve told him.” “So, now that’s two people that know,” she said, “Two more than we would like.” “You’ve got to trust us, Daphne; you know we would never say anything to anyone.” “I know Justin,” Daphne said, picking at her food with the chopsticks in her hand. She looked at him with eyes that were filling up with tears. “Hey,” Justin said to her as he reached across the table to take her free hand. “I am here for you if you need me. You have to know that. If you don’t want to discuss this right now, that’s perfectly fine with me, however, I’m all ears if you need to talk today or tomorrow or whenever you are ready, okay?” She looked at her best friend and decided that if she didn’t tell him everything she would lose her mind and quit functioning. She needed to be able to tell all because talking to Alex alone was not helping. He was too involved in this and couldn’t make impartial decisions. For all the years she had know Justin she knew that he would be honest, if nothing else, and they could talk about all the issues out loud without fear of hurting anyone’s feelings. Pushing her plate back Daphne said, “Okay, I do need to talk about this, but I’d like to do it somewhere more private, just in case I loose it and start to make a scene.” “Daphe,” Justin said, “The only drama queen allowed here is me, so don’t think you can be taking up that spot. I already have dibs on it.” Daphne laughed when she heard that. He was right; a bigger drama queen than Justin didn’t exist, well, maybe Emmett came real close, but for high drama, Justin seemed to always top the bill. Justin raised his hand to signal a waiter and after he paid the bill they stood up to go out to his car. Daphne had just crossed the street from the hospital so they didn’t have to worry about her vehicle. Getting into Justin’s car, Daphne admired the beautifully appointed leather interior. The seats were covered in pale gray glove leather that was as soft as butter to the touch. The wood paneling gleamed and there was not a speck of dust or dirt anywhere. “Boy, whoever maintains your vehicle certainly does a nice job, and I know it’s not you because you are somewhat of a slob,” Daphne said to him in her most prissy voice. “Excuse me? I’ll have you know that over the years I have reformed; all of Brian’s anal tendencies have rubbed off, a little bit,” he said with a grin. “However, in this case, you are right. I have nothing to do with the upkeep of this car, its all Raoul. He’s our grounds keeper; he’s great with cars.” “That’s right, I forgot about him. Well hooray for Raoul,” she said. “So, Daphe, where do you want to do this?” Justin asked. “Why don’t we go to your studio in town,” she said. “That’s fine,” he replied. “I’ll just let Anne go home for the rest of the day. She’ll be thrilled.” They drove silently across town and when Justin got to his studio he pulled into his parking spot. He and Daphne made their way into the building that housed not only his studio but also offices for the foundation that he and Brian had founded several years ago for the starving Gay artists. He buzzed Anne when he got to his private office and told her to take the afternoon off. The ‘thank you’ he got from her made him smile. Poor Anne worked her butt off for him whenever he was in town so letting her have an afternoon off was always a nice treat. He opened the little fridge he had on one side of the room and pulled out two bottles of Evian. He handed one to Daphne and sat down on the sofa, put his feet up on the table in front of him and said, “Okay, I’m listening.” Daphne looked at him, took a deep breath and started talking. She told him that about six months after they had been married, she and Alex decided that they would like to start a family. He was in his early forties, she was thirty-one, both well settled in their careers and ever mindful of the biologic time clock that had become such a buzz word to many women who had put off child bearing till they had established themselves in the professional world. At first when she didn’t become pregnant they thought nothing of it, making jokes about how they should try harder, use different positions, turn on the porn channels. After several more months of trying, the atmosphere started changing. Seeing the blood arrive like clock work every month became a cause for sadness or tension for several days thereafter. Alex would reassure her, telling her that it was probably stress related and this lead to her taking the courses in stress management and the whole tub/bath taking every morning. After several more months of failure, they decided she should see a specialist to determine if there was something actually physically wrong with her. She was told there was absolutely nothing wrong. She was a specimen of perfect physical health, more than capable of having a child and going through a pregnancy. Which lead to Alex’s submitting to tests, reluctantly, to find out if in fact he were the cause of the problem? She remembered the day clearly in her mind, when Alex had come to her office at the hospital, asking her to cancel out her patients for the day and go home with him. They had both cried in each others arms when he told her that his sperm count had yielded the verdict of complete and irreversible sterility. He was stunned when he heard the news. For the first time in Alex Cherny’s life he was not the first or the best. He was, in fact, a big loser in this very important contest of life and no one knew why or how it happened. The best they could figure was the bout of Measles he had when he was around ten years old. Since he was born in Russia, in a pretty remote village, his parents did not have access to all the latest vaccines and even when they migrated to America, they were never told to have him vaccinated against Measles. When he caught it as a youngster, it was a relatively simple case. He had a very high fever for several days but recovered quickly and the doctors never mentioned that sterility could be a side effect of the fever. Neither his parents nor his regular pediatrician thought anything more of what they deemed to be a relatively benign childhood disease. Yet it had been devastating, unbeknownst to anyone. He and Daphne talked about their options. Adoption was always one, but they had decided against it and opted to try a sperm donor. Alex wanted to give his wife the opportunity to have a biological child, even though it would be a donor sperm that would help her get pregnant. After coming to terms with the verdict, he decided that it was the least he could do. At least one of their genes would be present in the child they were going to raise, which was fine with him. She had been reluctant at first, not wanting to hurt his feelings but after he reassured her for several weeks, she was convinced that he too preferred this method to any other choice. It would be a private thing they would embark on, with the help of their doctor, and no one would know the child was not his. In theory it was perfect. They had spent a long time pouring over the bios of all the sperm donors, trying to make sure they had as close a match to Alex as possible. Physically, this would not be a problem. Blond men with blue eyes were always in demand at a sperm bank and they always had plenty of those on supply. Finding someone with an IQ to match Alex’s was a different story. They knew the chances of that happening were pretty remote; geniuses didn’t usually hang around to donate their sperm to other people, but eventually they found a donor who was not only physically acceptable but mentally as well. His IQ was nowhere near Alex’s but was certainly in the ninetieth percentile for most normal people. “So, it sounds like everything was going according to plan,” Justin said to Daphne, after he listened to her explanation. “Well, initially everything was pretty normal, as normal as anything like this could be,” she said. “But…What changed?” “Nothing happened. I wasn’t getting pregnant.” “But you were pregnant,” Justin said. “That’s because we switched to IVF,” she said. “What that?” Justin asked, clueless. “In Vito Fertilization. They make the baby in a Petri dish and then implant it in the uterus; that’s the non-medical version,” she told Justin sarcastically. “Gross,” Justin said. “So, then what happened?” “It wouldn’t take,” she said. “I went through all the four steps, the stimulating of the ovaries by taking hormones, the collection of the eggs, securing the sperm and then combining the sperm and egg in a laboratory to provide the perfect environment for fertilization and growth. Then when they transferred the embryos to my uterus, I miscarried. This has happened three times, Justin,” Daphne said with such a haunted look in her eyes. “Do they know why?” Justin asked. “Who knows, Justin. Your guess is as good as mine. None of the doctors know either. A chance of a female in her early thirties getting pregnant through IVF is about thirty percent. Obviously, I’m in the seventieth percentile. For some reason, my body keeps rejecting these embryos.” Justin looked at his friend who was trying so bravely to not lose it in front of him. He could tell that the tears were so close to the surface, yet Daphne was doing her best to remain calm and professional as she explained the whole process to Justin. “Well, you’ll just have to try again, Daphe; it’s worth it,” Justin said to her. “I don’t know if I can, Justin. We’ve already spent over forty thousand dollars in the last eight months, and have nothing to show for it but heartache.” “Holy Shit! That’s a lot of money,” he said. “I had no idea it cost that much to do this.” “Yes, it’s very expensive, as well as painful and humiliating and invasive and all around bullshit!” she said, looking at him with a little bit of the old Daphne in her eyes. “I guess it’s really not nice to fool Mother Nature is it?” he said. “I guess not,” she said, morosely. “So why would you make that statement to me, about me donating my sperm? Is it the expense? Because if that’s it, I will give you all the money you need to do this, until it works,” Justin said to her taking both her hands in his and giving her a squeeze. She huffed out a laugh. “Justin, Alex and I have a combined annual income of over four hundred thousand dollars. Money is not the issue here.” “Oh,” Justin said, feeling foolish. “What is then?” “It’s the pain and suffering. Having to go through all that and then having it fail. I can’t deal with it anymore. However…” “Yes?” Justin asked, waiting. “If we did it, the normal way…if you would have sex with me until I got pregnant, then maybe it would be worth a try?” “Have you gone nuts, Daphne?” “No, Justin, hear me out for a minute.” Justin looked at her horrified. He didn’t know whether he should shake her or just get up and leave the room. She had clearly taken leave of her senses, too distraught over her recent losses to realize what she was saying or asking of him. “Justin, don’t look at me like that! I am not going crazy. I know that what I’m asking you to do is difficult and against your very nature but it might be my only chance to get pregnant. Maybe I am mentally blocking IVF because it’s so unnatural. Maybe that’s why it’s not working. Having you as my support system will calm me and make everything more environmentally friendly for the embryo.” “Fuck that shit!” Justin said. “What about my comfort level? I am Gay, Daphne. I’m married, I’m in love with Brian…you and Alex love each other…this is not the same as it was when we were in high school and I was the first guy who slept with you. Everything is different now.” Justin could see Daphne’s face changing as he spoke out. He saw her eyes well up and the tears started flowing. He mentally cursed her hormone levels that were still so out of whack, causing her to break into tears at the slightest provocation. “And here’s another thing,” Justin ranted on. “Have you seriously thought about what would happen, if I was stupid enough to go along with this crazy idea of yours? What if you did get pregnant? Would I have any parental rights? Am I supposed to just walk away from my first biological child and let it be raised by you and Alex?” Daphne looked at him. She heard the words and realized he was right. How could she have thought this would ever work? Justin would never, ever abandon a child he created, no matter how it was done or who it was done with. He would never do it. TBC