1
“I’m not going to be like my grandmother,” Cecilia had been telling me. I said I didn’t get it and the truth is I didn’t. Had women’s desire to procreate been exhausted forever? Didn’t anybody care about continuity? Have a child for the species, for the family name. Have a child to love someone. Was that so absurd?
“I don’t give a crap about the continuist credo and your desire for me to be a mother, Martín.”
Last week Cecilia was pretty irritable. Ever since she took on more responsibilities at work, everything makes her hysterical. She hurries up the natural process of things, takes the plates from the table before we’re finished eating, slamming doors and dropping utensils with complete clumsiness. But, at the same time, she’s exultant. I’m not exaggerating with the adjective. Any little thing is up for debate. She wants to “decide” what brand of sweetener we’re going to buy, what we’re going to do on the weekends, what we should do about our broken Nit connection. My participation appears unnecessary and provisional to her. She wavers, consults me, does the math, but in the end she solves everything by herself. From the brand of milk we’re going to drink to the pants I should wear to the office. I like to see her debate, from the trivial domestic details to her biggest work problems. Sometimes I just watch how she gets caught up in the thousand and one activities that she wants to tackle. Still, even though I reject it, there’s something about it that attracts me: Cecilia settles down when she decides, and it makes things easier for me when she goes on alone.
“What is it that you don’t get?”
“What you said about your grandmother.”
“We’ve been over this a thousand times, Martín.”
“I still don’t get it.”
It’s true. We’d been talking about it for weeks. But it’s also true that we’d never been on the same page. Cecilia’s grandmother was the last woman in her family to give birth.
“I want to keep myself intact,” she went back to saying, as if I was the obstacle to each one of her projects.
“Intact how? And anyways… What does your grandmother have to do with you? We’re talking about having a kid, sheesh, about the fear of putting your body on the line to have a kid. The thing with your grandmother happened a long time ago. Things are easier now.”
“Just leave it. We can’t talk about this. We’re never going to understand each other.” She puts on her corduroy coat and gives up on the conversation. She always does this. She tamps down the urge to retort, stops what she’s doing or saying, and leaves in a huff.
Cecilia is the daughter of continuists. I don’t know the family dynamics well, but I do know that Hugo, her father, agreed to undergo various male fertilization tests during the embryonic stages of those experiments and that after a few tries he managed to get through the first trimester of a pregnancy that would result in his first and only daughter. Cecilia’s mother, who was an actress and tap dancer, reached new heights of fame after inseminating more than five anti-patriarchal guys. Fame wasn’t so great for Cecilia, who had to put up with cameras and all kinds of exposure. Especially after Hugo, a lawyer specializing in civil and criminal law, sued several times for custody of Cecilia, all after filing for digital divorce and becoming a hot commodity in the Nit forums. Hugo got his wife to pay for his daughter’s food and education and proposed the first piece of domestic gender equality legislation. This messy personal backdrop muddied our talks and distanced Cecilia from the desire to be a mother.
“Why don’t we just take it easy?” I say, trying to end the conversation.
“No, it is what it is.” She cuts me off and grabs the house keys in a fist.
“Wait a minute. We’re talking. Don’t be such a hothead.”
I take advantage of her distraction and pull the keys from her hand, teasing her. She doesn’t take it well and gets mad, glaring. I like it when she gets mad.
“No, no. That’s enough, give me that.”
“Don’t be so lame.”
“Martín, give me the keys.”
“Take ‘em.”
“Stop trying to be funny.”
“What? Did I make you laugh? Come on, you’re laughing. I made you laugh.”
“I’m not laughing,” she says, trying to hide her grin and letting herself be hugged. Then she gives me a peck, as if to get me off of her, backing her mouth away from my face. But I hold on, my hand on top of hers, my hand that now holds the keys, pushing them into the couch; with my other hand I trace two fingers along the metal zipper of her jeans. I push down hard and in the same movement kiss her on that elastic mouth, which she resists. She’s backtracking her decision to keep forcing her way out, so I pull off her T-shirt and kiss her. Then I watch her get turned on; I hear her let go of the keys that fall to the floor and she pushes me backwards.
“You asked for it,” she says, “don’t complain about it now.”
She takes down her hair and shifts down to her knees, in front of me, unbuckling my belt, opening my fly and pulling off my dress pants. She doesn’t do it carefully. She scratches my legs and squeezes my dick with one hand. I’m doing the math as fast as I can. I’m not sure that the fertilization window has passed. Even so, I’m not opposed to the attention and I let her go ahead. Cecilia sucks my dick, turning her head, looking me in the eyes, making like she’s choking on it. I hold on as long as I can and avoid the thought of that tragic coincidence when an egg is attracted by the strength of the sperm towards the cavernous body of my penis and then everything activates for fertilization. That’s where I am, pondering, when I can’t take it anymore. I lose control. I feel an intense trembling and I see Cecilia sitting on top of me, shaking like an animal.
I let her.
I enjoy her.
Ecstatic, underneath her, I see the way she enjoys it, or seems to. I hold on for a few more minutes and then I explode. In that moment she runs to the bathroom and brings back the apparatus that one of the Nit labs sold her. I suddenly realize what’s happening when I see her put a gadget inside the micro-orifice of my penis that’s losing its erection. I don’t feel anything other than the pain I had already imagined. The device is a kind of tiny syringe into which a geneticist has inserted Cecilia’s frozen eggs. She knows how to handle the equipment. She has all the moves memorized.
When we’d go to the movies and whatever was playing bored us, Cecilia would recite all the steps for fertilization in my ear. She was always a little obsessed with the idea. I would listen, but later I’d say no, not with me; to put those ideas into practice, she’d need to find herself another guy.
I want to have a child. I always have. But I never imagined that experience would happen inside of me. Cecilia worked to convince me as if she knew all along that this moment would arrive. When we started dating and we would talk about it, she would look me in the eyes and smile a charming little smile, or else she’d pout, pursing her lips like a spoiled little girl pleading with her father. I tried to convince her that it was better to travel to Euramerica, without kids, or to buy a house, or a virtual campground where we could relax. In fact, once we googled “web camping” and found ourselves in front of virtual cows and sheep and horses, even a working stable. But, evidently, the moment for such things had passed without me having been able to convince her. I don’t know how, but now we’re here, on the couch, me face-up with my neck stretched out and Cecilia’s hands inserting the speculum into my penis.
“Is that it?”
“No. Here comes the best part.”
Cecilia brings her hands together over my penis and resumes her forceful rubbing. We’d read in Beings magazine that it was important to recreate the pleasant feeling of the sexual act in the moment that the sperm meets the frozen egg. Still, I feel more aching and burning than pleasure.
Cecilia talks to me, moves in front of me, touches herself, closes her eyes, caresses her legs and tits, and once again she has me under her spell. When she realizes that I’m about to ejaculate, she enthusiastically lowers the syringe’s piston between her fingers, emptying its contents into my glans. A sudden chill comes over my body and immediately I see Cecilia pulling the instrument back as she yanks it out with a triumphant cry.
“Stop, you nut,” I’m telling her. “Are you crazy?”
But she’s cackling with glee. As soon as the assisted conception is complete, Cecilia hops off the couch and walks naked through the living room to the bathroom, skipping from floor tile to floor tile. Then she showers and heads off to work.
2
I read the shaving cream ingredients and put the can back on the shelf under the sink. With my elbows on my knees and my hands on the back of my neck, I end up thinking about children’s reach. “Keep out of reach of children.” Anybody could reach our cabinet at this height, even a crawling baby. I imagine a little hand pushing the door open, sticking its head in first, then its small body, its plump knees wiping across the floor. I pull up my pants, adjusting my cock to the right, and close my fly. I never push it backwards, or to the left, by habit. Sometimes I think that political ideology has a lot to do with which way we adjust our cocks. It doesn’t matter, I think, changing course: it can’t be that the egg has taken hold. First of all, because we didn’t do the procedure on the date of optimal sperm fertility, and secondly, because I don’t feel any weird symptoms, like the geneticists Cecilia and I visited suggested I might.
Just in case I look at the test’s folded instructions. A slogan on the packaging insists that “one minute is enough.” I wait a few more seconds anyway. I want to be completely sure. I observe the reactive strip like someone looking inside a casket. In the apartment, it’s as quiet as the grave. On the back of the box read the word “absorbent” and the initials “M.P.T.:” Male Pregnancy Test. I wonder about the clarification. Why divide the tests by gender when the hormonal modification of the urine, in these cases, is identical between men and women?
Positive.
I look at the reactive strip without realizing it and the answer is already there. “Positive again, no way.” My breathing becomes agitated, and I start to feel suddenly hot. I put it all in a bag and throw it in the trash can. I don’t do it in the bathroom but out in the street. I’d prefer Cecilia not find out right now. And what if the test doesn’t meet health standards? What if I’m facing a technical glitch and I fill Cecilia up with false hope and even I believe in the mistake of a conception that isn’t? I want and I don’t want to be going through what I just confirmed. I take it back: I didn’t fill my body with hormones for the past few months for nothing. Nonetheless, a part of me resists the fact that what is happening is actually happening.
All of a sudden an unknown burst of energy is springing up in my body. It’s been a while since I felt like this. I leave the house with a nimble step. Maybe it’s just the adrenaline for the tennis game I’m planning to play when I get to the club, like nothing else is happening. My nervous system anticipates it and sends a fistful of adrenaline to my legs that now move faster and surer. It has to be that, I think, it must be that. Dazed, I enter the Gascón y Sarmiento pharmacy to buy a better test and rule out any kind of glitch in the result. My phone lets me know it’s nine o’clock. I go up to the checkout and pay quickly. Pedro is waiting for me in the open-air court where we play doubles every Tuesday. He doesn’t tolerate impunctuality and I don’t tolerate losing. It bores me not to win. It bores me and discourages me.
[…]
I tell Pedro to get going, I’ll shower at the club then I’ll head back to the salt mines without breakfast. That’s what I tell him, “the salt mines,” like my old man said my grandfather used to say. Meetings first thing are pretty typical, so he takes it for the truth and claps me on the back goodbye. Then he loops a towel around his neck and heads straight for the parking garage.
When I’m in the locker room bathroom, I take out the box with the new interactive test, put a drop of urine on the test strip and enter the day and time as indicated by the instructions. The numbers on the reactive tape light up instantaneously. I look at the date and wait. I’m not an anxious person, but two minutes with eyes fixed on that reactive strip put me at the edge of despair. The Nit sites claim that this version of the test is simpler and doesn’t make mistakes. Someone bangs on the door while I’m in the middle of the procedure. I say I’ll be right out and ask my phone again for the time. It is five past ten, the voice says. I
grab the test strip and again: “positive.” I kick the bathroom door and violently head toward the locker room. The gray-haired guy who doesn’t know what it means to wrap a towel around your waist looks at me like he wants to tell me something. It’s a good thing he doesn’t open his mouth. In this state I’d be able to crack his jaw with one good punch.
I grab my bag and leave. In passing, I slam into the wooden locker room bench. I hit it dead on with my operated knee and I let out an interminable stream of obscenity. The old guy looks at me horrified, still in the towel, dragging his feet as he shuffles along in his slides.
Maybe I should just go home, I think. I head down Humahuaca and as soon as I turn I remember Cecilia and I imagine the relief on her face when I tell her:
“I’m pregnant. I got pregnant, just like you wanted, are you happy now?”
But quickly I reproach myself for being so soft. When I wanted to wait. This could have happened later, another year, in other circumstances, she could have eased up, but no, she insisted, like she always does. When I get to the office and I tell Carrezi I’m sure she’ll send me straight to hell with directions, if I know her.
I stop at Bar Almagro for a second, trying to calm down. I leave my bag on the floor and order a coffee. I need to take it easy, think cool. It’s all going to be ok, I tell myself.
“Double, no sugar.”
Once again I wonder if I’ve done the right or the wrong thing. Maybe the most convenient thing would be an abortion. Can you abort an injected fetus? Pedro told me a while ago that when he got pregnant he didn’t have any choice but to go ahead with it and give up some stuff: alcohol, coffee, fucking. Well, fucking, not entirely—he said—except the first few months and the last couple of days.
I give the waiter a thumbs down. He understands, lowers his chin, and aims his exit towards the kitchen. When I watch him go I notice he has wider hips. I wonder if the waiter might not be, too. The waiter who took my order and the one by the windows. That one also looks fatter, expanded, more irritable. I wonder again how I should deal with this. When I get home, I’ll shower, I think; I can’t stop giving myself orders: Get home, shower, wake Cecilia and go to work. No matter what, don’t tell her anything.
I was never an indecisive person. When I bought the car I brooded less. I saw it, I liked it, I had the dough, and I signed. This should be the same, or similar. After all, everyone has been through it at some point. I put the reactive strip in its folder and go home. I wake up Cecilia and get in the shower. She gets up and connects. I hear the Nit while I’m in the bathroom. After a while Cecilia lets me know that she’s about to place the grocery order. When I get out, to avoid contact, I tell her I’m in a hurry, that I have a meeting first thing and I’ll give her a kiss on my way.
“But should I get you something from the store?” she asks, raising her voice so I can hear her while she watches me leave.
“Yeah, shaving cream,” I yell. “Actually, never mind. Don’t get me anything.”
In the parking garage I wave to Cosme and get the monthly garage ticket on my phone. I accept the file and check the date. The charge should have already gone through, I think. I thank the old guy with a dry gesture and I get in the car. The onboard computer starts on its own. Right away I hear the little alarm that lets me know the Nit connection is good. I activate hands-free and with my finger on the thin screen’s display, I locate the search.
“Penile birth,” I say out loud.
“Search cannot be performed,” the clipped robot voice answers.
I say it again, enunciating each syllable.
“Pe-nile birth.”
The little search wheel spins on the display in the time it takes me to turn off of Acuña de Figuera and take Corrientes. A list appears in blue, underlined letters:
All-genital-warts-are-hpv.
Sexual-disorders-after-giving-birth.
The-use-of-Viagra-during-pregnancy.
Natural-and-cesarean-birth-by-penile-route.
Masculine-reproductive-health-and-birth-control.
I open the link. A pop-up asks if I want to activate the browser’s speaker.
I accept. I try not to distract myself. The first image that appears grabs all of my attention. Just in case I press pause and cut the engine at a red light on Medrano. I drive forward when everyone else does. Halfway down the block, on the left, I park in front of the perfume store that’s in front of the historic McDonald’s. I cut the engine and cue up the video. I need to watch this closely. There’s a green curtain and a man with his legs open towards a light. Five people are attending him. The tension is high. Still, everything is under control. A woman tells the man something in his ear. The man closes his fists and stabs his elbows into the gurney. The nurses tie his hands to lateral railings so he won’t tear out his lines. Then the camera, from the perspective of the parturient, shows us what he sees. His own legs, a sheet covering his cock and the face of the concentrating female obstetrician.
Without me doing anything, a picture-in-picture appears on the right side of the screen and expands their assistance in detail: the gloved hands of the midwife pulling foreskin back, the glans appearing, bloodied, the little cranium coming out of the central orifice, just barely visible beneath the translucent skin of the fetus.
A honk brings me back to reality.
I start up the car and head down Corrientes at the max allowable speed. I don’t have to say anything when I get to the office. The phone rings and it’s Cecilia. As if she knows, she asks what’s going on with me.
“Nothing, why would anything be going on?”
“You left the coffee maker on.”
“Yeah, I didn’t have breakfast at home,” I answer sharply.
“But you turned on the coffee maker.”
“I’m in a hurry, we’ll talk later.”
Because I don’t answer again for ten seconds, the call gets canceled. There’s a brief beep inside the car’s cabin.
At work I forget to print the daily raw material sheet for suppliers, experience some kind of anxiety, and I’m voraciously hungry at eleven in the morning. I make myself some tea and take a sip once it cools down. I avoid calling the obstetrician. I look at the public health database under gynecology and obstetrics for a last name that gives me confidence. I’m about to ask Carrezi’s secretary, who helped her the first time, but I remember the best thing is to just keep quiet. The best thing is to not raise suspicions and to find a specialist as soon as possible. I tamp down the need to solve everything today. The workday ends later than ever.
Translated by Maggie Dunlap
