The San Francisco Bay Oil Spill

As most of the country knows, a week ago Wednesday, there was an oil spill in San Francisco Bay. 58,000 gallons of heavy bunker fuel leaked from a gash in a boat that went off course and struck on of the retaining walls around one of the towers of the western section of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. If there is a silver lining for those of us who live here, it's that there was no damage to the Bay Bridge structure itself. WHEW!

I think I speak for a great deal of us here that we're incredibly sad that this occurred right here in our waters. I wanted to figure out how I could help. Yesterday, I got an email from my local NERT group informing me that there would be a training for oil cleanup to be held this afternoon. I was ready for action. However, later that evening, it was posted that the response for cleanup volunteers was overwhelming and that there wasn't enough work for them to train and certify another large group of volunteers.

Alas. Since I had planned on the afternoon being occupied with cleanup, I decided to take the N-Judah out to Ocean Beach just to see what things looked like. This is what I saw when I got there.

I snuck onto the beach anyway to see what it looked like. Here is absorption mat made out of human hair. I saw an article about these in the Chronicle

I walked up the beach and spoke with a man wearing a jacket with EPA stitched to the back. I figured he would know what the details were so I chatted him up. He informed me that groups of trained and certified volunteers were sent out in groups of 10-12 for two hour shifts. At this point, and at this location, the oil is in blobs the size of nickels. It's heavy and viscous enough to be picked up with gloves or a fork type tool. As you'll see in subsequent pictures, the beach, from afar, looks much like it does typically. According to the media, the beaches should be cleared for opening in the next week or so.

A group being briefed in the staging area before being sent out.

Suiting up!

Volunteers at work.

At the end of a shift, each volunteer disrobes and gets a scrub down.

I'm glad I went down to Ocean Beach today. I guess I imagined it looking like the pictures we all saw from the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska where there were large sheets of oil. I'm glad that the volunteer turnout was high and that the work is being done quickly. I know that there has been some grumbling about the slow reaction time and reporting of the size of the spill. But, things look good from where I stood. Perhaps all the doomsday reports about long term impact on the environment and birds will take place. I hope not though.

"Lesbionics"

That's my friend Carlos' name for lesbians. These women have been a player in the sitcom of my life this past weekend and month. Two couples have had different impacts, but nonetheless noteworthy. One couple had a wedding ceremony in Walnut Creek this past weekend. One of the women worked with Carlos at his former employer. She is a native of New Zealand, who married a woman from the South. Since I didn't know the couple at all, my mind wandered throughout the actual ceremony. I was hearing the words but not really having them register their true meaning and impact.

However, that immediately changed when the first dance was called. The couple, both of whom are quite involved in the dancing world, waltzed around the room that was truly an expression of their love and devotion to each other. The wedding attendees and I were all mesmerized by this moment. I would gather that the saying "took ones breath away" was truly apt in this situation.

After this first dance, the rest of the afternoon and evening was magical. All were invited to join in on the dancing. Since the couple invited their fellow dancing friends it was a great spectacle. The most successful part of the event was that the music chosen was great. It was a compilation of country and swing music that was toe-tapping and had people on their feet. It was fun to watch and participate. I even was out there on an occasion or two.

After the wedding, Carlos and I made a trip to see our friends Zac and Kelly. Kelly is 9 months pregnant and about to give birth to their son within the next couple days.

The subject of babies leads me to my second, and more significant, lesbian couple interaction of the past six weeks. Sometime in mid-September, I got an email forwarded to me from a colleague of mine. A friend of my colleague had put out a call for potential sperm donors for her and her partner. This couple was specifically looking for a gay, Asian/Asian-American, educated and San Francisco based male to be the sperm-donating father.

WOW! That came out of nowhere. However, my initial reaction wasn't "No Way". The thought surely intrigued me. So, I emailed the couple back and we set up a time to meet in mid-October. Upon meeting them, I liked the couple a lot. They are both Stanford educated, in their late-20's and been together for seven years. They both work in social justice related fields and had really thought this through.

The foremost topic of discussion would be the size of my role in the child's life were I to donate. I pictured that I would be a part of the child's life three or four times a year. Most likely for major holidays, birthdays and occasional other significant occasions. This was the picture that the couple ideally had as well. I also knew that were I to have this amount of contact, that my identity as the biological father of the child would be revealed to the child as soon as it made sense to do so. You all know me, I can't keep a secret, and to ask me to be around the kid and NOT say something would be close to impossible. With this scenario, it obviously was clear that I would have no day-to-day responsibilities nor any financial responsibilities.

After we got this out of the way, the couple and I discussed the actually process of insemination. It would start with my full health history, blood work and semen analysis. This would all be done in a medical facility. This process would take a couple months. While I was doing this, the couple was planning on leaving the country for the first months of 2008 and then when they got back in March, assuming the doctors gave the "GO" sign, the donation would occur at that time. Oh, and of course we would sign the legal documents and agreements before the actual process began.

Now, the information that came kind of weirded me out. The couple, by asking for a known donor, increases the chances of a pregnancy occurring. Instead of going to a sperm bank, in which the sperm is frozen, I would produce sperm into a sterile container and then hand it directly to the couple and the proverbial turkey baster would be used to inseminate. This event could literally happen in their home. For some reason, this I found a bit TOO intimate, but I was sure I could handle it.

The other thing about the couple using a known donor is that because the sperm didn't pass through third party hands (a doctor or a sperm bank), the child is not theirs until the adoption happens at the moment of birth. I as the "father" could not sign away the rights to a fetus. Interesting, eh?

So, that being all put out on the table that night we met, it was my turn to mull over whether I wanted to do this at all. The couple also revealed that they were in talks with another guy and he had already begun the medical history and evaluation portion. However, they wanted to pursue my willingness (or not) to do this on the off chance the other donor falls through.

I told the couple that I needed a couple weeks to think about this. I had to work through why I was hesitant to just jump in and say yes. What was holding me back? The first was quite easy to identify and that is how would I feel about the fact that if the child were born there would be a person out there with my genetic material. I know that I would feel attached to the kid and immediately become irrational and want to protect the kid from pain just like any other child. This issue seemed obvious, but I think now that I'm in my late 30's (ouch did I just type that?) I have the emotional maturity to handle the feelings that would come up on this? I know that five years ago, I would not have been able to sort through the possibility of these feelings, let alone take the time to identify that they would happen. I think this sign of emotional growth would certainly be something that would allow me to deal with whatever could arise once the child was born.

However, I knew that just the "being a biological dad" issue wasn't the only one. After talking in therapy, would there be credence to the fact that my serving as a donor be an admission to myself that at this point in my life that I probably wouldn't ever be a father? Granted it's not a deal breaker in finding a partner that he would want to have children so the issue wasn't the having a kid part. At its core was my being willing to serve as a sperm donor an admission to the fact that I don't think I'll ever find a partner? That this is my way of saying, "well I'm probably going to be alone for a while so why not just provide happiness for someone else?"

At the most dark moments in the process of trying to figure out whether or not I was going to say yes, these were the thoughts that I dealt with. I had to sit and ponder all these thoughts and identify the validity of them or determine whether it was me being a pessimist and a fatalist.

But seeing this happy couple moving along in their journey of having a child as well as the happy swing-dancing couple, I realized that love and happiness are things that I could have. I came back to this realization that we all can't have everything we want and desire at the same time or in the same order. I've been lucky in my life to have a wonderful family and have a wonderful career and been able to travel and do things I want. The partnership part is just the last piece of the puzzle. Other people get the relationship part first and sometimes get the other things later. This optimistic view of the world brought me around. This turnaround as well as the "Dr. Phil" conversation my sabbatical enjoying colleagues had with me while on my bike to work (as noted in a previous posting) made me realize that I was willing to say yes to being a sperm donor for this great and happy couple.

Therefore, this past Wednesday, I called to chat. I offered my services and the couple was happy. They did tell me, however, that the guy they had already started with had successfully passed the health, semen and blood screenings and the the couple and the other guy were in the legal negotiations part. Therefore, they asked whether or not I would be willing to sit in the background in case something fell through. I said absolutely. The couple should let me know by mid-December if the legal part fell through. If at that time, things are a go, then the only other thing that could go wrong is the actual insemination in the Spring.

So, if you were wondering what was on my mind this past six weeks, well now you know.