A Trip to the Courthouse

When you're gay, you must appear before a judge to ask to take care of the kid you've sired.

The judge will be friendly. She will confess--in fancy terms--to not-really-knowing what she is doing. This will be refreshing.

An array of questions follows. Do you know the DNA is yours? What if the husband of your surrogate became frisky with said surrogate despite being in a "no-fly zone"? In other words, what if marital sex occurred right after the embryo transfer?

A farce situation! Something appropriate for Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant! He thought the baby was his, but....

If you found out the baby was not biologically yours, would you still take care of the baby? Would you swear to this on the Bible?

After the questions, it becomes clear that the paperwork hasn't taken shape in the way you wanted. Through some Kafka-esque trick of plotting, there's now a long wait period.

The smiley, enterprising court receptionist has an idea. She will take you on a tour of the ancient prison facilities.

Cells from the 1800s! A list of prisoner professions: "Blacksmith, candlemaker, vagrant, whore." The receptionist will speak in an animated way about "solitary," and international trends in prisoner rehabilitation, and historical quirks in bookkeeping. Why doesn't this person have a PhD? You don't have the bandwidth to think about this.

Back upstairs: The documents aren't ready. A flood of unsolicited data hits you. This flood will hit you again and again. Something about a birth certificate, a draft of a birth certificate, the updated birth plan, the finalized birth plan, some airlines will fly with your two-day-old, some won't. Colostrum. Umbilical. Bishop's score. Healing ointment. Swaddle sack. Jaundice. Heart rate. Mucus plug. Epidural. Pitocin.

Smile and nod. Smile and nod. Smile and nod.

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