Read Online Point, Click, Love by Molly Shapiro - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Molly Shapiro
Tags: Fiction, General, Humorous, Humorous fiction, Contemporary Women, Female friendship, online dating
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out of. And now that the girls were entering their teenage years, Claudia and Steve fought about everything from curfews to dating to whether they should be allowed to wear makeup.
Annie wondered if maybe Claudia was right, that maybe it would be easier to go it alone. Sure, there wouldn’t be anyone to help when things were hard or to share in the good times, but there also wouldn’t be anyone to argue with or disappoint.
In the end, whether or not to have a partner in parenthood was really beside the point. Annie was thirty-eight years old, and not only was there not a man on the horizon, she hadn’t even been mildly interested in one for three years. If she wanted to get pregnant and have a healthy child, she needed to act.
So without saying a word to her friends and family, Annie began researching the process in secret, scouring the Internet forinformation about artificial insemination, in vitro fertilization, and sperm banks.
For Annie, that was the best part: the digital sperm bank. As a busy executive who hated going to the malls and shopping centers that dominated her surroundings, Annie bought everything over the Internet. Now it felt like she was shopping online for a baby.
She’d go to her favorite site and input her donor preferences: eye color, hair color, hair texture (curly? wavy? straight?), skin tone, height, ethnicity. She could even narrow her choice down to a Buddhist with a master’s degree, type A blood, and an interest in linguistics. There were profiles and essays and staff members’ impressions to read, and for a price she could see a baby photo, listen to an interview, and look at a personality test. The site even let her do a search based on the celebrity the donor resembled most. There were look-alikes for everyone from Vince Vaughn to Bob Saget, John Travolta to Keanu Reeves, Tom Brady to Stephen Colbert. There were even two versions of Russell Crowe to choose from—a youthful Crowe from his Gladiator days and an older version, presumably after the thrown telephone and extra poundage.
Once Annie stopped worrying about hormone shots and midnight feedings and instead concentrated on what her child would look like and which stroller to buy, the whole process seemed a lot more fun and a lot less scary. She felt comforted by all the websites hawking services and products for women just like her, who simply wanted to give birth without having to find, date, and marry a man first. She imagined there were whole legions of women out there thinking about and doing the exact same thing. Then she did a search on Google—singlemom.com, single mothers.org, singlemothersbychoice.com—and discovered there were.
Chapter Five
S ometimes, a cigar is just a cigar, but rarely is a book club just a book club. Most of the time, it’s a way to meet people, a way to assuage one’s guilt for not being well read, or a way to get out of the house one evening a month. Katie joined this club made up of moms from her kids’ school two years ago, right after she broke up with Rob, to take her mind off the divorce and to try to rebuild all those brain cells that had died during pregnancy. Maxine joined because Katie didn’t want to go alone. Claudia, whose kids went to the same school as Maxine’s, joined a few months later because Maxine told her it would be a night away from Steve. Annie, the newest member of the group, joined because she wanted to meet a whole new batch of married women with kids.
Every four months or so, the book club morphed into somethingdifferent, depending on who showed up, what books they read, and what kind of refreshments were served. At first, the club was dominated by former English majors who wanted to reread all the classics and have weighty discussions about character, point of view, and narrative, as if they were back in a college literature seminar. During that period, cheese and crackers and Diet Coke were served. Then a few of the literary types dropped out and were
Annie wondered if maybe Claudia was right, that maybe it would be easier to go it alone. Sure, there wouldn’t be anyone to help when things were hard or to share in the good times, but there also wouldn’t be anyone to argue with or disappoint.
In the end, whether or not to have a partner in parenthood was really beside the point. Annie was thirty-eight years old, and not only was there not a man on the horizon, she hadn’t even been mildly interested in one for three years. If she wanted to get pregnant and have a healthy child, she needed to act.
So without saying a word to her friends and family, Annie began researching the process in secret, scouring the Internet forinformation about artificial insemination, in vitro fertilization, and sperm banks.
For Annie, that was the best part: the digital sperm bank. As a busy executive who hated going to the malls and shopping centers that dominated her surroundings, Annie bought everything over the Internet. Now it felt like she was shopping online for a baby.
She’d go to her favorite site and input her donor preferences: eye color, hair color, hair texture (curly? wavy? straight?), skin tone, height, ethnicity. She could even narrow her choice down to a Buddhist with a master’s degree, type A blood, and an interest in linguistics. There were profiles and essays and staff members’ impressions to read, and for a price she could see a baby photo, listen to an interview, and look at a personality test. The site even let her do a search based on the celebrity the donor resembled most. There were look-alikes for everyone from Vince Vaughn to Bob Saget, John Travolta to Keanu Reeves, Tom Brady to Stephen Colbert. There were even two versions of Russell Crowe to choose from—a youthful Crowe from his Gladiator days and an older version, presumably after the thrown telephone and extra poundage.
Once Annie stopped worrying about hormone shots and midnight feedings and instead concentrated on what her child would look like and which stroller to buy, the whole process seemed a lot more fun and a lot less scary. She felt comforted by all the websites hawking services and products for women just like her, who simply wanted to give birth without having to find, date, and marry a man first. She imagined there were whole legions of women out there thinking about and doing the exact same thing. Then she did a search on Google—singlemom.com, single mothers.org, singlemothersbychoice.com—and discovered there were.
Chapter Five
S ometimes, a cigar is just a cigar, but rarely is a book club just a book club. Most of the time, it’s a way to meet people, a way to assuage one’s guilt for not being well read, or a way to get out of the house one evening a month. Katie joined this club made up of moms from her kids’ school two years ago, right after she broke up with Rob, to take her mind off the divorce and to try to rebuild all those brain cells that had died during pregnancy. Maxine joined because Katie didn’t want to go alone. Claudia, whose kids went to the same school as Maxine’s, joined a few months later because Maxine told her it would be a night away from Steve. Annie, the newest member of the group, joined because she wanted to meet a whole new batch of married women with kids.
Every four months or so, the book club morphed into somethingdifferent, depending on who showed up, what books they read, and what kind of refreshments were served. At first, the club was dominated by former English majors who wanted to reread all the classics and have weighty discussions about character, point of view, and narrative, as if they were back in a college literature seminar. During that period, cheese and crackers and Diet Coke were served. Then a few of the literary types dropped out and were
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