Once I’ve had the chance to thoroughly described the process, most people will exclaim “Oh, how magnanimous of you!” or “You must really got a heart of gold!” On the other hand, the more curious conversant will say, “I’ve always thought about doing that… how much did it pay?”
Depending on her genetic uniqueness an egg-donor can charge anywhere from $5,000 to $15,000 per donation and may receive “severance” pay if the preparation process—the incubation stage–fails to produce a minimum number of viable eggs, usually ten. For receiving the flat rate payment, or “donor’s fee” as it is called, the egg-donor is taxed as a private contractor at roughly six percent the fee.
By 2006, I had donated a total of 52 eggs, and was paid roughly $19,700. And although I could have fathomed the larger humanitarian gesture of donating ovum, I must admit my initial decision to donate was mostly motivated by the chase for cold hard cash. This changed, of course, when I met the woman who sought to be my egg recipient in a face-to-face interview.
I had never met the other recipients for whom I had previously donated until I found Jenna*– a nurse attorney listed on the back of a free San Francisco Weekly. I called the listing to schedule a preliminary screening and was told to bring all college transcripts, medical records, and photo albums for the purposes of creating a competitive “donor’s profile.” I thought to bring my best headshot, too, figuring, “I’ll be sure to get the ‘gig’ with this!”
Jenna’s home office was in the distant town of Marin—an affluent community nestled in the private hills of the bay. The trip required two buses and a long cab ride, which, for an ambitious student such as myself translated into two finished homework assignments and a lot of reading. Once I arrived, I found comfort inside the spacious kitchen of Jenna’s tri-level mansion, where I read and initialed all legal disclosures: once chosen, I would be summoned for blood, urine, and pap tests, provided with birth control, and scheduled to inject myself with various hormones over the course of 10-14 days–all in preparation for the day a doctor would retrieve my ovum with a pencil-thin vacuum. After complying with this, I would then be asked to renounce ownership of my eggs and to never intentionally search for the child, were a successful fertilization to reach full-term. None of this was new to me as I had donated twice before and I became eager to leave the mansion before she asked me any personal questions… or before I missed the last bus headed back to class.
I stood to leave, but she had no apparent plans to see me out. “Wait, were not done yet” she advised, “We need to take a picture.” “No prob,” I had said, but make it quick I thought. She took my picture with a Polaroid camera, set the photo on a clear plastic sleeve next to my family genealogy and promised my profile would be ready for viewing as soon as I signed the contract. She then proffered a pen but paused in passing it to me: “One more question,” she intoned, “…and your answer won’t necessarily disqualify you from donating through my agency…”
At this point, I thought, “Just let me leave already! She knows my blood type, the first day of my last period and a guestimate of how many cigarettes I’ve ever smoked in my entire freakin’ life. What else did she want to know?” Then I realized, she probably couldn’t have any more questions than the recipient might want to ask me.
She bit her lip and I started to fear the worst: I started to fear that she might ask about my romantic life—that tiny bit of joy that had just recently crumbled into non-existence when my boyfriend had just broke up with me. I hadn’t yet come to terms with the split and I had been dating every neighbor and his neighbor by default—to fill the void, I guess. So, for this reason, I feared that if the assistant were to ask me about my romantic life, i.e. how many men I was dating, I would either burst into tears—or, worse yet, blurt back from my doppelgänger’s mouth evil things like, “How many you ask?! ‘Nuff to be called a mass-murder!” and then smile as though I were only joking.
But then, to my major relief, Jenna asked: “How would you feel about meeting your recipient?”
To answer her, I neither cried nor spoke: I shrugged. I didn’t exactly know how I would feel, as I hadn’t before met the other recipients. But I was curious, and very much concerned with presenting myself as an open-minded, self-assured woman. So I agreed to meet the recipient and signed the contract.
Jenna’s assistant called two weeks later to confirm that I was willing to go back for an interview. “When?” I asked. “Um, now,” she chimed.
Unfortunately, I had had class that night with an incredibly hot lab partner and at first asked to reschedule. But the assistant’s voice conveyed a sense of urgency: although there were three other candidate donors, the couple had been exceptionally impressed by my personal statement and requested to meet me before making a final decision. “They liked my headshot, didn’t they?” I asked. The assistant giggled loudly into the phone, “See you soon. Don’t forget to mention you’ve got the comedian’s gene.”
Once again, I departed for Marin, but this time during the bus ride over the bridge, my attempt to study was punctuated with protracted bouts of daydreaming: I imagined the recipient and her husband, sitting patiently inside the cushions of the mansion’s opulent couch. I envisioned the man to be a stout, only somewhat attractive, businessman, and his wife to be tall, thin and blonde—the quintessential trophy wife. Though, by the man’s heartless standards, his wife’s infertility would deem her to be anything but, and together, they would be searching for some form of immaculate compensation. In other words: they were going to hate me because I wasn’t perfect, and my delusions of what “perfect” meant confounded my fear of being rejected.
But despite my fears, I scaled the daunting porch as though climbing steps into the clouds of the unknown. I knocked with Jenna’s brass-plated knocker, not too femininely, not to demanding, and the double-doors opened within a second to reveal the most beautiful couple I had ever seen: a cherubic-looking man with a chubby, playful countenance and a woman of warm, striking, classic beauty. She wore a well-tailored blazer and had plain yet bold facial features—the spitting image of a longhaired Demi Moore. Together, the woman and her husband stood upon my entrance, smiled pleasingly and offered strong, firm handshakes. We chirped friendly salutations and found our seats in Jenna’s waiting room.
The woman spoke first and continued to do all the talking. She phrased each of her questions eloquently, and emitted glottal–yet elegant–gurgles of approval over my comparatively awkward, bumbling answers. I thought of the other donors with whom she may have already spoke and I somehow became self-conscious behind visions of blonde competition. I asked myself: What the heck am I doing here? She’s probably found someone already. Or would she even recognize what she wants when she sees it? And by meeting me, is she learning by comparison what she doesn’t want? Was she repulsed by my obvious intent to please? Ahhhh!
Then suddenly, the woman fell silent, clasped her hands on perfectly chiseled knees, leaned forward, and bore a hole through the center of my pupil with a sassy, sexy gaze—the gaze that says, “Give me a reason to dismiss you.” I knew she was about to ask about my love life, and after having already experienced a momentary loss of all confidence, I nearly buckled under the woman’s discerning stare. And then it happened: “Are you dating anyone right now?” she asked.
Tears swelled into my eyes immediately and could began to fear I wouldn’t be able to show her the confident woman she was looking for. I knew I had to come to terms with my love life if I was going to answer this woman honestly so I sucked back the tears, shook my head and said simply, “No.”
She nodded, and I figured that would be the end of that uncomfortable subject. But then she shrugged with palpable curiosity: “Why not?” she asked.
“Because my boyfriend just broke up with me…” I responded factually. And that was, of course, the factual part of the answer—the answer I had hoped would end my misery.
The Demi look-a-like smirked smugly, as though to say, “Well, at least I’ve found a reason not to like you.”
So I blurted: “But I’m entirely too focused on school right now to invest in a serious relationship, anyways.”
And with that said, she smiled instantaneously and sat back in her seat. I took this as confirmation that she liked me. Perhaps she liked the fact that I might judiciously choose to be single, and to focus on myself, my studies, or my career. I realized that I felt the same way, that I would like myself if I actually did this, and that I could at least conceive of such conviction. I giggled to myself and smiled back at her.
The woman turned to her husband, and asked sweetly “any questions?” The husband thought for a second then threw his hands up in the air, speechless: “Nope.”
I stood and put out my hand: “It was a pleasure to meet you” was all I could say. I was so taken aback by her pleasant smile, all I could do was return the sentiment.
I left the house a little light-headed, unconcerned if they would choose me. But if they did, I knew they would be choosing a genuinely confident woman—the donor who had proven herself to be a little imperfect, yet perfect for them.
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