I Asked My Friends for Something No Husband Would Ever Ask For

My name is Andrés and this happened a few years ago, when I still believed life had a set order and things turned out the way you planned them. I had been married to Marisol since I was twenty-five. I met her very young, we became boyfriend and girlfriend almost immediately, and we got married just two years later. She was brunette, with black hair down to her back, not very tall, with a body that even today I struggle to describe without sounding like a lovestruck idiot.

We had always wanted to be parents, but we wanted to take it slow. First the house, then the business, then stability. We did everything right, in the proper order, like two responsible people. When we finally felt ready, we stopped being careful and started trying in earnest.

The months passed and nothing happened.

At first we took it with humor. Then with patience. Then with that quiet anxiety you don’t say out loud. We got some tests done thinking it was just a procedure, a formality to put our minds at ease.

I was infertile.

There’s no elegant way to tell that moment. The doctor was talking and I could see his lips moving without fully understanding what he was saying. Marisol squeezed my hand under the table. We left there in silence and drove home without saying a word, each of us looking out our own window.

The following days were the worst of our marriage. We didn’t fight, which would have been healthier. We simply didn’t talk. We ate in front of the television, went to bed with our backs to each other, and pretended to sleep.

One night, I finally worked up the courage.

—Forgive me —I told her in the dark—. I know how much you wanted this.

—It’s not your fault, Andrés.

—What if we adopt?

She was silent for a long time.

—I want to go through the pregnancy —she said at last—. I want to feel it growing inside me. If it can’t be that way, I’d rather not be a mother.

She mentioned artificial insemination, a bank, an anonymous donor. The idea of my child coming from a test tube, from the semen of a stranger whose face I would never see, churned something inside me that I couldn’t name at the time. And then, without fully thinking it through, I said the line that changed everything.

—What if we ask Diego or Tomás?

Marisol slowly turned her head on the pillow.

—For what? If you don’t want a bank.

—Well, the way babies are really made. Naturally.

—Are you serious? You’d let one of your friends sleep with me?

She said it with a broken voice, half outrage, half something else. And I, who expected to feel anger or disgust just imagining it, instead felt a strange calm, almost a relief.

—If it’s to give you a child, yes. I’ve known them all my life. I trust them more than anyone.

She didn’t answer me. But that night, for the first time in weeks, we fell asleep in each other’s arms.

***

Diego and Tomás had been my friends since school. We had grown up together, gotten drunk together, held each other up through every ugly thing life threw at us. If there was anyone in the world I could trust with something like this, it was them.

I asked them to meet me at a bar. We ordered a couple of beers and I let the conversation flow until I found the courage.

—I need to ask you something —I blurted out—. Something big.

—You got serious all of a sudden —Tomás said.

—I’m infertile.

Diego set his bottle down on the table. Tomás looked at me, not knowing what to say.

—I’m sorry, brother —Diego murmured at last—. I know what this meant to you both.

—That’s why I came. I need one of you to get Marisol pregnant.

The silence that followed was so heavy you could hear the music in the background, an old song none of the three of us would have chosen.

—Andrés... —Tomás began.

—I already talked to her. We’re sure. Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t some whim. It’s the only thing we have left and I want the father to be someone I care about, not a catalog number.

—What if we offered you money for a better treatment? —Diego tried.

—It’s not about money. It’s this or nothing.

They looked at each other. That look old friends have, the one that says more than any speech ever could.

—You know what? —Tomás said—. If you think about it, it’s better if we both try. Double the chances.

I laughed without feeling it, my eyes full of tears.

—Thank you. Seriously. You have no idea what this means.

***

I texted Marisol that they had agreed. When we got home, she was waiting in a short skirt and a blouse that left little to the imagination. She was nervous; I could tell from the way she laughed at everything, from the slight tremble in her hand when she poured us something to drink.

We sat in the living room and made an absurd effort to talk about anything at all, as if none of us were thinking about the same thing. Until Tomás stood up and held out his hand to her.

—Shall we? —he said softly.

Marisol looked at me. I nodded. And I watched them disappear down the hallway toward the bedroom.

I stayed in the living room with Diego, the two of us silent, pretending to be interested in the television. After a few minutes, the sounds began. First her breathing, then a stifled moan, then no longer stifled at all. I expected to feel jealousy, a stab in the chest, the urge to get up and end it all.

I felt the opposite.

—Are you okay? —Diego asked me, uneasy.

—Yeah —I said, and my own voice surprised me—. The truth is, hearing her turns me on.

Diego let out a nervous laugh.

—Me too, not gonna lie.

We stayed like that for a long time, talking in low voices while everything that was happening inside that room reached us from the bedroom. When it finally went quiet, Tomás came out adjusting his clothes, hair mussed, with an apologetic smile.

—Your turn —he told Diego.

And that was the first night. When they left, I went into the bedroom. Marisol was lying on her back, exhausted, with an expression I didn’t know on her face. I walked over, lay down beside her, and brushed the hair from her face.

—Are you okay? —I asked her.

—More than okay —she said, and laughed—. Thank you, love.

—Don’t thank me.

—I love you.

—And I love you.

***

What started as a solution turned into a routine, and the routine into a way of life we had never planned. Diego and Tomás came over almost every day. Sometimes during the day, sometimes at night, sometimes both together. I had stopped having sex with Marisol so as not to “contaminate” the attempt, according to some half-made-up theory of Diego’s, but the truth was that by then none of the three of us cared much about theories.

The strange part was how much I liked it. Watching her desired, hearing her enjoy herself, feeling that my two best friends and my wife were sharing something I had set in motion with my own words. I had become a spectator in my own marriage and, instead of hurting me, it turned me on in a way I couldn’t explain.

Almost three months passed. I kept pressuring Marisol to take a test, but she preferred to wait, not to get her hopes up. Until one night she was waiting for me at the door with shining eyes.

—Andrés, I’m pregnant.

I lifted her into the air. We both cried, holding each other in the hallway like kids. After so many months of darkness, finally the light.

—Two and a half months —she said through tears—. We’re going to be parents.

That same night she told me, somewhat shyly, that the doctor had recommended she keep being intimate with the father during the pregnancy, that it was good for her. That she had already talked to Diego and Tomás. And I, who by then had already accepted what our life had become, simply told her yes.

***

Over time, Diego and Tomás ended up moving in with us. I had two free rooms and the excuse was to help with the rent, but all three of us knew that wasn’t the real reason. The house turned into something I never would have imagined years earlier, when I dreamed of the perfect family from the handbook.

Marisol gave birth to a beautiful little girl. I cut the umbilical cord. I held her first. I was the one who got up every dawn when she cried, who changed her diapers, who sang to her until she fell asleep. Diego and Tomás were part of all that, yes, but the little girl called me Dad, and for me that was everything.

Months later, Marisol asked me if we could have another. She had always wanted a big family, and so had I. I said yes without hesitation. This time there wasn’t even any awkward conversation with the guys: they were already part of the house, the routine, our life.

Today we have four children and Marisol is expecting the fifth. The people who see us in the park see a couple with a bunch of kids and two friends who are always around. No one imagines the story of how we got here, and that’s fine by me.

I know many people will read this and think the worst of me. That I’m not a man, that I lost my dignity, that I gave up. I understand. There were nights when I asked myself that too. But then I open the bedroom door and see my children asleep, and Marisol happy, and I feel that out of all the possible lives, I chose the only one in which no one went without what they wanted most.

This isn’t the story I planned. It’s the one I was given. And, against all odds, I wouldn’t change it for anything.