My older sister, Kate, and her wife, Alena, had been trying to get pregnant for a while. Alena is going to be carrying the baby, and they asked me to be the sperm donor. To that end, I've been going around to their house once a month for the past year or so, jerking it into a sterile container, then handing it off to my sister before skulking out of the house.
It hasn't been going well, and they're both stressed and frustrated - especially my sister-in-law, Alena. The three of us are very close, and they've been very open about this process. Everyone has gotten fertility tests, and there don't seem to be any issues doctors can find.
I've always been close to Kate and Alena -- they are some of my best friends. We talk about a lot, traded stories of ex partners, opened on every issue under the sun with a bottle of wine. I know they both sleep with other people, that Kate used to fuck dudes but hasn't in a decade, that Alena is a gold star lesbian. They know my ups and downs in romance and have supported me through being single for the past few years. We've been to nude beaches together, gone to saunas together -- there's not a lot of secrets between us.
So when Kate was standing in my kitchen one afternoon, talking about their issues, that wasn't unusual. How nervous she seemed talking about it, however, was. She was telling me how Alena couldn't get over her anxiety about anything even vaguely "medical," which I knew was why they were going for conception at home. But even with that, the moment that syringe comes out, she gets stressed and anxious, it kills the mood, and she clams up. She's told Kate that she's starting to dread these sessions, when they wanted their conception to be something special. I knew all of this, and tried to be supportive.
"So..." Kate said, getting to a point it sounded like she had been building up to for a while now, "we had a thought, and wanted to check with you how you'd feel about it. On fertility forums we've heard some anecdotes that direct -- penis into vagina -- insemination might be more effective. And I still want to be related to my kid. So, I guess, we were wondering if you might consider that. Doing that. Cumming inside of her."
A bunch of thoughts raced through my head, but the first ones that got out of my mouth were amongst the most stupid: "But Alena's never had a cock before, I thought?"
Kate looked at me for a second, then burst out laughing. When she finally recovered, she choked out "your sister is asking you to put your cock in her gold star lesbian wife, and your issue is she'll lose her gold star?" I could immediately feel the tension that had been building up between us as she nervously explained things break. It was nice to just be chatting again.
Recovering from laughing right along with her, I said "Right -- there's obviously a lot I have questions about. And I'll start out by saying I'm not immediately against this. But -- how would this work?"
Kate went on to describe how they'd gone through this thought process. There were a couple of ideas in tension with each other. First, Alena had absolutely zero interest in men. Though the scientific literature would have you believe sperm was just as good coming from a cup, anecdotes said otherwise. They wanted their conception to be romantic and sexy. Alena hated the syringe. I was Kate's brother. There was a lot going on.
"So," Kate said, "We talked about having a friend do the actual drawing up and squirting part so I could keep Alena distracted, and she said 'well at that point why don't we just get your brother to be the syringe?' We laughed it off at first - but the more we talked about it the more it made sense. She's grossed out by the syringe part, but she's not grossed out by dicks - she just doesn't get turned on by them. And if there's even a slight chance of it being more effective - hey, why not?"