Joseph Osmundson is an out microbiologist and professor at NYU and author of ‘Virology’ which won the National Book Critics Award and a Lambda Literary Award finalist citation.
“Spawning Season” is a memoir of quest as a gay man, who, from the time he was a boy, wanted to be pregnant and give birth to a child.
“I first dreamed of my own pregnant body at nine years old. In my dream, I was standing with my side to a mirror, admiring my distended belly.” That is how he introduces his quest to give birth to a child. Perhaps he recalls witnessing his own mother who worked at a clinic where she taught a Lamaze class. At one point he even wondered if he was perhaps biologically intersex
He went fishing with his father for salmon, who explained the wild spawning runs of the streams of the North Pacific. The first chapters of his book go over the real-time cliff -hanging breeding cycles of fresh and saltwater salmon.
And it is the prism in which the adult Osmundson views the biology on a reproductive cellular level as it intersects to every living thing. From there his life of scientific wonder nurtured his dream vis-à-vis cold biological facts that propagate life on earth.
Casting a long reel indeed, narratively Osmundson is emotionally and genetically swimming upstream before he is swept back to the open sea as he finds a way to imagine his child, who already lives in his heart, who he has already named Fry, a salmon moniker referencing life cycles of moving through hundreds of miles of sea.
Osmundson is an out professor and a top scientist in his field. Now in his 30s, he writes about living his 20s gay nightlife now, since he didn’t get to do any partying while he was getting his science degrees. He is open to dating men, or hitting the bars with friends, honest about drinking and club drugs.
But he also embarking on his path to parenthood, to fulfill some of his most private desire to be a parent. Osmundson decides to pursue his parenthood after conversations with two women, his best friends since college, who would be surrogate mothers, Kay and Jamie, the three had decided that In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) was the only feasible way.
His first long-term relationship with Wesley ended because they felt differently about the timing of parenthood, at a time when he was promoted to a job based in London.
Leading up to that date for the insemination, he had to be screened for STDs, HIV, and potency. Everything was in place for love based parentage trio bond and medical miracles He chronicles preparing his body to produce the most viable sperm. He takes us to the sterile ‘cup’ room stocked, unfortunately for him, with hetero-porn. And his performance anxiety gives way to pre-cum stage fright which he overcomes rather impressively under the circumstances
Since these events occurred during the pandemic year, the future parents met weekly in the park, sitting six weeks six-feet apart. They planned the birth to make up of a shared family of four, Devon, Joseph’s new partner, would be the Uncle. All the medical and birthright papers were in order, excitement and love was building by the day. But just as suddenly everything changed, the meetings in the park stopped and the universe shifted for Osmundson.
After his dream almost became a reality and then didn’t, he was emotionally swept back to the open sea, already missing his child, who he had always called Fry and had lived in his heart and mind since he was a boy. In his imagination he would hear Fry call him Joey, the only other person who called him by that nickname was his mother. Osmundson’s heartfelt account of his quest for gay parenthood is a crucible of mixed emotions and harsh realities of a lost dream, but not lost love for that dream.
