When I was 7 years old, my father told me I was conceived through an anonymous sperm donation. As he told me the story of where I came from, the scene became burned in my memory like an acid-etched plate.
On a breezeless summer day in June 2002, I idled my bike to a stop. I was tired; sweat was building up in my black, angular bike helmet, dripping down into my eyes. I stood next to a wrought iron fence lining a road that overlooked a drainage ditch, bone-dry in the unforgiving Texas heat. The few drops of sweat that fell to the concrete from my forehead quickly evaporated. My sense of identity, too, had evaporated.
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