Are you my daddy?

Karen’s watching 60 Minutes, and they’re doing a story on a sperm bank which over-utilized one particular donor’s sperm. I gather the mothers are worried that their children might end up marrying a half-brother or half-sister. Interesting, don’t you think? You see, this donor’s profile was so attractive, LOTS of women decided they wanted him to be the father of their children.

I suspect most male medical students get the letters — you know, the ones that politely suggest you can earn money by jerking off. Not much money, but $40 a pop adds up after a while. And how many times had I thought, “If I had a nickle for every time . . .”

So I answered the letter. An attractive receptionist took a thorough medical history, and if I’m not mistaken, my blood was drawn as well. Last thing they want is an HIV positive sperm donor, and even waaaaay back then we had testing for carrier status on certain genetic diseases, like Tay-Sachs.

Once I made the first cut, I was told I would have to audition. Because, well, you know — they don’t want just any old sperm.

Auditioning is harder than you might think. They informed me that my “sample” (are you thinking about a supermarket deli yet?) could not be wrung from a condom, nor could my wife help in any way involving bodily fluids or lubricants. Nor could I use any bodily fluids or lubricant. It needs must, apparently, be the product of a dry hump.

You ladies: ask the man in your life, or affable male friend, how easy it is to ejaculate sans lube. NOT.

I was beginning to understand how I would have to earn my $40.

Remember, this was in the 80s, pre-YouPorn, pre-porn DVDs, pre- any porn whatsoever except for magazines, which have never done much for me. Oh, I suppose I might have gone to an X-rated movie theater, but folks got arrested for such behavior. No, I would have to do it the hard way.

Oh. And it had to be fresh.

Some time thereafter, the sperm bank called and requested my presence. What could be so important that I would have to meet with one of the supervising physicians? Were my little guys Super Spermatozoa, so viciously potent they would have to dilute my donations 1:10, such that each sample would garner me $400?

I wish.

Nope. The doc told me there were “too many aberrant forms.”

“I wouldn’t worry about it if I were you,” he said. “You’ll probably be able to father children. But we can’t use donors who provide too many aberrant forms.”

Some years later, when we were having fertility problems, I got myself checked out once again. This time around, everything was fine*, which leads me to ask: was it my spermatozoa who were aberrant, or was it me?

Don’t answer that.

D.

*Karen recalls: “They were better than okay. You had a very high sperm count, with excellent motility.”

So there.

Men

In the June 11/18 issue of The New Yorker, Jeffrey Eugenides writes of his reaction to Nicolas Roeg’s 1971 film Walkabout:

Soon the Aborigine and the girl are cavorting naked in an oasis. Later, as they near civilization, the Aborigine performs a mating dance, to which the girl doesn’t respond, and the next morning she finds that he has hanged himself in a tree.

Two suicides. A lengthy montage of Edenic, but full frontal, nudity. And all without my mother putting her hand over my eyes. Beyond the wondrous excitement of all this was the message the film conveyed, and for which there existed no better recipient than a twelve-year-old growing up in the wake of the sixties: civilization was evil, technology deracinating, and the only solution a return to nature.

Through this whole piece, I was so with Eugenides . . . right up until that last sentence; because, at that point, I became convinced that during our most impressionable years, he and I had watched a different movie. He thought the message of Walkabout was that “civilization was evil, technology deracinating.” (Precocious twelve-year-old, eh?) For me, Walkabout confirmed something my nine-year-old brain had known for several years.

Girls will drive you fooking nuts.

(more…)