I thought it strange when my older (shorter and balder) brother called and wanted to go shopping with me, alone. He rarely showed me any attention when we were growing up, except to hold me down and grind his knuckles into my still soft skull. Anyway, we were in the sports department at J.C. Penneys, in front of a shelf full of jocks.
"Betty and I have been trying to get pregnant for some time now," he said, snapping a supporter.
I looked at him suspiciously.
"We're having trouble conceiving," he whispered.
"More than an intelligent thought? divorce her and find someone fecund."
"Her fecund's fine. It's me," he admitted, leaning forward. "I have a low sperm count."
I bent back like he'd caught diphtheria: "Blanks?"
"It's not contagious. My counts low, that's all. We were wondering if you would help us out."
"I'm not easy, and I don't even like Betty."
"You don't have to stuff her, you idiot. Only I have to do that. All we need is you...."
"Did you have to ask me in Penneys? I have Nordstrom kind of sperm. Maybe Emporium. You already have one kid anyway."
"We want another."
"Junior's skull knuckled out?"
He rubbed his right hand as if filing down the culprits. "You still sore about that?"
I scratched my head as if counting each dent. "Why don't you adopt?"
"The odds of that are equal to me hitting .400 against Nolan Ryan. Hey, I'm not going to force it out of you. It's voluntary, like donating blood." He was eyeing the fishing knives, so I grabbed a catcher's cup.
"How does the doctor...?"
"He doesn't." Out of a round metal bin, he pulled a Louisville Slugger, and chocked up on the bat. "You have to...."
It's no mistake that "masturbate" has the same ring as exasperate, violate, mutilate, incinerate, defecate. Watergate. It was bad, I was always told. You were "beating" something; beating anything was bad, except eggs. Hair grows where it shouldn't; blindness. The coach said we'd lose tomorrow's game if we did it. We'd have been 0 and 9 if that were true. Nevertheless, by the time I played high school football, the fatigue theory had long been discredited.
Still, it's a regression after years of cooperative girlfriends, but it's for my brother, even though thanks to him I was born with Siamese knuckles embedded in my scalp. He was always jealous of me. I was younger, taller; had hair, sperm. I wanted to have children too, some day, but I never imagined that it would happen this way.
There were logistical considerations. I had to be at my brother's house, an hour's drive from my apartment, during a specific time of the month. Fortunately, like most collegians, I was majoring in semen donations. Then there was Wilma, my girlfriend. Wilma was the oldest of a large Italian American family. Her mother wasn't very ethnic though, thus, Wilma Mussolini.
I met her two years ago when she gave me a shot of penicillin. She's a nurse in a hospital. It was a tad embarrassing, but at least she now knew that I was cured. Wilma is attractive, in a mercurial Mediterranean-type way. Her dark thick hair hung like a painter's brush, until she got angry over who knows what and permed it into steel wool. She had two large front teeth with an overbite that gave her that bad little girl look; and fitting neatly between high cheekbones, her small hawk-like nose should have given me a clue.
Wilma didn't like the idea of me having a knuckle-dented kid walking around "out there."
"That's sick," she said.
"Betty and I aren't even going to be in the same room."
"You're not in the same room for phone sex either." She wasn't yelling, although I think she wanted to. Her fists were on her hips, and she stood stiff like she was a body builder posing for the judges.
"What's the real problem here, Wilma?"
"We've been going together for almost two years, but we're not planning a family."
"It's called birth control."
"When are we going to get married and have children?"
"When I'm sure it's the right decision. Responsibility is like a fish hook. It's easier getting snared than getting loose, and either way it hurts."
"I want a family..."
"Someday."
"...with or without you."
"Are you jealous of my sister-in-law?"
"I don't mean to be," she said. "I'm just not young anymore."
"You're twenty-three."
"My wisdom teeth are coming in."
"You're acting like this because two of your close friends are getting married this summer."
She dropped her hands to her sides. "I spend a lot of time on the maternity ward." Her voice cracked and she closed her eyes. "My mother had two babies by twenty-three." She looked so sad, I just wanted to hug her. She felt tight, like a body builder.
"Cheer up," I said. "We only have to abstain for four days each month prior to..."
"Why?"
"So I can reload, I guess."
"What about me?"
I should have never said anything about abstinence. We both dropped our arms.
"What if I found a donor?" she continued.
"There's no way I'd let my wife, or girlfriend, be boarded by foreign semen. If I couldn't have my own kids, so be it."
"That's hypocritical. You're doing it for your brother."
"My brother wants another kid so bad, he'll do anything. There's something anthropologically unnatural about it."
"What?"
"Raising another man's sperm. My hard earned student loans are not about to be spent on...."
"Egomaniacal, besides hypocritical."
Maybe that was the point.
No problem with abstinence that night.
I had to get up early (before noon) to get to big brother's. I was glad that nothing had to be extracted with a needle, or God knows what. I envisioned the doctor squeezing my prostrate like a wine bota. This was just a test run. The doctor would count tails, and make sure that they were wiggling like caffeine crazed tadpoles. I had three cups of coffee before I left.
My brother was waiting for his donation at the door.
"Have you eaten?" he asked.
"Na."
"I'll make you breakfast."
"I'm fine."
"I don't want a wimpy kid because you forgot to feed your seed."
"What's cooking?"
"Eggs and bacon."
"Johnny Weissmuller's sperm couldn't swim through that." I looked around the small shiny kitchen. "Where's Betty?"
"She took off. You know, she's embarrassed."
"She's embarrassed?"
"Made worse because she hates you, ever since you told me to marry the blond." He cracked an egg on the edge of a skillet. "What's in the sack?"
"I thought that's what we're here to find out?" He was talking about the brown paper grocery sack I had brought full of my all time classic photos. I grinned and dug into the bag, pulling out a veteran oil-stained issue. "Vaseline and Miss March."
"Cute," he smirked. He always said "cute" when he didn't have anything witty to say. He was never very witty. It's best he was using my sperm anyway.
"You can use Junior's room," he said, as we walked upstairs. Junior was my eleven year old nephew, conceived when my brother had sperm, and hair. He wasn't very witty either.
"After you're done, I'll take it to the doctor and if he tallies something liiiike...forty billion, next month we'll go for the real thing. Just holler when you've ejected."
"Ejaculated."
"Hold on a second." He went into his room and came out with a jar. "Put it in here."
The jar's label was partially ripped off. "Welches Grape Jelly?"
He left me in my nephew's room with the door open. "Why don't you just invite in the neighbors?!"
"You're not that prolific," he said, returning to close the door. I stretched out on the full bed and unbuckled, unbuttoned, and unzipped. My brother kept the house freezing, so I didn't take my shoes off. There it is. Okay, juuust relax. My nephew's room. The walls were blanketed with covers of sports magazines hovering down over me, and the swimsuit edition was no where in sight. What's that Stanford pennant doing up there. I hate Stanford. On the dresser sat a stuffed Garfield and Bert of Sesame Street. Sesame seed. Seed. I had to refocus. What if my nephew became sick and came home from school early? Even if he wasn't sick and came home from school early? Even if he wasn't sick, he'd be home in five hours-not long the way I was going. "Why are you...in my bed, Uncle?" That'd be easy to explain. Yeah, right.
I got out a couple of "men's" magazines. I didn't feel right bringing them into my eleven year old nephew's room. His mother wouldn't allow them in the house. They didn't belong here; I didn't belong here; my semen didn't belong here.
The jelly jar fell off the bed and rolled underneath. I kneeled down on the cold hardwood floor, and saw the jar lying against a magazine. I reached under the bed and pulled it and the jar out. A Hustler. This situation would be easier to explain to my nephew than I thought. Regardless, it was too cold. My vas deferens had frozen up. I yelled and my brother came running up to a jar without jelly.
"I can't do it," I said. "Maybe it was the picture of Billy Jean King on the wall."
My brother tried not to look disappointed. "Well, the doctor said if we didn't get a sample we could just go with it next time and hope for the best." It was strange, but I didn't feel embarrassed anymore. It wasn't like a real woman was in there. Only Billy Jean King, and Bert. In fact, it meant that a macho kind of guy like me needs the real thing, baby.
Betty would be ovulating a month from now. My life revolved around my sister-in-law's menstrual cycle. Worse yet, I had to fertilize over a two day period, making me a sort of weekend warrior. I ate plenty of protein and peas that month, hoping to strengthen my sperm. I'd have had them doing calisthenics if I thought it would help.
Wilma was still weird about it. "I want to be the only woman to carry your children," she pleaded. I'm paraphrasing, but it was something like that, along with a threat to cut off my sperm bank.
"I know," I said, "but this is family. You make sacrifices for family." I wasn't sure what that meant, but it sounded wise.
During the month, Wilma tried to take the interruptus out of coitus by first hiding my rubbers, and then serving me alcohol with everything, trying to get me drunk. "Here are some Wheat Thins, and a scotch."
"We don't have sex as much as we used to," she complained, hurling ice cubes into her mouth like popcorn.
"You know why? Sex with you is like playing hide and seek. I found my rubbers behind the encyclopedias."
"God," she said, rubbing her eyes. "You never look anything up."
"I was looking up PMS."
The phone rang. "Operation Donate is on," my brother said, and then hummed the theme to Mission Impossible.
"Don't sweat, I'm packing Miss November."
When I arrived, my brother said Betty was in the other room "dilating." "I can save money if I place it in there myself," he said.
"A novel idea." This time he held two jars. "You want me to separate the girl from the boy sperm?"
"This one's for me. I'll do it too and then mix them. Doc said I have a few sperm left."
"You want Miss May?"
I lay down again on my nephew's bed, and took a deep breath. I felt like a Boy Scout trying to start a fire with a wet stick. My sister-in-law was in one room dilating, while my brother and I were in two other rooms staring down the openings of minicorn and jelly jars. Beyond Fellini. I wondered how many grapes it took to fill that jar.
I opened one of the magazines. "Hmmm." The girls of Salt Lake City. Na, I wasn't in a pious mood. I listened for my brother to start stirring around out in the hall. He'd be done then, but he was in no hurry either.
Suddenly, one of the pictures ignited a spark in me. "Damn." The magazine folded close. "There," I whispered to myself. "The girls of Texas." But where was that picture, that Texette, the one I lost. I flipped through the September issue like a speed reader, my other hand on the throttle. Ah hah, on page 151 stood the dark-haired beauty with large brown, almost black eyes. She looked seductive holding a towel out to her side like she was going to drop it in a clothes hamper. She reminded me of someone. That body looked familiar, the tight stomach muscles and curvy hips. Wilma? I mean her name was Angelina, but she looked like Wilma. She is the woman who excited me enough to want to impregnate half the calendar?
"Did the breakfast help?" my brother asked just outside the door.
"Don't break my concentration!"
"Sorry."
I reached for the cold jar just in time. It felt as though my semen was being pumped out by a catheter, or an oil rig.
That was good, good as it's ever been. Why did I need that weird girlfriend? It didn't fill up much of the jar, though. Maybe I didn't do it long enough. It looked like spit, but smelt like Ajax. I'd never seen it in a jar before. I'd always left it in a rubber, or sinking into sheets. It would be embarrassing if my brother said, "Miss the jar?" How was I to know if this was a normal amount? I thought about making it look like more by spitting into the bottle. I started working up saliva. Forget it. I'll tell him I'll do it three or four more times real quick.
I stuck my head out the bedroom door, and said, "Done, I guess."
"Great," he said, snatching the jar like a moonshiner. He didn't make any snide remarks, so I figured it was twice as much as his.
"Glad you could make it," he continued, ushering me down the stairs, pushing me out the door. I felt like a cheap date. As I walked from his porch to my car, I looked back through his front window and saw him holding the jar up, eyeing the fluid like a barren Baron Von Frankenstein. I was tired of propagating the human race this way.
When I got back to the apartment, Wilma was breathing like she'd outgrown her rib cage.
"We need to talk," she said.
"One more day, and I'm all yours for another month."
"I'm pregnant."
I stared for a moment, helpless to stop warm blood from gripping my scalp and neck. Her face wrinkled and I reached out and hugged her, more so I didn't have to look at her crying than to comfort her. Her sobs shook her whole body, causing her nose to peck at my shoulder. Cold tears seeped through my T-shirt, warning that mascara wasn't far behind. Just moments before, I was a rogue, easy and free to do as I pleased; I now gazed across the room like a convict just sentenced. All I could think about was eighteen years of child support.
She sniffled, taking several short breaths. "At least we love each other."
I kept hugging her, but said nothing.
She pulled her face away leaving a black spot on my white shirt, and said, "Right?"
"Yeah, sure." I went along with it, but I felt I could get off on a technicality. She had originally asked me when we were in the middle of sex, and I wasn't sure if that counted.
"I left a message for my mother to call back. She'll be a big help with the wedding arrangements."
"Waaaait a minute," I said, my entire body jerking like my sentence had been carried out. "I don't think I'd have said that, even in the middle of sex."
"What's wrong? People who love each other and who are pregnant, get married."
"You say that as though I'd carried out justice during the French Revolution. I want kids as much as you do, but I don't think that pregnancy should force a decision...."
"You're not going to marry me?" Boy, did she start crying then.
"I'm sorry," I said, patting her on the back, "but I still don't think that pregnancy...."
She slowed up long enough to shove me away. "I've been crazy the last month knowing that your sister-in-law would be carrying your child," she cried. "You don't know the kind of pressure I've been under-working on the maternity ward-the kinds of things that I've been plotting."
"Rubbers behind the encyclopedias?"
"Worse."
"I just don't think that we should rush...."
"Shut up! And don't worry. I'm going to go away and leave you alone, and I'll tell the baby that it's a bastard because it runs in the family!"
I wondered if she was serious, I mean about leaving me alone. Did that mean not making me pay child support? "Now, about leaving me alone...."
"Completely alone!"
"Right, but do you mean...." The phone rang. "Ah, let it ring."
"Get it," she barked. "It may be my mother. I'm going to tell her about the bastard-both of them!"
"I'm only getting married when I want kids," I said, moping into the other room, feeling like a cad. "And I'm just not ready."
"What the hell will it take to make you ready?!" she screamed.
I picked up the phone like it was poisonous. "Yeah?" I trembled. It was my brother. "Glad to hear your voice," I said.
"Maybe not. Are you alone?"
"No one can hear."
"Umm, I'm not sure how to tell you this."
"What could be harder than asking for my sperm?"
"Telling you that you didn't give it to me."
"Did you drop the jar?"
"I took a sample to the doctor, and he ran your jar through some tests."
"So?"
"I have a very low count, but my sperm counts like the Chinese compared to yours."
"My semen is sterile?"
"Think of it as worthless. You don't want kids now anyway. You can try to adopt when you get married. Hey, I've come to terms with it. Fatherhood is more than spewing...."
I put down the phone, feeling as though a part of me had been lopped off. I felt numb like my hands couldn't grip. Strangulation was out. I didn't know if I was angrier at her, or the fact that Life had denied me what for so long I'd denied myself. All of those years of condoms, diaphragms, and the pill seemed so silly now. I glanced at the hall mirror to see if "irony" had been burned into my forehead. I dragged my severed ego back towards the only fertile person in the apartment.
"Who was on the phone? Was it my mother?" She was angrily wadding up the grocery sack that I'd brought to my brother's. I hadn't noticed before, but on it was a picture of a missing child with eyes wide and frightened.
"Well?!"
"Yeah. I told her to find a church, quick."
Hal Jennings has served as Editor-in-Chief of Law Research, Inc., a legal publishing firm in San Francisco. He was also an editor for the Congressional Research Service in the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. He is an attorney, educated at the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of San Francisco. He served as both Editor-in-Chief and Managing Editor of the Law Review. He is a published legal author, and is working on his first novel.
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