The Solitaire Effect

The innocuous-looking GENT-L-KARE plastic specimen container's volume is 4 ounces.

The quantity of the average human's ejaculate is between a teaspoon and a tablespoon. By nautical comparison, the Southern Right Whale unleashes approximately five gallons of seminal fluid in a single mating session. Fortunately, whales do not often need to ejaculate into little plastic specimen containers.

Unfortunately, tomorrow, I do.

Yes, kids, it's another infertility post. If that's not your thing, there's lots of good porn out there that I can't masturbate to until tomorrow morning at approximately 6:30am.

Then, I will race the semen over to the lab (it has to get there in one hour-- I'll be driving like those crazy Gift of Life people with their coolers full of kidneys) and try to make it to work on-time. I've already asked for permission from my supervisor to come in half-an-hour later and work a half-an-hour later.

"Why?" she asked.

"Um, I have an... appointment?" She furrowed her brow at me.

"That early in the morning?"

I hesitated.

"Yes?"

She regarded me quizically. She probably thinks I'm on drugs. Unfortunately, I'm not.

Of course, because I am not medicated, I am obsessing about the details of this little... process.

"I'm scared I'm going to get it everywhere," I complained to my wife, who has already endured several invasive procedures/tests, and was probably the wrong person to complain to.

"Look, you pussy," she said to me, "just as you're about to jit, tilt downward and put the cup right over your dick."

I stared at her.

"Excuse me, are you attempting to give me points on masturbation? That's like Rick Moranis trying to give Kobe Bryant lessons on basketball, or sex with hot chicks."

"Right, sorry," Mrs. Apron said, "I forgot that you invented jerking off."

"No," I replied, "I just minored in it in college."

The funny thing is, because you have to eliminate the sample (whoa-- I sound like Hitler) within an hour of getting it to the lab, I'll be doing this while normal people are getting dressed and ready for work. Maybe they'll be sitting down to a bowl of Cracklin' Oat Bran or Raisin Balls or something, and I'll be cruising the net for porn. Sure, I could involve Mrs. Apron in this endeavor (she volunteered to "help") but, for some reason, I'm opting to do this the old fashioned way. Call it the Solitaire Effect, but this is something I'd prefer to do alone.

Don't ask me why. Anybody who'd give up real, live play from one's cute-n-pert life-mate in favor of masturbation clearly needs psych meds.

I know me, though-- I'm going to be way too nervous and freaked to be any fun, way too disorganized and trembling to involve another person in this madness. I'm scared I'm going to miss the container entirely, forget to close the window shade in the office, spooge on my trousers, not be able to get it up (um, that one's probably irrational) and that I'll crash the car on the way to the lab, that I'll get stopped by the police for speeding and they'll test the contents of the container on the passenger seat next to me thinking it's some kind of new fangled liquid crack.

Of course, the thing I'm most afraid of is that they'll find my semen are all broken, or that they wear funny little moustaches, or that they are deformed, or that they only speak Korean.

My silly little semen. Never called upon to do anything particularly consequential in life except for reduce that nagging, dull heaviness in my ballsack, they will now face the most important splonk of their life: they will be examined, put through the ringer, tested and prodded, and will they measure up?

I don't know. And I'm scared.

But only after placing them inside the sterile GENT-L-KARE container, UPN#00605863492803, will we know the gloopy, gloppity, slippery, slimey truth.

Keep your testes crossed for me, kids.

Soon, I Will Jit in a Cup

And, later that day, I will blog about it.

Because that's the kind of society in which we live, and that's the kind of guy I am. And, fortunately, that's the kind of wife I have-- who will tolerate my exposing explicit and painful components of our lives to you, all-too-perfect strangers-- and not divorce me and/or pelt me in the junk with a tennis ball.

Such an act of junkular violence, obviously, would rather run counter to our procreation mission.

When we miscarried in the autumn of 2009, I innocently thought that we could wait the prescribed three months and just, you know, make it happen again. Turns out that, unlike ordering the "Rooty-Tooty Fresh & Fruity Breakfast," is easier said than done.

On Friday, Mrs. Apron went to a fertility clinic. They have prescribed her hormone medication. They're going to inject dye into her girl parts and take a look to see what shape everything's in. They're going to test her blood.

And, of course, they're going to test my spunk.

I'm not thrilled about this prospect, but I'm trying to be positive and mature about it. As you might imagine, neither comes naturally to me.

Heh-heh. "Comes."

See?

The good thing about the semen analysis is that I get to masturbate into a cup in the comfort of my own home on a Wednesday morning, and then drive it over to this clinic on my way to work. I don't have to do it in the exam room like some creepy bastard, and I don't have to let the scrubs-adorned pony-tailed chippy behind the counter know any of my peculiar pornographic proclivities. Which is nice.

What's going to be weird is that, on Wednesday mornings, my wife is at home. Like, how is this going to work-- logisitically speaking? I'll wake up, get dressed, walk the dogs before they explode all over the place, and then, like... what? Will I be here upstairs jackin' away while she's downstairs eating her "Smart Start"?

I mean, weirdsies.

There was a funny thing in the packet that says, "Occasionally, due to religious reasons, the sample may have to be obtained during intercourse. A special condom designed for this purpose will be provided." My wife read it to me and we laughed. Good ol' Catholics: saving the day with a dose of ice-breaking "Every Sperm is Sacred" comedy once again.

There is, of course, nothing funny-- about Catholics or infertility-- going on here, but I don't know what else to do at this point but be an idiot. Really, it's kind of my default. And thank God Mrs. Apron encouraged me, or at least allowed me, to blog about this.

"You realize that, if I do that," I said to her on Friday afternoon after her appointment, "that I'm going to do it my way, right?"

She smiled at me.

"I wouldn't expect anything less."

"Ha!" I laughed, "or more."

"Exactly."

I want a baby-- a son or a daughter, but not both at once, please-- and I will jit in a cup if it means that we'll be one step closer to the life we've wanted together for a very long time. I'm not in a rush or a hurry, but I am getting a little impatient to get started with this next part of our lives. It's not a contest, or a race, or a anything, really. And it's certainly not a joke. But, sometimes, it's really all I've got.

Well, that, and a hell of a lot of love.

Fair

It's easy to get depressed.

Just stop in the course of your Blackberry-Scrolling, Iced Chai-Swilling, Windows 7-Was-My-Idea'ing day. Just... stop. Just be a little still for a moment or two, maybe with your eyes closed (ill-advised if you're driving, operating a wheat-thresher, or negotiating a spiral staircase in a pair of stilettos or mukluks or, worse, stiletto mukluks [patent-pending]) and, if you just think, honestly, about your place in the world or your family, or your aging loved ones, or your job, or your long-dead grandparents, or about Israel, or about the oil spill, or about young widows, or about children without mommys, or about British cars from the 1970s, or the violence in the Sierra Leone, well, you'll get depressed pretty much in no time.

Though my blog may have successfully concealed this fact, I've been in an incredibly depressive funk for the past several weeks. I don't know if it's Depression, the kind that middle-aged women have in TV commercials-- the kind of Depression that's pronounced "Fibromyalgia"-- but I definitely am depressed. Little d.

The lowest point was when I called my mother a couple of days ago, just to yell at her about how selfish and disgusting my middle sister is, and how I hate her for what she's doing to our family-- having a baby practically out-of-wedlock, married to a man she doesn't love, and using my parents as full-time baby-sitters, and expecting everyone to wait on her hand and foot. My mother, dumbfounded and blindsided, didn't say much. Not getting the reaction I desired, I suppose, I hung up. She called me back later that night, because she's my mother. Anybody else would have stopped speaking to me for at least twelve years.

"You know," she said, "I don't really believe that's what you're upset about."

"Oh, really?" I replied, challenging her, "I'm upset about fuckin' everything-- so, pretty much, if you pick something, you're bound to be right. Better odds than the Roulette Table."

"Well," my mother began, in an unusually deliberate, careful way, "that may be true, but I still don't think that's what you're upset about." She took a breath. "I think you're upset about your miscarriage."

For a moment, I said nothing. And that always says something.

"Well that may be true," I conceded dryly, flatly. My tone belied the rage-tainted blood pounding through my veins. My head hurt and I wanted nothing more than to hang up the phone and not have this conversation. It was a taboo conversation to have, and my nine-month-old nephew's very existence made it taboo.

"It just isn't fair," I said to my mother, like a little boy might. "Why should she get to have a baby? She's got a shitty apartment in the city, she hates her husband, and she never, ever wanted a baby, and she barely gives a shit about him now that he's here. It's just not fucking fair," I whined.

"Fair doesn't even begin to enter into it," my mother said, sighing. "You have no idea how my heart breaks for you. And I know what you must be going through every time you see your nephew. I know. And you see us all with the baby-- and you're not pregnant yet-- and it hurts. But you will have a baby, and it will be wonderful." She stopped, maybe waiting for me to answer, maybe to gain her own composure. I don't know. Then she went on. "I know it's very hard for now-- and this is around the time you were going to be due, and I think that's really what's going on. Don't you?"

"I don't know," I said softly. And, really, I don't. I don't know if it's our miscarriage, or the fact that my time at my current job is dwindling down to nothing, and I have no solid leads on a job. I don't know if it's the curse on my head that fates me to be doomed to make $30,000-a-year for the rest of my life, in spite of a Master's degree and a nice vocabulary and a respectable haircut and a closet full of ties. I don't know what it is that has brought the little d to visit me whenever I have a moment to stop and sit and think. But it's here. And it hurts.

The miscarriage hurt-- no-- hurts. I know it happens. I know it wasn't a viable pregnancy. I know I know I know I know I know I know. I know it happens to lots of people. I know it might have even happened to you and, if it has, I'm very sorry and I'd hug you if I could. And I know it isn't fair to take it out on my shithead sister or her stupid, worthless husband. And it certainly isn't fair to take it out on their baby, with whom I love to play on my parents' living room floor. I think it's fun when he uses my finger as a teething toy, and I like to feed him his bottle. One time I almost fell asleep feeding him as the warmth of his body against my chest just lulled me away. He's pretty funny, and he is a brilliant mimic, just like his uncle. If you curl your fists and grunt, he does it, too. When he does this, my eldest sister calls him "Frustrated Frankenstein."

I remember the only other time my mother and I talked about the miscarriage-- well, we didn't really talk about it, we communicated about it. It was shortly after my nephew was born, maybe two months or so. I came over to their house to see him, and he was sleeping. And my mother and I stood by the carriage together looking down at him, watching his chest rise and fall so rapidly the way they do at that amazing young age and I caught sight of my face in the wall mirror-- on the wall of my own childhood bedroom-- and I saw my lower lip curl and I wanted nothing more than to look away from that, but I just looked down at the baby again, and these crazy, hot tears just started streaming down-- they were everywhere, on the arm of my shirt and racing down my nose and my fingers, and my mother was just standing there next to me and she put her hand inside mine, her dry, skinny hand and I could hear that she was crying too, but I didn't dare look at her-- I just didn't dare because, well, then it would have been real. It would have been not just me, it would have been a real, real thing, and I thought, well, if I can just keep it to me, it will just go away.

It hasn't, of course.

And I know it's not supposed to. I know. But thank God I have my wife, who is everything, and my mother, who knows everything, and my charming little nephew, who imitates everything. And you, who listens to everything.

Thank you.