A man and his wife pushed open the doors of the fertility clinic, with hope in their hearts. It was 1984, the year in which Richard Burton and Truman Capote died and the AIDS virus was first identified. Perhaps, thought the couple, artificial means might succeed where the natural way had failed.
The night preceding the appointment had been a restless one. Weeks of tests, examinations, fortifying medicines and other indignities had taken their toll but had not dampened their resolve. Once inside the clinic, the couple was separated with hardly time for a reassuring squeeze of the hand.
The wife was led away, embarrassed but determined, to a white-tiled room, to deal with the discourtesy of having her intimacy exposed to strangers. The man was handed a glass flask wrapped in sterilized cellophane and was told what was expected of him – produce a few cc’s of the requisite bodily fluid and aim it into the recipient. He was urged by the lady doctor to ensure that only the first two spurts went into the flask, because they would contain the best sperm. She forgot to tell him what to do with the rest.
The man who couldn’t come was shown into a small room, the main purpose of which was to store medical equipment. By a table at its centre stood a hard leather swivel chair bearing armrests made of cold chrome tube. A solitary window gave onto a grey courtyard into which a thin, bleak rain pattered and died. The room was overlooked by another building, the windows of which frowned faceless and appeared empty, yet who could say who might be lurking there and sniggering at a sad man’s plight.
Voices passed along the corridor, some laughing, some earnest, all oblivious to the distress around them. An antiseptic hospital smell cloyed the air. For inspiration, the thoughtful lady doctor had seen to it that a small collection of Playboy magazines was placed at the man’s disposal by the hard leather chair. For his greater pleasure and deeper humiliation.
There came a stranger’s tap at the door.
“Have you finished yet?”
“No not yet,” he replied limply, having hardly started. The man became acutely aware of the importance of accomplishing this act.
“Your wife is ready” came the voice again, meaning she was stretched out legs akimbo on an operating table with her buttocks raised into the most favourable position for the insertion of a catheter into exactly the right spot. All they were missing was the something to put in the catheter.
The man attempted to think of the good times, the exciting times, the private times that loving couples prefer to keep to themselves. Sinking further into misery he leafed through the pages of a magazine, telling himself he was a red-blooded male, and men are supposed to think only of sex and are ever ready to spring into rigid readiness at the merest glimpse of an ample bosom or a length of thigh in provocative stance. He wondered what those girls might think if they knew to what purpose their charms were being put. He asked himself whether this was a betrayal of his wife. He looked down upon his limpness and back again at the pages and sighed in mounting desperation.
An insistent rap at the door.
Trousers back on, close girly mags, cross the room, compose face, open the door.
“We don’t have much time, would you like your wife to come and help you?”
“No!”
“No wait, yes alright then.”
And then her worried eyes, why is he making this difficult, surely it’s not such a hard thing to do, what is his problem? This is not how it is meant to be, he thought, I am not a tap. But what must she think of me? After all, my part in all this is so trivial; it is mechanical, a few minutes and it will be over, then we can go home. She fares no better and her impatience grows. “Today is the best day to do it, tomorrow may be too late.”
“Leave me alone!” he snaps, “let me try again.”
And so he tried and he tried and he willed himself erect but nothing would come. He tried till it hurt and then tried some more. Then he got angry and then he hated himself.
An unmanly tear welled up in the eye of the man who couldn’t come. Unseen and unwanted, like the bleak rain outside, it trickled saltily down to the tip of his nose, where it hung quiveringly a moment. And then dripped into the empty flask.
