1 Boy 16 Cups or: Getting to grips with Scotland’s Sperm Shortage

Sat there on the hospital bed, trousers round my ankles and tally whacker in my hand, I turned the glossy pages of one of the hundred or so pornos that had been left in the bedside cabinet for this very purpose. I kept glancing at the clock on the wall, nervous that I shouldn’t be too quick, nor should I take forever, but the thing was stuck at 11.57 and remained so during the course of my visits. My own hands were equally as ineffective as those of that clock; try as I might, Reader’s Wife after Asian Babe after Girl Next Door, I beat my semi like a naughty puppy that had chewed its master’s furniture for the last time; and yet the cup remained mockingly empty.

This was a recently built, clean environment but for all the pages of smut at my disposal I just wasn’t feeling it. It’d taken me an hour and a half on different buses to get out there; it was raining and I’d only had coffee for breakfast. The embryologist was very attractive and friendly but it’s not like she stayed around to help, only to confirm my details were correctly recorded on the cup and ask: ‘How long since your last ejaculation?’ She didn’t even dim the lights, light a few candles and put on Morcheeba.

In order to ensure an optimal sample they ask you to abstain for between two and seven days. The sperm needs to be frozen and a good quality will help with the survival rate. As I mentioned in my previous post, I had come there thinking myself impotent but discovered that I was actually quite virile (I won’t bore you with the details suffice it to say I have laminated the print out and any time I happen to be in a bar that medical students frequent I’ll whip it out and show them.) We discovered that my little fellas, as I began to affectionately refer to them, need around four days to get their strength up if they’re to survive the freezing process. As I wasn’t seeing anyone at the time this didn’t prove to be too much of an effort.

Under the subsequent pressure of days of forced abstinence you’d think the sperm would be getting a bit cramped down there and so be eagre to get out and wagle their tails; but no, there I sat on the towel on the bed in the clinic. It’s the internet’s fault of course; back when I were a lad you were thankful for a Razzle you found in the forest or a dirty late night French film on Channel Four. Now we can watch whatever godless, degrading, illegal filth we can imagine for free and instantly; it’s raised the bar unreachably high and that’s made it hard to raise the bar – if you catch my drift.

In amongst the magazines I discovered a couple of DVDs: ‘Paydirt!’ I muttered, and shuffled over to the TV on the wall and fed one of the movies into the side. The scene selection screen came up but I couldn’t find the remote anywhere. I was able to navigate using the volume and channel change buttons on the side but only to select a scene, not fast-forward. So I stood there in front of that flat-screen, Mr Winky all shrivelled up like a christmas balloon in January, and tried to tease him back to life as I endured the horrendously acted set-up to the action. I had the sound down low because it was a quiet part of the building but we’d passed a few people at a desk on the way so I was scared of the sound travelling. The trouble with this is I could barely follow the story but gathered it was something about two undercover female Police Officers who go to a warehouse, do some kung-fu at the bad-guys then rape them. Of course it’s different when the law rapes you, especially if you’re a man, as a hard-on is always taken as a Yes.

The time was getting on and the young ladies were stripped down and having oil applied liberally to their surgically enhanced bodies. Finally something rose in me and I reached for the cup, the trouble was though, that the cup had a circumference less than that of the end of my John Thomas. A technique had to be quickly invented where I would anchor the sharp edges of the cup millimetres from the end of my bell-end by gripping it in my fingers as I locked thumbs. On screen the law rode the criminals; I tried my best to match my rhythm to the cup to complete  my endurance petit mort without giving myself a plastic circumcision.

Job done, I screwed the cap down on the cup and cleaned myself off. In the video the criminals are ejaculating in creamy torrents onto the faces of the Police Officers; thick, creamy ooze pumps out, again and again, covering them as they squint up at the camera, smiling lasciviously. I held my cup up and and peered at the pathetic amount I’d been able to produce and sighed to myself. I got my breath back, washed my hands and summoned the embryologist via the telephone. My IQ had dropped about thirty points and I became furtive and nervous as now I had to embark on the walk of shame past the staff, and they all knew what I’d been doing in there, I could feel their eyes, scanning me for genetic abnormalities and dangerous pre-dispositions; hoping I’d mopped up after myself after choking the chicken in their clean hospital.

In all I did this sixteen times. Two things I wish I’d done: 1) The first time I gave a sample and the embryologist handed me the cup I’d wanted to say: ‘To the top?’ 2) After putting the cup in the brown envelope and summoning her via telephone to collect me I’d wanted to weigh down the envelope. Not particularly hilarious but I didn’t have a lot to work with that wouldn’t get me put on a register.

In case you’re thinking they’ll take any old perverted reprobate off the street, let me assure you that there is a screening process. Before any of this they tested my blood and urine then I laid down while a thick fingered doctor fiddled about with my junk; he drew two ovoids on his form and wrote 15 next to one, and 20 next to the other. Everything checked out. Then I had to talk to a shrink for an hour as they need to get at your reasons for donating; check that all your dogs are barking; ensure that you’re not deluded in some way or could become a problem for anyone involved down the line. I told her what I told you in the last post and others before it, I just want to do something nice for someone, because I haven’t always considered others. It’s not that I believe in the afterlife or karma and so fear comeuppance or reprisal, I just think the world sucks and people need to help each other out more. I mean, if you’ve got two people that love each other so much they’re willing to spend a fortune and involve science to create a child, I’m thinking that there’ll be a lot of love in that family.

At the end of my visits they took some more blood and gave me a form to fill in. I have no legal responsibility to any children born of my donations – an amount that can number no more than 10, in case you fear Scotland could be a very different place in 30 or so years – but they did ask that I write a little about myself to help prospective donors decide on suitability. Plus I had to write a wee message to the child that it would read upon its 16th birthday – just to give it an idea of its ancestry. And here’s where it gets interesting: On the child’s 18th birthday he or she will be given my name and last known contact details, so if they wish, they can seek me out.

What the clinic recommends parents do, and this has been proven to be true, is tell their child that they were born as a result of a sperm donor while they are still, well, a child. None of this waiting until they’re a teenager to drop the bomb – if the child grows up knowing this then it won’t affect how it feels about its parents when it grows up. It sounds perfectly reasonable and it’s my opinion that parents should be as frank, honest and straight up, dude, with their kids right from the start. I’m still on the fence regarding the whole nature versus nurture thing and it’s a debate I would love to have but there’s not much wine left in the house so another time perhaps.

As for any financial remuneration sperm donors receive in Scotland, unfortunately we’re not paid as such – this has something to do with morality and incentive. Instead we are paid a flat rate per donation that is to cover expenses and ensure people do it for altruistic reasons, rather than pay for Laser Quest and KFC; dammit. This works out at £35 per (used) donation regardless of your distance from the clinic or any costs you may incur as a result of visiting, but does not take into consideration any visits where the purple headed soldier’s services are not required. I’ll admit this came as a pleasant surprise as I had been saving my bus tickets in the beginning when I heard ‘expenses’ but I still felt the dirtiest of all my time in that building when they paid me, dirtier even than anything me and my floppy trouser snake got up to.

In all I was on a stringently regimented period of masturbation for almost three months, on and off; and of my wanks into a cup, sixteen have been frozen. In 6 months I will go back, give them some blood and urine so they can see if I’m turning inside-out on goofballs or growing a tail, and if all goes well then they will begin to show prospective recipients my details. I wish them luck.

I’m not sure what to do now; the blood is an ongoing thing so what shut up and I don’t think I want to turn my head into a hair farm to be cultivated every three years. If I can’t think of any more bits of myself to cut off or drain away, and I have no fortune, and if you good people can’t come up with anything, then why not donate the one thing I have oodles of: Time. The trouble with that is I’m terrified of people; but I’m working on that. In the meantime I suppose I can spare a ball; take the smaller one, there’s more than enough love to go around in the one that’s left.

Here’s the introduction post I mentioned; not that it ended up really relevant after all. I put it here at the end as I didn’t want unsuspecting passers by to feel they needed to read it first and then be put off by by my trademark whiny bullcrap. Thank you for reading, love you, kisses to the family xx