War of the Encyclopaedists (37 page)

47

There is no definitive moment when two people become a couple. Elements of intimacy accumulate, and what makes a couple a couple is the gradual recognition of this accumulated intimacy. In the weeks since Corderoy had moved in with Mani, they had fallen into a rhythm: Mani hated doing dishes and Corderoy loathed taking out the trash, so a symbiosis had developed around these household chores; Corderoy left during the days (for “school”) and Mani painted; Mani rolled joints, Corderoy cracked beers. And though the idea that they were nothing more than intimate friends was becoming a fiction, they had yet to admit it to themselves. Without that critical admission, they were not a couple, but merely two people who lived together, ate together, traded chores, fucked each other, and each night left their bodies, vulnerable and asleep, in the shared space of a single bed.

Until you find a place,
Mani had said. And she had meant it at the time. Whether she still did or not, Corderoy wasn't sure. He hoped not, but that hope was fragile, bearing the weight of his conviction that he deserved nothing from her, not even a smile. It was a hope that would collapse immediately if Mani thought for a second that he was leeching off her. There was no way she'd let him stay, given the fact that he'd left her on the street, if he wasn't contributing. He needed money. He hadn't been called back for the cocaine study. He'd donated blood once, but that was only fifty dollars. He needed a miracle, and he found one.

Do You Have What It Takes to Be a California Cryobank Sperm
Donor?
Corderoy went through the checklist on the pamphlet. He was
at least 5'9"
. He was
between 19 and 38 years old
. He
already held a bachelor's degree
. He was
in good health
. And he was
legally allowed to work in the US.
Yes. Of course he had what it fucking took. How hard could it be? And for a hundred dollars per donation, up to three times a week! You could give blood only once every two months. Plasma, twice a week, but at only twenty bucks a pop. And it left your arm bruised and tender.

Comparatively, this was the jackpot. Three hundred bucks a week for whacking it into a cup! He did that anyway, minus the cup. It was a stroke of luck that he'd come across this pamphlet, splayed on the cement in front of the CVS. The thought of millions of little Corderoys swimming their way through the world was, if anything, pleasing. Better his seed than some other idiot's. And if some kid approached him eighteen years later?

You're my father.

No, your mom was my customer. I sold her the seed—through a middleman, of course—and she grew a plant. And that's you. Glad to be of service.

But—

Come back anytime, kid, if you need more seed—but cash on the barrelhead! Now get lost.

He called and made an appointment.

The California Cryobank was located on the ground floor of the large red-brick Bay Square condominium building. Six or seven floors above, large multibalconied condos with spired roofs looked over Central Square. It was ten a.m. on Monday morning, a rare sunny day in late February, almost T-shirt weather; both car and foot traffic were light, and birds chirped in the barren birch trees, exactly as you would expect.

Inside, the receptionist handed Corderoy a clipboard with a stack of forms to sign. He sat down and began reading:

The quality of our donors is the foundation of our service, with less than 1% of all applicants making it through the selection process. Potential donors are subjected to an extensive medical, genetic, and psychological blah blah

He stopped reading, flipped the page, and signed. His sample, according to the next form, would be tested for
sperm count, motility, progression, morphology, and freezing traits.
Flip, sign, flip, sign, sign, initial, sign.
Compensation will not be provided for this specimen as it is used only for analysis
. Balls. Sign.

After handing the sheaf across the counter, Corderoy was conducted through the security door down a hallway and into a room about the size of most doctors' examination rooms. The solid metal door clicked shut behind him. He turned the lock and felt the heavy bolt slide into place, then he surveyed the room. There were the usual pastel prints of plants and lakes on the wall. In the center of the room, a green pleather chair. Next to it, a sink with hand soap and a paper towel dispenser. The only giveaway that this was a masturbatorium was the large cabinet in the corner with a TV, a DVD player, and stacks of DVDs and magazines. He set down the collection cup he'd been given, then shuffled through the DVDs.
Score Island, Latin Sexfiesta, Sorority Sluts 5 . . .

He was accustomed to short preview clips and freebies on the Internet. Actual porn
movies
? He didn't want to have to fast-forward through ridiculous plots to get to the good stuff. And the thought that someone passing in the hallway might hear the moans and genital sloshings and flappings. He would have to do this the old-fashioned way.

He picked up a stack of magazines:
Club, Penthouse, Playboy, Juggs, Leg Show, Naughty Neighbors, Asian Fever.
He flipped through
Penthouse
. How many other donors had held this rag in their hairy palms? None of the featured sections aroused his interest, and soon he had reached the end of the official content, leaving only pages and pages of advertisements. It brought him back to his first pornographic magazine.

He'd found it half covered in a pile of leaves near a park bench somewhere in New York City while on a family vacation when he was fourteen. He'd rolled it up and tucked it next to his hip, cinching his belt tight enough to keep it from slipping down his leg. He walked around all day like that, several times claiming an injured ankle. His mother very nearly got him into a doctor's office.

The best stuff in the magazine had been the advertisements for 900
numbers in the back. Variety! Lesbians, spankings, blow jobs, orgies—it was all there, small but plentiful, a cornucopia of options. It never bothered him that some homeless guy had probably jerked off on that park bench while holding the same glossy pages. Why did it bother him now? Perhaps that was the power of one's first pornographic possession—all previous owners were erased.

Corderoy's dick was in his hand, but it was half-limp. He had to concentrate. He found a suitable image of a black-haired girl licking the head of a penis and struggled toward completion, readying the sample cup in his left hand. But the magazine kept slipping off his leg, and he had to downshift, readjust, and begin accelerating again. After two failed attempts, he managed to dribble a small pool into the collection cup. It certainly wasn't porn-star volume, but he really had no idea what a typical volume of ejaculate was. He'd have to look it up when he got home.

Out at the desk, he hesitantly handed the cup to one of the nurses. They were wearing gloves, but the cup was warm, and they would feel that. Then again, they must be used to warm cups.

The receptionist thanked him, handed him a pamphlet that described the next phase of the process, and told him he'd hear back soon. On his walk home, he flipped through it. It seemed to be for prospective buyers. Rich infertile couples. They must have handed him the wrong pamphlet. There was a list of information one could acquire from different donors, for a price:

They'd been analyzing his handwriting? Writing down their impressions of him? He didn't remember reading that on the consent forms,
but he had skimmed them. He looked down at his clothes. There was a burrito stain on his T-shirt. From last week.

• • •

Mani was sitting near the window, smoking next to an overstuffed ashtray, when Corderoy walked through the door.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Fine,” she said.

“You look, I don't know.”

“Late? Because I'm late.”

“For what?”

He was clueless. She leaned forward and raised her eyebrows. “Late.”

“Oh . . . late.”

“Yeah. Late.”

“So we get a pregnancy test.”

“Will you do it? I can't leave the house right now.”

“Why not?”

“Hal.”

“Okay. I'm sure it's nothing. I'll run down to CVS.”

He left and she inhaled the last quarter inch of her hand-rolled cigarette, burning her fingers. It was probably nothing. It was nothing last time. Maybe it would always be nothing.

• • •

Corderoy stood in an aisle of drugs, under fluorescent lights, soft Muzak bleeding from everywhere and nowhere, examining box after box after box, each claiming to be 99 percent accurate, easy to use, and better than the tests in all the other boxes, each doing exactly the same thing.

He didn't have a great track record at avoiding pregnancy. He'd split the cost of Plan B several times with his college girlfriend. Worse, he'd knocked up his high school girlfriend despite regular condom use. And he'd thought long and hard about what to say to her:
I want you to know that whatever happens, I respect your decision and I'll be here in whatever capacity you need me to be. That said, I also want you to know that I think it's in everyone's best interest, yours, mine,
the potential child's, to not go through with it. We're broke, inexperienced, and we'd make great parents someday, but now's not that day. It's your decision. And I'll live by it. I mean that, I'm here for you, blah blah blah.
He found out later that half his friends had given nearly identical speeches to distraught girlfriends at one time or another. Corderoy liked to believe that he would have kept his word and been the best father he could have been. His high school girlfriend ended up miscarrying.

The cheapest option was the CVS-brand pregnancy test for nine dollars. It made identical claims to the leading brands, Clearblue and First Response. Clearblue was fifteen dollars for the standard version. A stick that you pee on. A plus sign in the presence of hCG (human chorionic gonadotropin). Though the CVS brand was nearly identical, he didn't want to walk back into that apartment and hand Mani an off-brand test. This wasn't a thing you were allowed to skimp on. But which Clearblue? There were several varieties. The digital version (more than twice as expensive) boasted extreme ease of use. No symbols or lines to read. It provided the results in words:
Pregnant
or
Not Pregnant
. P or not P. It was a logical proposition with a simple truth table.

But it could easily be more complicated, depending on the truth value of P
A (If “Pregnant” then “Abortion”) and of the corresponding truth value of “Happy.”

But he could just as easily imagine the same truth table with reversed H values.