HUMOR
The Fourth Floor
The alternate universe of mid-life reproduction.
By Kent Doyle
We started out with the best of intentions. My wife and I married in our forties, and decided that a child would cement our love affair. We didn’t anticipate much difficulty. After all, we had spent much of our adult lives trying to avoid unwanted pregnancies. Procreating would simply be a matter of stopping the avoidance mechanism. Sex was fun at this stage of our relationship, so what could go wrong?
Most people our age had had the good sense to procreate in their third and fourth decades; i.e., their 20s and 30s. It’s easier that way. For those of us who were otherwise occupied, a delayed realization that our biological clocks were winding down came during the fifth decade. My wife and I could have accepted the fact that Mother Nature makes late-life pregnancies unlikely for a number of valid reasons. Instead, we hurried into the clutches of modern medicine, bolstered by our affection for one another and our modest life savings.
The purveyors of mid-life reproduction saw us coming. They told us: You’re not too old! It’s only a matter of investing adequate time and money!
We learned quickly that “fertilization through science” encompasses three phases. Phase I is more or less what you’ve been up to recreationally for years, but without birth control. Phase I also introduces various pills, shots, and procedures, the cost of which totaled, for us, about three grand, and could otherwise have afforded us a nice European vacation. By the time we flunked our Phase I final, my wife and I had already started to feel the first pangs of resentment toward one another. Yet it didn’t occur to either of us not to race toward Phase II.
Phase II, or “in utero,” involves the doctor helping your little swimmers to reach their destination via pipette. This has nothing whatsoever to do with the human sex act. In fact, you and your wife aren’t even in the same room. Foreplay involves a syringe sized for a horse and a $150 vaginal thermometer. Here, the woman’s role is relatively passive. Her internal temperature and time of the month dictates timing, but then all she has to do is lean back and be serviced. I envied the fact that no part of her anatomy must actually, actively work, while the poor sperm-pumping slob is required to deliver on a portentously tight schedule. In the doctor’s office I found myself pretending that while I remembered masturbation from my childhood, I would have to strain to reconstruct the procedure.
And feminine sympathy was out of the question. My wife simply refused to view my side as having any difficulties at all. Not to mention the escalating strain on our relationship caused by the absence of just plain sex, concern over the apparent failure of our experiments, and the crushing expense of countless not-covered-by-insurance medical procedures. To sacrifice a nice European vacation was one thing; a year’s lease on his and hers Jaguars was something entirely different.
Amazingly, the marital discord seemed minor compared with the humiliation I endured every time we visited the fertility wing of the hospital. There I was given a key to “the room,” attached to a wooden paddle too big to slip inside any pocket. I’d wait until the coast was clear and then sidle into “the room,” which was stocked with the sleaziest collection of pornography imaginable, including Big Tits magazine. The waiting specimen bottles were fully quart-sized. Did the other guys come close to filling their jars?
Eventually I’d head back to the doctor’s premises with my visible paddle and my visibly nearly empty quart jar of low-motile you know what. At this point I might have reflected on what I was doing. I might have remembered the saying: “With advanced age comes advanced wisdom.” I have two university degrees. Two. I might have tapped into my God-given common senses and pulled the plug on the whole endeavor.
No. By the time we flunked Phase II, we didn’t even talk about not moving on to the third and most drastic phase of human reproduction.
As we underwent the first two phases, we thought that we were spending some money. But until your life is touched by Phase III, or “in vitro,” you have no idea what the words cost and intrusion mean. “In vitro” is a thousand bucks a shot, and you’re not encouraged to limit your efforts to once a week. We could have had the nice European vacation, the his and hers Jags, and a really excellent cocaine habit for a fraction of the cost of our “in vitro” series.
Earlier efforts had taken place in doctor’s offices or hospital rooms. So when we arrived at the fertility clinic, there was no doubt in our minds that we were about to experience the big time. The clinic was in one of those little boutique office buildings with big-budget landscaping and lots of $80,000 cars in reserved parking spaces. Unlike “in utero” fertilization, “in vitro” doesn’t require you and your wife to be in the same building at the same time. Your sperm have proved incapable of successfully negotiating the uterine environment, so the whole process is relegated to a petri dish.
The doctor “harvests” an egg or two at the peak of the female’s fertility, and the male drops by later to make a deposit. The doctor puts the finest egg into his little petri dish and then selects the most vigorous of your seed to place in just the right spot. When the call comes, there is no brooking any delay. You have two hours to perform your manly chore, and if you don’t make it the egg is kaput and so is your thousand bucks. You are issued a blue beeper, which I came to think of as “the masturbation beeper.”
The fertility-clinic waiting room is done predictably in leather and Architectural Digest, instead of the ultrasuede and National Geographic that my dentist prefers. The girl behind the counter looks 16 and innocent in her starched white uniform. I thought phlebotomists only handled blood, but this one seems to have branched out into other bodily fluids. She smiles and hands me a quart-sized jar – the kind of thing a bulk order of mayonnaise comes in.
“Would you like to go to the fourth floor?” she asks. “Most of the guys seem to prefer the fourth floor.” Who am I to bristle against tradition?
Seconds later I find myself waiting for the elevator with the enormous specimen jar in my hand. The fourth floor turns out to house some bond traders’ offices with mahogany doors, and a multi-stall public bathroom. This is it? A thousand bucks a pop and I’m in a public restroom with a quart jar in my hand?
It passes through my mind that I could get arrested for what I’m about to do. Yet the tyranny of a two-hour deadline bears down. I go to work. There is a copy of Money magazine on the back of the toilet. “This might work for the bond guys,” I think, “but it isn’t going to help me much.”
The ambiance is bright fluorescent lighting with industrial tile and porcelain. A gentle waft of Clorox fills the air. It seems like hours before I manage to export a single drop into my jar, and years of practice tell me that there is zero possibility of going back to the well. My single drop rolls around the bottom edge of the jar as I rotate it. Ah, well. Time presses, so I seal my specimen and head for the sink.
The soap dispenser has a little button on the bottom that you push up. I hit it, perhaps a bit too enthusiastically, and the soap sprays toward me, leaving several dark splotches on my blue dress shirt.
I consider bolting. Just running mindlessly out of the building and hiding under my bed. I am in a public building with multiple exits, and I have my car keys. But I am on the hook for a thousand bucks and would have considerable explaining to do. Frantically, I rummage through my mind for a credible lie, but the emptiness of my head matches the emptiness of my jar.
Two hours later my wife calls. “Did something bad happen at the doctor’s office?”
“What do you mean, honey?”
“The nurse told me that you threw your specimen on the desk and practically sprinted through the door, all bent over.”
I drop my head against my hand and say the wisest, cleverest thing that comes into my head: “I can’t imagine what she’s talking about.”
