Joseph O’Neill - The Dog

I don’t want to be detained further by this stuff, because life’s too short. YOLO. But one last item makes a demand on the attention. It will be noted that our famous maxim doesn’t go, ‘Hell hath no fury like a woman in a state of severe romantic disappointment.’ Rather, it makes express reference to an action attributed to her (ex-)partner — the one who is deemed to have committed an act of ‘scorning’. I have inputted ‘scorn’ in the Free Dictionary. To scorn someone means to treat that person with disdain or contempt; to mock. I have looked up ‘disdain’ in the Online Etymology Dictionary: it is negatively derived, as one might expect, from the Old French deignier , to deem worthy or fit, which in turn comes from the Latin dignus , worthy, proper, or fitting, which in turn is rooted (as is ‘decent’, I see) in the Proto-Indo-European (i.e., over-five-thousand-year-old) dek , to accept, receive, greet, be suitable. I’ve also looked up ‘mock’. Though it obviously arrives immediately from mocquer (Old French), beyond that it is of uncertain origin (though there is a suggestion that the word may have to do with the Vulgar Latin muccare , to blow the nose (in a gesture of derision), which is itself the offspring of mucus , slime or snot). These investigations confirm that the evocation of the figure of the ‘scorned woman’ contains within it an automatic characterization of the male (or female: I am not aware that the ‘hell hath’ maxim is of only heterosexual application) as actively snotty, derisive and contemptuous. This blanket judgment, precisely because it is the nature of a judgment, in turn contains a grotesque rumour of the judicial — of a procedurally verified finding.

Was I a scorner? A looker-down? As I recall, this was a very lowly time for me, and I cannot think how I would have been able to look down on anyone, let alone high-up Jenn. Was I an oaf? Yes. Did I culpably cause damage? For sure. Did I fail her? Guilty as charged. It’s all somewhat foggy at this point, but certain memories are clear. Jenn had bravely done her bit — taken the follicle-stimulating hormones, gone every second day to follicle-measuring appointments, and above all taken on the chin the emotional agony that the dismal saga of artificial fertilization inflicts. All that remained, in order to try to make the baby we agreed we would try to have, was for me to do my part. The IVF calendar had produced an insemination date on which I’d be travelling for work, and this meant that I had to produce a semen sample in advance: the fluid would be frozen and used in my absence. I duly took myself to the clinic, or facility, which was in the basement of a brownstone in the East Twenties or Thirties. It was a strange little place. A sadness of masturbators, as I will collectively name them, sat around on grey chairs, each waiting his turn. A human voice was heard only when someone had dealings with the cheerful nurse-like woman who sat at a desk behind an open hatch. She gave me a form that required me, as I recall, to be specific about the number of days I’d been ‘abstinent’. I shamefully provided this and other information, and took a seat. The semen production took place in a separate area, the entrance to which was closed by a shut door. Once in a while, a guy went in and a guy came out. I did my best to not monitor the amount of time anybody took in there. Jenn texted,

Good luck.

A different nurse-like worker entered the waiting room. She called out a name that did not sound like a name at all. Everybody looked around. She tried again, with a different articulation. I realized she was trying to summon me, by my first, horrifying name. When I stood up, everyone looked at me with, I’m sure, a kind of revulsion. In I went. A short corridor gave on to the two chambers where masturbation happened. I entered one of these, on my own naturally, though I recall that I was nonetheless taken aback to find myself alone in this little room. There was a surprisingly cheap armchair — maybe I’d been half-expecting some kind of special custom-made jack-off lounger — a few worn pornographic magazines, and a tiny piece-of-shit non-flatscreen TV that must have been about twenty years old. Onan himself would have found the set-up a challenge. I studied the laminated instruction card and wrote my name on the receptacle label and stuck the label on the receptacle. I activated the shit TV. There was a scene of a male repetitively fucking some featureless moaning blonde. I hit Fast Forward. Now some other dude was banging a woman from behind while she gave his or her buddy head. I watched for a few more seconds, hoping for some contagious performance of desire on the part of the woman actor, because surely that is the core fantasy — that one is desired. I was already distracted about how much time this was taking. What was normal? Five minutes? Ten? The question of volume worried me, too: I wanted audio, but I didn’t want it to be overheard by anyone. Fuck it, just do it, I said to myself. I dropped my pants and got started — standing up, because there was no way I was going to sit on that chair. A minute or two passed. My dick was inert as a sock. I turned off the TV and tried with closed eyes. When that didn’t work, I turned off the light, which was a bad idea, because I needed to capture the ejaculate in the receptacle and I couldn’t see a damn thing. I tried to relax; I breathed deeply; I recalled certain erotic triumphs of my youth; and I began to get a response. But every time I thought I might be getting close to producing something, the climactic sensation dissipated. I kept working at it. By the time I finally gave up, half an hour had passed, and the guys out there were surely wondering what the hell I was up to. ‘I’m having a problem,’ I said to the nurse, actually hanging my head. She looked at my information sheet. ‘You live nearby, right?’ I said I did. She said, ‘Why don’t you take the vessel home with you, honey, and then just bring it back here right away when you’re done.’

Meanwhile, another text from Jenn:

Done?

I was done, all right — as of that moment. I walked to the rent-stabilized one-bedroom in a chill of nausea. I waited there. When she came through the door, I told her I needed to talk to her. She went off into the bedroom, and when eventually I went in there after her, she went back out into the living room. ‘Could you please stop moving around?’ I said. ‘I want to say something.’

‘I’m really, really tired.’

I was very clear in my mind what I wanted to say. I did not want to start a discussion. The time for discussion had come and gone. I made sure to use very plain sentences. I told her I’d tried and failed to produce a semen sample. I told her I did not intend to try again.

She said, ‘You mean you’re breaking up with me?’ As usual, she’d gone straight to the pith.

I expressed no disagreement.

Next, I remember, she said, ‘I need a drink.’ Later she said, ‘OK, this isn’t happening. Let’s just go to bed and see where we are tomorrow.’ Later still, in tears, she said, ‘You can’t do this to me. I want a baby — you give me a baby! You owe me. You owe me my baby!’ At some other point she said, ‘You can’t back out now. It’s not right. It’s not fair. What am I supposed to do? Start dating? Find someone else? I’m thirty-five years old!’ She made further statements, including the statement that I was the murderer of her marriage. She said, ‘OK, look, just give me the sperm. I’ll have the baby myself. I’ll take care of the baby. I don’t need you. I can do this. I’m strong.’ And, ‘I’m going to be a laughing stock.’ And, ‘You wait until I’m having fertility treatment, and then you quit? Oh, boy. It’s like you’ve done this on purpose. Is that it? I’m right, aren’t I? You’ve done this on purpose.’ And, ‘My God. You’re a monster. A monster. A narcissistic psychopath. My God. That’s it. That explains everything.’ She tore off her clothes and bent over and spread her ass cheeks, and said, ‘Fuck me! Go on! Fuck me! Can you do that? Get your cock out like a man! You fucking asshole! You coward! You had to wait until now? What’s the matter? You don’t like pussy? You fucking psychopathic asshole.’ This was when she went for me, when she was naked, lunging at me with a terrible scream and clawing at my crotch and face. I fended her off and ran to my usual retreat, the bathroom, and locked the door. Leave me alone, I said. Please leave me alone. She started to punch and kick the door, which she had never done before, and there was the terrifying new sound of wood splitting. ‘Open up. Let me in, you coward,’ she said. ‘Be a man. Face up to what you’ve done.’ I stayed where I was, leaning against the door, panting. A very long time went by, as I experienced it, in which I stayed in the bathroom and she stood at the door and screamed obscenities and threats. Then she began weeping loudly, and the barrier I’d rightly or wrongly put up to defend myself against her agony crumbled, and as she sobbed I opened the door, hoping maybe to be of some comfort or at least to bear witness to her pain, of which I was the cause. I’d opened the door no more than three inches when I felt the crash as she tried, with another terrible cry, to push her way into the bathroom. The sobbing had been a ruse. I was only just able to heave back and lock the door once more.