Stanley Elkin - Boswell

What I saw when I had switched on the light took away my breath. What Dr. Green had called a lab was really a kind of closet. Around the three walls were unevenly spaced shelves, on each of which had been placed some object obviously meant by Dr. Green to inspire lust. There were those tiny models of women one sees in those drug stores where they sell trusses. The women, otherwise naked, were intricately and suggestively taped, their bandages oddly emphasizing their nakedness. There were rubbery, life-sized breasts removed from some medical school lecture room, the nipples spread and torn by cancer. There were posture charts ripped from old textbooks, the girls in profile, anonymous, one square- shouldered, straight-assed, the next round-shouldered, the pelvis somehow fallen, the behind dragging sluggishly. There was a 1944 wall calendar from a garage in Pittsburgh. There was a model of a plastic, transparent woman, the organs like tainted meat inside her, vaguely suggesting one of those heavy globes portraying some cozy winter scene. I had the impression that if I turned it upside down and shook it, her insides would glow with impossibly slow-falling snow. Everywhere there were plaster of Paris breasts, torsos, behinds, vaginas like halved fruit. In one corner of the closet was a bald life-size department store manikin, completely nude. She had movable arms and legs and these had been arranged in an obscene pose by Dr. Green or one of the donors. The profits from some of those adoptions I scorn paid for this, I thought.

I thought, Oh God, I’m getting out of here, but I made no effort to move. I told myself that it was my fascination with the act of fatherhood that kept me there, but against my will, or rather without it, I began slowly to respond. Quickly my fantasies began to multiply, proliferating wildly so that it was impossible to concentrate on any one of them. One after another, insane images leaped into my head. It was like being on a magic-carpet ride or on one of those subterranean tours of the world. Suddenly my hands were everywhere, touching, fondling, torturing. I put my palms over the rubber breasts and squeezed, the hard doll cancer-ridden nipples pressing unpleasantly into my flesh. I nuzzled my head between the manikin’s breasts; I arranged her hands caressingly and rubbed against them. Just before the orgasm I leaned back heavily against a shelf. The uneven wooden edge put a splinter into my back, but I nearly swooned. I forgot the bottle and only at the last moment managed clumsily to catch the dregs. Sperm was everywhere. Weakened, I knelt to scoop it into the bottle with my cupped palm.

Suddenly Dr. Green pulled back the curtains.

“Forget it, dear boy,” he said. “The woman cleans it up.”

“I thought you were out getting cigarettes.”

“Cigarettes cause cancer. I’m a medical man. I don’t smoke.” He smiled. “That’s mine, I think,” he said, taking the bottle from my hand. “I don’t mean to rush you, but I have to make the test while the stuff’s fresh. You’d be surprised how quickly it dies in the open air.” He took the bottle to a microscope and poured a little onto a slide. The outside of the bottle was smeared with sperm and a little got on Dr. Green’s fingers. I stared at them. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m used to it. Go get dressed. This won’t take long.” I had forgotten that I was still naked.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“Don’t worry about it. You’re a very vigorous man.”

In the closet I pulled the curtain and put on my clothes quickly, averting my eyes from Dr. Green’s collection. When I came out the doctor was sitting behind his desk. For the first time since I had seen him he inspired a kind of confidence. That he achieved this at the expense of my own barely occurred to me.

“Well,” he said expansively, “the count’s a little low — what I call ’the lower limits of normal.’ But you’re not sterile.”

“What’s wrong, then?”

“Well, your sperm count is only seven million per square inch, plus there’s too high a proportion of long- tails and short-tails.”

“Seven million sounds like a lot to me.”

“You laymen give me a laugh,” he said. “Of course it only takes one to make a life. It only takes one.”

“Then it’s all right.”

“Well, it’s a tricky problem,” he said. “We don’t understand it. Somehow the more a man has going for him the better his chances are. You hear seven million and you think you could be the father of your country, but that’s not the way it works. The average man has about sixty million per square inch, did you know that?”

I shook my head.

“The goddamn sperm are incompetent. They don’t know what the hell they’re doing. They’ll swim backwards, get lost, drown, anything to keep from getting the job done.” He frowned. “Oh, it’s a tragic thing when a couple wants children and can’t have them.”

“But you said I wasn’t sterile.”

“Well, technically you’re not. You’re not. But it’s going to be harder for you. Listen. There’s a terrific emotional thing here too that goes on. Don’t leave that out. Your count is low to begin with and you get anxious about conception and that doesn’t help anything. When you make love you got to put all that out of your mind. It’s like what they say about rape. You’ve just got to lie back and enjoy it.”

“Crap,” I said.

“Look, you want some advice? Listen to me. The thing for you is to adopt a kid. Once you do that the edge’ll be off. You’d be surprised how often one of my couples conceives after they’ve adopted. People who’ve been childless twenty years.”

“It doesn’t make sense,” I said. “The fact is that when I was fifteen years old, on my first try, on my first try, I made a girl pregnant.”

Dr. Green looked dubious.

“I did,” I said.

“Who?”

“What does it matter? A girl.”

“Your girlfriend? A virgin?”

“Yes. No. I don’t know.”

“There, you see?” the doctor said.

“Do I see what?”

“Well, sonny, you may have been taken for a ride, that’s all. Did you marry the girl?”

“No.”

“Good for you. Good for you. Sure, that’s what it was, you were taken for a ride. Oh, sure, the sperm count could go down over the years, but it’s an unlikely thing. The first time out? Seven million? Such a high proportion of short-tails and long-tails? It’s hardly likely, and that’s my professional opinion.”

“What do I owe you?”

“Hey, are you sore?”

“What do I owe you?”

“Come on, don’t get sore.”

“What do I owe you?”

“You are sore.”

“He lives with me,” I said.

“Oh,” the doctor said.

“He’s my son.”

“Well, he probably is. It could happen. Sure he is. Certainly.” -

“He’s my son!”

“I’m certain of it,” the doctor said. “The father would know a thing like that.”

“What do I owe you?”

“Fifty dollars,” Dr. Green said.

I put the money on the desk and got up to go. When I walked out of his office Dr. Green followed me. “Listen,” he said, “the next time you make love to your wife, relax.” I pressed the button for the elevator. “Your sperm are a little sluggish. Copulate only once a week. Have her use a pillow under her ass — it makes for a better angle. Make sure the room is warm but not overheated. Cut out fatty foods. Meat is very important.”

I started to walk down the stairs. The doctor stood at the top and called after me. “Try wheat germ. Get in shape. Don’t be anxious.”

“He’s my son,” I repeated to myself. “My son.”

I didn’t want to go home; I didn’t want to see David until I had figured it all out. I went to a bar, and as I drank I thought about Dr. Green. I was a little surprised that I wasn’t really angry. He’s my son, I thought. I began to giggle. Seven million, I thought. Father of my country. I laughed. Short-tails, I thought. Long-tails. I told the barman to leave the bottle. Only one will get through, men, but I’m asking for seven million volunteers. Who swims? Not you, short-tail. Not you, long-tail. I went into the men’s room to pee. You worthless prick, I thought. I went back to my stool at the bar. We’re dead a long time, I thought. How rare a thing it is to be alive, I thought. I told the barman about it. He shrugged. “You laymen give me a laugh,” I said. But really, I thought, how rare a thing it is to be alive, how really rare. It was almost clever of us to manage it. Everything was against it: a hostile solar system, booby sperm, short-tails, long-tails, fatty foods, the wrong angle, cold rooms, overheated rooms. Finally, ultimately, death itself was against it. I felt liberated, almost gay. It wasn’t unlike that sensation one has of self-congratualation at the death of a friend. What did it matter not to have sons? “All the better to hoard one’s life, my dear.”