1 Boy, 1 Cup

I have decided to become a sperm donor.

As a gay man in my twenties, I never considered children. It’s just not something I imagined possible. To me, it was like licking your elbow or winning the lottery or Heidi Montag and Lauren Conrad being friends again. I figured, if I couldn’t get married, then kids just simply weren’t an option.

Sure, there are plenty of gay couples who have children, but that just didn’t compute for me. And now in my mid-30s and now that I can get married, I’m nowhere near ready to have kids. So I’ve accepted that raising a child is not in my cards.

There are no possibilities of a partner on the horizon. I don’t want to be a single parent. Changing diapers makes me gag. And while it is true that it takes a village to raise a child, my village is full of idiots.

So I figured I would be a sperm donor. If my tests are clear, then for the next six months, I will make a bi-weekly pilgrimage to a cyrobank in West Los Angeles and make deposits.

Cut to eighteen years later: If the child wants to meet me, then I get a child that has gone through all the growing pains and the unenviable period of hating their parents. By then, I’ll be rich and powerful and living in fabulous homes all over the world. I’ll put them through college and pay for their weddings and therapy. And if I need a kidney, then I have a possible back up plan.

It’s like a layaway.

I can honestly say I’m not doing it for the money. There’s something kind of wonderful about helping a couple in which one is shooting blanks. Or a woman who chooses to have a child. Or a lesbian couple who want to start a family. But at nearly a hundred dollars a pop, it will help put gas in my car for a day or two.

I can thank my parents for good genes. All of my grandparents lived very long lives. My parents are still alive and happy. I’m athletic and creative. College graduate (though I’m still not sure how that effects my sperm, but apparently it’s important). And tall and healthy. And I’m not terrible looking. My main flaw, which wasn’t on the list, is that I’m attracted to morons.

It’s sad that while sitting in that sperm bank I came to the realization I’m a pretty good catch.

Today was all about filling out forms and providing a specimen for examination. I filled out health and family history. Then I got to the “sexual history” portion of the program.

I’m going to be here till Labor Day, I thought. Number of partners. Number of times. Dates of said relations. I can’t remember what I had for breakfast, much less what I “had” in March. They should really just have boxes that you could click that read, “virgin,” “active,” “popular,” “get around,” “slut,” and “dirty, dirty whore.”

After the forms, I was introduced to my cup and taken to the “collection room.” I’m not sure what I was expecting out of the collection room. The web site didn’t exactly show pictures like a day spa or a resort, but I might have pictured a large room with a fountain, Sade playing on the stereo, canvas oil paintings, candle light and a table or a bed with chocolates on the pillow.

Instead, it was a room that was three feet by six feet. A desk chair. A sink. A small flatscreen television/DVD combination. A box of “seat covers” for said chair. And a box with porn. Straight porn.

It was smaller than a voting booth and I wasn’t poking any Chads. Or those things you punch out on voter cards.

By a show of hands, how many people have jerked off while seated in a chair? Clearly I’m not as adventurous in my masturbation positions.

I’ve also never jerked off in a chair with a television screen two feet from my face. I mean, sure, it’s like masturbating in an IMAX theater, but when a vagina is like the size of the Grand Canyon, it’s not inspiring to the boys down below. And porn movies make me laugh. I’m constantly scrutinizing the plot and dialogue.

But there was a bigger issue at… well, at hand. You see, Little Alex didn’t want to come out and play.

As a potential donor, you are instructed NOT to ejaculate for 48 hours before visiting the facility. There is even a note that says, “if you think that will be a problem, please reschedule.” I can only hope to imagine one day going through my plans for Sunday: go to church, brunch with friends, shopping at the Grove… ejaculation. Or even worse, having an “accidental” ejaculation and having to call and say, “hi, I need to move my donation to Thursday. I had a slip-up. That’s right… I had an unexpected ejaculation. Totally didn’t see it coming.”

So with 48 hours since my last sexy time, all seven and half inches of lusciousness was out to lunch. You know how people say, “it happens to everyone.” It has never happened to me. And now it was happening when volume was the most important. It was as if Little Alex was punishing me.

I tried everything. Standing. Lying on the ground. Lying on the ground with one leg on a chair. I tried the chair. I looked like a model in an Annie Leibowitz photo shoot. Hell, I even tried the porn, but I couldn’t get an erection with all those damned shaved vaginas in the pictures! And when I popped in the video, I started laughing. I was horrified when I realized I was in a room right next to another donor who can hear me laughing.

I tried all my go-to fantasies: David Beckham, the yoga instructor at my gym, my first boyfriend, the entire male cast of Battlestar Galactica. Nothing. I even whipped out the vintage memories of Jake Gyllenhaal and Hugh Jackman... though not together, but perhaps some sort of Brokeback meets X-Men scenario might work in the future.

I even did my impression of Darth Sidious at the end of Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith when he commands, “Lord Vader…. Rise.”

Nothing.

Nothing seemed to work. I tried talking dirty to the cup, but it just sat there. Cold and standoffish. Much like a Sunday afternoon at Here Lounge.

There wasn’t any lube, but there was some melon scented hand soap on the sink. FYI: bad idea. My magic stick still smells like melon. I thought, this would make an excellent scene for a porn movie. “I’m going to wash your mouth out with soap! That’s right! You take my soap on my rope! You take my melon soapy ropey!”

An ex once said of me, “your mind is like a bad neighborhood. You don’t want to go in there alone.”

My mind was all over the place. It drifted to my “to do” list. At the top of it: delete all my Facebook and MySpace pages. MySpace is the gateway to evil. It’s like The Ring. You click on MySpace and your soul is dead in seven days. While it has certainly made stalking easier, it also gives you information you are better off not knowing.

For example, last night I discovered that a recent love interest is now “in a relationship” and his new boyfriend is on his “top friends”... which is the closest thing he’ll get to a “top” in that relationship. I clicked on the new boy and… well, did you see the movie Waitress? There is a scene where Keri Russell’s face freezes in confusion and shock during a montage with Cake’s song “Short Skirt, Long Jacket.” It’s a priceless, frozen, befuddled, glazed over expression. That was me for a half-hour.

My former love interest is now in a relationship with a 20-year-old go-go boy.

There is nothing wrong with being in a relationship with a 20-year-old go-go boy. I’ve dated a stripper or two in my past. But when you are 32 years old, what could you possibly have in common? I mean, the kid wasn’t even alive when the Bangles released “Walk Like an Egyptian!” Zac Efron is older than this piece of chicken! I am officially that guy that can say, “I have shoes that are older than you.”

Which led me to thinking about T.R. Knight and his much younger boyfriend. No one ever came out and said, “don’t you think it’s a little odd that he’s dating a barely legal kid?” Instead everyone says, “they look so cute together.” Bull crap. They look like a PSA for NAMBLA. They met through a mentor program! Am I really the only one who finds this creepy and wrong? Perhaps T.R. should become a spokesperson for gay adoption. Isaiah Washington called him a faggot, he got a free pass.

So while I was trying to raise the Titanic, all I could think about was the fact that guys my age appears to be only be interested in young, inexperienced, hairless children.

Then I started thinking about the fact that the swimmers I were about to expel from my loins were going to be tested. They were going to be looked at, frozen, prodded and examined. These little guys wouldn’t have the possibility of shooting down the shaft of a turkey baster. They would never have a fighting chance, like a biological version of SURVIVOR, to swim down a canal and fertilize an egg. Nay, they were going to be experimented upon like something in Frankenstein’s laboratory.

I suddenly felt sorry for them. Sure, I’ve never considered the safety or well being of my sperm before, but these guys were actually groomed for this moment. Harvested for the past 48 hours. And what was I going to do? Blast them into a cup for experimentation.

Then I thought about that new O! Burger place that just opened on Santa Monica Boulevard. Food! I should have known that would turn me on. Finally some inspiration swelled and my swim team was released into a cup. I’ve never been so happy to ejaculate in my entire life. I just knew the receptionist and the other nurse were talking about me outside. “I thought these gay guys were experts at this sort of thing. What’s taking him so long?!”

After sealing my baby batter into its temporary tomb, I returned it to the window and was sent on my way. All they way back to my car I felt like I was doing the walk of shame. I felt the eyes of all those UCLA college students on me. I felt like I had a big scarlet “A” on my chest. I felt eyes on me that seemed to know I just made love to a cup... And I wasn’t even that good. And I felt dirty.

But at least I bought myself dinner afterwards.