Fun_People Archive
13 Oct
A hun'rd and ten million! That's pretty good shootin', stranger.

Date: Fri, 13 Oct 95 15:19:01 -0700
From: Peter Langston <psl>
To: Fun_People
Subject: A hun'rd and ten million!  That's pretty good shootin', stranger.

Forwarded-by: bostic@bsdi.com (Keith Bostic)
Forwarded-by: glen mccready <glen@qnx.com>
Forwarded-by: david.coble@equinox.org (David Coble)

                         The Jack of All Trades

                            By Steve Connely

   Unless his father is rich, a graduate student in computer science
will most likely end up supporting himself by working on university
research projects or, if he doesn't speak English, by teaching
undergraduates. These students make less than a freelance can recycler.
A few students work part-time at a useful craft or trade that supports
them in comfort. I decided that I would practice such a trade:
Professional sperm donation, the jack of all trades.

   During my first visit to the sperm bank, I was taken to the office
of the doctor in charge. His walls were covered by medical degrees and
citations for his achievements in sperm preservation. One of the
citations said "Honorable Discharge", which I thought was a bit grandiose.

   "It is of the utmost importance that semen samples remain
sterile," the doctor explained.

   "Sterile semen?" I oxymoroned.

   "Thus, samples must be produced by unassisted direct manual stimulation
of the genital protuberance."

   "Huh?"

   "Choke the purple-helmeted love Nazi."

   "Oh."

   "Furthermore, before the production of each sample, there must be
three days of abstinence."

   "Three days? 4320 minutes! Is that really a good idea?" I had
visions of being rushed to the emergency room to have my scrotum lanced
and drained as it expanded like a Jiffy Pop bag. "I'm no doctor, but I
think an hour of abstinence is enough. I mean, we're not aging a fine
wine, are we?..."

   I was scheduled for a donor room, where I would have to deliver
samples, piping hot, in 30 minutes or less. I didn't know if I could
become aroused under such conditions. I was of an impressionable age
when I first saw Racquel Welch in "Fantastic Voyage", and afterward I
could only be aroused by women who wore rubber diving suits and were
covered by foot-long antibodies. (These days, having your partner in a
rubber suit covered with large antibodies is not a bad idea.) I've
since grown out of this habit. Although now I can only become aroused
by a woman if she turns the letters on my "Wheel of Fortune" board
game. I decided to get some men's magazines for immoral support.

   As a teenager I found Penthouse to be highly stimulating. (As a
teenager I found everything to be highly stimulating. I had to take up
tennis just to explain my tennis elbow.) However, Penthouse photographs
are often rendered in a diffused soft focus, which is why you go blind.
Eyestrain is the reason you often see men crying when they read the
magazine.

   Once, when I was fourteen, my father wondered if he should get a
subscription to Penthouse. "Great idea!" I panted. "It offers an
insightful editorial posture and interviews with personalities of
topical interest."

   He shrugged indifferently.

   "You have to get it! You absolutely have to! It offers guides to
fashion and accessories, goddammit!" I shrieked before passing out. Now
I've started to actually read those articles. I used to put magazines
under my mattress so they wouldn't be found; now they're there for
lower back support.

   I thought that, if I'm going to be a professional in a medical
facility, I should forget the over-the-counter products like Penthouse
and look for more potent prescription remedies in the shops of the red
light district.

   These magazines did not have interviews with personalities of
topical interest. Their titles generally were the names of female body
parts. One was called "Female Body Parts". The magazines might serve a
medical professional as references of female anatomy and its many
diseases, but they were too much for me. I settled for this month's
issue of "NBC Anchorwomen in Chains".

   As it turned out, I was able to wield Excalibur without anxiety in
the clinic's donor room, and I looked forward to returning there on my
twice-weekly visits. I didn't appreciate it at first, but I eventually
realized what a terrific room it was. It had a wicked, shameless chair,
a voluptuous, come-hither lamp and a coy, pouting paper towel
dispenser. However, the room was small, or perhaps it only seemed so
because when there I was usually homo erectus, so I was constantly
upsetting lamps and clearing shelves. Okay, maybe not.

   I produced so many test specimens that the doctor could have built
an infant from scratch and avoided conception altogether. But after
several weeks, the testing was over and I was sent back to the doctor's
office.

   He said that I had been accepted into the program: my sperm count
was five times higher than average.

   There it was. In seconds, I had become an awesome engine of
fertility, a sexual force to be feared. Condoms and diaphragms could be
shredded by my Zulu sperm cells as their superior numbers overwhelmed
the British outpost of the ovum. My minions could overcome any female
contraceptive resistance and commit countless acts of microscopic date
rape.

   My ego was further engorged by the fact I'd finally met someone
who wanted me just for my body. I was a sex object, meat on the hoof.
The doctor obliged by talking about me in the cold quantities of sperm
counts and motilities, reciting my "tale of the tape" as us pro
athletes call it. He also referred to donor candidates by number
instead of name to preserve anonymity. To the doctor I was The Man With
No Name, a hired gun.

   "A hun'rd and ten million! That's pretty good shootin', stranger.
What'd you say your name was again?"

   "I didn't say...."

    From now on, I would be paid. My one-armed bandit had consistently
hit the jackpot, and now I was going to cash in. Some guys think their
penis has a mind of its own. Mine had a career of its own.

   It was during my next visit, as I approached the main desk, that I
first saw her: Candy the candy striper.

   I had never been particular about my women. Two X chromosomes
sufficed. But Candy was different. Perhaps it was the three days of
fluid backing up into my brain that made her look like an angel
floating toward me. Perhaps it was her helium breast implants. All I
knew was that I wanted to suckle that bosom till I talked like Donald Duck.

   She noticed my groin, which bulged handsomely due to the bag of
ice I put in my pants to keep down the swelling.

   She gave me a specimen cup and I went into the donor room, where I
was great. A minute later I returned.

   My headache was gone. I sauntered over to Candy's desk and turned
on the charm, which I can do pretty much at will.

   "Sorry, but my cup runneth over with love."

   She smiled the dazzling smile that is the gift of a woman with
braces. She said, "You might want to zip up your fly."

   "Why, you eagle-eyed minx," I teased. "You've been watching my
fly, haven't you, like a photographer waiting for a glimpse of the Loch
Ness monster."

   She giggled. "So, what do you do?"

   "Here? Um, I do what all the other guys do. But better."

   "I mean, what do you do for a living?"

   I hung my head. "I'm a computer science graduate student."

   "Really? Can you say something in computerese?"

   "Awk grep sed lex yacc?"

   She squealed with delight, and her sudden increase in body heat
caused her implants to expand. I had it made.

   On our first date, I learned all about her. A woman of compassion,
she had bought a water bed because it made the fleet feel more at home.
She had also bought a high-tech, no-mess vibrator, only to learn it was
an electric orange juicer.

   I thought it would be responsible of me to inquire about her
medical history. Her gynecologist had said that, though she needed
retreads, she didn't have any social diseases. This was a relief
because it meant the president wouldn't have to order a stand down of
all naval operations. Her neurologist had said that her brain was still
a virgin, its fragile tissues untouched by knowledge.

   Her favorite literary work was Kafka's "Metamorphosis". She hadn't
read it, but she had seen an ad for the promo of the music video. She
could empathize with a human mind that finds itself trapped inside the
body of an insect, because she suffered the opposite problem.

   She was my girl of my dreams.

   Toward the end of the evening, I made my move. "Pound bang slash
bin slash cush semi ell ess minus ell splat."

   She fell against me, nearly swooning. Should I strike while the
iron is hot? The sperm bank had already scheduled to within 4 minutes
every ejaculation I would have in the next year. But how often does a
man find true love? I decided I would service both Candy and the sperm
bank, spreading myself thin, so to speak.

   "Candy, would you like to go to my place and view my itchings? We
could practice CPR. I'll check you for tumors. Maybe a lower GI series?"

   We got to my apartment and with a flourish I opened the door to my
lair of lust. "Welcome to my Altar of Ecstasy, my Boudoir of Bliss."

   "Gee, it looks just like a sperm donor room."

   We wasted no time. She was so hot her bust deployed like a
Chrysler air bag. All night it was twiddle twiddle twiddle pipe mount
socket pound bang pound bang splat return. Consummate, consummate,
consummate.

   In the morning I staggered to the sperm bank. The vigor of youth
had abandoned me. I needed a heavy styling mousse to achieve the
hardness needed to raise my flag over Iwo Jima and produce a specimen.
The cup would've held more microbes if it was filled with Jersey tapwater.

   Unfortunately, the doctor chose that day for a spot check of my
handiwork. He looked at my specimen under a microscope, but couldn't
find anything. He continued hunting for Red October and finally found a
sperm. It tried to swim, but then it grabbed its chest and rolled over.

   So, my career ended as soon as it started. But my romance has
flourished. Candy has proven to be a challenging libidinal dynamo, but
nothing me and some new vacuum cleaner attachments can't handle.
______________________________________________________________________

© 1995 Peter Langston