For Science.

Damn. My pageviews have really jumped since this morning. It looks like you all really want to know what it's like to sit in a little corner room of a medical building and jerk off into a plastic cup. Well,.. it's weird.

I got a late start and the roads were crap, so I barely made it to my appointment. I wanted to be more composed than I was when I got there, instead of running late. Also, I think in my head that the office girls working would be like the ones at virtually every other medical appointment I've ever had, meaning younger and usually attractive. This would make it easier for me to joke about what it was that I was about to go do. Instead, there were two women, one who reminded me of someone that would be friends with my mother, and then also her mother.

"Do you have the pink sheet we gave you?" this was the older of the two.

(Crap)

"It's okay if you don't."

(well, that's a relief)

They make me a new pink sheet and say "do you know where it is?" I do not know where it is.

They send me down a little hallway which is on the opposite side of the lobby as was our appointment here previously, when we met with the fertility doctor.

I get to the end of the hallway where there is a little window and a woman on the other side who for some reason reminds me more of a lunch lady than a medical professional who will soon be handling my specimen.

I hand her the sheet and tell her my name. It's a good thing that they didn't, in fact, check my identification, because I left it in my running shorts 100 miles away.

"Do you have a sample with you?"

(that was an option?!)
"No. I do not."

"Okay, follow me." I follow her.

She comes from behind the glass window and opens the door across the hall ( the door had a sign labeling it the "collection room" and one of those slides that either covers up the part that says "vacant" or "in use"). I kind of stop listening as I take it all in but she says something like, "twist the lid on the cup really tight when you're done." Later I wonder if she also said to put the cup into the biohazard bag, because I don't remember her saying that, but I figure that that's what the bag is for. She does not, however, even acknowledge the giant television or the drawers on the cabinet. Those are apparently for me to figure out what to do with on my own.

"Can I use the bathroom first?" I really had to pee for about the last hour of driving.

"Of course, it's right next door."

I go to the bathroom and she goes back to her fishbowl across the hall. I finish and wash my hands, even though I will quickly be soiling them again. Habits, you know? I open the door to the bathroom and there is another girl, I think who worked there but I didn't really want to stick around and make eye contact or anything, who either needed something from the first girl or who was pretending to need something from the first girl so that she could see what kind of guy was about to go into the spank tank (that's what I would call it if I worked there). I'm getting paranoid at this point.

I go into the room and close the door. I take a few pictures for my facebook fans. The cabinet underneath the television has a drawer marked "magazines." I almost don't want to open it because I'm afraid that the girl in the fishbowl can hear the drawer and knows exactly what is up and I would still like for there to be some kind of mystery. I can actually hear some chatter from outside in the hallway. This is unexpected. I don't know why, but in my head this room was soundproofed... or maybe sufficiently far enough away from anywhere else that I don't have to worry about things. Or maybe in my head the room was just.. . bigger.

I am curious about what happens if I turn on the television. I had expected a pile of DVDs and an accompanying player. There was none. I thought maybe this was just regular television, that I am meant to find the most attractive person on Maury or whatever daytime television nonsense that I could find, and have my fun. I found the volume on the remote before I pushed the power button. I wanted to turn it on while immediately turning it to silent. I hit the button.

Somewhere from behind the unit I heard the unmistakeable whirring of a disc. The movie began to load on it's own. Everyone was kind of fake and typical pornstarrish. This movie was not for me. For the record, the magazines were three penthouse and two playboy. One was one of those "college" editions, and one was the Lindsey Lohan edition. Although I handled them with curiosity, I did not need them.

Even though I had waited for several days for this very moment, I didn't want to start right away. I didn't want the girl outside to know exactly when I was doing what I needed to do. I also didn't want her to know how long it took. This seemed too intimate.

Eventually, it happened. I put the lid on, tight. I put the cup in the bag, and I washed up. I thought about going for a round two, just to ensure that there was enough. I decided that this was unnecessary, and that I didn't want to be here any longer, and I opened the door. The girl took the bag, and I left.

I stopped to see my mom's friend and her mother on my way out, to make sure that I was all set. This felt odd, as I don't think that they were expecting me, and they did not have quite the same pokerface attitude about it all that the girl from the lab had. They had the air of "but you just...." and "no.. you don't need to be talking to us, at all,.. you can just leave" while they explained that I was all set. Again, paranoid.

I should mention that on my way out I asked the girl in the lab, since I am going to have to do this all over again in a few weeks, what she meant when she asked if I had brought a sample. She explained that this was only an option if I lived less than an hour away. I wanted to explain that I drive really, really fast.