"The Apples Don't Fall Far from the Tree"

The Apples Don’t Fall Far from the Tree

07.22.2014

If life gets better with age, I’m aging in retrograde. Eight years ago, I was a cast member on a hidden-camera prank show, making more money per day than I make per week present day. In the years since, I’ve gained weight with the immutability of Old Faithful’s eruptions, 40 pounds in all. My eyes have gone bad, my knees have gone worse. Last week, I ejaculated into a specimen jar in the hope of joining my local sperm bank’s stable of test-tube studs.

That the Fertility Industrial Complex would screen me for STIs, inheritable banes and the like was a given. However, its post-secondary education requisite flummoxed me. While I never made it into med school, much less through it, I’m certain that erudition can’t be conveyed by one’s genes the way red hair or a predisposition to high cholesterol can.

I rang the buzzer. The gaudy bombshell gatekeeping the frosted glass partition looked more like the hypersexual secretary in a stag film than an administrative functionary. Talk about auspicious beginnings!

I was shown to a small private room. A TV sat atop a console containing “visual aids.” I popped the hatch anticipating an impoverished soft-core porn cache; instead, I unveiled a hardcore hoard spanning genres from same sex to 3-way! Unbeknownst to me, unearthing that treasure trove was the apex of my beginner’s luck bell curve.

I set the essence-conjuring sequence in motion, but the gears were slow to turn. Distractions besieged me. The room was chilly. My mother rang me. I didn’t answer, but the sight of her smiling face on my screen softened me. Fortunately, I was raised Roman Catholic, so this was not my first ED rodeo. I closed my eyes, took deep breaths, and imagined the Cali Cartel-sized cash stacks I stood to make for doing something I’d been doing gratis since puberty. Why, if I saved aggressively and invested prudently, I might one day own the palace in which the orgy unfolding before me filmed!

As directed, I kept my seed bottled for 3 days prior to my appointment. 4th of July fireworks ensued. My cannonade missed the miniscule cylinder entirely. The number of paper towels cleanup required comprised an ecological calamity. My conscience compelled me to tip the custodian.

The select few with whom I’ve shared this yarn all wondered whether I would (or even could) remain insouciant about having offspring living lives soundly outside my bailiwick. What I affirmed with great certainty then I affirm with greater certainty now, 6 years into a K-12 teaching career. Women who undergo fertility treatments don’t do so on a whim. Infertile couples aren’t spending upwards of 10 grand, per round, on IVF just to placate their grandbaby-crazy parents. At a minimum, financing fertility treatments materialize one’s claptrap commitment to bearing the 18-Year Curse’s financial cross.

No, I’m not a Conservative who exploits social safety nets -PPE, stimulus, social security- only to abscond when it’s my turn to buy a round. What I am is an egalitarian, averse to deifying my spawn by virtue of shared DNA. As someone who reveres humanism and reviles tribalism, I rue babies born solely because their breeders’ cult deems contraception sinful, even when said breeders find themselves with more wards than waking hours. I chafe over breeders who perceive penury as their bloodline’s caste. I wring my hands for children born to Duggar and Turpin types, infant fetishists perennially pregnant solely to accessorize their latest selfies.

Epilogue

Days after my “audition,” USPS delivered a form letter. In short, the apples don’t fall far from the tree. Why my nut didn’t make the cut went unexplained; how much time had to lapse before I could reapply went unmentioned. I saw no point in pursuing the matter as, from this writing’s completion date, I’ll reach the donor cutoff age in tandem with today’s zygotes reaching their delivery dates.