“Good.” Says my brother as if he’s certain I’m above it. When it’s a matter of survival what’s to be above? “I could hand-scrape out some sperm into cash every three days. A hundred and twenty a week, a few bonuses at the end, giving sperm wouldn’t be a bad gig.” There’s a sigh over the phone just as a young girl, Brazilian, possibly Puerto Rican—I don’t know—maybe Libyan or some shit, opens the front door to the hostel and the sun-baked salt in the air whips at my skin, tugging at my hangover and twisting my insides, reminding me that I’m still poisoned, that I’m still not worthy of the in-your-face-hospitableness of the Barcelona climate. I’m a worn out bag of soiled tissue around a half-poisoned feeding tube that needed time, water and something greasy or pharmaceutical to recover.
“You do something like that and you’ll spend the whole rest of your life wondering if you have kids out there.” The feeding tube developed a head awhiles’ back and filled it with brain, that stuff that throws out loud solutions when the feeding tube is having problems unsolvable by the normal instinctive means. Some think their head-voices’ loud solutions are some kind of truth so they amble around sharing about their nonsense like headless chickens share blood. I only trust those who hear every voice, including the one inside them, as a possible tyrant’s. Those are the ones who question. The others just drink the blood.
“Fuck ‘em” Another sigh spills out of the phone and the thought of my brother’s breath makes me want to feel that bright, cold kiss of foot fungus on brittle stone as I sprawl out across the white tile. Up close it probably looks more like a cream and up closer it would probably look like V.D. en masse, loud incestuous colonies, just wiggling around proliferating and getting a bite to eat before the next pine-scented, chemical holocaust turns the terrain into vast empty wastes.
“Who get’s the sperm?” I ask my sigh of a brother from two thousand miles away and the girl eating cocoa balls looks me right in the eye. I read somewhere to never look away so I never did. When the eyes of predators meet, their separate streams of gaze compete for some grin or aversion, any sign of submission, respect or hostility. She almost looked to be blushing into her phone, but it could’ve been that she was one of those red-all-over types the kind that blushed through every inch of their skin, pink everywhere, some places more than others.
“I’ll tell you who gets the sperm,” I announce to the cafeteria. “The people who want it. The people who plan, then try and try and try and try some more and it doesn’t work so they see a specialist and the specialist changes their diet, gives them new positions, new angles, new time windows and so work schedules get rearranged and they try some more and the girl has to read all her make up labels and eat salmon roe and the guy can’t jerk off without feeling like a monkey-coward and the specialist reminds them how significant the next full moon will be and the sex becomes plain, genitals become wet machinery. Like old joints feelings eventually wear away and it gets duller and number until one day it’s a chore and chores aren’t what drives you to come home. They aren’t even the things we think of when we think of a home. ” A man whose shoulders crawled with dreadlocks touches the beautiful lab mouse of a woman on her far shoulder. She takes the bait and turns back around as he spoons some of her chocolate cornballs into his mouth. Her eyes grow. Her phone doesn’t exist. Two predators bask in each other’s gaze. Two feeding tubes purr and play over a bowl of chocolate balls.
“Then one day there’s some results and they aren’t good, there’s some crying, and maybe a little relief, there’s a period of loneliness, some scattered talks, a fight, maybe someone stays at their sister’s for a couple weeks or a drunken bar fuck is buried deep into their memory so that it’s nearly forgotten enough to stay on track, then something comes together because someone says something true and ugly to get the ball rolling. There might be more of that too but then someone compromises and gives up their bullshit. Being all-in is a big realization. One day one of them says something else true and a dream is swallowed to make room for the next step. Then they do the shit they’re good at. They research the spermbank, the process, the big-named gyno with the perfect track record and pictures of seashells all over his office. They make phone calls and write emails. They end up in a white room reading my profile: White, six foot two, blue eyes, a nonsmoker at the pinnacle of his health. Grade A sperm and, guess what? They’re happy to have it.”
Other Posts:
The Best Fuck You Part 1Part 2Part 3Part 4
Invest in Rain Part1Part 2Part 3
Where does your father do his barnacles? Part 1
Van-life series Part 1
-Shameful E-begging i.e. Support the Arts! Please God help me!-
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