As it was, he’d already had the advice of the vasectomist. He’d made and actually kept an appointment some weeks earlier. He’d gone to the doctor’s office, out in the east end, and kept his eyes down in a waiting room filled with other men. There was a receptionist whose hair was the only thing that showed over the countertop. The sound of unread pages being turned was the only noise in the place, except for the occasional invitation to someone to go see the doctor. Then they’d come out and huddle over the desk with the secretary, and most of them, at one point, would offer a nervous laugh, then take their coat and leave.
When it was his turn, Roth went in and sat in the doctor’s private office. It had all the soothing ornaments a doctor’s office is supposed to have: the signed documents, the wood paneling, the framed pictures with their backs turned like embarrassed party guests. The only thing out of place was the big plastic testicle on the doctor’s desk. This he used to demonstrate the brief, painless procedure with the brief, only slightly uncomfortable recovery period. Roth tried to pay attention to the big nut with its removable layers and tubes, but all he could hear the doctor say, at least three times, was, “Then we make a very small incision here.”
“I thought there was a method that didn’t require an incision,” said Roth.
“Well, some doctors use a puncture method that’s more like making a little hole through which the vas deferens is extracted, but it’s essentially the same thing, Mr. Roth. You have to get into the scrotum somehow, and from there it’s a cruel cut no matter how you look at it.” He’d taken the top layer off to show the blue vas deferens beneath, and now he pulled the vas apart in the middle. It split into two with a neat little click.
Roth nodded. “I see.”
“Do you have any more questions?”
“Can it be reversed?”
The doctor sighed dramatically and looked away from Roth, tapping the denuded testicle with the tip of his pen. Roth saw now that the top of the plastic model was stippled with pen marks. “If you are concerned with reversal, Mr. Roth, you may want to think harder about your reasons for seeking vasectomy. Are you sure they’re your reasons? The point of a vasectomy is to take the bullets out of the chambers, so to speak. If you think you’re going to want to use live ammo again, then maybe this isn’t for you.”
“I just want to know what my options are.”
“Some doctors undo it,” he said curtly. “I don’t. It’s not meant to be undone.” He brusquely reassembled the model, snapping the two ends of the vas deferens back together and covering it with the scrotal sac. “And it’s not this easy, either,” he said.
Back out at reception, the woman gave him a nice smile and stood up.
“Will you be making an appointment, Mr. Roth?”
“Yes,” he said quietly. She looked down behind her desk and removed two sheets of paper, which she spun toward him so that he could read them. She pointed out what he needed to know with the tip of a pencil.
“No anti-inflammatories for ten days before the procedure,” she said, “so no aspirin or Advil, you know. Tylenol is okay.” He nodded dumbly. “Make sure there’s someone here to pick you up afterwards, and remember to bring this form”—here she brought out the second sheet—“which is a consent form you have to sign saying you understand the risks and that we don’t guarantee sterility.”
“It’s not guaranteed?”
“Well, it is,” she said, “but by law we have to put that. And will you be paying for prep or would you like to prep yourself?”
“I’m sorry?” Roth said.
“Someone here can shave the area for you, at a nominal cost, or you can do it yourself.”
His mouth was dry. “I’ll do it myself.”
“Very good,” said the receptionist, folding his information and slipping it into an envelope. “Just make sure you don’t do the whole operation by accident.”
Roth laughed nervously.
IT SEEMED to him that in all the years he’d been seeing doctors the luxury of a bedside manner was one rarely found. If you weren’t really that sick, it was a quick scribble on a piece of paper and out you went, there were sicker people than you. But if you were truly ill, if there was no hope for you, it was worse. Dead customers are no good for any business. When Lila had taken ill, he’d been amazed at the clinical distance they encountered at their various stops on the road to her death. It had got so bad that Roth wanted to strangle some of them. What would it cost for a little comfort? But Lila kept herself in check. She wanted to save her strength.
Little bits of her went off regularly to be tested. Cell counts and biopsies. The children didn’t understand why their mother was losing weight. She told them she was tired from the sickness and didn’t need as much to eat as she did before, but Roth knew it was because they were taking her away, biopsy by biopsy. Stern had been cold comfort here as well.
“She’ll go to her death half the woman she once was,” he’d complained to the rabbi. “And you tell me it’s still kosher with the meshiach?”
“God’s not going to keep Lila out of the Promised Land because she had a few operations. It doesn’t work that way.”
“Then how does it work?”
Stern stood up then, his face dark with worry. “Nathan, you need to go and be with her and with your children and stop worrying about the next life. She needs you.”
He was shaking. “Do I keep everything they take out of her, Rabbi? Does it all get buried with her?”
“The cancer isn’t her. And it’s not the point, Nathan. It’s a metaphor, this whole thing. You want to present yourself to God as an entire human being, not just a complete body. Think about it like that.”
THIS WAS what was in Roth’s mind as he drove north through midtown to the clinic he’d found in the Yellow Pages. It was beyond where he’d grown up, clear beyond all the reform synagogues with their big lawns and goyische-looking stained-glass windows. It was in a strip of offices beside a tennis club, a nondescript building with a sign on the door that said simply, FDS Technologies.
There was no one in this waiting room, and the secretary sat at a desk, where it was easy to make eye contact.
“Mr. Roth,” she said. He was right on time. She stood up and came around the desk to shake his hand. “Why don’t I take your jacket and you can fill out a few forms. Then we’ll go in.”
He took the forms from her and sat. He couldn’t imagine how he was going to provide a sample; there was nothing about the place that made it likely. The lady took the clipboard back from him after she saw him sign it.
“It’s two hundred dollars the first year and seventy-five for every year afterwards. That’s for one vial. It’s half-price for every vial after that.”
“How many vials do most people give?”
“Oh, that’s a personal decision, Mr. Roth. Some people give two or three, and some even come back after that and give a few more. It’s whatever you think you’ll need, and whatever you’re comfortable with.”
The image of the back rooms behind her desk filled with men on return visits filled Roth with disgust. Did some people treat this as a hobby? This last-ditch, strip-mall storage facility? At least the place he ran had pretty signage and he could look his customers in the eye. “I think I’ll just be doing the one.”
“All right then.”
“It’s in case of . . .” He hunted in his wallet for a credit card. “I probably won’t ever need it.”
“If you ever get to the point where you want us to dispose of the vial, we do that at no extra charge.”
“Can somebody else use it?”
“I’m not sure what you mean, Mr. Roth.”
“Maybe for medical research. Or for a couple who can’t have one on their own.”
“We can’t pass along unwanted specimens, I’m sorry. You can have it back if you choose, but otherwise we destroy it.”
This information sent Roth into a strange reverie, this notion that he could have his own sperm back. H
e imagined himself, perhaps twenty years down the road, a vasectomized man about sixteen hundred dollars out-of-pocket, finally returning to FDS Technologies to reclaim his specimen, and then onward to one of the doctors in town who actually did reversals, where he’d have his tubes reconnected and his own sperm put back into his own testicles. How he’d laugh at the rabbi then. Who’s a sinner now, Stern?
“Mr. Roth,” the receptionist repeated. “If you’ll come with me.”
He followed the woman down a hall of doorways. To the clinic’s credit, they had not decorated the walls with pictures. What do you put on a wall in such a place? Everything could be taken the wrong way.
The woman was approaching a door with a blue plastic tag on it. She turned it around on its hook to its red side and opened the door with a key. “For your privacy, Mr. Roth, the lock on the other side of this door, once you turn it, locks the room from the inside. So you can relax knowing there is no way that anyone can enter.”
She pushed the door open and they went inside. There was a single bed and a La-Z-Boy chair, in a space that looked like a very nice bachelor apartment. There was a bookshelf with a few books on it (no erotic masterpieces, noted Roth, seeing the names Deighton and King), and there were a couple of cabinets and a television hanging from a steel pole in the ceiling. The receptionist put a glass vial down on a desk beside the door.
“Now, this room is yours, Mr. Roth, for as long as you like. In that cabinet over there”—she pointed to the space below the television—“are some items you may feel you need, and many men do use them, so please feel free. Don’t be embarrassed. This is the business we’re in and the thing we really want is a good, healthy specimen to be put aside and kept for future use, so it’s important to relax and let your body do what it knows how to do. That’s the way you get your money’s worth. Now, some men prefer to take a nap and take advantage of one of those wonderful things about their physiology, and just do what they need to do as soon as they wake up. This is why we ask you to come in when you’ve got at least five free hours—that way you can nap if you like.”
Roth listened carefully, nodding as if someone were telling him how to operate a new and interesting machine. He felt curiously empty, as though he’d somehow signed away all his worldly possessions and he was the only thing that remained of his life. The receptionist was explaining that there were normal television channels and normal books, everything you might need to feel that you’re on a little vacation. She held out her hand and Roth took it with a fixed smile.
“Most men laugh when I say good luck, but good luck.” Roth broadened his smile. “To get to the last thing, the actual placement of the specimen, we really do recommend that you use one of the sterilized condoms that you’ll find in the drawer beside the bed and only worry about getting the specimen into the bottle once you’ve got it. So don’t get all knotted up over the mechanics of aiming or anything like that. All right, then?”
Roth was still holding the woman’s hand. “All right,” he said, and she went out and he turned the big silver lock to the left and stood alone in the quaint, anonymous room.
A HALF-HOUR later, Roth lay under the covers in the little bed, thinking maybe he’d drowse. He’d told Rachel, his manager, that he was not going to be available all afternoon owing to the fact that he was having minor day surgery, something to do with his dermatologist and some liquid nitrogen. Sybil never called him at work, so there was little worry that he’d later have to square anything with her. At the very least, he wouldn’t have to square the details, since Rachel hadn’t asked for any, dermatological procedures being the kind of thing people were not so naturally curious about.
He had spent the better part of twenty minutes utterly failing to accomplish something he’d been doing successfully since before his bar mitzvah. The banal fantasies he’d called to action lacked any erotic dimension, and he’d lain in the bed feeling squalidly lonesome. His imaginings had segued within five minutes to a fantasy in which he was in front of a Russian firing squad, his pants around his ankles, and he would be shot if he did not bring himself to orgasm. This was an involving fantasy, but it had no power to bring about the required reaction, so he’d stopped altogether. So far his experience at FDS Technologies (A Public Company, he’d noted on the form he had to fill out) had veered between horror and despair.
Beside the bed was an array of switches, and he experimented with them until one dropped the room into darkness. Being less aware of where he was might help, he thought, and he settled himself down into the bed again. In the jet darkness, he couldn’t see anything at all, but he was suddenly more aware of the workings of the building: the air being shuttled from one space to the next, overhead lights somewhere near, coolly buzzing, and even conversation, distant and with a hollow bass line, maybe even in the restaurant three doors down from where he was. Nevertheless, he closed his eyes and focused, and began to build himself an imaginary woman. She was wearing a one-piece red bathing suit and her legs were oiled with lotion. The straps coming off her shoulders barely contained her breasts. She was darkly tanned, and her hair was raven black. Roth had her slip the bathing suit off, one shoulder at a time, peeling it over her chest and down her belly. She gracefully brought out one foot and then the other, gestures that he found stirring. Then she stood there naked in front of him, her legs open a little, one fist on a cocked hip, a sun-kissed Amazon.
She was beginning to work for him; Roth kept his eyes squeezed shut and moved a hand into place. But the moment he made contact with himself, the Amazon’s breasts began to sag and the nut-brown nipples enlarged and became uneven. Her hair went sandy blond, and dark lines appeared below her navel, rivulets of flesh that swam down toward her pubic hair. The long, thin legs thickened, and puckered flesh popped out on her thighs. Roth tracked his gaze up her body—the loved, imperfect body—and reached Lila’s sad face. She was smiling at him, the smile meant to reassure him. She put her hands on his chest, spreading her fingers so that his hair sprouted between them, a forest of gray in the interstices of her long brown fingers. And she put her mouth to him, taking him in, enclosing and containing him, and he died there. She could not contain him, he could not allow that, although he had wished the best of him, the most vital parts of himself, could have done that for her.
He opened his eyes on the darkness again and fumbled for the light. The room blinked into existence around him, the sterile replica of a warm and homey space. What kind of sin was it that not only was he about to spill his seed in vain (with his luck), but that he appeared to want to commit the infidelity that Rabbi Stern had spoken of with his dead wife?
He pushed the covers back with his feet, shoving them off the bed. He was not tired enough to nap and had no faith, anyway, that he’d wake up in a state of physiological readiness, as the receptionist had so admiringly suggested.
Roth went into the bathroom and splashed some water on his face. He was surprised to see how red his cheeks were. Then he went back out and, without a pause in his step, he strode over to the cabinet under the hanging television. The items the receptionist had referred to were here, magazines printed on a paper stock much glossier than in any of the magazines he read. He dared not touch them, sharply aware of the duties they’d been pressed into by other clients of FDS Technologies. Despite their glossiness, he was not sure how easily such things wiped clean. On top of the magazines was the television remote control; a thin strip of paper taped to the bottom of it said “Channel 55.” Roth switched on the television and found it was tuned to Channel 11. Haltingly, he went up the dial, station by station, pausing on all the soap operas and the home shopping and the midday movies. He passed all the cable stations he and Sybil watched in the evenings and was surprised to see that their midday programming was just as interesting. They showed yet more of the dangerous car chases and explorations of distant ecologies that were their nighttime specialties.
When he got to 54 (a channel that specialized in foreign sports), Roth paused, hi
s eyes feeling heavy and his breathing tight, then he switched to 55. There, a bright pink surface moved rhythmically to a musical score that might have been written for a bad spy film. He knew he was looking at a body, or bodies, and after a moment he made out that the largest object on the screen was the back of a woman’s leg, which she herself was holding up (he could make out her forearm at the top of the screen, tucked under the back of her knee), and therefore, following down, the expected anatomies came into view.
The camera changed angle, and now it was clear what Roth was looking at. Neither performer wore anything, although the woman still had on a pair of socks. He stared at the image, under which he could make out the repetitive sounds of the man’s effort and the woman’s apparent pleasure, and felt his body respond. Now he could probably do it, as long as he was quick about it and didn’t think too much and didn’t take his eyes off the television. This was why the La-Z-Boy was positioned the way it was, about six feet from the cabinet, since you could tilt it back and be right in the eye line of the television. But whereas Roth could count on the bedsheets having been changed, the chair was upholstered, and nothing could compel him to sit down on it. Instead, he gingerly lowered his pants, put the container on the floor, took a deep breath, and the man on the television withdrew himself from his partner and spilled himself in vain all over her face.
“For Christ’s sake!” shouted Roth, completing some kind of sin circuit, and he reached down violently for the remote as the woman on the screen began massaging the vainly spilled fluids into her chest and neck. “Lord, Lord,” Roth groaned, pushing the buttons to switch the images off. He pressed the power button, but nothing happened. He whacked the device against his leg in fury, stumbling backward and wrenching his pants up. But this somehow turned up the volume so that the murmured sounds of approval coming from the woman filled the room with a low, wet growling. Roth’s arms and legs went cold and he was afraid he might black out. He went right up under the television and jumped up to hit the power switch on the console, and on his second try, the remote control slipped from his hand and hit the floor and the batteries spilled out. At the same moment, the channel changed as well, and Roth was looking at a news report from the Middle East.
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