direct deposit ann tinkham If someone had told Lilly as a girl, dreaming of the family she would one day have, that she would be shopping for the father of her child at a sperm bank, she would have told them they were off their rocker. But after no serendipitous meetings with Mr. Right at the age of 38, and after encountering losers, players, stalkers, and lurkers while Internet dating, Lilly turned to friends. Her friend, Felix the Flash artist, responded to her request with blushing gratitude, “I’m flattered that you would ask me, “ he said, then an eclipse overtook his shiny eyes “but I’m morally opposed to reproducing. I’m making a conscious choice to commit genetic suicide.” Lilly was silenced in the face of gene pool extinction. Next, she asked her friend, Sage, the jazz musician/pothead. She had concerns about the effect of THC on his genes, but she asked him anyway. Sage said he would happily donate (au natural—no turkey basters) as long as she didn’t care that there were schizophrenics on every branch of his family tree. Lilly imagined a family tree rotting from the inside out, and said, “Never mind.” Her last hope among her friends was Adam, a striking rocket scientist. He had been responsible for the Deep Impact project—a space project in which an impactor spacecraft penetrated a comet’s nucleus. Who better than a deep impact rocket scientist to penetrate her ovum? He declined, saying under his breath that he had retrograde ejaculation—his semen didn’t go through the proper channels, but instead went into his bladder. He daily pissed out the treasures from his family jewels. Disheartened, Lilly told her girlfriends that genetic suicide, schizophrenics, and retrograde ejaculation were thwarting her attempts at sprouting an egg. They sprung into action. Rosie, Anna, and Lauren became sperm donor missionaries—approaching guys working in natural food markets, corner bars, and cafes. One intentionally bald barrista with a soul patch agreed, but then confessed to low motility sperm. Lilly didn’t want to mess around; she wanted bull’s eye turbo-sperm. Lilly’s ova were sending SOS signals to her brain—use us or lose us! The panic set in. There was only one thing left to do. Go to a sperm bank. ******************************************************************************************** This was Lilly’s second appointment with the sperm bank—Pacific TechCare, high tech with a soft touch. The first appointment was a meet and greet. She still had so many questions. As she made her way off the elevator, she was still trying to narrow her focus—that had been this week’s assignment. Her reproductive counselor had told her to zero in on the ideal donor profile. Otherwise, she’d be choosing between Latvian, Swedish, Northern Indian, Ashkenazi Jewish, Polish, Scottish, Peruvian, Mexican, Norwegian, English, Shoshone, Québécois, and Blackfoot sperm. Among others. Lilly was leaning toward Québécois, because she liked the way it sounded. She could imagine the auditory seduction each time she discussed her child’s genetic make-up. Of course, Shoshone or Blackfoot would allow her child to claim a minority background, which would afford him or her access to scholarships. Her head was spinning trying to picture her genes combined with each of the sperm donor profiles. An Ashkenazi Jewish or a Korean version of herself. What if the Korean genes wiped out her Waspy genes, and there was no hint of her? She had such a friend who was married to a Chinese man. People were always asking her friend if her child was adopted. That just wouldn’t do. When Lilly arrived, the sperm donor receptionist was on a headset phone. She was a bouncing buxom blonde with peek-a-boo cleavage and non-stop perkiness. Lilly wondered if they didn’t hire her to help the donors with their deposits. “Two to three days before your appointment, you must ejaculate to clear out your pipes-- the dead sperm and debris followed by abstinence until the time of the collection, which helps you build up your sperm count!” Miss Perky took out a mirror from her pocketbook and reapplied her strawberry-scented red lipstick while saying, “You can either book the collection room here, which I’d be happy to do for you, or collect at home and drop off your sample. If you collect at home, you can pick up a sterile container from the lab, or use a sterilized baby food jar, as long as it's absolutely dry because water kills the little guys—sperm I mean. Okey dokey?” She said all this as though she were talking about fuzzy bunnies. As Lilly listened, she couldn’t help but feel that she was eavesdropping on phone porn with a clinical bent. She pretended to leaf through Golf Digest as Miss Perky delivered her collection instructions. Out of the corner of her eye, Lilly noticed Miss Perky’s screen saver; it was a soothing blue-and-white pattern. After a few seconds, she noticed that the white pattern was a school of tiny sperm, tails waving as they swam across the screen. Miss Perky ended her phone conversation. “Miss Cochran, I’ll let Bridget know that you’re here.” Miss Perky buzzed Lilly’s counselor, Bridget. Bridget was British and had been transferred from a London-based sperm bank to one in Seattle. She was someone who wasn’t afraid to use words such as “masturbation,” “ejaculation” and “sperm count.” To Lilly, the words sounded a little less obscene when said with a British accent. Bridget appeared, dressed in red plaid from top to bottom. She even sported a plaid Oliver Twist hat. “Good day, Lilly. Let’s go have a look at our catalogue. Shall we?” Then as they turned the corner on the way to her office, Bridget asked, “Have you identified your ideal profile?” “Not really. It’s such a daunting task.” “Right-o. Not a problem. We’ll pick out the perfect bloke in no time. You and I will chat, and then I’ll send you home with a fresh-off-the-press copy of the donor catalogue. It’s particularly sizzling this go-around.” Bridget stopped suddenly, touched Lilly on the shoulder, and said in a whisper, “I’ve heard we have some celeb sperm! Can you believe it?” Bridget clapped her hands in glee. “Of course, we don’t know who. I can only imagine—Denzel Washington was up here shooting a film recently. You could do a lot worse than Denzel.” Lilly was amazed by the contagious exuberance that filled the hallways and offices of the sperm bank. She would even dare say it was downright orgiastic. Lilly snickered when she realized it was the only product she knew that required an orgasm for the production process. Bridget led Lilly to her office and offered her a seat in front of the desk. Bridget took a seat behind her expansive cherry desk. Her red plaid ensemble went well with the cherry-colored wood of her office. She set her elbows on her desk, clasped her hands together, and said, “Lilly, let me in on your thinking process.” After Bridget framed it like that, Lilly was embarrassed to not be able to reveal a sophisticated decision-making process. “Well, to tell you the truth, I’ve mostly been thinking I want to avoid losers who are, you know, depositing to pay the bills.” “Lilly, let me reassure you. We are not a jack-off-for-cash joint. We are THE best sperm bank in the world. You’re getting the highest-quality product available to donees…Alright, let me see if I can help you think this through. When you imagine a child’s face you could love, what do you imagine?” “I suppose I could love any child’s face.” Like a teacher who received the wrong response to a question, Bridget’s face sagged in disappointment. “Lilly, this is not the Peace Corps. The world of men is at your fingertips. DREAM BIG!! You don’t want a carrot top with a piggly-wiggly nose and bunny choppers. Now do you?” “I wouldn’t mind. I’m really more concerned about personality than anything. I wish I could meet the guy—if only for a few minutes—to see if he has a sunny disposition and a smile that lights up the room.” “OK. How about this angle? Do you want Bill Gates—a brainy software magnate? Or do you want Tiger Woods—a beautiful bronze athlete? What about Jerry Seinfeld—handsome, boyish, confident, and funny? How about a literary or artistic genius? You just have to make sure you get a genius who’s not crackers.” “I don’t suppose any of those guys have donated. Have they?” “Well, I’m not at liberty to say, but I’m trying to stimulate your imagination—get you to dream big.” Dream big about sperm? Bridget seemed frustrated with Lilly’s inability to focus on the perfect male specimen. But Lilly just couldn’t figure out how to narrow down infinite genetic possibilities. “Alright, let’s start from the top-down. What color hair is your favorite?” “I suppose blonde, red, or light brown.” “That narrows it down. If you had to choose, which would it be?” “Blonde.” “Good. OK. Eyes--slanted, straight, wide, narrow?” “Straight and wide.” Bridget was taking notes. “Right. Nose—wide, narrow, flat, turned up, turned down, hooked?” “Oh, definitely not hooked. Thin and turned up.” “Excellent. Lips—full, thin?” “Full, I guess.” “Cleft or no cleft? “No cleft.” “Tall or short?” “Short if it’s a girl; tall if it’s a boy.” “OK. We’ll go with medium, then.” “Alright, Lilly, we have a profile for you. Believe it or not, you’ve chosen my people or Northern Europeans. The Viking clan—a hearty breed, but a bit reserved. Let’s just hope you don’t get a repressed bloke. I myself don’t fancy those uptight, quiet chaps. But no worries there. You can read the personal comments section. I have to warn you, though. The comments are a hybrid of bad high school essays and cheesy personal ads.” “So...” Lilly hesitated and then looked flustered and flushed. “Um, how…” “Yes?” Bridget put her pen down and looked up at Lilly, signaling that she was giving Lilly her undivided attention. “Can you tell me where the restroom is?” “Oh, I thought you were going to ask me something else. The nearby restroom is simply awful—the toilets are overflowing. You’ll have to go to the staff restroom. Just ignore the silly sights in the hallway. It’s down the hall, through the double doors, to the right, and straight back. If you go to the left, you’ll end up in donor hall.” Silly sights? I wonder what that means. Lilly made her way down the hallway and through the double doors. As she ambled toward the restroom, she saw rooms named “Venus” “Marduk” “Mars” “Macha” and “Min.” On the door of Min, was an Egyptian God holding a flail in one hand and possessing an erect penis. These must be the rooms. Then the door to Kokopelli opened and a stunning thirty-something man with unruly blonde surfer hair emerged carrying what looked to be a specimen. Lilly averted her gaze in an attempt to protect his privacy and anonymity. “Hey,” said the guy from Kokopelli with a wide, gleaming smile. Lilly almost lost her footing. A man, who just minutes before was donating, was now being sociable. He noticed that she was looking at the sign on the door. “Kokopelli. I named this door. He is a fertility deity depicted as a humpbacked flute player. Native Americans believed that his penis was detachable, and he sometimes left it in a river in order to have sex with girls who bathed there.” Lilly laughed, but it came out as a giggle. Oh God. “I’m looking for the restroom.” Lilly wanted to make sure he knew her visit to this hallway of fertility gods and goddesses had a non-reproductive purpose--that she wasn’t a desperate woman seeking his or anyone else’s sperm. “Oh, it’s down there.” He pointed in the direction she was headed. “It’s the last door after Ishtar—the goddess of love and maiming. Go figure.” He let out a belly laugh, and he and the specimen disappeared around the corner. On her way back from the restroom, Lilly saw that the Marduk door was open. She peeked in and saw huge, round silver storage tanks, storing, no doubt, millions of sperm. So these weren’t the rooms after all. Lilly still wanted to sneak a peek at donor hall, so she went straight at the double doors. The doors to the donation rooms were not named, but they were painted red, orange, green, and blue. The door to the red room was open, so she stepped inside. She only noticed a curtained closet before she heard footsteps. “You’ll be in the green room,” Lilly heard a reproductive counselor saying to a donor. Each door had a light hanging over it; only the light over the blue door was on. Lilly imagined the scene inside and quickly made her way back to Bridget. She didn’t want to catch a guy right after the act. “Did you get lost in spermatozoa hall? Some of our staff members clearly don’t have enough to do, so they name doors.” Bridget said. Lilly laughed, and then wondered how she might broach the topic of the blonde Kokopelli. “Um, so there was this guy who came out of Kokopelli, and I was wondering if I might…well…be able to consider his…um…” “Sperm?” “Yeah, how might I find out about him?” “If he was coming out of Kokopelli, he was a donor technician. It doesn’t work like that, Lilly. You must select an anonymous donor.” “But I can’t tell much about the donors without photos. It’s just that I’m picking a complete stranger.” “Therein lays the strength and the weakness of the modern sperm bank, Lilly. Anonymity is what most people are going for. It’s much less complicated, I can assure you.” Bridget turned in her chair and squinted at the invasive sunbeam making its way across her desk. “Most people in this city whip themselves into a sun-worshipping frenzy when the sun makes it grand entrance, but I prefer the cool grey drizzle.” Bridget leaned forward to let Lilly in on a secret, “Don’t tell anyone.” She turned around and pulled the curtains with a drawstring to keep out the mid-day sun. It was then that Lilly concocted a plan. ******************************************************************************************** Lilly took her basal temperature religiously until she knew she was ovulating. Then she donned a brunette Parisian page boy wig, Jackie-O glasses and a silk scarf tied beneath her chin. She wore a trench coat and black patent leather go-go boots. When she got off the elevator to the sperm bank, she headed toward donor hall. All of the red lights above the rooms were on—indicating that the rooms were in use--except for the middle room. Before entering, she made sure that the coast was clear. The room was dark and windowless with a leather couch, a TV, a closet with a curtain, and a bathroom area. There were stacks of magazines, porn movies, and white cotton towels. She slipped in behind the curtain and waited. Her heart was beating vigorously under her coat. At 10:15 am, she heard footsteps and then the door creak open. The counselor delivered the donation instructions in a bland, monotone voice. Then she said, “Here’s your stack of girlie mags to help with production. Questions?” Lilly couldn’t hear the question, but the answer was, “Boy mags?” The shuffling and sorting of magazines. “Here, you go. OK, good luck.” Good luck? Did people need luck for this process? Lilly wondered behind the curtain. After the counselor left, she risked a peek. The guy—a short and nerdy accountant-type—was leafing through magazines. After determining that he wasn’t to be her donor, she stopped peeking and listened. The page-turning stopped and there was silence. Apparently, he had selected a fantasy boy. The accountant began to moan in deep tones. The tones began working their way up the scale until they sounded like the moans of a woman. When Lilly thought the moans couldn’t get any higher, he hit a high C at full pitch and then said, “Lockheed, oh Lockheed, launch me.” A soprano accountant with missile-launching fantasies was not going to be the father of her child. The Lockheed-lover was followed by a mullet-wearing rock-n-roller, a comb-over Russian, a pudgy gnome, a surly Indian, and a quiet Asian-American who donated without a sound. After all the grunting, moaning, and groaning, Lilly was beginning to have ejaculation fatigue and thinking that in order for her plan to work, she’d have to be Jackie-O behind the curtain for weeks, maybe months. The door opened and someone came in without the counselor and her bland ejaculating-into-a-cup instructions. Strange, Lilly thought. The person rearranged the furniture and then sat. She snuck a peek; it was Kokopelli, the beautiful blonde surfer!! He was reading a book titled Internal Ejaculation. She moved back behind the curtain, her heart racing and her mind whirring. What was he doing here? It could only be one thing. Could I? Would I? She hadn’t really thought past the camouflage and the curtain. Her face flushed and her palms got clammy. It’s now or never! She emerged from behind the curtain. “Hi there.” She couldn’t think of what else to say. Kokopelli’s unruly hair rearranged itself as he nearly lost his balance on the table that served as his meditation platform. “Shit! You scared me! Are you a female voyeur or a spy?” “Both, I guess. I’m a spy on a mission to find the perfect sperm.” “Man, good luck with that.” He set Internal Ejaculation face down. “I think I’ve found it.” “Cool. Yeah, we have thousands of specimens in our tanks. Our counselors are top notch at helping people find what they’re looking for.” “I don’t think you understand.” “Don’t understand what?” “Aren’t you here to donate?” “Well, yeah. You want to watch or something? Wow! Kinky!” “No, no, that’s not what I’m saying.” “You want me to give you my specimen? That would be premeditated sperm stealing, and I would be an accomplice. I think you can get 15 to life for that.” He smirked and leaned back on his hands. “What I’m asking is if you would be willing to donate directly.” He laughed, thinking it was a joke. But she didn’t crack a smile. “Seriously?” “Dead serious.” “Man, I don’t know what to say; this is highly unexpected,” he looked down at his feet, sighed, and put his hand to his forehead. Lilly’s heart sank as she braced herself for a rejection. Then he looked Lilly straight in the eye and said, “But, hell, I’m all for cutting out the middle man.” As soon as Lilly got the go-ahead, she acted quickly for fear that he would change his mind. The scene looked like a fast motion striptease act. She pulled off her coat, scarf, dress, and panties and threw them down on the chair. He hesitated, not sure what to do next. Then he jumped down from the table and took her by the waist. He helped her up on the table and laid her down. “Dude, I can’t believe I’m doing this. I hope nobody looks for today’s specimen, cuz’ they ain’t gonna find it.” To Lilly, this experience was better than any pointed turkey baster or prodding medical procedure with frozen sperm. It was a direct deposit. - Duluth, 1992