The Specimen. It sounds like bad science fiction – like something reptilian, lurking. But yesterday morning a disconcertingly jovial man in a sterile hair net handed me a cup and told me to produce one. When I “produced” my specimen for the semen analysis I was able to take the cup home with me. I was able to “produce” in silence and obscurity. I was able to produce on my own timeline. Then I transported that specimen to the lab in my pocket (it’s supposed to remain as close to body temperature as possible).

But yesterday I had to have conversations about my specimen. I had a particular time and location to produce it. Theoretically I had all morning, but there were people waiting for me. People who saw me enter the bathroom and had a job to do post-production.

One of the questions I asked in the consultation room with the nurse earlier that day was if this specimen was going to be The Specimen. “Yes,” she said, “so make it a good one.”

I appreciated the tension-diffusing humor, but blushed anyway.

She led me down the hall and passed me off to the jovial lab technician. He had a few forms for me to fill out and told me there would be more to complete when I got back. What great foreplay and afterglow – forms.

He handed me a cup and had me write my name on it. We walked down another hallway lined with offices. All of them were filled with people who turned to watch me pass with my cup. The technician was in a great mood, laughing and making jokes. I was deadly serious.

He pointed to a room, “This one is my favorite.”

I tried to put that image out of my mind entirely. I pulled the door closed and got ready to produce. Unfortunately, there were a number of distractions.

Distraction 1: The woman outside the door talking about her son’s stomach flu. She and her co-worker – who must have had offices right next to the specimen room, lucky them – discussed her son’s symptoms in detail. Projectile vomiting, diarrhea, cold sweats. The works. I’m sorry for her son, but for God’s sake, I’m trying to make a baby here.

Distraction 2: The porn. In the rack on the wall, in full view, was a magazine with a naked woman on the cover, holding a gasoline nozzle in front of her crotch. I did not open the magazine, but I hope that in its pages the use of the nozzle never ventured beyond the realm of the symbolic. I do not pretend to understand this image or its erotic appeal, but it remained within my peripheral vision. Eventually, I turned the magazine over revealing all manner of other perversions.

In desperation I reached for the Purple Folder, labeled “Alternative”. It was offensively thin in comparison to the legion of materials on hand for the production of heterosexual specimens. It too contained all sorts of odd scenarios: naked man on the deck of a ship, naked man by a lamppost, naked man with a shotgun (presumably for the Log Cabin Republicans in the audience). I closed the folder, but used it to cover up the other magazines, so now I was only looking at a purple rectangle. (And can we talk about the fact that the gay porn was concealed, while the straight porn was out in the open? Can they get a filing cabinet or something?)

Distraction 3: Bette Midler, on the radio, singing “God is Watching Us”. Here I am, holding a folder full of gay porn, the image of the lewd service station attendant burned into my retinas, trying to produce, and Bette Midler is signing a song about how we are never out of sight of the Divine.

Eventually, miraculously, triumphantly, I was able to produce the Specimen. I took it back to the lab technician and handed it over.

“How’d it go?” he asked.