Jamie Ross
I awoke with a jolt of excitement today. I heard my door open, and through bleary eyes I saw my mother coming into the room with an envelope in her outstretched arm. What could this be? A wistful letter of love from an old flame? A massive order for Jamie Ross charity wristbands? Of course not, it was a letter from my old mates at the sperm bank.
I don’t know how you like to start your day, fellow students, but I’d venture that very few of you would choose to wake up by receiving a letter straight from the desk of a sperm nurse which, in its very first sentence, informs you that you have a “slightly low sperm count“.
About a month ago, I had to give a sperm sample due to the small chance that my treatment could make me infertile. I don’t know who invented chemotherapy, but his efforts to iron out the flaws in his creation can only really be described as lacklustre. If he went on Dragon’s Den he’d no doubt present something revolutionary and fantastic, much like Reggae Reggae sauce, but it would probably cause eight of your toes to fall off and make the earth explode.
Apparently having a slightly below average count is of little consequence to me, but they thought I’d get a kick out of this emasculating piece of trivia anyway. They claim that it’s “most likely” down to my illness, which reads to me as a thinly-veiled suggestion that I have rubbish testicles. However, I am reassuringly told that they have “great motility” which means that, although perhaps low in number, they are a force to be reckoned with. Much like the Spartan army.
They go on to instruct me that I have to contact them as soon as I enter a serious relationship so that they can sort out the relevant consent forms for it. This begs the question, how in shitting crikey am I supposed to bring this up to the lucky lady? At what stage in a relationship is it acceptable for me to suggest that her name should be written onto my bottle of sperm?
This also means that somewhere in Ninewells Hospital there will be an inevitably long and depressing record of each successive failed relationship that I have had to cancel consent for. Perhaps the sperm receptionist will moonlight as a handy relationship councillor for me. ’Oh dear, what happened this time Jamie?’ ’Same as last time Doreen, I told her I needed her date of birth and address to fill out the form for her to mother my test tube spawn‘.
In the final paragraph they inform me that I don’t have AIDS, which was a relief. I think that finding out that I had both cancer and AIDS in the same year would have been somewhat of a bitter pill to swallow. Anyway, it was on that bombshell that the letter ended and I was left to pick over the prospect of living my life knowing I make slightly less sperm than a normal man, but it’s okay, because they could have AIDS.
