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Blood Simple
By Vic Colfari
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Only a very small percentage of men (less than 3 percent) who attempt to become semen donors actually make the cut. After several examinations in which it was concluded that I am tall enough, thin enough, smart enough, psychologically stable, not a sodomite or homosexualist, possess functional sperm, not an abuser of drugs or alcohol, and that my motives were altruistic (or whatever), my prospects for rising to the level of official sperm donor were promising. Most of this just goes to show that you can fool some of the people, some of the time. So it is not just that I am superior to almost all other males, although there is that.
There was a problem with my blood work however. I am no stranger to the process of extricating the red liquid from veins in the arm; I have traveled to several foreign countries, been tested for diabetes/hypoglycemia and all that. It has never bothered me and I’ve never had any problems. At IDANT - the fully accredited semen bank - extracting blood proved to be a painfully tedious process; the “nurse” stuck the needle in, began drawing the stuff out and just let the thing go for what might have been forty-five minutes. She filled up approximately 15 large test tubes with the red juice. IDANT intended to test me for every blood-borne affliction known to science.
I came in the following week to hear the results. I was anxious - one reason being that this was one of the final obstacles I had to traverse in order to earn the title ‘sperm donor’. It turned out that I was HIV-negative, which is nice to know - thanks all the same - in any case. But the happy news came on a rather jarring note when I learned that most of the other tests “didn’t go through,” so now they had to be redone. My left arm was all poked up and tapped out from last week, so the right one would have to suffice. I was baffled by what was going on but I’ve learned to take things philosophically and roll with the blows. So after a couple of false starts we finished up and now I had to wait another week. In the meantime I stepped inside the private room to give another donation, as my generosity scarcely waned.
Round Three: I’m told that some of my blood tests in regards to one thing or another are a little off but that this is ultra-common and almost never serious. But, by the way, we have to do the tests all over again because the results have to be perfect in order to move forward. Well, shit. So I again braced up for the battle. “Let the bloodbath begin,” I said to myself. The “nurse’s” first attempt on my left arm proved feckless - she just couldn’t woo the stuff out, no matter which vein she coaxed. I guess this irritated her because she bleated out a ghastly accusation about how I must therefore be “anemic.”
Forget for a moment about ‘bedside-manners’ or just common courtesy, the flippant diagnosis of anemia, as I found out later, fails the test of accuracy. Somebody with anemia either (a) lacks red blood cells or (b) lacks vitality. Never mind the fact that I had - with much energy - poured out buckets of blood in the last two weeks; if there was something wrong, then there must be something wrong with me. A couple minutes later, the red krovy was flowing out of my right arm like some stream receiving encouragement from gravitational forces. Butchered and bandaged, I left the office reassured that I am not anemic after all.
When I came back to get the new results the IDANT people were all happy to tell me that everything checked out this time. I was almost good to go. However, we will need to take out some more blood, Number 01859, because we just noticed that you have some French-Canadian in your blood. And as everybody knows, French-Canadians are more susceptible to this condition than non-French-Canadians (I am sorry readers, but I simply don’t pay much attention to certain details because they do not interest me in the slightest; I wish I knew exactly what affliction French-Canadians are more likely to contract, but with that I am taken into deep waters). On the original application, I was asked to break down my blood by reviewing the ancestral nature of my parents and grandparents. I had indicated that one of my grandmothers had a drop of French-Canadian in her; I don’t even know if this is true, but I had indicated it nevertheless. Only about two months later had IDANT discovered this admission of guilt.
It is idle to ask questions like, “Why didn’t you test for this French-Canadian plague with the rivers of blood that you’ve already taken from me?” I would need more blood work and that was that. The lack of professionalism at IDANT knows no bounds as I have shown on more than one occasion. Not so long ago the company lost a million dollar lawsuit when it mixed up donors (ho-hum) and impregnated a woman, not with the semen of the male she chose, but with some other guy’s. Poor girl. I mean to say, that must come as a nasty shock when, after ordering a positively handsome, dark eyed, dark-haired, 6 foot 1, 175 pound alpha male, she gets a poet instead. Fortunately, from my end, there is only so much damage they can inflict.
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Vic Colfari is a writer living in New York City. He can be contacted by sending a letter to [email protected].
©
2003 Me Three