As I mentioned in another place, I have been in a common-law partnership for six years. Shortly after we began living together we decided to try to have a baby. My conditions were that there would be no fertility treatments and no adoption. I was nearly 48; my partner was 44 and mother of a twenty year old son. After a few months with no results, we agreed to have ourselves checked.

I was not embarrassed or offended by the idea of performing a sperm count. I saw it as a potentially erotic experience. I would go into the small lab run by women in white smocks. I would give the receptionist my referral slip from the family doctor and be given a small container and a selection of nudie magazines. She would direct me to a cubicle behind a curtain. Behind the curtain I would drop my pants and shorts, already hard. With two or three women within earshot, the whole business would be no more than a minute.

I arrived early one morning. Sure enough, the sperm lab was run by women in white smocks with one receptionist-clerk type. There were, however, no magazines, and no cubicle with a flimsy curtain behind which I could jerk off without any negative feelings. Instead, I was to go outside, turn right, right again at the corner, and then enter the women’s fertility clinic where I could fulfill the mission in the toilet. That already made me apprehensive. A ladies’ toilet is not intended for men giving sperm samples. With my pants and shorts down, I saw that I had neither the erection nor the mindset to produce semen in the cup. Soon enough there were knocks on the door. This was a disaster. I would have to walk out of the toilet, facing all those impatient women, having done nothing.

Somehow I managed to leave the building without further damage. Back on the sidewalk I realized that this wasn’t going to be so easy. One thing that makes me very hot is the possibility of being seen. Just thinking about it was beginning to help. I needed a place where I could be caught. The key word here is “could”; “would” might work, but I would probably go to jail for indecency. I passed some parking lots. Standing between parked cars occurred to me, but the lot was busy now, people coming in one after another. It wouldn’t do; what I needed was to be inside a car, but then again, I would have trouble getting the spillage into the cup. It had to be done standing up. I walked on.