To be born at all brought me a moment of fame.
The waiting room was full of frightened young men clinging to numbered tickets and plastic receptacles. We nervously anticipated our turn to touch ourselves in narrow, drywall stalls. A government-mandated fertility test wasn’t exactly what I had in mind for the summer after high-school. I had shit to do. My bullet train to Montreal was to leave the next day. First, I had to provide my specimen. The alternative was up to one year in prison and a twenty-thousand dollar fine. I had no such funds or years to sacrifice, and at eighteen, I had an overabundance of hormones coercing my every thought to go forth and multiply. Did I want kids? I wish I could’ve finished being one before the choice was taken from me.
Shuffling in line at the joint venture between Service Ontario and Health Canada, I felt the most sympathy I’d ever mustered toward Desmond, walking the worn vinyl dots across the floor in his shoes. They were unprecedented times in our country. The population plateaued years before I was born, and plummeted since. An unheard-of call to action was announced by the Prime Minister. Sterility was the affliction that went on to define Desmond’s generation and the era that followed. My mother always spoke of his genetic donation as a civic duty to be admired. She read a lot of books about raising children as a single parent. Mom made sure to put my dad’s few known accomplishments in a positive light. I’m sure there was a chapter in all the nonfiction she consumed about giving your child a male figure to revere.
Acclaim fastened itself to my father far longer than the National Photography Prize cash he won. It was in all the papers, rather, it was run under countless sweaty thumbs, trapped in light and pixels behind fragile glass. The still image he took of my placenta-covered face in my mother’s arms, was headline news. I was the first child born of the government’s repopulation initiative. Viable sperm was akin to the ivory trade, low supply high demand. Strange that Desmond could list fatherhood among his accomplishments when he was an estranged sire to an unknown son. My mother raised me. She loved me. I tried my humble best to push the source of my seed from daily thoughts because for one, what kid spends too long pondering their conception? Second, what difference did it make? Life was given and it was wholly mine to spend.
Scanning the faces preparing to deposit their samples into the reusable plastic cups did little to inspire admiration or arousal for the task at hand. I explained all this to the weary nurse dispensing numbers from behind the high countertop where the specimens were returned under the guise of paper bags. Her profession was a result of national crisis, but her sense of urgency appeared long ago eroded by the unfortunate necessity of masculine bodily function. ComeOneComeAll was a trending hashtag when the legislation first passed.
The command performance cast a wide net. Young men from every walk of life were gathered in befuddled anxiety when they came of age. Most of them had likely never gotten laid. I was held in prestigious high-school esteem when news that I slept with Niko Mori was spread in the social water supply. Girls could be even more discerning about their mates in the days of rampant sterility, hence the awe for my lost virginity. I knew my status was undeserved.
My mom put a pool in the backyard of our east-end Toronto home the summer before eleventh-grade. That was enough to draw the attention of all my classmates as temperatures continued to rise with every passing year. Mom was born into money, so Niko was an opportunist, and I was forever grateful. Niko and I dated again the next summer, but she was off to Dalhousie after graduation. She wanted to enjoy the east coast summer before the fall semester started. I was envious of all the boys living in Halifax with backyard pools or in close proximity to the ocean. Niko may have settled for a hot tub with the right landscaping.
Whiling away the summer afternoons with Niko’s feminine wiles was what I preferred to picture in readying myself for the performance ahead. Beauty is magnified beneath a layer of water. Niko was no different. Just as the egg-white walls around me began to fade into views of my backyard swimming hole and Niko’s rose-red bikini, her ink-black hair turned darker under chlorinated water weight, her marble skin, her nose-scrunching laugh, her ebony eyes, her…
“Number one-three-six,” the nurse sighed loud enough for all to hear.
My paper ticket stuck to my sweaty palm when I rubbed my thumb over the number. Rising to my feet, I noticed my erection pressing against the seam of my slim-fit jeans. Hot embarrassment rushed to my face. Everyone around had their eyes fixed on the floor. Only the exhausted nurse met my gaze. If she noticed my bulge, she didn’t let on. Knowing the nurse saw such things on a daily basis did little to ease my horror. I received my paper bag. When accepting my plastic cup, my forefinger grazed the nurse’s gloved hand. I immediately wanted to turn heel and run.
“It’s OK, sweetie.” Her kindness defeated her fatigue with a smile offered by her eyes. Her mouth was hidden behind an N95 mask. “Follow me.” And then we walked on down the hall.
I had the misfortune of crossing paths with another donor between the long row of doors on either side. Neither he nor I made a sound. Neither of us looked up. Neither breathed. What was all this shame doing to our future relationship with sex? The nurse unlocked door number twelve. What was this experience doing to our relationship with nurses? She entered the small room. I followed close behind in fear of being left alone in the hallway of heroes.
“Just a minute,” said the nurse, and she covered the chair affixed to the floor in a sheet of that dreadful, noisy medical paper. She then wiped the tablet secured to the armrest with disinfectant wipes. The bulge in my pants was long gone. “Take as much time as you need,” were the practitioner’s last words before I entered the tiny space. I seriously doubted eighteen-year-old boys were setting any stamina records.
When I mercifully closed and locked the door behind me, there was a wide variety of erotic content awaiting in digital selection. An eclectic collection of desires, fetishes, curiosities, and perversions were at my fingertips. It was nice to see the government supplying and ultimately supporting such diverse tastes. Fear that my own preferences might go on official record kept me from scrolling through the virtual menu to where my true lusts ran. Health class teachers often warned that the easy access to porn and its limitless sexual scenarios were causing erectile dysfunction in kids as young as fifteen. I didn’t buy the demonization cast on one of my most beloved mediums, but it certainly made me think twice every time I opened the browser on my phone to indulge myself in a journey of self-discovery.
I began my typical voyage into the dark recesses of my eroticism, periodically surprised by what my subconscious cravings clicked and viewed. Those who condemn the form must be really afraid of their latent curiosities. Despite the abundant stimulation, my libido hid somewhere inside where lascivious light could not reach. It didn’t matter how many genders or participants I added to the sex scenes, blood didn’t flow where I needed. The sounds from neighbouring stalls weren’t principle among my impediments. I’d masturbated in diverse environs, mindsets, and conditions as teens are wont to do. My abilities were a point of pride in my youth, but my talents were laid to waste by the knowledge that a life could begin soon after I finished. The flesh colliding on screen suddenly lost its lustre and I couldn’t keep myself from wondering if my portion of conception would be steeped in the conditions surrounding my donation. What was to come of the generations born from a fashion better compared to jury duty than ecstasy? I was among the first test subjects, a social experiment in real time. Depression and anxiety already ran rampant among my peers. Did my conception alter my composition? Questions for Desmond came rushing in. Not because my mother lacked parental guidance. She simply came from the opposite side of the fertility equation, which is to say: she never came at all. I just couldn’t help but wonder if the pieces that made me were tainted by the fact that passion was not the key ingredient in my making.
My hands were chilled from washing under the faucet in the cold-water stall. The irony of calling my mandatory sample a donation was all too apparent when I placed the plastic cup in its paper bag on the reception desk and the nurse swiped my health card to keep me out of trouble with the authorities until the results came back. She didn’t meet my eyes as she called the next number. Women suffered far worse invasive regulation on their reproduction since time immemorial. Tell a man he’s going to face stark consequences for not masturbating at the behest of his country and he’s not going to spend too long arguing.
I looked down at my phone as I left the building to see that I’d been in the stall for over half an hour. Clocking my longest time on record would have been cause for celebration under different circumstances. The LRT stop outside Service Ontario was a receptacle for kids likewise unsure about which outcome they hoped for. We didn’t know if we were about to join the sterile masses or the drastic minority of fathers. No one spoke in the shadow of the tree hanging over the stop. An intersection of spring and summer danced on the air pouring in the LRT window. Passengers accustomed to the route gave furtive glances as if to tell me they knew exactly where my hands had just been. I felt like an exhibitionist with an open fly and no underwear. A lot of attention was given to where I placed my hand on the overhead rail. I showed the other passengers the palm of my left hand before grabbing the yellow strip of painted steel.
It intrigued me to watch my fellow donators exit the red rocket along the Dundas route that crossed the Don Valley between very different boroughs of inner-city Toronto. None of them were returning home to fathers. Doldrums awaited so many of the angry youth born of a legislative plan to combat the nation’s dwindling human resources.
I became suddenly overwhelmed by the weight of it all. An immediate urge overtook me to ask my father what to do in the face of such times. Calm and comfort from his mouth seemed to be just the antidote to the anxious venom pumping through my veins. I was bitten by the thought that I might bring life into the world before the year was out, or never be able to. The ghost of my father – the stranger Desmond – felt like the only possible source for a remedy to slow my hummingbird heart. He’d walked a thousand kilometres in the shoes I wore. I had to meet him. Of course.
My mom stood in the kitchen when I got to the house. We lived in a remodeled century-home just south of the many restaurants lining the Danforth. There was a cold Left Field brew sitting open on the kitchen bar between us. I sat down on a stool, took off my mask, and smiled, resting my elbows on the countertop to tilt the beer into my mouth. The moment I looked away from my mom, she went to the fridge and poured herself a tall glass of Niagara pinot grigio.
“We’re going out,” she proclaimed. “It’s your birthday. Jalen made us a reservation.”
Jalen was my mother’s lover, a sentiment painful to any boy, no matter how progressive his views on every being’s need for affection of some kind. He owned a tattoo parlour in Kensington Market. We’d only known each other a few weeks when Niko flaunted a piece Jalen had needled into the taught flesh of her hip the fall after she first dumped me. The blood she unveiled when peeling back the bandage to show the school cafeteria was out bled tenfold by my wounded heart. I did that thing so many of us do to pretend agony isn’t winning. I simply held a blank stare as long as I was able, feigning the meekest of smiles until I could go home to ride my bike with headphones in, hoping to pedal off the planet, to some distant place where hurt didn’t hurt so bad.
Jalen made his remorse well known when he eventually connected the dots with Mom. I couldn’t blame him for his unknowing transgression, but part of his job was to shave the skin where the ink would go to keep the needle from jamming. The thought of the man dating my mother performing such an intimate ritual with the girl I adored was a punch to the gut.
The three of us sat in awkward silence in the swank dining room atop the Broadview Hotel. I was buzzed by the time our well-groomed server brought the main courses. The building stood for over a century, a remnant of Jilly’s strip club, a seedy, city landmark just east of the Don Valley on Queen Street. Gentrification could be defined by the transformation that took place within its redbrick bones. Jalen sat opposite me. He was one of the many without the privilege to reproduce, to make a child all his own. He was fifteen-years mom’s junior. Her wealth was three generations her senior.
“Anything you want me to tell dad when I find him?” I asked my mom, emboldened by expensive cocktails.
“I’m sure he won’t remember me,” she laughed, sipping a martini. “You know how many children he’s given the world by now?”
“You never forget your first,” Jalen added.
“Do you think he’ll remember me?”
“Don’t embarrass me when you go.” My mother blew right past my question. “I had to call in a lot of favours for you to get his address. The government keep those paternal documents sealed tight.”
“Anything you want me to tell him?”
“No. This is about you and him. I paid my money and got you. Done deal, so far as I’m concerned, but you go find your answers, honey.” Mom flagged down the server. Jalen resigned to let Mom pick up the tab. He was chiseled and tattooed.
“I never knew my father either,” he said, interlocking his ink-soaked fingers and leaning over the candlelight. “I’ll never get to right that wrong with my own kid. Just not possible. Ain’t that some shit. But what else is there to do, other than live with it?” Jalen swirled his cognac in the base of his snifter. “I know I’m not your pops. All I ever hoped to be when I fell in love with your mom was someone you could talk to, someone you’d be able to come to if you ever needed help. I’ll never try to tell you what to do, but you’re about to blow up every pre-conceived notion you had of your biological father. Let me know if you want a hand sorting through the pieces.” Desmond suddenly became all the more real.
“I’ll figure it out,” I said, not meeting Jalen’s eyes.
“Sure. Of course,” he replied.
***
A distant pounding echoed in my head when I awoke. Drool soaked through my pillow case as I lifted my head from the Egyptian cotton. Thunderous bangs came from the front door downstairs.
“Mom?” I cried out, pleading into the void for her to make the beating on the door stop.
There was no reply. In the agony of my first hangover as an adult, I pulled on a pair of loose-fitting boxers and went to the main floor. My mom was nowhere to be found. I checked the time on the stove, angry that I’d been shaken from sleep before noon, so long before I was due at the train station. A fist came just shy of my nose when I opened the front door. The police officer doing the knocking withdrew his hand. I squinted in the blinding light of day.
“Vincent Price?” The cop barked. There was another officer behind him. She had her hair pulled back tight. She had a grip on the handcuffs strapped to her belt.
“Yeah.”
“Did you provide a sample to the Health Canada clinic on Dundas yesterday?” The meat-head at my door asked.
“I did.”
“Congratulations, young man. You’re going to be a father.” The officer handed me a manila envelope heavy with papers. “This is for you. It has all the information you need and some instructions.”
I took the envelope.
“Happy belated birthday,” said the other officer, and they both gave me their backs on their way to the cruiser parked on the driveway.
Still reeling from the hangover, I closed the door gently to avoid the slam.
“What was that about?” Jalen asked, descending the stairs from my mother’s bedroom in a bathing suit and nothing else, his body a shrine to his trade. The dragon tattooed on his sternum stared at me.
I couldn’t muster a response, taking a seat on a stool at the kitchen island. The papers were spread out on the granite countertop. My eyes scanned the documents through sleep.
“You tested positive, didn’t you?” Jalen read over my shoulder. “You can have kids.”
“Says here, the deposit I made can be used up to ten times.”
“Ten kids?”
“I’m due back next week and every week after that.”
“Or else what?”
“They’ll arrest me.”
“You still going to Montreal?”
“I thought there was a lot of stuff I wanted to ask my dad before. Now I really have some questions.”
Jalen put a supportive hand on my back. I couldn’t tell if it was placed there in jealousy or pity.
“Can you do something for me before I go?” I asked him.
“Anything.”
***
Jalen took a dollar store razor and shaved the hair off my forearm. He wiped the skin with a disinfectant wipe. The surface around my pores was smooth and shining under the fluorescent lights. There was no one else in the shop. It was Jalen’s place. We were alone together. He placed the tracing paper on my skin and wet it with a squirt bottle. The stencil was left behind when he pulled off the damp material. My birthdate was written in black.
“Your first tattoo,” Jalen said. “You never forget your first.” I looked at his neck, his hands, his arms, the organ enclosing his body covered in ink.
“They’re putting me out to stud, but I don’t want to forget any of them.”
“Then you won’t,” Jalen replied.
The gears of the tattoo gun began to turn. A soothing buzz hummed in my ears like a mantra. The needle moved up and down so fast it became a solid line in the air like a sparkler waved quickly through the air to spell a name in the dark. I felt the sharp tip break the skin. My blood spilled out and began to mix with the black ink as the date of my first conception was printed permanently on my flesh.
