Now You Semen, Now You Don't.

The already small room seemed to shrink even more after the receptionist opened her damned mouth.

The words bounced crisply off the walls of the waiting room, nearly the size of a bathroom stall, and into the hallway where the sound waves bounced about like a pinball.

The blonde seated in the waiting area behind me and whose halter top struggled to retain her ridiculous breasts was now aware, as were any passerbys, that I "have the option of taking the plastic cup home or using one of our bathrooms here. If you go home, you have to be back in thirty minutes or the specimen won't be any good."

I had a sudden rememberance of me driving through town when I hit a curb and spilled my soda pop down my shirt.

"Here. Fine. Is fine." I said quietly though with the grace and confidence of a neandrothal who had just touched the big black monolith and subsequently and mystically was granted the gift of speech.

"Okay, just take a seat in the lobby for now."

To my horror there were only two seats. Boobs was in one seat, and the other was adjacent to hers but close enough that our knees would have touched.

"Wow, they really pack us in, don't they?" I laughed nervously while I slid my chair a few feet away from hers. I sat and instinctively crossed my legs, not realizing until moments later that I had done so. I pulled out my phone and began to pretend to text.

"Mr. Moore?" I expected her to say, "you can go jack off now," but instead she said, "You're going to have to go downstairs and take this sheet to Admissions." I held the form in my hand and thought, "don't you have a fax machine?"

I withheld my protest, however, upon realizing that this bureaucratic nuisance at least spared me from enduring another second staring at the wall and not breathing.

Above the reception counter was a sign that said, “Voted Best Hospital Laboratory – 2004” by such-and-such health magazine. These sorts of awards should have an expiration date. If they cannot follow this victory with a 2005 trophy, it is like saying, “Salem Hospital Laboratory… slowly declining since 2004.”

-----

Hospitals are sick places. The corridors are narrow, the air is stale, and the patients are crazy. Like a casino there are no windows or clocks. For some reason I kept expecting the place to burst into flames.

I made it down to admissions (is that even what it was called?) and stood behind a sign far from the registration desk that read, "For privacy purposes, please wait here until you are called." Where the hell was this five minutes ago?, I wondered.

I was the only one in line and after thirty seconds had not yet been acknowledged by the receptionist who simply stared blankly at the computer screen. She lacked the courtesy to even move her hands about in order to look busy-- a trick I employ in the drive-up teller window at work when I don't want customers to know that I need at least a few moments to recover from the last dumbass who came through before I deal with their shit.

I began to slowly sway back and forth, hoping that she might then notice me; you know, sort of like how certain reptiles can't see you if you don't move. It worked, and she called me forward. I handed her the paper and she said I will have to take a seat and wait for a number.

Suddenly playing the part of Bill Murray's or Steve Martin's character in 1980's comedy I sat in the waiting room and watched the receptionist do absolutely nothing. "Make my number happen!" I wanted to yell. "You aren't making anybody else's number happen! Make my number!"

I was again in a waiting room with but one other person. This time it was a stout, old woman in a sundress with what appeared to be male pattern baldness not unlike Terry Bradshaw's. She was reading a paperback novel entitled, "The Demonic Pigs."

"Ohhhh," she would mutter. "Ewwww... Ohhh Gawd."

Then she looked up at me: "It's a really good book."

I mouthed, "Oh."

She nodded and returned to her book, but immediately after her head tilted toward the pages it bounced back up at me and said, "It's sort of a sorcery and magic sort of thing."

"Really." I glanced around the room in fear that anyone nearby might have actually supposed that I had inquired about "The Demonic Pigs."

"Yes, there's this sorceror and he has a fairy. He has this fairy with him. Flies around and such. And there's this warrior. Well he was a warrior in the previous book but he died and in this book he came back as a weasel." She chuckled, "He wasn't very happy about that."

I shook my head in sympathy with the warrior.

A voice cut in: "Marge? Marge Witherby?"

Sun Dress stood up, but before walking away turned over her shoulder and said, "It was nice talking to you." I told her likewise and I do not know why I am such a liar sometimes.

My number was never called but my name was called by a hospital employee who walked in from the back somewhere wiping mayonaisse off her face and brushing crumbs off her shirt, so I then assumed that "wait for your number" thing means "sit there while Glenda puts down her hamburger and gets off her fat ass."

I sat at a desk while Mayo typed into her screen information that she was reading off the paper. I looked around the office and no fax machine was in sight, and so I understood my role of courier.

Then the questions started.

Who do you work for? Wells Fargo.

Do you have your insurance card? Here.

This doesn't look like a card. It's what they gave me.

They didn't give you something else? No.

Hmm. (click click click click) Is this insurance company new to Wells Fargo? I'm new to Wells Fargo, so...

Hmm. I'm going to have to check on something. (click click click click click click) Ohh, it works now. Apparently something wasn't updated in the whatnot, and so therefore things weren't compatible with the so on and so forth, but it's fine. Good.

"And you're here for..." her eyes scanned my piece of paper. "Oh. Okay."

Got weird suddenly: "And do you have any religious preferences?"

What? Will a chaplain come out and talk with me? Is there a ceremony that follows? Am I sinning if I say, "I'm Christian, now can I go masturbate into a cup please?"

"That's a weird one," I said. She chuckled, but waited for an answer.

"Do I have options?" I asked.

"Let's see," she said. "Muslim, Mormon, Christian, Baptist..." Apparently the Salem Hospital does not consider Baptists Christians. Ha.

"How does my answer affect the procedures that follow?" I asked.

"It doesn't. It's just for demographics." (Salem Hospital Issues New Study, Finds Catholics More Likely To Jack Off In Hospitals Than Buddhists)

"Hmm, that's a toughie." Part of me felt I was taking this too seriously and that I should just pick one, but at the same time this didn't seem like the sort of question that one handles lightly.

"We can just put atheist," she said.

"I'm not really one of those," I said.

"Agnostic?"

"No... can you do sort of a Progressive Agnostic slash Liberal Christian Traditionalist?"

"We'll just put down other." She said.

I was dissatisfied but I accepted it.

"Now, sir, I am required to notify you of our Anonymous Research Disclosure. In the state of Oregon, any specimens that are not destroyed can legally be retained for research purposes," she said.

"If I break any records will I be notified?"

"No sir, that's why it's called an Anonymous Research Disclosure."

"Because that would look really good on a resume."

-----

I returned to the laboratory upstairs with my marching orders and was relieved to see that Boobs had moved elsewhere and the lobby was empty. But by the time that my sigh had formed in my lungs in came a large, smelly lady with five children, two of whom were twins approximately two years old. The twins began running around smashing into plants and my shins. The daughter, approximately twelve years old, sat down in a doorway and the mother, standing in another doorway, yelled, "Yer blockin' tha doorway!" The rest of the children started spinning around with their arms out helicopter-style and slobbering.

I began to feel the pressure. In a few moments I had a job to do, but I was not sure if I was up to task, so to speak, given the surroundings. Not exactly putting me "in the mood."

"Mr. Moore?" The receptionist called over the warbling sounds of toddlers.

"Okay, for your semen analysis here is this cup for the semen to go in for the analysis. Here is a piece of paper with a semen analysis questionnaire. On the back of the semen analysis questionnaire there are directions for you to follow for the semen analysis. There is a bathroom around the corner for you to conduct your part of the semen analysis..."

I invented a drinking game in which I would take a shot of vodka every time she said the word "semen analysis."

"Now, keep in mind," she continued, "that if you've had any, um, activity in the last five days this test won't do any good."

"Heh?"

"Yeah. They didn't tell you that?"

"No."

"Well they should've told you that."

"Oh."

"Yeah."

"So, now what?" I said.

"Well, the test won't be accurate."

"Can't you calculate proportions?" I asked. "Do you have, like, a slide rule or something? Is there an equation where you can plug in the..."

"I'm sorry sir, you're going to have to come back in later."

"When I come back can we expedite the process?"

"No sir, you will have to go through the same procedures."

"There's no streamlining process? My address will still be the same." (I wanted to add, "I'm not converting to Judaism.")

"Unfortunately the registration papers only last 24 hours."

Then what happens to them? What sort of paper do you write it on? Does it evaporate? Does it go sour?

"So I'm screwed then," I said, not catching the irony in time.