Inconceivable

Dear Penny

Sam’s a bit quiet and rather down at the moment. I know he had a row at work with that appalling Channel Controller. (Who else but an arse could spend ?7 million of public money adapting Finnegans Wake? FINNEGANS WAKE! I ask you. A road map of Birmingham is easier to follow. And seven million! That’s a million pounds per viewer in my opinion and I said so at last year’s Light Entertainment Christmas party. George laughed so loudly something came out of his mouth, but Sam, who can be a fearful toady, told me to keep my voice down.)

I do feel sorry for Sam. I mean he really does seem a bit depressed, but it’s so hard to know how to help. The fact is he doesn’t want any help. He’d rather read his newspaper. If it was me I’d want tons of attention, in fact I do want tons of attention. Sam, however, neither craves it nor gives it very much and this leaves me feeling in extreme want of warmth. This evening I knew something was on his mind and I tried to reach out to him but he’d have none of it. He just drank beer and cracked silly jokes about if we do have a kid we’ll have to send it out to work at the age of seven because we’ll be so poor. Ha ha. So now we’re going to be penniless as well as infertile. Hilarious.

Dear Sam

Well, it’s done. Conjugal visit to hand completed. Not as easy as I might have hoped, considering my enormous experience in this area, but the required sperm sample is sorted. Funny to think that my sperm is in some laboratory somewhere waiting to be tested, darting this way and that for the benefit of a total stranger. Hope they’re looking after it, keeping it warm. I feel very slightly paternal about the stuff.

Producing it was a close-run thing. Originally we had planned for Lucy to attend the masturbation, possibly even lending a hand, so to speak. This was her idea. She doesn’t really like the thought of me having sex without her, even if it’s only on my own. She’s convinced that I’ll not give her a single thought throughout the whole proceedings but offer my entire fantastical erotic being to Winona Ryder, and of course she’s right. Well, for God’s sake! I get to sleep with Lucy every night, I only get to do it with Winona when required to produce a sperm sample. I tried to explain this, saying that psychologists had established that an uninhibited fantasy life was part of a healthy, monogamous sexual relationship. Well, Lucy wasn’t having any of it. In fact she acted quite hurt, which I find truly extraordinary.

Women! I simply do not know where to start. They actually think that a man can be unfaithful whilst indulging in solitary masturbation! It’s positively early Christian in its unforgiving intensity. Thank goodness I didn’t tell her I’d also been planning to invite Tiffany from EastEnders, The Corrs and Baby Spice to the party.

Anyway, as I said, Lucy seemed to feel it was important that she be involved in the process, so this morning when we woke up I went and got the pot from the sitting-room mantelpiece. I handed it over to Lucy, got back into bed and took up my limp appendage whilst she held the pot out expectantly, clearly anticipating an immediate outpouring.

Well, I’m here to tell anyone who cares to listen that masturbation with an audience (particularly an impatient one which hasn’t yet had a cup of tea) is not easy. I mean, of course Lucy and I had done this together before, but only in relaxed mode, in the spontaneous joy of passion, so to speak (and not, I admit, for some time). We had never before attempted masturbation for a solely practical purpose. Book, I am here to tell you that I felt a complete prick, both personally and of course literally. There I was kneeling on the bed, portion in palm with Lucy holding out the pot like some kind of beggar, and nothing was happening. Lucy, bless her, had a rather self- conscious go and disported herself about the bed a bit, you know, cupping breasts in hands and pouting, that sort of thing. I really don’t know which of us felt more stupid. After about thirty seconds I could see she was getting bored and beginning to think about breakfast. It was as much as she could do to stop herself looking at her watch. Quite obviously it was never going to work. I love her and I fancy her but a fellow can feel self-conscious even with a woman he’s shared a bed with for six years. I just could not get things going and in the end I had to decamp into the spare room and choke the poor old monkey alone.

I could see that Lucy was a bit hurt (though she denied it), but what could I do? You can’t masturbate without an erection and you can’t get an erection with your wife staring at your dick angrily and saying, “Come on, it’s already eight-fifteen. Don’t you fancy me, then?”

Anyway, left to myself I came up with the goods, so to speak. I say “goods”, if that isn’t too grand an expression to describe the sad little sample I produced. I couldn’t believe it. I’ve always been under the impression that my ejaculation is as substantial as the next man’s. If anything I might have even flattered myself that I was rather a major supplier. Well, let me tell you, you can forget all that once it’s dribbling down the inside of a plastic pot. It looks pathetic! I mean pa-the-tic. Like a sparrow sneezed.

Interesting, really, how vulnerable the whole exercise made me feel. I felt genuinely exposed, like my very manhood was being tested. As if the whole exercise was a test of my virility and sexuality. Rather sad, actually. I’d always presumed I’m a pretty relaxed, modern sort of bloke. I didn’t think I’d ever bought into any of that macho bullshit about being a big noise in the trouser department. Yet there I was staring at my sample thinking about trying to eke it out with a bit of flour and water.

But one thing you learn as you go through life is that you are what you are and you have to accept it. Besides which, I suddenly realized that I’d spent about two minutes worrying about how little I’d produced and of course I only had an hour to hand it in before the stuff died. I had to get to the clinic or I’d have the whole business to do again.

Now the advice that Dr Cooper had given me was to pop the pot down my pants, because at all costs its contents must be kept warm. In fact he had told me that if possible I was to work it into a warm crevice, which I assume is doctor code for shove it up your bum. It’s a very strange feeling waddling along the street trying to hail a taxi with a pot of sperm clenched between your buttocks. I was immediately consumed with the irrational conviction that everybody knew what was going on. Policemen seemed to glare, toddlers tugged at their mothers’ skirts and pointed, office girls veered across the pavement apparently to keep well out of my way. I swear I heard an Evening Standard vendor mutter “Dirty pervert” as I passed. Perhaps it was my desperate, hurried air that drew people’s eye. Let’s face it, a man is hardly going to look his most relaxed and urbane when he is charging along the street, agonizingly aware that his sperm has only minutes left to live.

Every taxi was full, every bus a “Not in Use. Driver in Training” let-down. The tube station had one of those chalk blackboards outside which regret that two thousand people are stuck in a tunnel below. Eventually I spotted an empty cab but inevitably another bloke spotted it too. We both dashed for it (well he dashed, I waddled) and arriving at the same time we wrestled over the handle together.

“Mine, I think,” I said. Normally I would have given up without a fight but I was desperate by this time, having only twenty-eight minutes left.

“Well, you think wrong,” said the man. “Bugger off and get your own cab. I’m having this one.”

Honestly, I don’t know how some people can be like that, so casually brutal and rude. I couldn’t do it if you paid me. It’s like when I see people throw litter out of car windows, I just think, are these people from another planet? Are they a different species altogether? I would never do that. Oh well, mustn’t get depressed about it, it takes all sorts I suppose.

Anyway, on this particular occasion, quaking at the thought of a scene though I was, there was no way I was going to let that cab go.

“Look,” I said, “I have to have this cab, it’s a matter of life and death.”

“Tough,” said the man. “I’ve got a very important meeting.”

“Well I’ve got some warm sperm up my arse and it’s dying.”

I’ll have to remember that one. The bloke let go of that door handle like it was a live snake.

“I bet you’re the sort who drops litter out of car windows as well,” I said as I got in the cab, and I meant it to hurt.

It wasn’t an easy journey, unable to sit down as I was. I had to curl up on the back seat in a sort of foetal position and I could see that the driver didn’t like it. But we got there in the end, with a few minutes to spare even, and I rushed into the clinic and handed in my sample. Actually that was a pretty gruesome moment too. I was so desperate to get there in time that I just rushed through the front door and went straight up to the reception desk. It was only as I was actually fishing the pot out of the back of my trousers that I realized that it might have been