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but one a half-hour drive away, presumably to protect me from local gossips identifying the
nature of my visit.
So I headed off with my dictionary, which unsurprisingly was pretty low on masturbation
vocabulary. I obviously knew what would be involved in the test, namely that I'd have to
produce a sperm sample, I just didn't think I'd feel quite so seedy, no pun intended. I was
greeted coldly by the stern receptionist who told me to wait; I was the only one there, adding
to the sense that I was some kind of pariah. The wait was mercifully short and the smiling,
quite slick-looking doctor showed me into a small room directly opposite the receptionist. Sit
down, he said, relax. I just need to ask a few simple questions: 'What's your full name?' he
said. 'Your date of birth? When did you last ejaculate?' Simple, straightforward questions, the
kind that always crop up between men.
Then he got down to the nitty-gritty. 'This is what you do,' he said. 'Wash your hands,' and
he pointed to a tiny corner sink, 'rub this solution on your "gland",' pointing to what looked
like a hand-soap dispenser and then my 'gland', 'and then masturbate into this
flacon
,' again
needlessly pointing at the thing. 'Close the
flacon
,' he continued, 'place it on the counter and
leave.' He didn't say 'quietly and with your head hanging low' but he may as well have. 'Oh,
and by the way', he added, almost as an afterthought as he was about to leave and opening
the bottom drawer of the desk, 'here is some
matérial suggestif
.
Au revoir
.' And he was gone.
The whole thing just felt so dirty. The
matérial suggestif
was all American for some reason;
the French clearly feeling that their own pornography was too good for vasectomy-requesting
milksops like me. But these
Playboy
and
Penthouse
magazines, with their ridiculous-look-
ing, oiled-up mannequins with fake breasts and no pubic hair felt so out of place here in rural
France and the fact that this plastic, generic vision of woman was all that was on offer to me
just added to my sense of complete displacement. Here I was, in a sterile cupboard in the
Loire Valley being told to 'fiddle the flesh flute' into a cup and then to leave without fuss. It all
felt so grubby and undignified, like I was the victim of some particularly sordid hidden-cam-
era TV show. I have never felt less aroused or more embarrassed; I have also, inexplicably,
never felt more English or more foreign.
I can't remember how long I was in there and I think I spent more time washing my hands
than anything else which, as any man will tell you, is a fatal thing in a tiny wash-hand basin:
as I was preparing to leave I noticed the water had splashed all over the front of my beige
trousers. Bearing in mind what I was in this room to do, this was the final ignominy and cer-
tainly not a good look.
I unlocked the door and was confronted by the receptionist, still on her own, but thankfully,
given my appearance, refusing to look up from her notes.
'Au revoir, Monsieur,'
she said coldly.
'C'est tout?'
I asked and for the life of me I don't know why.
