Free Sex Cells: The Medical Market for Eggs and Sperm by Rene Almeling Page B

general, though, he has “a schedule to come here. In my head I have to work it out. It’s normally either on the way to or from school. So then I just try to figure out what I have to do today, how long I got to get it done, and then when I can fit this in.”
    Pleasure and Control
    Upon arrival at most of the banks, men are buzzed in through secure doors, which is greater security than is in place at egg agencies. Sperm donors sign in and fill out a form with their donor number and answer questions about when they last ejaculated and whether they have had unprotected sex. Gametes Inc. had a new computerized check-in system that would automatically alert men when it was time to provide a urine sample or have their blood drawn. This needed to happen every few months so that the sperm samples could be released from quarantineand posted on the website for sale to recipients. Several men said that they did not look forward to blood draw day.
    The donation rooms in each bank had slightly different décors. At CryoCorp, the founder proudly showed off what he called “masturbatoriums,” small rooms with erotic pictures on the walls and flat-screen televisions for watching pornographic movies. Western Sperm Bank, a nonprofit, offered larger rooms with a small bed and chair but only provided magazines. Most of the sperm banks had several rooms so that more than one person could donate at a time, but University Fertility Services had a much smaller program, so men were simply directed to the clinic’s bathroom, where there was a small stash of magazines in the drawer under the sink. Ethan, a thirty-nine-year-old who had just finished an eighteen-month stint at Western Sperm Bank, gave the most detailed description of the donation room and his routine.
You go in a room, and they have a chair and a bed. It’s comfortable, and they change the sheets, kind of like hospital linen. Even though it may not be clean, it always seemed to be smoothed out. And there’s a big wicker basket full of sperm cups with a twist cap, and they’re all individually hermetically sealed. A lot of times, they’ll pick up one of those and set it in the middle of bed so it looks like no one’s been there. It’s like this nice hotel touch. First thing in the morning, it’s always set up, but if they’re really moving through people, especially later in the day, the pillow might be whatever, so you gotta kind of fluff the pillow. Or there might be a pubic hair on the bed. Sometimes I did masturbate thinking about my wife, but it wasn’t the same. So I usually just grabbed a magazine to be sure that I would get aroused quick and get out of there. But in the beginning, it was kind of experimental and kind of fun. It was fun all the way through, actually. It became part of my day I enjoyed. It was like a stress release, and I got to look at really beautiful women without my wife going “I’m not letting you have a subscription to Penthouse !” [ laughs ] Guys were tearing—my favorite pictures would be gone some days, or your favorite magazine would disappear. You got used to your favorite room, because the rooms were decorated a little bit differently. I would get two magazines, especially if I knew them. This girl’s really great, and this girl’s really great, too. So I would lie down, and I would start masturbating. Then, at some point, you had to make a decision about how you were going to do this clinically. You have to sit up. I would have the cup sitting there, with the cap off and open, because if you were just about to ejaculate and the cap wasn’t off, you had to fumble. You could come all over yourself, and that’s $50, a mess. I mean, it could be very embarrassing. It never happened to me. So you have to be conscious of that. It’s not this free-flowing sexual activity.
    In linking a spilled sample with $50, Ethan points to men’s ever-present awareness of the fact that they are paid piece-rate.
    About a third of the sperm donors