WHITE GOLD

For the past few weeks I have been preoccupied with checking my mail.  Having applied to several PhD programs in November, March brings a daily ritual of slowly walking down to my mailbox in the West Village.  Usually what I find is not an acceptance or rejection letter but something related to the whole graduate school process. 

By applying to schools – and having been in graduate school for almost three years now – I’ve managed to be added to several mailing lists.  Daily I get offers to apply for a student loan or scholarship.  Consolidation plans for current student loans come in official looking packages with dire insistencies to open now and reply immediately.  But the most curious pieces of mail lately have been more about making a deposit than taking out a loan. 

A couple weeks ago I received a plain, brown, very official looking envelope from Park Avenue Fertility .  It contained a little brochure about an application process and had smiling guys in its inset.  It took me a minute to realize this was a solicitation for my sperm.  I thought this was odd and wrote it off as being some New York City, mailbox in the West Village thing.  But yesterday, I received another similar mailing.  This one from the F.C. Clinic outside DC.  This now was too strange and so I did a little research.

I’m delighted to announce that my sperm has recently jumped in value.  That’s right.  Because I am pursuing a graduate degree and have one already under my belt (pun intended) my baby batter can now be sold to reproductively challenged mothers at top dollar and I should consider applying to a “clinic” to see if I am eligible to “earn additional income.”  Somehow these people know something about me and they would like to get a little more intimate so I should fill out the little card and mail it in.  Creepier still is the thought that graduate school admissions offices, or someone within a degree of separation from them, are selling their applicant mailing list to sperm banks. 

A little research uncovered that this is not all that uncommon.  In an excerpt from his book The Genius Factory: The Curious History of the Nobel Prize Sperm Bank posted on Slate, David Plotz talks about the research he did for a writing assignment.  He goes through the whole process of applying which includes a lot of paperwork and an interview.  It also includes some medical tests and eventually a, ahem, specimen collection.  His article is revealing about the mentality of these banks:

“She asked me where I had gone to college. I said "Harvard." She was delighted. She continued, "And have you done some graduate work?" I said no. She looked disappointed. "But surely you are planning to do some graduate work?" Again I said no. She was deflated and told me why. Fairfax has something it calls—I'm not kidding—its "doctorate program." For a premium, mothers can buy sperm from donors who have doctoral degrees or are pursuing them. What counts as a doctor? I asked. Medicine, dentistry, pharmacy, optometry, law, and chiropractic.”

I have a lot to consider in making the difficult choice of which school to attend.  I think about the program, who I might get to work under, the amount of funding I’ll receive, and the location of the school.  But, until recently, I never considered the institution’s impact on the value of my semen. 

It’s oddly encouraging to my sense of virility and overall value as a man though.  Ten years ago I graduated high school with a head full of dreams and a sac full of bargain basement splooge.  But now I hold a creamy commodity in my pants and the banks are after me.  I’m not alone in these feelings.  Plotz also talks about the confidence gained from having one’s sperm complimented. 

“In the abstract, donating sperm had seemed fundamentally silly. But actually doing it was seductive. I had been accepted by the ultraexclusive Fairfax Cryobank! My sperm was "well above average"! My count was 105 million! What's yours, George Clooney?”

It is unlikely I will cash in on this lucrative opportunity.  In spite of all my progressive inclinations the thought of contributing to something called a cryobank still seems weird.  And I’m not sure I want to be responsible for fathering a litter of mini-me’s for whom further erosion of privacy rights might result in discovering daddy some day.  But I have to say I appreciate the compliment. 

I don’t know quite how to work this into a conversation.  “By the way, did you know I have high-demand reproductive fluids?”  It is unlikely to finally make my parents proud of me or something I should add to my résumé.  But it’s nice to know it’s there.  No matter how many rejection letters I receive in the mail from Political Theory programs I know someone, somewhere really wants a frozen vile of my sperm.  And that… is almost good enough for me. 

Comments

[David Ely]

The proper emoticon eludes me.

[Anne Morgan]

Hahaha! One of the most amusing stories I've read in a long time.

[mia]

neat! I worked at F.C. while I was in VA. Your white gold is a total hot commodity and could conceivably be worth the value of a new small car.
Jokes aside, I wish there were more sperm donors so women who need donor sperm can at least have a choice in what they can use. If a woman needs asian/middle-eastern/native american/etc. donor sperm, she is pretty much SOL.
:(