While the bunny rabbit is not native to Commonwealth Avenue, ever since I became a sperm donor I’ve sure been seeing a lot of bunny ears. It seems their natural companions are the words “work,” “job” and other labor-related terms, which are usually accompanied by a variety of sarcastic jibes: “You always ‘work’ so hard, Cass”; “I hope you have a pleasurable time at your ‘job’ today”; “What an exciting ‘occupation'”; and so on. Apparently something about sperm donation rouses the bunny-ears – not to mention all sorts of banal puns – from their peaceful hibernation, and causes them to descend upon my verbal intercourse like a swarm of rhetorical locusts. I guess some people believe that sperm donation is such an absurd occupation that it doesn’t deserve to be called work, but rather “work.”
And maybe they’re right. After all, the substantial tasks of an average day at the job are filling out the same short “Do you have AIDS?” survey and depositing into an eager piece of Tupperware the product of my labor, something I’ve been depositing in other places for a while now. A typical shift lasts 15 minutes, though poor “catalyst” material and chilly weather conditions can keep me longer. I do this twice a week, with three days between shifts to ensure a high-quality product. That’s the extent of my duties. When compared to the back-breaking labor of the destitute millions, or even the slavish drudgery performed day-in and day-out by many college students, it becomes difficult indeed to call what I do work.
Masturbation, far from being considered a way to make money, was once considered extremely dangerous. One man – a signer of the Declaration of Independence, the founder of American psychiatry and the country’s most prominent physician at the time – claimed masturbation led to just about every ill, including “seminal weakness, impotence, dysury, tabes dorsalis, pulmonary consumption, dyspepsia, dimness of sight, vertigo, epilepsy, hypochondriasis, loss of memory, manalgia, fatuity” and, of course, the dreaded “death.” His name was Dr. Benjamin Rush, and yes, with centuries’ worth of irony, he’s my far-removed uncle. No doubt he would see sperm donation as nothing more than getting paid to brutally massacre yourself.
But Dr. Rush, bless his soul, is himself dead, so I’m left only with the opprobrium of my peers. Reinforcing their belief that sperm donation is nothing more than paid pleasure is the hefty salary attached to the activity. Each specimen nets me a surreal $85, making my hourly wage around $340 – not bad for a 20-year-old with no prior professional experience. Nothing so nicely compensated can be called work, they claim, as they bemoan the endless hours and meager pay that characterize their jobs. I can certainly understand the source of their contention: since high wages are often perceived to be greatly disproportionate to the labor exerted, the highest paying jobs are usually the most lambasted. How many times have you heard someone gripe about how professional athletes don’t deserve the staggering amounts of money they make? As it is with them, so it is with me, just on a different scale.
On the other hand, there are some aspects of sperm donation that make it more work and less “work.” The application process was rigorous: 18 pages of questions ranging from my religion to whether my maternal grandmother was afflicted with dwarfism, an interview discussing my application answers (apparently “European” isn’t an ethnicity, and no, she wasn’t a dwarf), an array of blood tests to make sure I was STD-free, plus some invasive prodding in prodding-averse places. Only one in 20 men who apply even gets the job. Beyond these initial trials and tribulations, there are ongoing requirements: that I remain STD-free, which means no using the CAS bathrooms; that I always have exactly three days of abstinence before donating, leading to potentially awkward Saturday afternoon encounters with the roommate; and that I refrain from using lubrication, which means…well, if you’re a guy, you know.
In the end, however, perhaps all of this discussion of what’s really work is beside the point. Who cares if public opinion has condemned my cash-cow to the ridicule of “work,” to the plague of the bunny-ears? What matters is the color I see when I open my wallet: green, and lots of it. And trust me, I’m taking it all the way to the bank – the sperm bank, that is.