As one of the most sought-after IVF doctors in the world, Dr. Vicken Sahakian had the tricky task of making prospective clients feel special in the shortest amount of time. For us, choosing the right doctor was a big deal; it could make or break the journey. For him, it was just another Tuesday, and he had babies to make.
On our first Skype call, he was ready with pen and paper for ten minutes of rapid fire.
“Have you found an egg donor?”
“How many children do you want?”
“Will you choose the sex?”
“Whose sperm?”
We answered.
“So not mine?”
We laughed. And in that moment, the weight of this daunting undertaking felt a whole lot lighter. This was our guy—direct, efficient, funny. We hung up and forwarded the andrology gibberish for him to translate into layman’s terms. He emailed back:
Hi Charlie,
Your sperm is excellent!!
V. Sahakian, MD
Unlike my hypochondriacal husband, I’d assumed this would be the case, but it was no less exciting to see it in writing. Those four words and two exclamation points were the first cause for celebration in a multi-month or potentially multi-year process full of hurdles to clear.
Proceeding to the next hurdle meant returning to a masturbation station, this time at his L.A. office. In a perfect world, we would have made embryos from fresh sperm and fresh eggs, but the logistics of that were tough, so something had to be frozen. According to Dr. Sahakian, that something should be sperm, so Paolo and I were up first. We could have tried to ship samples from London, but he preferred to have it done on site. That’s partly why we chose his clinic—it was a five-minute drive from my parents’ house. I already had plans to be back in L.A. a few weeks later, so the timing worked out well.
The clinic was in a large office building. I stepped out of the elevator and walked towards a door surrounded by collages of Christmas cards and family portraits. I’d never seen so many diverse combinations of husband/husband, wife/wife, husband/wife, single dad, and single mom. There were also thank you cards lining the hallway. Too many to count.
I checked in, and the nurse handed me a Semen Evaluation Report. A section called Method was already filled in with “Masturbation.” A section called Container was filled in with “Cup.”
I was in a playful mood and asked, “Forgive my ignorance, but what other methods and containers are there?”
The nurse burst into laughter, then replied, “For some people, it’s against their religion to masturbate, so they have intercourse using a special collection condom.”
“Fascinating. You must see it all.”
“You have no idea, honey. We should make a sitcom.”
She told me to write down the number of days since my last ejaculation, what time it is when I finish, and the approximate percentage of semen that makes it into the cup, adding, “Please do not scoop any off the floor.”
I laughed. She didn’t.
“You’d be surprised,” she said with a I wasn’t kidding about that sitcom expression.
True to stereotype, the masturbation stations in London and L.A. could not have been more different.
London had been prim and proper, an antiseptic building where the act felt entirely devoid of sexuality. That it involved wanking was to be ignored in the classic British fashion of evading uncomfortable topics. When I finished, I pressed a button for someone to retrieve the cup, like a butler responding to a bell. I was told to leave the room before that person arrived, so we never crossed paths, butler and I, to spare us both the indignity.
L.A., on the other hand (though I used the same hand), felt like the back of a Hustler store. There were erotic black-and-white photos on the walls and three objects in the room: a pleather lounger covered in disposable pads, a TV, and a cabinet full of porn DVDs. I opened the top drawer and saw enormous dicks under titles like Butt Fuck Buddies and Ass Reamers. Had I been sent to the gay room? Was there another room for straight men? If not, they were in for a real shock.
Compared to its London counterpart, this was a far more inviting place to rub one out, but I was conscious of the room’s thin walls and the layers of dried stains beneath those pads, so I didn’t linger. After shooting 100% of my semen into the cup—a real feat of hand-eye-penis coordination, for the record—I looked around for a way to notify someone, like the intercom button in London. I didn’t see anything, so I brought the cup with me to reception, and only now, in recounting this, realize I was almost certainly meant to leave it in the room. Oops.
The nurse told me it’s best to collect two samples and asked, “Can you come again on Monday?”
“I sure can,” I said in a frisky tone to emphasize the double meaning.
It would be two more months before Paolo gave his sample, and during that time I found myself musing on the fragility of life. It was as if, in depositing my genetic material, I felt more at ease with my mortality. God forbid something happened to me, it wouldn’t prevent Paolo from going forward with our plans. That knowledge gave me unexpected peace of mind, and the fact that he was yet to bottle up his DNA had the opposite effect: I worried more for his life. Every time he went for a walk, I wanted to shout, “Look both ways!” Every time he drove—“Buckle up!” Every time he ate—“Chew carefully!”
It weighed on me, and the only way to take that load off my mind was to take a load out of him.
After what felt like an eternity, he finally made the trip to L.A. and stayed with my parents. Mom drove him to the clinic and asked what time she should pick him up, which was sweet but awkward given the underlying question: “Tell me, son-in-law, how long will it take you to jerk off in there?”
“I can Uber back, Martha, but thank you so much.”
