The Cube People

Copyright © Christian McPherson, 2010.

all rights reserved.
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Nightwood Editions acknowledges financial support from the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Canada Council for the Arts, and from the Province of British Columbia through the British Columbia Arts Council and the Book Publisher's Tax Credit.

This book has been produced on 100% post-consumer recycled, ancient-forest-free paper, processed chlorine-free and printed with vegetable-based dyes.

Printed and bound in Canada

library and archives canada cataloguing in publication

McPherson, Christian

The cube people / Christian McPherson.

ISBN
978-0-88971-251-5 (paper)

ISBN
978-0-88971-268-3 (ebook)

I
. Title.

PS8625.P53C83 2010 C813'.6 C2010-904331-6

for Molly and Henry

my world, my gravity

I'm waiting to masturbate into a cup. I realize fairly quickly that not everyone here is waiting to do the same thing. A chubby elderly woman sits three seats down reading
Cosmopolitan
. She's wearing grey sweatpants and a white T-shirt with an orange smiling-sun cartoon poking out from behind the words “Orlando, Florida.” Her left leg is extended and her foot is wrapped in a tensor bandage. Crutches lie in the seat beside her. Her breasts are big and droopy and they hang down to her stomach like a basset hound's ears. I try not to think about them, but then I involuntary flash to my grandmother's breasts, wilted watermelons dangling down to her navel. No, no, no, no. I close my eyes and rub my temples.

“You okay?” asks a female voice.

I sit up and open my eyes.

“You okay?” repeats a semi-attractive lady across the aisle.

“Ahhh, yeah, no, just a bit of a headache is all,” I tell her. I note that she's extremely pregnant. She looks like she swallowed one of those giant exercise balls.

“Yeah, I get those all the time,” she tells me, her concerned face turning into a smile.

“Ah,” I say, not really wanting to talk.

My wife and I have been trying to get pregnant for over a year now. We recently went to a fertility specialist, Dr. King. He thinks he knows what the problem might be – PCOS, Polycystic Ovary Syndrome. However, he said he wanted to cover all the bases, so he sent me for a test to make sure my sperm is good, too.

I'm worried that I won't be able to perform. I want to stay focused on the task at hand, the task that will literally be in my hand quite soon. God, pregnant women and grandma titties, I definitely need some better fodder for my fantasy love tug. I think about my wife's breasts. I think about my ex-girlfriend's breasts. I think about the breasts of the girl I saw standing at the bus stop on my way here. The pregnant lady is still smiling at me, waiting for me to engage her in conversation.

“How far along are you?” I ask politely.

“My due date was yesterday, so I think I'm going to have to be induced if he doesn't show up soon. I had to be induced for my first, I was ten days late. Are you here for sperm analysis?”

I feel my face flush. Christ almighty – am I here for sperm analysis? You have to be kidding me. I contemplate asking her if she's planning to give up the baby for adoption. Isn't there any privacy anymore?

“Yes, I am.”

“My husband had to do it, too. Nothing to be embarrassed about, I'm a nurse. I just took an educated guess, after all, this is a fertility office. That's what all men come in here for usually.”

Just as she finishes saying that, I see a guy about my age appear from around a wall. He looks a little dazed, bewildered, spent. He quickly glances around the room, then dashes for the front door. A short chubby nurse, with a clipboard and a plastic cup in her hands, comes around the counter and says, “Colin MacDonald?” I stand up waving my hand. The pregnant woman across the aisle whispers “Good luck,” as if I were about to perform for an audition or head in for a job interview.

Good luck on what, getting an erection? Fear grips me again. As I follow the nurse down the hall, I try to think sexy thoughts. But all I can do is watch the white fabric of the nurse's pants being devoured by the hungry crack of her stop-sign-wide bum. I try not to look. I try to think of what nurses look like in pornos – white thigh-high stockings, short miniskirts, tight shirts with boobs about to pop out, and little caps with the red cross on the front.

The nurse leads me down a narrow hallway to a windowless room the size of a walk-in closet with a minuscule ensuite bathroom. A plump armchair takes up almost the entire width of the room, a picture of a sailing ship hangs high on the wall, a small trolley sits next to the door, and a magazine rack is mounted on the wall. The nurse hands me the cup. “When you're done put the cap back on and mark your name and the time on the label. Place the sample in this warmer. Here in this rack are some magazines if you need any assistance. I recommend you lock the door. Any questions?”

“Umm, I guess not. Just put the sample in there?” I confirm, pointing down at the bottom of the cart to the little rectangular box that is emitting bubbling sounds similar to a fish tank.

“Right,” she says closing the door behind her.

I lock the door.

My grade five teacher, Mrs. Dunbar, was a knockout. She had long dark hair and always wore snug turtlenecks and tight slacks. My buddy Gord and I had many recess debates about whether or not Mrs. Dunbar did it. I knew she was married because she wore a ring, but I still wasn't convinced that she really did it with Mr. Dunbar. Gord, on the other hand, was convinced. “I bet they go at it all the time,” he would tell me.

As the school year progressed, Mrs. Dunbar suddenly took to wearing dresses. I hadn't really attributed anything to this shift in wardrobe. Then after three months of wearing this new attire, she came into class and dropped the bomb. She was pregnant. Then I had known for sure she did the nasty.

I think of Mrs. Dunbar as I unzip. My pants fall around my ankles. Looking to my right, I see the sailboat. I try to imagine Mrs. Dunbar in a bathing suit, sunning herself on the boat's deck. I pull my underwear down to my ankles and stare. Nothing. It just hangs there, pathetic, flaccid. I play with it a little and try to picture Mrs. Dunbar naked. I can feel some blood moving and life is springing into the monster, into Marvin. Yes, I too have named my appendage. Why Marvin? Actually I didn't name him, my wife did. Marvin the monster, who roams around in wet slimy caves. It seemed funny at the time.

Marvin is a tad sluggish. Tugging at him some more he plumps up a bit. I realize I can't do this standing up, so I shuffle backwards like a prisoner in ankle chains, toward the chair, and I'm just about to sit when I flash to all the dirty asses that have jerked off in that chair. Marvin shrinks back down. I shuffle to the bathroom and pull out a ream of paper towel. I bring it back to the chair and lay it out in two strips. I sit down. Yank yank yank on Marvin. Blood returns, but the horrific image of the fat nurse's butt ass-munching those pants is stuck in my head. God, why does my brain keep going to that? And this brings me back to the old lady's tits in the waiting room, the one with the crutches. This is a fertility office, so she isn't here about her leg, but rather to get a Pap smear or something – Oh God, Sasquatch bush. Must get rid of these visions. Time to invoke the porn. As I stand up, the paper towel sticks to my butt. I pull it off and scuttle the two feet to the magazine rack to grab the only issue there,
Penthouse: The International Magazine for Men
, Oct. 2003. The rag is old and there are pages missing. Some are stuck together. Gingerly I place it on the arm of the chair, trying not to touch it as much as possible. It flops open to a page where the caption reads, “Diving her tongue deep into the beautiful blonde's honey pot.” Marvin responds well to this. I readjust the paper and sit back down. Still, it doesn't completely quiet my mind – fat-ass crack-munching pants keep popping up.

“No!” I yell, and then realize that maybe the nursing staff or the people in the waiting room might be able to hear me.

I think of all the other guys who have been through this madness. There must have been thousands of men in here before me, trying to think of all kinds of weird sexual stuff, trying not to think of their grandmothers' tits. That's what gets me going, not the guys masturbating before me, but their fantasies. I think of the girl-on-girl action, the honey pots, the whips, the chains, the group sex, asses, nipples, vibrators on full throttle. My mind is a swirling vortex. Ass fuck, cucumbers, chickens, anal wands, whipped cream, blindfolds, vaginal piercings, the girl at the bus stop, Britney Spears videos, Sarah's mouth moaning, Mrs. Dunbar biting a pillow. A tornado! And there's the Wicked Witch of the West on her broom stick, except she's naked, and she's rubbing herself against the broom, sliding back and forth, back and forth. Bad witch, ohhhh, bad bad bad witch. Ohhhhhh!!!!!! BAD WITCH! BAD WITCH!! I fumble for the cup, get the lid off just in time as Marvin throws up. I look at my cellphone and note the time: 8:41 a.m.

I clean up my paper and write my name and time on the cup. I inspect my sample. Is it big enough? Am I producing enough sperm for Sarah? Maybe I've been choking the life out of my testicles with my boxer briefs. Maybe I should just wear plain old boxers? I use a tissue to grab the sample of the other guy who was before me and compare. I'm at least double. I note the name, Jerry Thompson. Jerry has hardly any sperm. I put the samples back and feel better that at least I have more juice than pitiful Jerry has.

I move out into the empty hall and shut the door behind me. I walk toward the waiting room. I glance and see another man about my age sitting there. I don't make eye contact with anyone, just dash out the front door. Now I have to catch a bus to work.