Ch 2 Only A Game
"Somehow," my husband Jerry teased me as I rolled away from him to get out of bed at 3AM, "it's appropriate that you begin your internship in a fertility clinic on Valentine's Day. Care to sneak me in there to try out my equipment?"
Bare body, freed from the covers, meeting the cold winter air, I might have liked to have allowed Jerry's strong hands to pull me back into bed, but I couldn't be late on my first day. "You needn't worry about your desirability as a sperm donor. You need to worry about your jealous sperm donee."
I smirked. Much as we could use extra money to buy the house, Jerry enjoyed spontaneity in bed. So, did I. Could he submit to the clinic's rules? To be admitted to the program, male Donors were locked down in a "cock block," a chastity device between donations. During my interview, Dr Velour's dark eyes penetrated my bare body when she told me, "It maximizes the yield."
I shook off Jerry's hands to start marching for the shower, dismissing his attentions with the remark, "You already got your Valentine."
Laughing, Jerry called after me, "if you have to shower before starting work, why do you need to shower off before you go?"
"Because sometime in the middle of the night I found myself on my belly, naked, bucking up to you to draw you in deeper," I teased him. "I don't remember exactly how it started .."
My voice trailed off as I turned to throw him a devilish smile.
I had been in a state between sleep and consciousness when Jerry tugged at the elastic of my panties. In my zombie -- like state, I lifted my butt for him to pull them off and like an automaton mechanically rolled on my hip to kneel and hold my hands up. I felt a delightful tingle as Jerry lifted his T shirt over my head.
"You had your fun," I teased Jerry, "but now it's morning and you need to respect me while I shower you off." I gritted my teeth; my voice betrayed my uneasiness, "It's not like I'm looking forward to starting this internship, but it's paid and I get a check ..."
"There's a check?" Jerry replied, "The work may be grimy -- cleaning a fertility clinic -- but the money will be clean. And since you shower entering and leaving the clinic, the dirt will be Rub -- A -- Dub -- Dub-ed away."
I sighed. "I had to sign confidentiality agreements, promising not to talk about my work or the people I meet, to wear only the clothing issued by the facility on duty, to be submit to physical inspection of my person, to consent to physical contact with persons of the same or opposite sex if required, to be a subject of psychological testing and experimentation." I paused to exhale.
"You're dressed to turn a trick," Jerry baited me, "but you don't intend to put out."
Playfully slapping Jerry, I revealed my reservations. "Dr Velour, the owner of the facility, is a little weird. I think she enjoys conversing with nude women. When I was hired, she conducted my interview as part of my physical exam, no hospital gown. After a tour of the facility, I was left naked during a briefing on her expectations. I gulped before I exclaimed, "Why need I worry about getting through the first day?"
"Get through it the way I would get through a short arm exam when I was in the Corps," Jerry advised, "make a game of it."
"A game?" I said as I strode, deliberately swinging my hips to tease Jerry, toward the shower.
When I arrived at the Western Avenue Fertility Clinic to begin my first shift at 4:30 AM, I was surprised to find the oversized closet that housed the locker room already abuzz. Although I, forewarned that I must undress and shower to enter the facility, had my auburn hair cut short, I was unprepared for the scene of women packed into the right side of the locker room. I was barely able to hear the security officer's directions over the din of high -- pitched voices cackling. The dozen or so women, mostly 40ish or older, crammed in together, were busy undressing and stowing their clothes in lockers on their side of the room.
Eek! I almost freaked out. I was a college intern in a fertility clinic. These women, paunches hanging, most of them twice my age, wouldn't their appearance discourage nubile young women from inseminating themselves? The ladies faced their lockers chatting among themselves oblivious to the naked men, on the other side of the room idly standing by. Game, I sighed, the game calls.
Pushing my way through the bodies packed together, I nearly passed out from the bouquet of perfumes rising from half naked bodies before I reached my assigned locker. "The new girl?" asked the bare -- chested lady to my right. "I'm `Rory, short for Aurora and that slut, she's," Rory pointed to the lady on my left who was bending over to remove her panties, "Astra short for Astarte."
Forcing a smile, I tried not to stare at her shaven pubis.
Smiling back at me, Astra explained, "My parents were into mythology. Astarte is the goddess of love. Appropriate for St Valentine's Day?" She paused. "As the daughter of the moon goddess, Astarte was granted the crescent moon for her symbol."
"So," Rory exclaimed, "reporting in this early, you're caught between night and day." When I looked over my shoulder at the naked men, Rory assured me, "Oh, they're not in cock -- blockers but still harmless."
Shaking her head, Astra interjected, "It's the law. We have to live with."
"During my time in school," I replied as I removed my top, "we needed accustom ourselves to undressing in front of drooling guys."
"Ah, equality reigns," Rory sighed, "Allow me," Rory requested permission to unhook my bra, "Gender equality means the employer doesn't have to pay for separate locker rooms for men and women."
"But, we can't fault our employer on that score," Astra interjected as she swept the unhooked bra off my shoulders and flung it in my locker, "You'll see Dr Velour in here, bare to the bone, prancing to the showers before she does her rounds."
"And you can feel her beady black eyes upon you whenever she's around," griped Rory.
"If you can't exclude men from the ladies' locker," I chuckled hobbled on one foot to remove my sneakers, "There is the hope real men might control the occasional perv."
Raising her penciled eyebrows, Rory snickered, "Not to worry. These guys are more embarrassed than we are. We count on them remaining hypnotized by our beauty," she wiggled her body, "while we get ready for the herd to race, like cattle on the trail, for the shower."
"Judging by swollen schlongs," I looked over my shoulder as I planted a hand on Rory's bare shoulder for balance to step out of my dungarees, "I might think not."