Not that this is anything to brag about, but I may well have been the only teenager in the history of the Western world punished for not masturbating. As the sound of Dad’s oversized feet clomped their way up the stairs and lumbered purposefully towards my bedroom, I braced myself for another of our confrontations. Still, I was in no way prepared for the perverse twist this, our third major argument in as many days, would take. Trust me, if I’d possessed advance knowledge of the screwball Q&A Dad was going to put me through I would have handily escaped out my bedroom window, always left open just in case. After all, any self-respecting teenager would have eagerly risked breaking an ankle over one of my dad’s inquisitions.
Thwackkk! The door flew open, smashing against my bedroom wall and bouncing right back at Dad. He flicked out the big, broad palm of his hand with the speed and deftness of a seasoned boxer, steadying the door and then closing it behind him as if to say, “Whatever’s about to go down between us stays in this room.”
Then he said, in his patented Dad snarl, “Where is it, boy?”
“Where’s what?”
“You know what I’m talking about.”
“Sorry, Dad, I don’t.”
For once I wasn’t lying. The kind of stuff I concealed from my old man wasn’t really the sort of thing that could be found stashed away in my room, like, say, a skin magazine (Dad had been buying me Playboys since I’d turned eight), or his coveted World War II pistol, or a twenty-dollar bill he’d left sitting on his bedroom dresser. My secrets, my sweet little acts of rebellion and betrayal, were way cooler than that.
“Look up at me when I’m talking to you. And stop slouching over that daggum guitar of yours.”
I tilted my head ever so slightly in his direction, careful to make sure his face was still out of my line of vision.
“That’s better. Now, I’m talking about that sample of yours. The one you promised Dr. Peters you’d produce and have on his secretary’s desk last week.”
“Oh, that.” I mumbled, straining to keep the “Oh God, here we go” out of my voice. This was going to get ugly. Beyond ugly. And Dad was just getting started.
“Stop your stalling, boy, and tell me, right this instant, where that sample is.”
“I lost it.”
“You’re lying through your teeth, boy.”
Something about the way my dad leaned on the word “boy,” the way he used it as a kind of punctuation to cap off one of his insulting harangues, always pissed me off more than the harangue itself. “Boy” was what white officers called lowly Negro privates like Dad in the U.S. Army during World War II. And now, a quarter-century later, “boy” was what Dad called me to remind me that I was, and would always be, his subordinate. Still, boy or no boy, it occurred to me that I might just be able to take him. I was fifteen, on the high school wrestling and cross-country teams. Dad was forty-five, overweight, overworked and diabetic. But then I thought about how quickly he’d intercepted the bounce-back of my bedroom door. I knew from experience that his hands were big and fast, and I’d been on the receiving end of his out-of-nowhere slaps enough times to know better than to knuckle it out with him.
“There you go, daydreaming again. Get that moony look out of your eyes and start listening, carefully.” Dad paused here, just to make sure his words were having the intended effect. They were.
“Danny, we both know that Dr. Peters gave you that deposit cup two weeks ago. I want your sperm sample in that cup and in his office by the end of the week. No ifs, ands or buts.”
Just hearing that dreaded word, “sperm,” made me shout out in protest: “No way I’m doing that. You can’t make me. I don’t care if I’m sterile. I don’t wanna have kids anyway.”
Saying that would wind Dad up even more, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to tell him the real reason why Dr. Peters wasn’t going to get his precious little sample out of me: I hadn’t masturbated. And the closest I’d come to being sexually active was sneak-reading Dad’s paperback copy of Candy, memorizing the juicy parts and reciting them to my thunderstruck classmates over the phone. Although, truth be told, even if I had been more, well, experienced, I would have put off delivering what my doctor had so breezily ordered. To see Dad go apoplectic at the thought of his first son possibly being sterile was high entertainment for me. I was, after all, Daniel Grafton Hill the Fourth, the eldest of three kids—the extension of the Hill family legacy rested on my shoulders, or, to be blunt, on my so far unproven ability to coax a sperm sample out of my reluctant body. Talk about pressure. Especially since, according to Dad, the Hill family was a superior species. “Hills were born to be extraordinary,” he’d trumpet around the house with that mad grin sweeping across his face. After all, his PhD-toting father, Daniel Hill Jr., in his capacity as dean of the Howard University School of Religion, had moved in the highest circles of the “Negro elite,” arranging in the early sixties for such luminaries as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to speak at his school. (“Continued success in the noble work that you are doing,” the great human rights leader had written Granddad in a thank-you letter that kicked off a correspondence between them.)
Well. What Dad, currently the first director of the Ontario Human Rights Commission, was demanding of me could hardly be considered “noble.” What about my human rights? I thought, as Dad, inching closer to me, clenching and unclenching his hands, hissed, “I’m warning you, boy, you’re in no position to tell me what you will or won’t do, so don’t get sassy with me or I’ll slap you sideways.”
If this was meant to intimidate me, it had the opposite effect, as Dad’s blows were never preceded by a warning. With him, violence and surprise came in the same package.
“I’m not trying to be sassy, Dad. I’m just saying that there’s not a chance I’m gonna deliver a sperm sample for that perverted Dr. Peters.”
Dad removed his glasses and slid them into his shirt pocket. I’d inadvertently issued him a challenge. Big mistake. He took a few seconds to mull over his response. Then he smiled. Not a good sign.
“I’m not wasting any more time on this foolishness. You’ve spent the whole daggum summer flat on your back with that crazy virus of yours.”
“It’s called orchitis, Dad.”
“Call it whatever you want, your testicles were swollen up to the size of grapefruits. Your mother and I were worried sick about you. I don’t know what you were doing at that summer camp up north, but it sure as hell wasn’t pitching tents. This is not about you or your precious privacy. As your father, it’s my right to know whether or not you’re sterile.”
“Jesus, Dad, I’m fifteen years old.”
“That means you’re old enough to picture what I’m about to say. If you don’t have that sperm sample ready by the end of the week, you’re gonna be bundled up in a straitjacket and dragged into Dr. Peters’ office. Then you’re gonna be strapped face down onto a cold, metal table with your legs forced wide apart, while the doctor gives you a prostate massage.”
“What’s a prostrate massage?”
“Prostate. It’s what medics did to soldiers in the army when they needed a sperm sample. Once a doctor’s finger winds its way deep into your raised hindquarters and makes contact with your prostate, you’ll have an involuntary orgasm.”
Dad snapped his fingers in front of my face, as if to drive home the horrifying image of me in the throes of some spastic orgasm, courtesy of Dr. Peters’ frighteningly nimble, hairy finger.
“Trust me, son, once Peters is through with you, you’ll have produced enough sperm to fill a milk bottle.”
I blinked back at my dad, stupefied. For some reason, all I could think was that I’d never be able to drink a drop of milk again.
“Anyway, it’s your choice, son. Either deliver that sperm sample on your own or the doctor lends his helping hand.”
Dad’s voice had softened, to the point of being almost cheerful. Like he’d done me a real favour by giving me these options. Then, acting as though this ridiculous conversation had never taken place, he brightly announced, “Don’t forget, Danny. Dinner’s at six sharp. I’m making my special meatloaf. Your mother’s favourite.”
With that he was out of my room. Trust Dad to storm into my room like some Black Marquis de Sade, batting around preposterous and disgusting threats, only to saunter out minutes later masquerading as Betty Crocker.
As if I hadn’t been through enough that summer, laid out on my back with that just-kicked-in-the-balls feeling day in and day out, balancing an ice pack that leaked freezing water all over my scrotum. The rare times I’d risked the agony of walking, I’d tenderly cupped my elephantine testicles with both hands, convinced that if I didn’t they’d burst right through the stretched-to-the-breaking-point sack of skin and drop, ka-plunk, like bowling balls, to the floor.
When I’d finally got better, Dr. Peters had checked me over and determined, in his clinically pinched tone: “I have to tell you, Danny, that there’s some rather disturbing evidence of asymmetry down below.” Then he ordered the sperm test, yanking a plastic cup out of one of his cupboards and handing it to me as if it were some sort of special bonus that came with visiting your friendly neighbourhood doctor.
How Dad got wind of this remains a mystery. I was long past the age of needing a parent to take me to the doctor. I don’t mean to come off as paranoid, but at times I could have sworn he had spies everywhere, financed by some secret government payroll, who kept track of my every move. Why couldn’t Dad be more like my pleasantly oblivious mom, who knew nothing about my post-orchitis “asymmetry” or the doctor’s sample orders?
Suffice it to say that everything about my dad was way over the top, larger than life and outrageous in the extreme. Worse still, his need to control everyone around him, whether within our family or off at work—he was forever bragging about the size of his staff—rarely met with any kind of resistance. Alas, I was the sole exception that proved the rule. I delighted in defying him at every twist and turn, although usually my rebellion came in an indirect and sneaky form. Unfortunately, a sperm sample was a pretty black-and-white order, and, short of enlisting a “pinch hitter,” either I complied with Dad’s command or I faced the consequences.
However, since almost everything that leapt out of Dad’s mouth was, if not an outright lie, an inspired exaggeration, I sensed that Dad’s talk of me being kidnapped and deposited onto the doctor’s examining table was just that: talk. I’d become something of an expert at sifting through and weighing his threats. Even the word “prostate” sounded suspect: yet another of Dad’s elaborate made-up words. Surely, if such a revolting piece of anatomy actually existed, I would have heard of it by now, being that I possessed a pretty advanced sexual vocabulary. What I lacked in raw experience I made up for in literary research: Harold Robbins, D.H. Lawrence, Henry Miller, Anaïs Nin—hell, when you’re hungry for knowledge, you don’t discriminate. Whatever, prostate or no prostate, Dad’s threat of what basically amounted to anal interference in the name of our family’s future left me more than a little rattled.
At least I’d been smart enough to stay seated on my bed, hunched over my guitar, throughout most of our little showdown, thus denying Dad the satisfaction of seeing my face flush a deep sunburned red at the thought of Dr. Peters bearing down on me with his gloved, wiggling middle finger. With respect to the daily dust-ups between Dad and me, any victory that came my way, however small and fleeting, gave me the strength I needed to keep my side of the war going strong. Now that he’d finally left my room I could get back to working on my new song. It was about a half-Black teenager who drops out of high school and leaves home to become a famous singer. Aside from that, it wasn’t really autobiographical.
As I predicted, Dad never followed through on his threat to have me dragged like a prisoner into Dr. Peters’ office to endure the unendurable. Knowing all along that he couldn’t force me to comply with his demand, his real punishment for my refusal was not a prostate massage but the threat of it. Indeed, the bizarre scenario of being kidnapped and deposited on Dr. Peters’ “massage” table left me wrestling with a mortifying image that spooked me for months.
Dad, no doubt satisfied that I’d suffered the appropriate consequence for my disobedience—absolute humiliation—never mentioned the sperm sample again.