by Terence M. Green

The day that I got my vasectomy was the day that I tried, finally, to deal with the aliens.

#

"Take off all your clothes." She indicated a metal dressing stall, shelf, door hangers. "Put this gown on over your front. It ties in the rear. Put this one on over your shoulders, like a regular robe. It’ll cover your back."

Cover my sorry ass.

"Everything? Can I leave my shoes and socks on?"

"You can leave them on. You’ll have to walk down the hall."

With my sorry ass covered.

"Put your belongings in the locker."

"My book too?" I’m a reader. Always got a book with me. Can’t sit in waiting rooms and just stare at nothing. I’ve seen guys who can. Figure there’s not much between their ears.

"Book too. You can’t take anything with you. The room has to be sterile. When you’re done, you can wait here." Pointed to a chrome and vinyl chair.

I opened the locker, looked inside, thought of my wallet, wondered if it’d be safe.

"You do the shave?"

"Did the best I could. Cut myself, started to bleed, scared myself, so I stopped. It must be the least shavable spot on the human body."

She looked at me.

"The scrotum."

"You can wait in the chair. I’ll be back soon." She left the room.

I kept my glasses on too. Shoes, socks, watch, rings and glasses. Couldn’t see how they’d get in the way. Sat in the chair and read my book, The Wisdom of the Desert (Sayings From the Desert Fathers of the Fourth Century), till she came back.

#

The aliens live inside me, millions, billions of them, coursing through my body. They make me crazy and at least once a week I have to let them out. They’re in control, moving out into the world, changing things, changing everything. I had to do something. You can see that, can’t you?

I’ve seen Fantastic Voyage. Saw it at the Fairlawn Theater when I was nineteen. I know how you can sail through the bloodstream if you have a ship small enough. I know I’m not crazy. Shit, I even liked the movie. Raquel Welch in a rubber suit. Thank God they never remade it. Who could replace her? What was not to like?

But it made me think.

#

I lay down on the operating table, with my shoes, socks, rings, watch and glasses still intact. The same nurse came in and pulled up my gown, baring me from the waist down. She covered my legs with a hospital-green sheet and did the same with my upper torso, tucking my dick under it as well, leaving only my poor, alien-hording balls exposed. Then she slathered my entire groin area with a chilly antiseptic that made me wince and start. Made my anus pucker.

"Cold," I said.

"Sorry."

I didn’t look down. Couldn’t.

She tucked the sheet under my balls, tipped the table back ever so slightly, listing me at about a ten-degree angle, my feet elevated, head pointing downward, and left the room. After about fifteen minutes, I was in full anxiety mode, and then it lessened. I think the blood drifting into my head might have had something to do with it.

My poor balls. Propped right up there. Jesus. I considered getting up and leaving. You would’ve too.

#

The aliens were everywhere. Tattooed, faces pierced, green-orange-purple hair spiked, nails painted black. Some of them wore their pants at half-mast, crotch at the knees. They all listened to their home planet, their masters, via buttons and wires dangling from their ears. I-Pods?

Pod people. I’d seen The Invasion of the Body Snatchers. The 1956 version, with Kevin McCarthy screaming in the street at the end, not the 1978 one. I knew what was going on. Seriously.

#

The doctor brushed in, the nurse following. They wore face masks, rubber gloves.

"How’re you doing?"

"Okay, I guess." Think about it. How good could I be doing? My balls propped up, humiliated, exposed, my head filling with blood. "Got a little anxiety."

"I’m not a psychiatrist. Can’t help you with that."

Maybe I should leave, I thought again.

He lifted my sac, examined it. The nurse looked too. I’d had dreams like this. No-pants-dreams. Then he positioned the overhead light, tilting it just so. They looked again. He placed a cloth or something under my balls. I could feel it, but I didn’t want to look. Couldn’t.

"Going to put some freezing in."

I knew this. It had been in the pamphlet that he’d handed me in his office two weeks ago, when we’d had our consultation. Injected through a fine needle, is what it said. I just wasn’t sure exactly where they were going to inject it. The pamphlet had been vague about that. I’d read it quite carefully, trying to get that piece of information. It seemed to have been carefully omitted, I thought. Very shrewd.

My anxiety resurfaced. The not-a-psychiatrist expertly slid the needle into my scrotum. I winced, reflexively tried to move back, but there was no place to go. Held my breath.

"There," he said. Slid it out.

Easy for him to say.

Then another one. Again, I twitched, felt my leg muscles jump. Yours would have jumped too. I pressed farther back into the sheets. No luck.

"Done." He said. "We’ll just let this take hold for a few minutes."

I think I sighed. I think I knew that that was the worst. That and the anxiety which he had admitted he was unqualified to handle.

#

"How old are you?" he’d asked me two weeks ago.

"Fifty-nine. I’ll be sixty next month."

He seemed to be digesting this. I knew I was an unusual candidate.

"My wife is fourteen years younger," I added, trying to flesh out the context.

"How many children do you have?"

"Three boys. Aged twenty eight, twenty-five, and six."

He jotted on the pad in front of him.

"It’s a second marriage for me. A first for my wife. We’ve been married twelve years."

He just listened.

"Her doctor took her off the birth control pill. Told her he couldn’t in good conscience keep prescribing it for her, given her age. So we’ve got to do something."

The hand with the pen moved. More notes on his pad.

"We discussed the options. We have no idea how close to or far she is from menopause. Could be years."

He sat back, tilted his head.

"I still enjoy sex," I said. He had no idea how much. "I’m still in the game. Plan to be for quite some time."

He smiled.

"I’m finished having kids," I said. "Ran out of time. Too old." He could do the math.

I didn’t tell him about the aliens. Even back then I could see that he was no psychiatrist.

#

My sac felt like it was made of cement. Nothing. No feeling.

"Saw you had a book in the waiting room," he said.

"I’m a reader. Love to read."

He was doing something down there. I couldn’t tell what.

"Sometimes I think I’d like to write," he said. "I’ve got so many ideas. Sometimes I think I should just get up in the night and write, when I can’t sleep."

Could be a plumber, I thought. Or a seamstress.

Pulling something down there. I pictured him handling the vas, snipping. No feeling at all. Nada.

"You should do it," I said. "Put in details. Lots of medical details. People like that." Then I asked, "You got kids?"

"Three."

"How old are they?"

"Three, six and nine."

"That’s a full house. I think you’re gonna have to do your writing in the middle of the night." Aliens, I thought. Everywhere. I kept my eyes closed, feeling nothing.

"I’m just trying to distract you." The not-a-psychiatrist talking.

"I understand," I said. I did. "I want to be distracted."

#

Did you ever see Invaders From Mars? The 1953 one, not the crummy 1986 remake. Saw it on a Saturday matinee double-bill at the Willow Theater when I was six. Scared the pants off me. The kid, little Jimmy Hunt, was the only one who knew that the police chief was an alien. Jesus. So was his father. No one else could see it.

And here I am, scared, with my pants off, again, like little Jimmy, knowing what I know. It never ends.

#

"Done."

My balls still felt like they were encased in cement. Solid. Like they were going to a museum.

He left the room. Definitely not a psychiatrist.

The nurse leveled the table. "You okay?"

"I think so."

"You can get up. I want you to come out into the hall."

I sat up, expecting to be sore. At least dizzy. Still nothing. Stood. Looked at the bed where I’d been lying and saw reddish-brown stains.

"That’s not blood." She’d been reading my mind. Another alien trait. "It’s the antiseptic solution."

I nodded, glad to hear it, followed her, walking slowly.

"Up here." She indicated a bed in the hallway. I sat on it, swung my legs up carefully, stared at my legs, at my shoes and socks, lay back. She propped my upper torso at a forty-five degree angle. "Would you like some juice?"

Maybe she was the psychiatrist, I thought. "That sounds nice."

"Apple or orange?"

"Apple, please."

Like I was on an alien planet. People in green-white scurrying like tumbleweeds, charts of the human reproductive system on the wall opposite me, studying us. Like an alien abduction. All that was missing was the anal probe. Contact, The Day the Earth Stood Still. I didn’t know what they wanted. Maybe they didn’t know either. Maybe they just spread, a blind imperative, salmon swimming upstream, like everything else. I’m not paranoid. But you could see for yourself. Anyone could.

The not-a-psychiatrist came by and gave me a prescription for Tylenol Number 3 and a lab requisition for a semenalysis in three months. A nurse gave me a sample bottle to take with me. I held them all in one hand, my apple juice in the other.

Twenty minutes later, they told me to get dressed. You can go now, they said.

When I pulled my pants on, I checked for my wallet. It was still there. In the hospital lobby, like E.T., I phoned home. Help. Come and get me.

#

It wasn’t so bad. I’ve had lots worse. It’s only been a few days, but I’m getting erections at night in my sleep and everything seems to be sliding back to normal. There’s some visually alarming bruising, but still no real pain. I’m looking forward to testing out my equipment this weekend.

Still have to be careful, though, for three months. They might be lurking, waiting their chance. My balls look like Riders of the Purple Sac, but you saw Alien. They got inside the guy’s chest, popped right out. I think that happened to me. Right? I mean, where’s Sigourney Weaver when you need her? Or Raquel Welch in her rubber suit?

We’ve been looking in the wrong direction. Those ships, those probes, SETI, space telescopes, radio signals. They knew it back in the fourth century too. Wisdom of the desert. Don’t let anyone in.

My sons. The ones that got out of me. My six-year-old is playing Spy Muppets: License to Croak on his Game Boy in the rec room. Told me it’s the best game ever. His eyes sparkle. My twenty-five-year-old has his own apartment, lives in Vancouver by himself, collects movies and books, works at Home Depot. He never writes, never calls. My twenty-eight-year-old lives in New York with his wife. He knows what he’s doing. He’s an actor. Besides testing out my equipment, that’s the other thing I’m looking forward to this weekend. They’re coming to visit with their new baby, a boy, my grandson, whom I’ve never seen.

And here’s the thing. The thing about the aliens. In spite of my feeble efforts by getting myself snipped, in spite of how they look and how they’re impossible to penetrate and how I’ve tried to cut them off, distance myself, protect our interests, stake out my territory, the first contact with a new one is always completely breathtaking. Yes, breathtaking. They’re here. They take everything, change everything, use our world, drain our resources, bring us to our knees. But it’s okay. It’s okay. Even if the guy, the guy who’s going to get up and write in the middle of the night, even if he had been a psychiatrist, he couldn’t have explained it. Not even the desert fathers have got a complete handle on it. I don’t know how wise they were.

I picture them getting out of a taxi, coming up the walk, ringing the doorbell. Maybe she’s holding him, maybe he is, all wrapped up in a blue blanket. I tried, you see, but you can’t stop them. Not really. They’re at our door, right on the other side, pressing inward, hands on the latch, coming into our homes, our lives, part of the next generation, striving for world domination. I picture the black moon monolith, the space-child, floating free, hear that crashing music. 2001: A Space Odyssey.

You can laugh or you can cry. But I can’t. Not this week. If I do, it’ll be like tilting that table again, all the blood running into my head. I’ll need apple juice again. Christ. I have to tell you. I have to level with you. I’ve never been so excited in my life. It’s the truth.