Choto Temple Ch. 07

Zerzinski took on his academic airs again.

"Part of my interest in sociology is the media. How it behaves, what it covers. How that affects people as individuals, and society as a whole. Who owns the media, the phenomenon of the media cycle, etc.

"But analyzing the media from a safe distance, and being at the center of the storm, are two different things entirely. I never truly understood the term 'media circus' until that Monday."

"When your identity was revealed."

"Yes."

"It basically took three days?"

"Yes. Someone at the CDC made it easy for them."

"Do you know who?"

"It doesn't matter. Shit happens. It's all water under the bridge now.

"Basically, by Saturday the breaking news was that 'a source has revealed' that Donor X is a school teacher from Connecticut.

"This would be news item #1, you know. Whereas the next five headlines would be like, 'the Science Behind the Sperm of Donor X.' 'Donor X's Conundrum: What To Do?' 'Sex and Morality: the Case of Donor X.' And shit like that."

"You hadn't even been identified yet. Nor had you decided what to do with your life at that point. But there was all this speculation already?"

"It was nuts, technically," Zerzinski confirmed. "You think journalism is dead - no offense - but with newspapers folding every day, hardly anyone actually making a living at the trade any more, etc.

"You know all these things, and then - bam - a Big Story comes along. And then you see where all the journalists are. They still exist, as you know. And they were all competing to come up with a new angle for another article about me. On and off for years.

"So I was barely sleeping. Constantly reading articles and watching news clips on the internet. And then when I woke up on Sunday, I had apparently just missed the latest big story.

"Breaking news! Read all about it! Donor X is not only a school teacher from Connecticut, but he spent the previous week getting tested at the CDC. And allegedly having sex with female CDC employees."

"It's getting more salacious," I noted.

"Constantly, ever more salacious. So I'm no statistician. But I just took a wild guess that if thousands of journalists and news organizations are trying to figure out who I am, armed with the information they already had, it would not be long before they figured out who I was."

"And it wasn't."

"No. Who traveled on what flight to Atlanta may not be public information like the list of school teachers is.

"But different journalists have different connections within government agencies that do have access to this information, it seems. Or hackers or whatever, I don't know. The sources are always speaking 'on condition of anonymity,' you know."

"So what happened then?"

It was a familiar story in terms of the generalities, but I was becoming well drawn into the telling of the tale.

"Well, at that point I decided I was going to be discovered. I was panicking. And I just thought what I needed was allies."

"Good thought," I concurred.

"Yeah. So naturally the first thing I did was think with my dick. No, I'm joking. Sort of. I had a friend. Maybe more of an acquaintance. But we talked a lot during lunch. And we liked each other. She was much younger than me. And at the time had a very sombre, gothic vibe about her. She did accounting and other things for the school administration. Named Katya.

"Years before, she had been a student at the school. But she was never in any of my classes. For years she lived in LA. Dated a minor rock star. Pursued a career in acting that got her on some TV commercials.

"She came back home to Connecticut because, as she said, reality is for people who can't handle their drugs. And she couldn't.

"I didn't know the details. But she was stunningly beautiful in that completely dismissive kind of way. You know, the youth with no capacity to admire their own beauty. All they tend to see are their minor flaws. That most people would never notice.

"On the rare occasion there might be a guy in the picture with her, they always looked like tough guys. I was far too much of a nice, emotionally accessible type for her to ever seriously consider. Plus I had been a teacher when she was a student. So there was that taboo thing, you know.

"But in addition to really wanting to fuck her for years, I also thought that she might somehow be a useful person to talk to. In any case one of the few that I knew who had had some kind of experience on the outskirts of the world of celebrity, and the pitfalls around it.

"And she knew lots of tough guys. She was the only person at the entire school aside from one of the janitors who had visible tattoos."

"Connecticut is not Portland, eh?" I chimed in usefully.

"Not that part of Connecticut, anyway. Or the rest of the state, come to think of it."

"So you contacted Katya?"

"Well, sort of."

Zerzinski held his hand out as if he were looking at a cell phone.

"I got out the staff directory to look up Katya's number. Since I didn't have it in my phone. Since I don't think I had ever actually called her on a phone before. I brought the directory over to my phone. Turned on the phone to dial her phone number. And there was a text.

"So I opened the text, and it was from Katya. It was very discreet, too."

"What did it say?"

"It just said 'Hi Robert, this is Katya. Can I come over?'

"I'm sure it was coincidental timing and all, but it was pretty trippy. It took her about ten minutes from the time I wrote back for her to appear at my doorstep.

"She was dressed head to toe in black. But skin-tight, sexy clothing. Definitely not her usual school clothes. I saw her through the window, walking fast toward the house, looking intently at the front door and skipping up the stairs before she quickly rang the bell.

"I let her in, and we faced each other, standing, with this awkward silence for about a second. I wanted to hug her, but I didn't know if I should. I think I just stood there stupidly.

"She just said, 'it's you, isn't it?'

"She could see I was just a mess at that point. And I'll never forget the way she just took charge. So therapeutically.

"'OK listen' was how she was starting a lot of her sentences that evening. And I was.

"'OK listen, when the shit hits the fan, it's going to be a madhouse around here. Like nothing you've ever imagined. Are you stocked up on food? Do the locks work on all your doors and windows?'

"I hadn't thought of any of this kind of thing. She went out, came back with groceries an hour later. And then suggested that we hunker down and wait. While talking about my options."

"What did this hunkering involve?"

"Well I told her everything I knew about this thing. Which she already knew, since she had read as many of these articles in the past couple days as I had.

"And she asked me about how I wanted to try to deal with my impending celebrity status. Basically she had the same sorts of thoughts that Charity and that FBI agent had."

"Which ones...?"

"That my choices were basically to either try to live a secret life, change my identity if I were identified, basically go underground. Or to deal with being a celebrity. And everything that comes with that.

"And if I were to do that, that meant acting like a celebrity. In the sense of using the reason for my celebrity status to provide myself with the sort of lifestyle and security that my status essentially required.

"They agreed that just being me, in the open, after this diagnosis, was not one of my options."

"What did it feel like, being in there with Katya, waiting for something to happen?"

"Oh, it was electric. Pretty much the same feeling as when you know there's going to be a massive hurricane that will hit any minute. Everything gets especially quiet, it seems like, even the birds stop chirping for a while. And then it all comes crashing down.

"With Katya being there, too, it was just so therapeutic. Not only someone with her head screwed on better than mine, who was able to talk me down a little. But she also was being very physical with me, which was really helpful.

"We hadn't had a very physical connection before that day, but without any efforts at verbal communication on the subject, she started touching me, massaging my shoulders, sitting close to me."

"I'm curious if you found yourself thinking of ulterior motives with her? I mean you're about to be very famous, potentially rich. You have magical sperm..."

"Yes, of course. There's always that elephant in the living room, eh? But it's that way with any kind of power dynamic. There's just more of it in some cases. Like just being a westerner traveling around most countries, you can experience that kind of dynamic every day of the week."

I sensed a bit of agitation in Zerzinski's voice.

"I wasn't suggesting," I said, "that there was anything wrong with Katya or her motivations. Just to be clear."

"No no, I understand," he replied.

"Can you tell me more about how the rest of the night went?"

"You're very nosy, you know."

He said it with a look of annoyance that may or may not have been faked. But then he continued his recounting of that eventful day.

"I think we were both curious to turn on CNN. But we both knew it wouldn't be good for me to keep hearing them say the same shit about 'the search for Donor X' over and over. We were both obsessively checking our phones for any breaking news updates, though.

"I just wanted to escape from the impending reality. Especially as the evening progressed, and I got a little tired. Everything seems harder then. And the escape I wanted most was sitting right next to me.

"By this time I wasn't even nervous. At least not about Katya. Too nervous about everything else, probably.

"I just said to Katya, with the kind of weird, nonchalant confidence that I was quickly developing about my own sex appeal, which seemed so alien, but there it was, and I just said to her, 'shall we go to bed?'

"The rest of the communication for the night was all eye contact. Other than me saying 'yum' and things like that. There was no need for any more talking, or thinking. We just went upstairs, brushed our teeth together as if we had done that before, stood on either side of the bed, and each took off our clothing. Then got under the covers. It all felt strangely familiar.

"We cuddled for a long time. Eventually I started kissing her. She just responded so receptively to whatever I was doing, physically accommodating every move, you know. Like physically saying, 'yes, this is welcome, too, let's do that.'

"I think when I was on top of her, and her legs were spread wide, up in the air, clearly ready for me to fuck her, at that point I may have waited for her to pull me inside her. But maybe I didn't, I don't remember.

"It was one of the most therapeutic fucking sessions ever. We created a beautiful, insulated bubble on that bed. Katya was very much penetrated - but our collective bubble was impenetrable.

"Oh, there was one word. Now I remember. Sometime after we eventually fell asleep, I woke up feeling panicked at some wee hour of the morning. Later I thought, who knows, maybe that was the moment some hacker found my name and address and flight number all at the same time.

"But I suddenly woke up with all this anxiety, and then finding Katya's naked body right next to me, god it was so comforting. I just held onto her. And then I was lost again, and wanted to fuck her, but I didn't know if this might be annoying, you know. Women don't always want to be woken up by someone poking at their insides.

"But I guess she was awake. At least a little bit. Because her hand wandered around behind her back and felt my erect penis. And she moved herself around a little to make it easier for me to fuck her from behind, while we lay spooning on the bed. And she just said, 'more.'

"We woke up for the day in earnest because of the sounds of people and traffic, in the normally quiet residential streets just outside.

"At 7 am the streets and sidewalks were packed with journalists, news trucks with big satellite dishes on top of them. And lots of random people from the neighborhood and beyond who were wondering what the hell was going on. Probably for two or three blocks in every direction"

"You must have recognized a lot of them," I suggested.

"Oh yeah, that was also really weird. I recognized at least several dozen. Out of the hundreds that were within view of my bedroom window on the second floor.

"From there, we could see the people out there without them being able to see us, we figured. Small window, though - from the big picture window in the living room we could see much more, but then we'd be clearly visible, too. And we both thought that hiding seemed like a better idea."

"Were the police there?"

"Yeah, they showed up to direct traffic and such early on, which was great. I definitely wondered what might have happened if they hadn't been there. It's not like it's very hard to break into that house or something. And those first few days especially, it was crazy."

"As we were eating muffins and drinking coffee, we were watching the scene outside, with CNN playing in the background.

"Which was really weird, because we were looking out from the window, and CNN kept going back to the view of my front door. No need for a security camera when you got CNN I guess!

"In the morning especially, when there were about as many journalists as other people out there, you could clearly see which networks the journalists were from. It was all really mainstream networks. CNN, FOX, the local affiliates of CBS, NBC.

"I definitely got a thing for journalists. They dress in such sexy outfits. But then they have to act all knowledgeable and in control on screen. As they read the news and interview politicians and mass murderers and such.

"I was gazing at an incredibly sexy young Asian reporter as she talked into her microphone, looking at the cameraman, when Katya asked me, 'do you think she wants to fuck you? How many of them want to fuck you?'

"It was actually a pretty overwhelming question. I had no idea, really. Though I suspected a few did. But at that point, still in the morning, I was completely drained from the previous night's activities.

"I guess by the time I finished the second cup of coffee, I might have been up for doing something with that Asian reporter though... But we kept all the blinds down and lights off, and tried to look like we might not be home, all morning.

"Katya suggested she call a couple of guys she knew who worked as bouncers at an Irish bar in Norwalk. That turned out to be one of many great moves by Katya, who increasingly was feeling like my angelic savior in black.

"She called these guys. They probably both had only just gone to bed a couple hours earlier. But they had heard the news and seemed really happy just to be part of the action.

"They were both from Ireland. From Belfast. And they had charming Irish accents, and apparently endless patience. But backed up with the suggestion of brutality just in the background. They never smiled much. They were covered in muscles. And they both wore tight t-shirts that emphasized this fact, and allowed everyone to see their many tattoos. Some of which included IRA slogans.

"Once Liam and Sean arrived, everything felt a bit more orderly. Less chaotic at least. There was now a clear border between the inside and the outside of the house, somehow. Which seemed like the first thing to establish.

"Then Katya created a new email account for us to use. To start to try to deal with communications with the mob out there and presumably beyond.

"Liam and Sean told the journalists who approached them that if they wanted to contact me, they could use this email address.

"It was hilarious - suddenly half the people out there are pecking away at devices. And suddenly the inbox of this new email address was completely flooded with hundreds, and soon thousands of messages. Coming in at a rate of several per second at least.

"By early afternoon, things were starting to get even more interesting outside.

"Morning was mostly mainstream journalists and locals. By afternoon it was every alternative press outlet you've never heard of. Plus all kinds of international press that presumably came in from New York. And lots of other people.

"It literally resembled a circus. Especially when the cheerleading squad showed up."

"What were they up to?"

"They had worked out a racy Donor X routine. To the tune of the Beatles' song, 'Help.' With 'help' changed to 'fuck.'"

"Fuck! I need somebody - fuck! Not just anybody - fuck! Won't you please, please fuck me?" I sang.

"Exactly."

"Sounds fantastic."

"It was. It was breathtaking. I mean, as a nerdy American kid, I grew up having unattainable cheerleader fantasies.

"The idea of dating one cheerleader was a completely outrageous goal for a kid like me. Now here was an entire squad of cheerleaders, who at least appeared to be begging me to fuck every one of them."

"That's a powerful image," I agreed.

"Indeed. Sometime soon after they got the attention of every camera within 200 yards with their 'fuck' routine, the truck from Al-Jazeera showed up."

"Oh I remember hearing about that."

"Yeah, it was all over the tabloid press."

"'Harem: Al-Jazeera' was the headline I remember seeing."

"That was the one," Zerzinski concurred. "See, I invite journalists from an Arab network to come in and interview me, and immediately everybody jumps to the most Orientalist conclusions possible."

I probably looked bemused, though I tried to keep a straight face. But under the circumstances, who wouldn't jump to such conclusions? Certainly not good journalism to jump to unsubstantiated conclusions. But the suspicions are fairly clear.

"You gave them an exclusive, didn't you?"

"Yeah. Katya suggested that maybe I'd want to do an interview. She coached me a bit, helpfully, telling me that less is more, and I just needed to be careful about what I said. And that I should feel free to tell them I didn't want to talk about something. And to end the interview at any point."

"Good advice. Though it makes for a boring interview."

"From the perspective of a journalist," he pointed out.

"Yes," I agreed. "So you invited in the folks from Al-Jazeera then?"

"Yup."

"I'm curious why Al-Jazeera in particular?"

"Well they've gotten more mainstream since. But at the time they seemed to be really the only major network that was doing good reporting on the human consequences of the American death machine."

"The war?" I asked.

"The wars," he corrected. "But they also have the sexiest reporters."

"Who you then had sex with?"

"No comment."

"They spent the night, though, according to everybody."

"Yes. I had a two-bedroom, two-bathroom house. The downstairs bedroom became a very active guest room for a while there."

"And you told Al-Jazeera that your struggle now was how to use your gift in a way that helps people. While at the same time staying safe and enjoying yourself in the process?"

I had read the interview a long time ago. And not with huge interest at the time. But it was his first, and it made an impression.

"The part about enjoying yourself," I recounted, "created a bit of a media firestorm, eh?"

"It did."

"Did you anticipate that it would?"

"I guess when I said it, I didn't think it would be especially controversial. The fact that it was, I think, speaks to the puritan values that are still very much part of this society.

"There was nothing controversial about what I said in the French media, for example. They pretty much universally seemed to think it was either obvious, or a subject for cartoonists to work with."