As published on The Huffington Post

I have become desensitized to the annual ritual where my dad hands me an envelope he's received in the mail addressed to me and that has no return address. After 14 years, we are both nearly positive of the envelope's origin. I open one side and remove the bill just enough to see Fairfax Cryobank across the top, and then hand it back to him. "I think this is for you."

My mom and I visited Fairfax Cryobank for the first time on September 25, 2000. The doctor explained my risk of sterility and the sperm banking process, and then asked my mom for written permission for me to use pornography.

"If he needs it," she said.

The previous night my dad had asked if I "know how to get it out" or if I "need help." I kept my eyes fixed on the same textbook sentence I had already read 30 times without realizing and said, "I know how; no thanks, Dad," thrilled that the dull lamp in my bedroom hid my features, hot and red as a mature habanero. At 16, I could only laugh with friends at my dad's inquiry, unable to understand his courage.

I did need help from the magazines, however. With my mom one room over, chemotherapy to treat my aggressive bone cancer beginning three days later, and the sterile cup and alcohol swab on the counter next to me, I wondered if anything other than live action would do the job.

I returned to the cryobank once more before starting chemo, this time less nervous and with both parents present in the waiting room. "Are you done already?" my dad asked after I emerged from the room with the brown couch that so many with cancer before me had been forced to execute on. Keep reading, here.