“i suppose it was about a year ago that i began trying to make myself infertile with any kind of…[pause]…any kind of sincerity. i started to hear a lot about nuclear test sites, you know – trinity, the marshall islands and, of course, the sites that were established in nevada in ’51. before then i had always been sure that continuing my family line was something i could never do but it wasn’t until i heard the stories about the government’s nuclear program that i started to think ‘hey…maybe this is it, maybe this is the way i should do it’.
it seemed so perfect. for me, my attraction to infertility stemmed from my…[pause]…complete conviction that i wanted to remove myself from the equation of humanity. at no time in my life was i drawn to the ideas of universal destruction that were being proposed by the far right after the war, particularly among the remnants of the war time elite. i never wanted to see the light of mankind extinguished, as some of my friends assumed at the time. instead, i wanted to free myself from an anxiety that had been with me from as early as i could remember. i was always afraid of what might happen, what could happen to other people after i’m dead and gone. i hoped that, if i reduced my chances of reproduction to absolute zero, then i would no longer have to deal with this anxiety about the future of the human race. [michael looks at the interviewer and gives a broad, boyish smile] you’re grinning [michael laughs with a light tone] i know….
so, anyway…[pause]…my first location was in the nevada desert. at the time, that was the one i knew the most about and it was the easiest for me to get to….”
