A WOUNDED CENTAUR
OF LOVE

Bad timing: the sad story of one man's vasectomy

“Everything’s got a moral,
if only you can find it.”

Lewis Carroll,
"Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland"

I know this will make me sound un-hip and old-fashioned, but I never even considered shaving my testicles until it was required for my vasectomy. Honestly, it never crossed my mind. OK, sure, like everybody, I’d seen a few smooth, glabrous scrotums in porn films, but as a healthy heterosexual male I’d always quickly averted my gaze or crossed my eyes or blocked out that side of the screen with one hand until the video returned to 100% T&A. And, in any case, this new breed of sleek, waxed cocksmen inhabited an altogether different reality than me—a golden, pulsing Xanadu where plumbers, postmen and pizza deliverers got repeatedly shtupped by multiple, Britney-Spears look-alikes every time they rang a doorbell. (“Hi! Come on in! Me and Heather were just looking for our panties!”) The point being, I guess, is that I didn’t really identify with them. Perhaps if the pizza boy had been played by Philip Seymour Hoffman or Billy Bob Thornton I’d have felt otherwise.

Actually, the HMO instructional video, excitingly entitled “The Vasectomy Supremacy”, didn’t exactly feature an ordinary looking joe either—he kind of resembled the Sly Stallone of the early Rambo years, except without the head bandanna—but, for whatever reason, him I plugged into, maybe because of the “Rocky” connection. As the movie opened, Sly and his young, attractive, patently fertile wife sat on the couch holding hands, looking over the literature and discussing the matter in a loving and mutually respectful manner. They looked deeply into each other’s eyes over the rims of their General Foods International coffees, and when appropriate, one would nod, tug an earlobe or pick a nose in a thoughtful and emotionally mature manner. And then, only after carefully weighing all the pros and cons, did they conclude that, yes, a vasectomy was indeed the right decision for them. (They’d avoid the egregious weight gain issues and the mess of the birthing process and go with a schnauzer puppy instead: cuter than a baby, way less work to house train--and with the money saved over the next twenty-two years, they'd buy a big house, a Mercedes convertible, a plasma TV and an exercycle.)

Once the decision was made, the dramatic reenactment shifted to a steamy bathroom: our hairy-chested Italian Stallion dropped his towel in a breathtaking full-frontal-nudity-in-the-mirror shot, lathered up his secret garden with Peppermint & Aloe Edge Gel for Tough Beards and then reached for the Gillette Super Mach 8 with the rubber grip, swivel head and mentholated lubricating strip. Just as he was about to start shaving, he stopped, stared straight into the camera, opened his mouth wide and broke into the most soulful “Pagliacci” this side of Caruso. I'm not embarrassed to admit I wept at the pathos of it. [A narrator voice-overed the back story: It was now the night before the operation and it wouldn’t be fair to make the urologist chop through the nutsack's rank and unruly undergrowth. The jungle-like conditions might prompt hellish flashbacks of ‘Nam, causing the doctor to freak out, make a necklace of your ears and run down the corridor, yelling “Fire in the hole!”]

Frankly, I was prepared to cringe and squeal during the scrotal shaving sequence and, indeed, quickly laced my fingers over my wincing peepers to peek through the interstices just as I do when watching the medical shows on TV. But to my relief, the whole thing went quite smoothly: no spurting blood or hysterical screaming, no body parts flopping wetly to the floor—any of which would have reconciled me, if necessary, to a lifetime of condoms as thick as Playtex rubber gloves.

Hmm, I thought, I guess I could do that after a Xanax and a couple of stiff drinks. Hee, hee, I snickered, it might even be fun to do just once. Be that as it may, I was glad Jeannine wasn’t watching the video with me: what if the idea caught her fancy (“Yowza, hairless balls!”) like the ice-pick-and-sex scene in “Basic Instinct” had? (That was a very anxious few months of "lovemaking" for me.) Nor was I comfortable with the idea of her famished gaze--likely accompanied with a Pavlovian panting and slavering--fixed upon another man’s loins. Especially a buff, virile, tousle-headed gentleman with big hands and big feet—if you know what I mean and I think that you do.

The instructional video concluded with a series of reassuring vignettes: dancing cartoon hotdogs and meatballs being chased by a playful Mr. Scissors; an ER-like simulation where Gumby thrashed wildly under the knife while Pokey held his hand and cooed; and a lovely idyll of frisky, well-adjusted, Kentucky Derby geldings frolicking in the bluegrass. Finally, in the last scene, we see our post-op hero and his sexy wife dirty-dancing ecstatically in tank tops and skimpy panties-flashing skirt--while a circle of beer-commercial-gorgeous onlookers clapped and yowled in encouragement.

The idea for a vasectomy had originated during a dinner out with another couple, close friends with three horrifying children already, who announced that the husband had recently undergone the "simple, painless operation." “Gee,” Jeannine said, turning to me, “why don’t you get a vasectomy, honey-bun? Then I could remove my IUD.” Hmm, I raised my eyebrows, tilted my head and pursed my lips in the manner of a lively, open-minded and liberal intellectual: Why not indeed? J and I were entering into early middle age and neither of us had ever expressed any desire to have kids, nor enjoyed their winsome company much past the initial two or three seconds—plus we already had our cats PeeWee and Tweeter, as well as Mr. Bumfin the goldfish, whom we loved very much and wouldn’t want to feel displaced in our affections. Children also made getting high—even in one’s own home—miserably problematical. (A co-worker, caught furtively smoking a doobie inside his own garden shed, had been snitched out by his second-grade daughter. Since he’d been arrested twice for shoplifting cough syrup in his teenage years, this was his third strike and he was sent away for life.)

Furthermore, as the world continued its inevitable spiral down the commode of violence, fundamentalism, ecological devastation, Disney-ism and Republicanism, we could remain blithely complacent and humbly superior, because we’d be gone in a few more decades, leaving behind no genetic spawn to face the assuredly even more heinous music of the future. And, last but not least, with rugrats underfoot, you can forget about tugging down one another’s pajama bottoms in the kitchen for some spur-of-the-moment, Sunday-morning rumpy-pumpy, licky-pokey.

When I shouted, “Waiter! Strap me down and cut me right now!” everyone in the restaurant applauded wildly, calling out “Hear, hear!” and singing "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow" just like the hearty chaps in “Jeeves and Wooster.” We had a couple magnums of champagne and thoroughly enjoyed the evening out.

So, over the following months, I read the booklets, attended the HMO class, and signed disclaimers waving any right to litigate should they accidentally remove or transplant my genitals, or sew them on someplace else as a joke. As mentioned, I watched the video, and then let the mandated 30-day waiting period go by. During this time, Jeannine once, off-handedly, raised the idea of freezing some of my vital essence, you know, just in case, but, jeez, that seemed like a hassle—more interviews and paperwork, wearing the disposable plastic glove to ejaculate into a little cup in a tiny room to some cheesy porn they stockpiled for the customers—and, anyway, we didn’t want children, right? So I kept my eyes glued to Doonesbury, grunted in a not-yet-caffeinated-enough-for-idle-conversation manner and morosely spooned up another glutinous cud of granola and yogurt. As she never brought it up again, she clearly failed to attain “squeaky wheel” status.

By and by, the day arrived to shave my love sack, which was not as difficult as I thought it would be, considering the lack of surface tension and the density of virgin, decades-old foliage. I do, however, strongly recommend the luxury of hot, wet towels and thick, rich lather. (But skip the Old Spice as it stings like a motherfucker!) And then, come jingle-jangle morning, after a quick splash-and-wash crouched beneath the bathtub faucet--wanting to be fresh as a daisy for my date with the butcher man--and a supportive peck on the cheek from the little woman, I toodled blithely in to the hospital, whistling a brave happy tune.

The operation itself went nicely, I thought. The room was nice and tidy; I changed into a summery, frock-like piece of apparel that made me feel unexpectedly shy and girlish—if a little chilly down below—and the nurses generously pulled a fresh sheet of waxed paper over the operating table. The doctor seemed nice enough, if slightly drunk, and the local anesthesia worked quite nicely (after the emotional hurdle of having a needle stuck into my nuts). Minus a bit of odd tugging down there, I didn’t feel a thing. Nor could I see a thing, which was super nice. And while he snipped, sawed, stitched, stapled, knotted, cauterized and shrink-wrapped, the doctor and I had a very nice conversation about appreciating real estate values in the Bay Area. Bing, bang, boom, it was done and I was on my way bowlegged as a tender broncobuster. Nothing to it and feelin’ groovy.

When I got home, Jeannine inquired if all had gone well, and I said it had, thanks for asking, sugar pie. She wondered if she might observe the affected zone, and though a modest man, I obligingly pulled my trousers down to reveal my two purple hearts. I’ll be the first to admit that it wasn’t pretty—unlike “Star Trek” medicine, present-day surgery is surprisingly crude and invasive—but I was in high spirits and said something, apropos of all the suturing, about having the “Balls of Frankenstein.” I looked up to share this absurd and whimsical Kodak moment with my beloved—here I sat, khakis and briefs bunched around my ankles, considering the woeful shaved and tailored orbs of my reproductive system—but instead of the expected grin of complicity (“Oh boy, we’ve done it now, muchacho!), Jeannine’s face was drained and twisted in horror and revulsion and...infinite, revelatory regret. (Even more so than when that African beetle with the sharp, twitching mandibles crawled inside the ear of the sleeping explorer John Speke in the movie about the search for the source of the Nile—and that had her sleeping in earplugs for months.)

Really, I had to chuckle: it did look rather gruesome. And, honestly, no one—except for the inevitable Internet splinter group—wants to contemplate such things at close quarters. It strikes at the very root of biological purpose—an awesome and capricious compulsion the HMO unmistakably recognized. (“Vasectomy reversal operations are expensive, often unsuccessful and not covered by your policy.” Sign, date and initial here, here and here.) With her eyes yet glued to my disarmed pelvis, Jeannine replied to my idiot chortles in a voice devoid of mirth or irony: on second thought, she'd decided she wanted a child after all, very much so, in fact she could never possibly be happy without one.

Say what, baby?

Oh Henry, you sad, giggling clown, you should have—as they say in admittedly contrary contexts—kept it in your pants.

So, now came the months and years of practicing that plum role so beloved of romantic comedies, i.e., the shallow, boorish, exploitive, self-centered, commitment-phobe boyfriend who won’t give his sweet, smart, talented, funny, cute, sexy girlfriend a child—thus dooming her to an empty life of unfulfilled womanhood utterly devoid of meaning. (At least until the sensitive, witty, kid-loving Hugh Grant character bumps into her in the office hallway and knocks her files to the floor. Or, conversely, Hugh himself is the selfish asshole, but has an epiphany in the final minutes of the movie about what’s truly important in life (Babies!), requiring a frantic cab ride—driven by a wise, spliff-smoking, dreadlocked Rastafarian— across rush-hour Manhattan to stop his forlorn sweetheart from boarding a flight to Ulaanbaatar to work for the World Bank. In the epilogue, an ostentatiously contented Hugh lounges on the green grass under a leafy tree in a springtime park, the glowing head of his lovely wife resting smilingly in his lap—a ripe basketball of new life gloriously stretching her summer dress. Two or three beautiful girl-children run around in circles, shrieking and pulling out each other’s hair. The End.)

But back to me sitting on the bed, pants and underwear still piled upon my shoe tops, heart shriveling, smiley face dying of disembowelment: in a hallucinatory flash offering an alternative future to that of the happy, squealing Hugh-family, I saw myself falling and flailing, mouth stretched in a silent O-scream of anguish, into a dark, dank and bottomless grave (a la Jimmy Stewart’s nightmare scene in “Vertigo”).

Yep, it was time for couple’s therapy.

By Henry E. Panky

Take these broken wings and learn to fly...

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