I know this will make me sound un-hip and old-fashioned, but I never considered shaving my balls 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 lived in 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 Michael Moore 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 scene opened, Sly and his young, attractive, patently fertile wife sat on the couch holding hands 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 a vasectomy was the right decision after all. (They’d go with a schnauzer puppy instead: cuter than a baby and less work to house train.)
Once the decision was made, the video continued with a series of reassuring vignettes: frisky, well-adjusted, Kentucky Derby geldings frolicking in the bluegrass; dancing cartoon hotdogs and meatballs being chased by a playful Mr. Scissors; and an ER-like simulation where Gumby thrashed wildly under the knife while Pokey held his hand and cooed. Before I knew it, Rambo was dropping his towel and singing “Pagliacci” in the bathroom, lathering up his testicles with Edge Gel and reaching for the Gillette Super Mach 8 with the rubber grip, swivel head and mentholated lubricating strip. It was now the night before the operation and it wouldn’t be fair to make the urologist chop through such rank and unruly undergrowth. Flashbacks of ‘Nam might cause him to freak out like Martin Sheen in “Apocalypse Now” or Chris Walken in “Deer Hunter.” He might make a necklace of your ears, play Russian Roulette with the defibrillators, or yell “Fire in the hole!”
Frankly, I was prepared to cringe during the scrotal shaving sequence and, indeed, quickly laced my fingers over my wincing peepers to peek through the interstices as I had during “Kill Bill 2” when Uma Thurman stepped on Daryl Hannah’s loose gloopy eyeball in her bare feet. 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 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: 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 time 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, tousle-headed gentleman with big hands and big feet—if you know what I mean and I think that you do.
“One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!”
Lewis Carroll, "Through the Looking Glass"
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 had one. “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 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, 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 underpants in the kitchen for some spur-of-the-moment, Sunday-morning rumpy pumpy.
When I shouted, “Waiter! Strap me down and cut me right now!” everyone in the restaurant applauded wildly, calling out “Hear, hear!” just like the hearty chaps in “Jeeves and Wooster.”
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. As mentioned, I watched the video, and then let the mandated 30-day waiting period go by. During this time, Jeannine once brought up the idea of freezing some of my vital essence, you know, just in case, but, jeez, that seemed like a hassle—interviews, 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. I do, however, strongly recommend the luxury of thick, hot lather. (But skip the Old Spice—Yow!) 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—I toodled blithely in to the hospital.
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 balls). Minus a bit of odd tugging, 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, we had a very nice conversation about appreciating real estate values. Bing, bang, boom, it was done and I was on my way bowlegged as a broncobuster. Nothing to it and feelin’ groovy.
“O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!
He chortled in his joy.”
Ibid
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 would never dishonor them or America by throwing them over the White House fence.) 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 a revelation of horror and revulsion and…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 power 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 baby after all.
Say what, sugar plum?
Oh Henry, you sad, giggling clown, you should have—as they say in admittedly contrary contexts—kept it in your pants.
“‘The time has come,’ the Walrus said,
‘To talk of many things.’”
Ibid
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. 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 scream of anguish, into a dark and bottomless grave (a la Jimmy Stewart’s nightmare scene in “Vertigo”).
Yep, it was time for couple’s therapy.
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