Put the Scalpel Away, Doc, We Shan’t be Needing It

When your wife is pregnant, she goes to many doctor’s appointments. Toward the end of the pregnancy, or maybe right after delivery, one of the conversations the doctor insists on having is what birth control you’ll be using once the post-partum dry spell ends and the lovin’ ensues. I’m not sure why the doctors include this topic. Perhaps they’ve gotten so accustomed to teenagers they feel the need to explain the birds and the bees to all new parents. “Just in case you don’t know how this happened, here’s what you did and here’s how to prevent it in the future.”

For several years now, I’ve always assumed I’d take the outpatient route and go under the knife. Several close friends have done so, all with no complications or bad things to say. When the conversation turned to prevention after our second daughter, I told the doctor that I would take the necessary steps and we moved on to other bits of wisdom such as a newborn’s inability to digest turkey dogs (all Kosher beef or nothing) and the fact that newborns wholly prevent you from sleeping for the first six months. (Don’t worry future parents – The hallucinations are better than anything you achieved from the fungus and sugar cubes the questionable dude with dreadlocks and no last name provided in your younger years.)

There is a reason I’d always assumed I’d go down this path. Penelope and I, to use clinical terms, are fond of raw dogging and creampies. Condoms seriously impede raw dogging and creampies. For most, the pill is an option, but Penelope is in that unlucky minority that suffers highly unpleasant side effects from the pill. The cliché regarding wives and headaches isn’t as applicable as the honest truth regarding the unpleasantness of living with someone who suffers from frequent severe headaches. Moreover, not being a bad guy, I hate to contribute to such headaches and, being familiar with the bangover*, know firsthand just how unpleasant the temporarily vanquished headache can be upon return.

But no matter how much I hate condoms and no matter how hard I try, I cannot make the call and schedule the appointment. In the words of Dave Barry, “If you’re a man considering this step, you need to reflect upon the fact that they are going to cut a hole in your scrotum.”

When I was 13 years old, I was quite daring with my bicycle. Once, while doing front wheelies, I decided, for some idiotic reason conjured deep within the idiocy of my 13 year old brain, to build up to a good speed, and corresponding momentum, before slamming on my front brakes.

It was a racking to end all rackings. The soft graze that moves from contact to limbo for approximately 10 seconds before crescendoing to crippling pain, normally the bitch mother of all nut pain, paled in comparison to the shock waves that rippled through my groin and radiated out through my body. I crawled into my house and to the bathroom. There, upon examination, I discovered a tiny amount of blood. Not free flowing, but it was blood! On my nuts! I limped to the back yard and told my dad the family jewels were in serious peril.

My dad was building something at that moment. He didn’t even turn off the circular saw. He just dropped it to the ground. It spent the following 2.5 hours, while we were at the doctor, chasing the dogs around the back yard. We didn’t close doors, we didn’t turn off anything, we just got in the car and left.

Once at the doctor’s office, the serious damage was determined to actually be a minor scrape on my sack. No tearing, no rupturing, no lasting effects.

Rather, I should say, there were no lasting physical effects. Emotionally, that story haunts me, especially when I think about purposely scheduling an appointment in which my doctor, a fine and talented man, will cut a hole in my scrotum.

Thousands upon thousands of men have undergone this procedure, but as of this writing, I will not join their ranks. There is always a chance that something will go wrong. Any possibility, no matter how infinitesimal, that I could become such an outlier is too great a risk. I’m reminded of a joke. Why do women rub their eyes when they wake up in the morning? Because they don’t have balls to scratch.

They’re that important to us.

As I’ve said on many occasions, I got married for the right reasons and to a good woman. I told Penelope about my decision regarding scalpels and my ball sack. Her response was that she couldn’t believe I’d considered it in the first place. The conversation moved to other options that allow raw dog creampies.

Perhaps in the future I will overcome this fear. Perhaps there is a doctor so infallible, so intelligent, so skilled with scalpel, so trustworthy, that I will find the courage to schedule the appointment. But until I see the sign that says, “The Office of Dr. Jesus H. St. Einstein Sushruta is now open for business,” no one wielding a scalpel is coming within 10 miles of my scrotum. I’ll be damned if I’m going to wake up in the morning and rub my eyes.

*bangover n. The hangover headache that, temporarily vanquished by the act of love, returns with all its mates at the moment of stack blow.