I would like to take a moment and use this column to talk about a problem that affects every man alive today, especially the drunken ones: impotence.
The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. Brewer’s droop. The sleeping bishop. The dead soldier. The under inflated zipper zeppelin. Involuntary abstinence. Down for the count. Soft-on. A flat tire. Failure to stand in the presence of a lady. Shooting pool with a rope. Sleeping on the job. The early worm. The Little Engine That Couldn’t.
It happens to almost everyone: guys who work too hard, gain too much weight, smoke too much, drink too much, worry too much, party too hard, stay up too late, try too many times, just plain aren’t interested, or for no goddamn reason at all. It can even happen because you’re worried it’ll happen. In fact, there’s only one class of men that never experience this helpless feeling.
Guys in erotica.
When was the last time you read something like this:
The herd of subway passengers crushed her against him, and he struggled to make room. He was polite, Jerry was, and that simple gesture of humanity in a harsh, foul-smelling environment may have been what piqued Kim’s interest. Total strangers, they were suddenly connected in a sea of distant and disinterested faces.
She looked up at him, a quick darting movement that left him uncertain whether she’d been smiling or not, or even exactly what she looked like. But when her hand crept unseen across the front of his pants and he gasped, he got a glimpse of a small, catlike grin that she hid from him even as she groped further.
Kim marveled at her own daring. What kind of slut was she, to feel up a guy on the subway? But she was feeling playful, and he seemed nice, and no one ever had to know. The smooth feel of his slacks sliding beneath her palm made it elegant, even romantic, and she quested on.
Torn between the dizzying need to grab her and the terrifying fear of being caught, Jerry settled for unobtrusively pushing his hips forward. He moaned as she found him. Her small hand cupped his groin and squeezed gently before stroking up and down. Jerry closed his eyes and sighed happily.
Two stops later, her arm was cramping up. Was he ever going to get hard? Was he even awake? He was facing the right way, she wasn’t accidentally jerking off his change purse or something, was she? She didn’t dare look at him now for embarrassment, but she was afraid he’d get mad if she stopped. What the hell had she been thinking? Grimly she took a deep breath and kept going.
Jerry was in agony. A probably-beautiful woman was giving him an anonymous handjob and nothing was happening. God, this was hell. He should do the polite thing and back away or stop her hand, but he couldn’t make himself do it. Instead he took a deep breath and thought frantically about breasts.
“You’re doing it wrong,” came the raspy voice, and they both jumped. It came from a disreputable-looking bag lady sitting on the bench next to them, leaning forward with her hands on her knees and her overstuffed greasy shopping bag tucked safely between her legs. Through unspoken agreement, Kim and Jerry managed to resist making eye contact with her or each other. It didn’t help. “That ol’ up and down shit ain’t gonna get the butter churned,” she said in a loud voice. “You gotta tickle it under the chin, girl!”
Kim blushed bright red and considered running for it. Maybe the next stop, she could get off and walk the last few blocks? Behind her a middle-aged man in a baby blue jogging suit leaned sideways to look past her waist. “Nah, the stroke is okay,” he pronounced. “She just needs to adjust her grip. Go with two fingers, honey, coax him out.”
The long-haired young woman behind Jerry reached up and rubbed his temples in a soothing manner. “Just relax,” she said in a sing-song voice. “It’ll happen, there’s no hurry, no hurry at all…”
“Maybe if they kissed?” suggested the woman in the Donna Koran suit two poles down.
The bag lady abruptly jammed a filthy hand in between them, grabbing a startled Kim’s hand and forcefully repositioning it. “There! Try flicking his switch and see if his light don’t come on!”
The other passengers turned around and watched with interest, oblivious to the white-hot embarrassment that came off the new lovers in waves. A few of the teens in the back of the subway car started placing bets on the outcome, and a rhythmic, encouraging chanting began…
Nope, nothing like that in Best American Erotica this year, was there? And that’s the problem. The most annoying thing about impotence is that it’s self-perpetuating. Fear of not getting it up causes you to not get it up, and then you worry so much that it’ll never get up again that it never gets up again, and it just spirals further and further down until you feel like loading your rifle and loitering around the mall for no good reason. And why?
Because thanks to thousands of years of bragging and lying and Penthouse letters and your buddies and pornos and stroke books, guys have come to accept that manhood = rock hard, no exceptions. No matter how many times you try to reassure your guy, deep inside he knows for a fact that if he can’t get it up no matter what, he’s not really a man and when he wakes up on his tear-stained pillow the next morning he’ll discover that you’ve left him to party with the U.S.S. Nimitz.
It’s only through media acceptance of impotence that men will come to accept it as a natural and acceptable occurrence, like charley horses or pattern baldness. Writers, you need to cut back on your limp dick jokes and reduce the number of throbbing pistons of love that appear like magic in your stories. Who can compete with fictional characters that spring to action at a cool breeze? It’s really intimidating. I mean, it can be intimidating.
This is one of the few places where adult movies are leading the way. In many x-rated movies, especially the ones without budgets, there’s always at least one guy who’s chicken has no bone. I could never do what Peter North does, not even with a stunt man, so this schnook is the guy I identify with. I’ll cheer and scream and root for him, and when he finally does get a wobbly, half-hard erection I feel like I’m watching the Patriots in the last quarter of the Superbowl. Go, team, go!
How much better it would be if, just once, we could see the guy try for wood for a few minutes, and then shrug cheerfully and go to town just pleasuring the woman. Wouldn’t that be great? Wouldn’t that be refreshing?
And it would be even easier in erotica, where you don’t have any ego-mad prima donna actors to deal with. Add a character that takes a more “what happens, happens” attitude towards sex. Think of the complexities of a man that self-secure, that comfortable with my… with himself. Take it as a challenge. Let your lordly studs relax for awhile and pay attention to their relieved and grateful ladies for once.
Maybe then we can finally lay this big, throbbing thing to rest.