by Barry, Dave
“No,” I admitted. “I’m going senile.”
Then we both laughed. Although not that hard.
Speaking of not that hard: I hate Viagra commercials.
Let me stress that there is no shame in needing Viagra, although I personally do not need it, but if I did need it I would not hesitate to acknowledge this, although, as I believe I mentioned earlier, I do not need it. But the commercials are loathsome. First of all, we are talking about a product intended to enable a man to—and here, in the interest of discretion and professionalism, I will employ medical terminology—get a boner. No question, this is important. Human males need to get boners; this is one of their three most critical biological functions, along with farting and second-guessing pass-interference calls.
Unfortunately, the human penis is poorly designed. It is the Windows Vista of mammal penises. Other, better-designed mammals—your raccoons, your gorillas, your moles—have no boner issues because the males have actual bones in their penises. Really. It’s called a baculum and it’s brilliant, whoever thought of it. I have, in my office, for legitimate, tax-deductible journalistic reasons, the penis bone of a walrus, which the Eskimos call an oosik, and which I call Walter. It’s nearly two feet long. It is very impressive. You could easily kill a person with Walter. The mature male walrus is basically packing a billy club in his tallywacker. He is not worrying about getting a boner. He is very confident in his manhood. This is why you almost never see a male walrus driving a Corvette.
But whoever designed human males failed to include the baculum option, so our mechanics are trickier. As we age, many of us (although, as I may have mentioned, not me personally) need help. So Viagra and other erectile drugs are a welcome development.
But here’s the thing, and I am about to speak for everyone in the United States who is not some kind of degenerate sicko pervert: When we are watching television, in our family room, with our family, which includes our children, and we have chosen to view what is supposed to be family-appropriate programming, such as a sporting event, we do not want to be exposed to a sixty-second commercial about getting boners. We do not want to have to answer questions about boners from our younger, more naive children; and we do not want to have to sit in mortified silence while avoiding eye contact with our older, boner-savvy children. In other words, this is a time when we, as a nation, DO NOT WANT BONERS TO COME UP* AT ALL.
And yet they do. There are boners up all over what is theoretically family viewing time. It is Bone-a-Rama. This is grotesquely inappropriate. It also creates a deeply troubling picture of the physical state of the modern American male. You watch an evening of TV and by the fifteenth erectile dysfunction ad you’re thinking: Can’t anybody in this nation get it up? Inevitably, if you’re an older guy, you start to wonder: Could this happen to me?
You especially wonder this because the guys in the Viagra commercials are always more masculine than you are. For example, there’s one Viagra commercial, which I have seen dozens of times, in which a rugged aging cowboy is driving a manly pickup truck towing a horse trailer on a rural road and he gets stuck in the mud out there in the middle of nowhere. Is he daunted? No, he is not. The announcer says: “You’ve reached the age where you don’t back down from a challenge.”
For the record, this statement is one hundred percent pure bullshit. It is the opposite of true. The older you get, the more likely you are to back down from a challenge. If you want scientific proof of this, go to YouTube and search for any variation of the phrase “shoot bottle rocket from ass.” This will turn up many videos of people attempting to shoot bottle rockets from their asses. It goes without saying that all of these people are males. But more to the point, they are all young males. I have no doubt they were all responding to challenges from their friends. “I dare you to shoot a bottle rocket out of your ass!” their friends said. And, being young males and therefore less intelligent than a bowl of grits, they responded to the challenge. And then they went to the ER to be treated for, among other things, scrotal burns.
Here is my challenge to you: Find an older man—any older man—and challenge him to shoot a bottle rocket out of his ass. I guarantee you that he will not hesitate: He will immediately back down. Learning when to back down from challenges is one of the main reasons he got to be an older man, as opposed to dead. His current idea of an acceptable challenge is trying to stay up until 10:30 p.m.
Also, for the record: If an older man has trouble getting a boner, he will not view that as a “challenge,” any more than he will view a tapeworm or hemorrhoids as a “challenge.” He will view it as “a medical problem.”
But getting back to the cowboy in the Viagra commercial: He gets out of his stuck pickup and opens the doors to the horse trailer. The announcer says: “This is the age of knowing how to make things happen. So, why would you let something like erectile dysfunction get in the way?” And, by gum, the cowboy doesn’t let it get in his way. In the very next scene, there are two horses hitched to the front of the pickup, and the cowboy—thanks to the miracle of Viagra—is having sex with both of them.
No, that does not happen. At least not during the commercial. Of course we don’t know what happens later when the camera is off; we cannot say for certain how the cowboy expresses his gratitude to the horses for towing his truck. We do know it gets lonely out there.
But my point is, if you’re an older man watching TV, you’re going to be bombarded with commercials suggesting that there is a nationwide epidemic of noodle dick. You inevitably start to wonder: Could this condition afflict me? You also wonder this about all the other medical conditions—there seem to be thousands—featured in TV commercials for prescription drugs whose names sound like characters in The Lord of the Rings, as we see in this comparison chart:
Prescription Drugs
The Lord of the Rings Characters
Crestor
Zocor
Cymbalta
Lyrica
Chantix
Boromir
Saruman
Denethor
Faramir
Galadriel
Every one of these commercials features older people (People like you!) suffering from apparently common medical conditions (Conditions you very well could be suffering from!) and needing to take prescription drugs (Drugs you should probably be taking! Ask your doctor!) despite the possibility of unpleasant side effects (“Discontinue using Faramir if both of your eyeballs explode”).
After an evening of watching TV, I’m pretty sure that, one way or another, I’m going to die within hours, which actually doesn’t seem so bad because I have also concluded that, manhood-wise, I will soon decline to the point where I could no more get an erection than bench-press the Lincoln Memorial.
So I hate TV as much as I hate my mail.
I do a lot of math these days. It’s Death Math. I’ll be waiting to pick my daughter up at middle school and I’ll start thinking: OK, so when she graduates from high school, if I live that long, I’ll be seventy. When she graduates from college, if I live that long, I’ll be seventy-four. And when she starts dating boys, if I live that long, I’ll be . . . Jesus, I’d be ninety-two years old.
By way of explanation: My daughter is not allowed to date boys until she’s forty. This is the only rule I’ve laid down for her and I think it’s reasonable, based on the known scientific fact that boys—even intelligent, thoughtful, loving, sensitive and caring boys—are scum.
When my daughter can legally commence dating (February 24, 2040), I intend to monitor her closely. I intend to do this even if I am deceased. My last will and testament will contain instructions stating that if my daughter goes anywhere in a car with a male belonging to the opposite sex, the urn containing my ashes shall be placed on the console be
tween the passenger and driver’s seats, along with a little placard that says “DON’T MIND ME! YOU KIDS HAVE FUN!” The urn will also have a siren that goes off periodically.
I don’t want you to think that all I do, now that I’m old, is sit around and think about death. Not at all! Sometimes I also plan my funeral. Here’s how I want it to go:
My Funeral Program
I. ORGAN PRELUDE: “Let a Man Come In and Do the Popcorn” (James Brown)
II. PALLBEARERS ENTER
There will be eight pallbearers to carry the casket. There will not, however, be an actual casket; the pallbearers will be mimes. They will mime setting a heavy casket down in front of the room and feeling very sad. Then they will mime being trapped inside a glass box. Then they will mime suffocating to death.
III. CLERGYMAN ENTERS
The clergyman will say a few words welcoming everyone to the service. He will then realize he is not wearing pants.
IV. CLERGYMAN EXITS
V. AWKWARD EIGHT-MINUTE PAUSE
Note: The mimes may elect to fill this void by performing additional routines. If this happens, they are to be shot by Navy SEAL snipers.
VI. CLERGYMAN (A DIFFERENT ONE) ENTERS
The clergyman will say a few words welcoming everyone to the service. He will then speak for fifteen minutes on the benefits of becoming an Amway distributor.
VII. CHOIR SONG
The choir will perform the Howlin’ Wolf version of the Willie Dixon song “Wang Dang Doodle.” Lyrics will be distributed to the audience, which will be urged to sing along for this part:
We gonna romp and tromp till midnight, we gonna fuss and fight till daylight
We gonna pitch a wang dang doodle all night long
VIII. EULOGY
I would like my eulogy to be given by a close friend or, if he is available, William Shatner. I will not presume to dictate the contents of the eulogy. My only requests are that it (1) be done entirely in a fake Scottish accent, (2) have a Charades portion, and (3) feature, at some point, the word “poontang.”
IX. LUCKY SEAT ANNOUNCEMENT
The audience will be instructed to look under their seats. Under one of them will be a small container of my ashes, which the audience member can take home.
X. LIVE PERFORMANCE OF “CANDLE IN THE WIND” BY ELTON JOHN
If Elton John is unavailable, the organist should again play “Let a Man Come In and Do the Popcorn.”
XI. PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE
XII. CANDY TOSS
XIII. ORGAN POSTLUDE: “Let a Man Come In and Do the Popcorn”
Of course my funeral could be a ways off. As I write these words, I’m looking at the newspaper and this happens to be a pretty good day—the People section is noting the birthdays of four celebrities who are older than I am and yet, incredibly, not dead. Granted, they don’t all look so great; vultures are clearly visible in their publicity shots.
But the point is, they’re still around. And, for now, so am I. I’ve been granted another day of life and I intend to live it to the fullest. But first I’m going to go outside and get the newspaper.
Every morning my wife and I take our dog, Lucy, on a two-mile run.
OK, “two-mile run” is inaccurate. A better way to describe it would be “several hundred closely spaced urination stops.”
Urination is a major component of Lucy’s lifestyle. Think about the most wonderful thing you’ve ever experienced—falling in love, seeing your child being born, going an entire day without hearing the name “Kardashian.” Remember the joy you felt? That’s the kind of joy Lucy feels every time she smells another dog’s urine. And since we live in a dog-intensive neighborhood, Lucy is in a state of near-constant rapture.
Each morning we leave the house and trot perhaps four steps when, suddenly, YANK, Lucy—a big, strong dog who has the ability to create her own planet-level gravitational field—stops and makes herself roughly as mobile as a convenience store, causing my leash arm to come halfway out of its socket. Lucy’s nose hoovers the ground and her tail whips around like a snake on amphetamines, which is her way of signaling the fantastic news: You will never guess what I have found here: DOG WEEWEE!! Can you BELIEVE it?? Then she squats to squirt some of her own weewee—she has a 275-gallon bladder—on top of the other dog’s weewee. To humans, this behavior may seem pointless, even stupid, but it serves an important biological function: It is how one dog signals to another dog the vital information that both of them contain weewee.
When she’s done squirting, Lucy permits us to trot a few more steps, whereupon, incredibly, she discovers another place where a dog has urinated and, YANK, we must stop again. And so on, for two miles. It is slow going. We make about the same rate of progress as Bill Clinton passing through a roomful of women. If the early American pioneers had taken Lucy along on their wagon trains, everything west of Cleveland would still be untamed wilderness.
So our morning “run” takes quite a while, and during this time Michelle and I have a chance to talk. And when I say “Michelle and I,” I mean “Michelle.” She does the vast majority of the talking. I’d like to contribute to the conversation, but I can never think of anything to say. At that point, Michelle and I have been together for at least twelve straight hours. We had dinner together the night before, watched TV together, slept in the same bed together, woke up together, went through the morning routine together and drove our daughter to school together. If I had anything to say to Michelle, I’d have said it by then. So when we’re running, the only potential conversational topics that pop up in my mind are the same ones popping up in Lucy’s (Squirrel!).
Whereas Michelle, who is a woman, always has many new topics she wants to talk about, and every one of these topics reminds her of other things she wants to talk about, and those other things remind her of still more things she wants to talk about. She is a nuclear reactor of words. But I’m not complaining and I’ll tell you why: I don’t want to sleep in the driveway.
No, seriously, I enjoy hearing Michelle talk. She’s like my own personal talk radio station, Radio Michelle, always full of interesting news, such as what our daughter Sophie is up to. Michelle knows because she actually talks to Sophie. Whereas I do not. I spend a fair amount of time in the car with Sophie, driving her to and from activities, and we’re happy in each other’s company, but we don’t talk: I listen to sports radio and she exchanges texts and Instagram messages with her fourteen million girlfriends. We don’t discuss these things with each other because Sophie doesn’t really care if the Dolphins need help at offensive tackle and I don’t really care if Girlfriend No. 11,368,421 and Girlfriend No. 5,820,327 are mad at Girlfriend No. 7,009,256 because she (I refer here to Girlfriend No. 7,009,256) said something to some boy in the cafeteria.
But Michelle does care about these things so she talks to Sophie all the time, which means that when we’re on our run she can fill me in on things about our daughter that I would not otherwise know, such as whether she is happy, what grade she is currently in, whether she has had any major operations, etc.
And it’s not just Sophie; Michelle talks to everybody. She has many, many friends, and when they call, she can talk with them for hours, even if they already talked earlier that day. I have maybe one percent as many close friends as Michelle, and, being males, they never call. This is fine with me because if they did call, even if we hadn’t talked in fifteen years, we would quickly run out of things to talk about. Within seconds we would be discussing the Dolphins’ situation at offensive tackle. By the end of a minute we would be down to awkward silence, and that would be that for another fifteen years. Some of my close friends could easily be deceased; this would not have a serious effect on our relationship.
I don’t think I’m abnormal. I think I’m a regular male person, and there are plenty more like me. For example: Some years ago, because I needed something to write a column about, I became an official Notary Public in t
he state of Florida and performed a wedding. The bride, whose name was Pat, gave me the following account of how the groom, Phil, proposed to her:
“One day he was telling me what needed to get done, and he said we needed to register the boat, get a fishing license and get a marriage license. So I said, ‘Wait a minute, what was that again?’ And he said, ‘Register the boat, get a fishing license and get a marriage license.’ So I said, ‘Are you serious?’ And he said, ‘Yeah, we’ve got to register the boat.’”
Phil, a male, did not feel the need to get all blah-blah-blah about his decision to go ahead and engage in matrimony with Pat. He’d decided that the time had come for them to get hitched, so he informed Pat of this decision, thoughtfully grouping it with other to-do items requiring proper legal documentation.
Another example: I once ate dinner at a Mexican restaurant with a group of about ten women sportswriters and they got to talking about another woman sportswriter, whom they did not like. When I say “got to talking,” I mean they talked about this woman, and nothing else, for two solid hours. They explored in great detail the reasons why they didn’t like her; they analyzed the various possible causes of her behavior; they agonized over whether their feelings toward her were justified; and on and on and on. Finally, they noticed me, sitting quietly at the end of the table behind a forest of Dos Equis bottles, and they asked me if a group of men would ever have this kind of discussion about a person whom everyone in the group disliked. I said a group of men would handle it as follows: The name of the disliked person would come up and somebody would say, “What an asshole.” Then everybody would nod, and the conversation would turn to a more fruitful topic, such as the situation at offensive tackle.