What was I thinking when I gave away my clients and told everyone I was giving up lawyering for writing? Panic and Practicality grabbed me in my nether regions, gave me a stern shake, and reminded me that I had never written anything in my life. I don’t know how I could have forgotten that, I said to Panic. Get your hands off me, I said to Practicality. So I sat down and wrote this:
Shaving my balls was the least humiliating part of the whole vasectomy experience.
The ordeal started the day after the birth of Lizard Boy. My son was a mewling lump of peeling hunks of skin, but I thought he was one good-looking kid. Having met my quota of one perfect daughter and one perfect son by the age of 45, I was ready to relinquish my admirable skills of procreation. I wanted to snip them in the bud.
“OK, Carol, you promised. I want to go to see Doctor Neil and get spayed.” Doctor Neil was the only vasectomy doctor on the North Shore. That’s all he did, no-scalpel vasectomies. And circumcisions. Talk about having a fixation on one small, but notorious, part of the male anatomy. It’s too bad that I was already circumcised…I could have tried to negotiate a two-for-one. His laser focus on masculine genitalia may sound a bit creepy, but thankfully Doctor Neil was a non-creepy guy. He looked like a dour accountant. I guess that’s the same as a normal accountant.
“You’re not getting spayed,” said Carol. “That’s a removal of ovaries and you don’t have ovaries.”
“Well, I don’t want to be castrated then. But neutered would be OK.”
“Billy, I had a baby yesterday. Couldn’t we talk about this later?”
“You did a great job at that, by the way,” I graciously said. “I just don’t want you to have to do it again. What’s to talk about?”
“I think we should wait a bit until we are sure,” replied Carol.
“I’m 45. I’m SURE,” I said. Apparently, we weren’t sure yet, so it wasn’t until six months later that I was standing in Doctor Neil’s office as he cupped my clammy testicles in his reassuringly warm and gentle hand.
“Everything looks OK, Bill,” said Doctor Neil. “But before we can schedule your procedure, we should talk first about cryogenically freezing some of your sperm.”
“I thought the point was that I didn’t need my sperm anymore, because, you know, because of the strong scientific evidence that it leads to children.”
“Think of it as a kind of insurance policy for the future. Your circumstances may change and you’ll be happy to be able to have more children some day.”
“I won’t be putting any kids on ice, Doc. I get what you’re saying, but I am 100 percent confident that I don’t need to save some kids for a rainy day.”
Returning home, I learned from Carol that we were not as 100 percent confident as I thought. “What if something bad happens to the kids?” she said. “Maybe we should freeze some sperm, you know, for a year or something.”
“WE should freeze some of my sperm? Are WE going to masturbate together, or am I going to be the one masturbating in a hospital operating room, with all the lights on? C’mon Carol, you know that’s not my favourite activity.”
“It won’t be too bad,” Carol said. “It’s not as hard as having a baby, you know.”
She had to bring out that little chestnut. The one argument, that to her credit she rarely used, which trumped all others. Once this gauntlet has been thrown down, the only thing any guy with a brain in his head can do is graciously concede. I may not be smart, but I’m not stupid. I made an appointment to visit the fertility centre for sperm storage. Before this call, I don’t remember ever having a detailed conversation about my sperm when I wasn’t a bit drunk.
“Yes, Mr. Crow, you can come in next Thursday to leave us a sample for analysis and cryopreservation,” said the bored technician. Cryopreservation, I thought. Isn’t that what Ted Williams’s kids did to his body after he died? Of course, it would have to be after he died. “And you will produce your semen sample in our discreet, private facilities.”
“Really?” I said. “The semen production room is private? I thought you’d have me put on a show standing in the middle of West Broadway.” Had the technician heard this joke before? Not even a giggle. If you spend your whole career handling the last liquid hopes of soon-to-be-gelded men, you lose your sense of humour.
“Oh no, sir. It’s a separate room with a door and everything,” she clarified.
The ‘and everything’ was the part that I only fully understood when I was escorted into a small room in Vancouver General Hospital. It was bad enough that the pretty, petite, 25-year-old technician knew exactly why I was there and what I was expected to produce while she waited outside. My mortification reached new levels when she said, “There is a collection of pornographic magazines on the table over there for your use. Please don’t take any of them home. You can see the TV on the wall, and the VCR has an adult movie in it for you. There’s also a large collection of towels. When you’re done, please put the specimen through that little door right there. I’ll be waiting for you, but take your time.”
I refrained from telling her that she wouldn’t have to wait too long if she stayed in the room with me. That could set a sample-producing world record. I thanked her instead, never meeting her eyes in my shame, and locked the door behind her. The first of many disgusting features of the room was the lone chair. It was a brown, overstuffed, faux-leather recliner, facing the television. I supposed the chair’s upholstery allowed simple hose downs after each client, but there was no way I was going to sit on that. Curious, I turned on the VCR (yes, a VCR), which was showing trashy 70s-era porn. The entire movie consisted of an ursine Burt Reynolds look-alike being administered by three women of improbably balloon-shaped breasts, voluminous hair, and rugs to match. It reminded me of the Baby Blue Movie that played on television every Friday at midnight when I was a teenager. When one sex scene seemed to meld into the next I realized that the VCR was on a continuous loop and I had watched the same performance three times. Since the film did not produce the desired effect, I turned to its two-dimensional cousins.
There were about 20 dog-eared magazines in a messy pile beside the sink, under a large bathroom mirror. The top cover showed a disturbingly young-looking Asian girl in a school uniform, well, almost in a school uniform, being spanked. Flipping through the pages, I could quickly see that every page featured naked or near naked Asian girls, which would border on child pornography if they weren’t all so buxom. All of the other magazines also featured Asian schoolgirls. I wondered what market research went into the supply of reading material in the ‘sample-producing room,’ but it wasn’t working for me.
Even when I decided to forget the carnal aids and take matters into my own hands, my efforts proved unproductive. I should have practiced more in high school. I don’t know if it was the ticking clock or the bright lights, or seeing the look on my stupid face in the mirror. All I could feel was humiliation and failure, and the need to run out of that sordid room as fast as possible. I wasn’t ready for that kind of pressure. I decided to give up, to slink away and try another day. Then I thought of the shame of walking past the technician without leaving a sample. What could I tell her? How could I explain the last 40 minutes? As much as I didn’t want to go through that whole degrading procedure again, I also worried that I wouldn’t be able to get another appointment before the day already scheduled for my vasectomy. I’m not a doctor, but I was certain that providing the sample to be cryogenically frozen after the vasectomy would be counter-productive.
While these defeatist thoughts ran through my head I must have cleared some other mental block, because I suddenly rallied. I produced that sample faster than a teenage sailor on shore leave, and placed the precious vial in the square compartment in the wall. It had a door on my side and a door in the room next door, like the place where the milkman would leave the milk in the homes in my childhood neighbourhood. There’s an analogy in there somewhere. The relief was indescribable but my embarrassment returned when I realized that the technician had been waiting for 45 minutes. On exiting, I tried to make a lame joke about needing a film with higher production values, and she said, “It would have been OK if your wife had gone into the room with you. Some of our patients find that helpful.”
“What?! Now you tell me?”
I dreaded ‘V’ Day Eve, because of the afore-mentioned testicle shaving requirement. I had heard that teenagers not receiving vasectomies were shaving the entire area, porn-style, in an effort to produce the optical illusion of a larger manhood. My assignment was to concentrate on the area where a man I barely knew was preparing to slice into my scrotum. Doctor Neil provided me with a special razor for the delicate job, to be performed on a bumpy, spongy, ever-shifting worksite. I have shaved my face thousands of times, but that’s mostly a taut, smooth surface. This was a much more challenging procedure. I succeeded in cutting myself so many times that my testicles resembled the skin of some exotic Dr. Suess creature, patterned by moistened pieces of toilet paper, each with a congealed red bullseye.
Most of the bleeding had stopped by the momentous next day. As instructed, I slid the athletic supporter over top of my underwear, and then stepped into my jeans. This was a particularly goofy sensation, akin to what an adult diaper might feel like. The bulbous front package made me look more virile than I expected to feel by the end of the day. As I drove to my appointment, I was anxious, but serene. I knew this was the mature thing to do, and didn’t feel like any kind of hero because of it. I planned on shouldering this ordeal with dignity.
My dignity lasted until I presented myself at the reception desk at Doctor Neil’s clinic. The waiting room was full of moms holding whimpering infant boys and men with suspiciously bulging groins. On closer inspection, the men all looked pale and it was obvious that they had bags of ice in their pants. As I checked in, everyone could hear the receptionist when she loudly said, “Mr. Crow, have you shaved your testicles as directed?”
I noticed several heads lean forward to catch my response. “Yes, I have,” I murmured.
“But did you use the special razor and insure that you have completely removed all hair from your entire scrotal area?”
“Clean as a whistle,” I said in a quiet voice. The other patients sat back in their seats, disappointed in my response. I took my seat and scanned the room while I waited. A framed poster of a cat with enormous eyes, precariously suspended from a tree branch, advised me to “Hang In There.” A collection of 19th century torture surgical instruments were expensively framed and hung on the wall. As the infants shrieked and wailed in their nervousness, their baby lead soloist, off stage and in the hands of Doctor Neil, screamed his displeasure in the musical stylings of AC/DC’s Bon Scott. One of the post-operative men stood up too quickly, and promptly fainted at my feet. Amid the bedlam, a man of my age walked up to the reception desk and even the babies became quiet.
“Mr. Weddigen, have you shaved your testicles as directed?” We waited for his response.
Almost too quiet to hear, he replied, “No, not yet.”
“Uh, oh,” said one of the patients, loudly.
“Oooooooohhhhhhhh!” said everyone else, dragging out the word. A few of the guys giggled. “Marcie! Get ready for Marcie,” they laughed.
“Well, that will never do,” said the receptionist, sternly. “It was very clear in the welcome package that you were to completely remove all of the hair from your scrotal area. You have just earned a date with Marcie.” The unshaven man slunk to a chair, but his sheepishness soon turned to terror. A hulking, frowning Amazon, with a cursive ‘Marcie’ embroidered in pink on her smock’s breast pocket, entered the room and gestured him to follow her down the hall. The next sound I heard could have been the man, but it also could have been another baby being circumcised.
“Mr. Crow, please come with me,” said a voice to my right. I turned to meet the owner of the voice, but no one was there. Then I looked down, and saw an expressionless nurse, a sturdy Filipina about four feet tall. She was the shortest person I had ever met not suffering from dwarfism. I followed the nurse to a small operating room, with a table of surgical instruments and one bed covered by a paper sheet. Doctor Neil wasn’t there.
“Please leave your shoes and socks on, but lower your pants, underwear and athletic supporter in one motion down to your ankles,” said the nurse.
“I think it would be better if I took off my shoes first,” I said. “It will certainly look better.”
“Please don’t do that. Lower everything down to your shoes, but leave them on.”
I had known the nurse for 30 seconds, such time period reducing my taking-down-my-pants-in-front-of-a-woman record by a large negative exponent. As I stood there naked from my waist to the bulk at my ankles, my nether regions refusing to leave the warm cocoon of my body, I was confident that my level of embarrassment could not increase. It was then that the nurse asked me to hop up onto the bed. With ankles held by shackles of denim and underwear, my hop attempt turned into an awkward teeter, ending in a loud splat as I hit the floor. Lying face down, my fish-belly colored butt greeted Marcie as she entered the room.
“I heard a noise. Is everything OK in here, sir?” asked Marcie, in a flat monotone.
“Really, I’m fine,” I said to the linoleum floor. There was no dignified way to stand up in front of these woman, half naked, ankles constricted. Before I could fall again, Marcie increased my humiliation by flipping me over, picking me up like a baby in her brawny arms, and depositing me on the bed.
“Thank you Marcie,” said the nurse. “You can leave now. Okay, Mr. Crow, lie back and don’t be embarrassed.” That train had long left the station. Mortification took over. I thought that water skiing in the Pacific Ocean on New Year’s Day the previous year had caused significant shrinkage, but I longed for a comparable display of manhood. It was then that the nurse reached below the bed and started turning a crank. The bed slowly rose, and she continued cranking until my frightened penis was exactly level with her face. I guess she wanted to get a good look. She opened a drawer and pulled out a thin rubber hose and a metal clip. The nurse then tied one end of the hose to my glans in a squeaky flurry of hand movements not unlike a clown making a balloon-twisting dachshund. Grabbing her rubber lasso in one hand, she yanked my penis so that it was stretched and pointed at my chest, and secured the free end of the hose to my t-shirt with the clip. I was thankful that she remembered to use the rubber hose for this procedure. The clip had sharp teeth.
“Is all that necessary?” I asked, feeling somewhat vulnerable.
“We don’t want it flopping all around during the procedure,” she replied.
I mentally thanked her for the compliment, but I suspected she used this line on all the boys.
Opening a jar of an antiseptic-smelling liquid, and using a cotton ball, the nurse painted my scrotum bright crimson. It was the same colour as the iodine some moms put on scraped knees in my childhood, and it could have been the same stuff. It was cold. With my shaven, exposed, retina-searing balls, I looked like a Mandrill monkey, hairless red genitals sticking out of my fur.
“Alright Mr. Crow, you’re now ready for the doctor. Just relax until he comes in.”
“But I am a little worried,” I said, setting up the old joke. “Will I be able to play the piano after this?”
Without a flicker of recognition or humor, she soothingly replied, “Of course you will be able to. The operation will not affect any of your motor skills.” I could not believe she went for the joke, and didn’t have the heart to pursue it. “Please wait for the doctor who will be in shortly. And please stay on the bed.”
It is a good thing the nurse added that last part. I was already planning to waddle onto the elevator and push all the buttons, showing off a scrotum that looked like the goal light at a hockey game, and a penis roped and tied like a steer. I decided to quietly await my fate on the bed. And wait. And wait. After 10 minutes I wondered whether they had forgotten about me. After 20, I started to laugh, as a person could not be left in a more ridiculous or vulnerable position. When Doctor Neil and the nurse arrived, after leaving me helpless for 30 minutes, I said, “I waited so long for you two, I went ahead and performed the operation myself. It didn’t hurt too much.” The nurse looked alarmed, but I saw a small smile at the corners of Doctor Neil’s mouth.
“If that’s true,” deadpanned Doctor Neil, “then why can’t I smell burning flesh?”
“I don’t smell it either, Doctor,” said the nurse in a serious tone. I was happy that at least Doctor Neil had a sense of humour, but I could only concentrate on the phrase ‘burning flesh.’ Considering my physical predicament at the time, I seemed the most likely candidate in the room to soon own burning flesh.
“OK, Bill, not to worry,” said Doctor Neil. “We’ll have this done in no time. Did you bring any background music? Some patients feel better if their own relaxing music is playing during the procedure. Or you can suggest something and I’ll see if I have it on my iPod.”
“How about Cat Stevens’s The First Cut Is The Deepest?”
“Never heard that one before. I don’t think I have it. Since you’re from North Van, I have already cued up Bryan Adams’s Cuts Like A Knife. Local guy. Now don’t sweat about me cutting anything. As we’ve told you, this is a no-scalpel vasectomy,” said Doctor Neil.
“That’s the part I don’t understand. Aren’t you going to cut into my scrotum?”
“Well, yes, we make a small incision,” replied Doctor Neil. “But we use a pair of special forceps.”
“Special forceps or a scalpel, what’s the difference? It’s still cutting. You could call it a ‘no samurai sword vasectomy’ too. Wait a minute, what do you use to cut the sperm tube once you have yanked it out of my scrotum?”
“Oh, we use a scalpel for that,” Doctor Neil admitted. I started to question the wisdom of antagonizing the guy who was about to perform this most delicate operation upon me, but Doctor Neil seemed unperturbed. “Would you like to watch the operation being performed?” asked Doctor Neil. “We have a big mirror up there in the corner, by the ceiling.”
“Sure,” I bravely replied. The nurse pulled out a stepladder and from the top step, on tippy toes, she pulled the towel off of the concave mirror staring down at me. I liked the concave mirror, because it was like a funhouse mirror. From my position, my penis looked enormous. Some day I would like to live in a world where funhouse mirrors are at my beck and call, and they could adjust others’ perceptions of my physical flaws.
“Now Bill,” said Doctor Neil, “what I’m going to do is freeze part of your scrotum with this little spray. OK, that wasn’t so bad, was it? Now the small incision, and then I pull the vas tube, or what you call the sperm tube, out of this teeny weeny slit in your scrotum….”
“What’s that thing in your hand? The cutting thing?” I asked.
“Oh, that’s a scalpel,” said Doctor Neil.
“Thanks, just checking.”
“There. It’s cut,” said Doctor Neil. “Now we cauterize the end…….” This is where the smell of burning flesh came in. “And we do the same thing on the other side. Easy. Are you feeling okay?”
“I’m fine. I understand the cutting and the cauterizing and all that. But you only sealed one end of the tube. Isn’t the other end still open, and spurting semen like a garden hose?”
“Not all the time, I imagine,” said Doctor Neil.
“Yes, yes, I know. But I assume semen will still be produced. Where will it go if you’ve sealed off the only available transportation hub?”
“It leaks into your scrotal sac,” said Doctor Neil, matter-of-factly.
“That doesn’t make me very comfortable. It also sounds painful, you know, with the buildup and all.”
“That doesn’t happen, said Doctor Neil. “The body breaks it down, and recycles the sperm into its component parts. And the body uses them again.”
“We already recycle at home, so that sounds pretty good,” I said. I was still worried about my body’s capacity to recycle such a large sperm output, but I was not in a position to argue. Doctor Neil finished his intricate work and I shuffled out to the waiting room for a well-deserved juice and a cookie. And a big icepack to put in my jock for the drive home.
Two months after my operation, having far exceeded the 20 ejaculations demanded by Doctor Neil to flush out my system, it was time to have my sperm tested. I had to ensure that I was officially shooting blanks. The sperm-testing procedure was almost as pressurized as the sperm-saving-for-freezing procedure. The advantage was that the sample could be produced in the privacy of one’s home, but it had to be delivered, still warm, to a medical clinic within 30 minutes. I reserved a whole afternoon for the manufacture and delivery of my sample, when I knew that Carol and the kids wouldn’t be home (I couldn’t have Carol help me with the happy ending in the middle of the day with two infants at home). The details of my production of another sperm sample all by my lonesome are best left private. But from the exact second I dribbled my pathetic offering into a sterile plastic container, it was time to play Beat the Clock. I had to immediately clean myself up and pull up my pants…..I realized too late that I should have taken the nurse’s advice and left my shoes and socks on for the procedure. I had to race out of the house because I knew I had a 20 minute drive to the clinic. That left 10 minutes for everything else, which was cutting it a little tight. As I pulled away from the house, I slammed on the brakes, having left my sample on the bathroom counter. Retrieving the vial, I tucked it between my legs for the drive to the clinic. This was to keep it warm, but I thought it also nice to keep the sample close to the scene of its production for old time’s sake. As luck would have it, the waiting room at the clinic was jammed, and I was forced to take a number. I waited impatiently for my turn, my face still flushed from my solitary bedroom activities, checking and rechecking my watch. The plastic container in my lap felt like a bomb that would go off if I didn’t soon hand it to the medical staff for dismantling. With my 30 minutes almost expired, holding a paper number close to infinity, I realized that drastic action was necessary. I stepped up to the counter where a nurse was taking details from an elderly patient, and wedged myself in front of him.
‘I’m very sorry to have to do this,” I said politely to the patient, “but I must go next.”
“What is your number, sir?” asked the stern nurse. Her authoritarian manner forced me to show her the number, but then I realized that wasn’t the point. “You’ll have to wait like everyone else.”
“But you see,” I stammered, “I have to drop something off here, and I’m in a hurry.”
“Everyone is in a hurry,” said the nurse. I looked around the waiting room and none of the patients seemed to be in a hurry to me. Most of them seemed catatonic.
“But I have to drop off my sperm sample,” I said in a faint whisper.
‘What did you say,” she asked.
“I said I have to drop of my sperm sample,” I said, a tiny bit more loudly.
“OH. YOUR SPERM SAMPLE. GIVE IT TO ME. DON’T YOU KNOW THAT TIME IS IMPORTANT? DID YOU PRODUCE YOUR SPERM IN THE LAST 30 MINUTES?”
The waiting room went completely silent, as I softly groaned “Yes.” Humiliation complete.
