February 2018 – Page 2 – ☆ STARSAILOR ☆

I mentioned some time ago, never mind how long precisely, that I was getting a vasectomy. I got one. With my employer-sponsored health insurance the whole thing came out to $25 in the form of a copay. I went in once before the surgery for a “consultation”, where my doctor, a fine doctor named Dr. Yan, asked me if my intentions were the result of a “unilateral decision”. I told good ol Dr. Yan, I said: “Yes, it is just me, and I alone have decided I don’t ever want children.” He said, more or less, “Right on!” He described the procedure to me, and it sounded pretty all right.

I remembered the worst medical situation I’d been in. I was a sophomore in college in Baltimore. I woke up one morning and for whatever reason, I very briefly lost total hearing in one ear. And I remembered the ER doctor inspecting my ear canal and my head, and so on, and finding nothing there (not even a brain of any kind), he had me roll over onto my side. He parted the back of my hospital gown like opening night on Broadway, slapped on a latex glove in that cartoonish way like you hear it in movies, and told me to expect “a little pressure”. He sure did go right ahead and stick THREE fingers up my ass while my cringing girlfriend watched on! I made a primordial sort of guttural noise and nearly threw up as he danced around my fucking prostate with the tips of his fingers. He took the glove off and placed it into a plastic bag the nurse was holding open. “All done!” he said. Turning over, I looked him right in the eye and said: “I told you I couldn’t hear out of my left ear. I didn’t say I couldn’t hear out of my asshole.”

Back in the present, in the Here and Now in Dr. Yan’s office, I told him his vasectomy doings didn’t bother me one bit. Three fingers up my ass! My god, man! Anything less than that was paradise. And the whole thing was only going to last 15 or 20 minutes. Give me a break. That’s nothing.

I’m writing an essay about various things that have happened to my testicles over the last five years. It is divided into three parts, which is how many testicles I have (three). So I don’t wanna give away too much. But the whole thing was real OK and, I think, successful . . . which is measured, of course, by my sperm count dropping to zero within 60-90 days. It takes about that long for all the auxiliary sperm (ew) hanging out in your tubes (ew) to be cleared out through a couple dozen miserable joyless ejaculations (nice).

This post right here is to say that on Wednesday I delivered a semen sample to a lab near my house for analysis. It was pretty much extremely weird and sad to have to masturbate on command like that. See: the sample has to reach the lab “within two hours”. So I had to plan this whole thing out. Kinda sucks the flavor out of it! Which is not to say that I, a 30-year-old man, enjoy mastrubating anymore. If you’re 30 and you still like jerking off, you need to take a long look in the mirror, dude. You’re fooling yourself, or at the very least you’re a fool. I file away masturbation into the same category of “self-maintenance” as bathing and brushing your teeth (which, hmmm, I actually enjoy). At any rate: I did it, and it’s done. I placed the sterilized plastic cup containing that godawful stuff into a biohazard bag, which I then placed inside a crumpled Trader Joe’s wine sleeve in the name of decency and discretion, fearing I might walk past a playground or some such place. Once inside the safety of the lab, I handed the bag to the poor lady behind the reception desk and, bless her heart, she told me I’d know in about 72 hours if my swimmers are dead in the water.

Dr. Yan, poet laureate, had said to me that fateful day: “The factory is still in production . . . but the roads leading to the factory are gone.” So it’s more accurate to say that, yes, I’m still producing sperm (ew), but it’s reabsorbed back into my body (nice) instead of ending up in my ejaculate (cool!). That’s what happens to unused sperm anyway, don’t you know, vasectomy or no. Your body makes more of it than you could ever possibly use. That’s kind of terrifying actually, so I’m not going to think about it anymore.

Hey: You know me! I’m gonna announce the good news here too, probably on Monday when I know. No more sperm!! Shooting blanks till the end of time!!! That’s neat, man. Well? Isn’t it?? I’m tired of buying Plan-B! It’s getting expensive (just kidding (maybe (hmmm))).

I will end what is almost certainly a gross entry by saying that I am the result of a reversed vasectomy. My brother Jeb told me once that my father had used it as a pick-up line when he was courting my mother. Something like: “I would get my vasectomy reversed for you.” What a fool. I love you, Dad, but you made a huge miscalculation and now I’m paying the price on what could possibly be another hundred years at the rate medical science is advancing. You miserable fool . . . I love you, but I won’t make the same mistake. I am the final Starsailor~

PEACE.

tonight at trader joe’s i was walkin down the wine aisle with a chip on my dang shoulder. i was looking for the $3.99 bottle of wine that has a pig on the label. a t-joe’s employee was restocking some shelves fifteen feet away. i watched as he pivoted on his heel, and we were both surprised when his shoe produced a loud clown shoe squeaky noise. he set down the box of wine he was holding and, with this puzzled look on his face, purposely slid the front his shoe across the floor as if sharpening a blade. it made an even louder squeaky sound. i think he was oblivious that i was there because he took his other foot and did the same thing back and forth over and over at the rate of one clown squeak per second. he was going squeak wild in the wine aisle and having himself a good ol time. he seemed not to care how insanely loud it was. i loved it. i loved how loud his squeaking was.

said i to him: “you squeakin around big time over here, huh?”

said he: “. . . something’s not quite right.”

EXITING THE WINE AISLE EMPTY-HANDED, I REPLIED:

“yeah baby . . . tell me about it!!!”