A rude awakening

Andreas Bacchus, CC-BY, via flicr

“I know this is kind of awkward, but I’ve yearned for you since the moment we first met” she said.

Melissa had followed me into my office and shut the door. We had been working late and there was no one else in the department. She stroked her lower lip with her forefinger, as if checking it was still there. I expected her to laugh and tell me it was all a prank. But she didn’t. Motionless, I gaped at her.   

“I’m f-f-flattered, but I’m a married …” My voice trailed off. I was stunned. Melissa was in her early thirties, at least twenty years my junior, and the most appealing girl in the department, oozing sexuality from every pore.

Her hazel-brown eyes locked onto mine. “I need you” she whispered. Her breathing quickened. “I need you now.”

Her hand moved from her mouth to her neck. I could see her swollen nipples through the flimsy fabric of her white top; she was not wearing a bra. Without taking her eyes from mine, she slowly undid the buttons of her blouse, slipped it from her shoulders and dropped it on the floor, releasing her firm, pendulous breasts. She approached me and slipped her hands around my waist, backing me against the office desk. She nuzzled her head into my neck and I felt the moistness of her lips. Her ebony hair caressed my cheek and her fragrance stirred me. Her hands slipped into the back of my pants and she held my buttocks, pulling me against her hips. Her grip tightened and her finger-nails burrowed into my butt-cheeks. I moaned with pleasure. Her grip tightened further; I gasped in astonishment at the urgency of her need. Her talons sliced through my skin causing me excruciating pain. I could feel rivulets of blood trickling down the back of my thighs. I screamed.         

“Bryan, Bryan; can you here me?”

I opened my eyes. An Asian fellow in a blue tunic, with a moustache and hairy arms, was gently tapping my face. As I regained consciousness, I registered a stinging pain from the cavernous depths of my arse.

“One hemorrhoid removed” continued the junior surgeon “and two successfully banded.”

“Right,” I mumbled, “Thanks.”

Prostrated on a bed clad only in a surgical gown, I recalled the events of the day. My arrival at the hospital after six-hours of prescribed starvation. Suffering the indignity of an enema delivered by a student nurse young enough to be my daughter (“hold it in for 10 minutes” she’d said – yeah, dream on!). And removing my chic pink underpants and Velcro-slippers and placing them under the surgical trolley prior to being transported to the operating theatre. 

phallin, CC-BY, via flickr

Later, while recuperating in the recovery ward, nibbling my corn-beef sandwich and sipping tea, I reflected on events in the operating theatre. What contortions did they put my body through so as to get me in a position to assault my hemorrhoids? I was lying on my back on a trolley when they injected the general anaesthetic so they must have moved me while I was in a coma. Did they turn and splay me over a bench, in a position not dissimilar to one, I imagine, commonly encountered by inmates in a Turkish prison? Or did they leave me on my back and place my legs in straps (as per gynaecological examination) before hoisting my butt into the air; if so, they would have required a mechanical winch to get my sagging bollocks out of the way of the operation site. 

And what about Melissa? Throughout the surgical procedure I would have been surrounded by a clutch of theatre staff. Were there any clues as to my fantastical muses while under the anesthetic? Did I get up close and personal with the dude with hairy arms? Were there any obvious signs of arousal? Come to think of it, the theatre nurse did smirk as she pushed my trolley all the way back to the recovery ward … …    

The peril of smooth muscle

             

I’m tormented. An orchestrated campaign is underway to cause me misery and embarrassment. As I descend into middle-age (and beyond) a group of living entities, all with a similar form, is waging systematic assaults upon my body.

And who is responsible for this crusade of terror? An inner-city gang of hoodlums? A plague of norovirus? A pack of rabid dogs? No, none of these, it’s something much more terrifying that’s collectively known as smooth muscle.

Smooth muscle is found in various parts of the body including the gut, windpipe, bladder and blood vessels. Unlike most of our muscles which are under voluntary control (those in our arms and legs for example) smooth muscle does its work automatically. While we can choose when to move our limbs, smooth muscle operates outside of our conscious control.

It’s as if smooth muscle has a mind of its own. It can also be sensitive to our focus of attention; concentrate on a bodily function that is mediated by smooth muscle and that function can change, often in ways we wouldn’t have wished for. This combination, involuntary activation and sensitivity to attention, can be an incendiary mix. Let me illustrate:

1. As I get older I worry more about my health. My hypochondriacal mind occasionally senses that my gullet might be narrowing and that a blockage is imminent, thereby putting me at risk of an agonizing death. Striving to reassure myself that the tube is open, I focus on my throat and repeatedly attempt to swallow saliva. By third or fourth gulp paralysis sets in – try it if you doubt me – thus confirming my initial fear.

2. A formal meeting at work and a lag in the discussion. The silence is shattered when my stomach and intestine spring into action sounding like the brass section of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the elongated growl of a tuba along with the staccato of the trumpet section. Colleagues eye me suspiciously; I pat my stomach to reassure them about the source of the interruption.

3. Sometimes the culprit resides further along the alimentary canal. Last week, while in the frozen food section of the local supermarket, I bent over to pick up some battered fish when my anal sphincter released a blast that sounded like a container-ship’s fog-horn; I give the old lady next to me an accusing stare, and ambled away.

4. Smooth muscle is involved in the expansion (and constriction) of blood vessels, a process that is responsible for the most vital of all male functions: the development and maintenance of an erection. And this is where smooth muscle’s behaviour is at its most fiendish. Home alone watching old episodes of Baywatch, titanium-plated steel; throes of passion with Mrs Jones, molten putty.     

5. In a public toilet, standing at the urinal and about to pee. Another bloke enters and immediately starts to pound the porcelain with a powerful stream of urine. My hose has yet to start squirting. I begin to mind-read; standing here in a public place with my todger exposed, but not peeing, what will he be thinking? Will he conclude I’m a homosexual, seeking sexual favours? Or will he label me as a pathetic flasher, exposing my genitals for thrills? I urge myself to pee, but nothing happens. The more self-conscious I become, the longer it takes to pee.           

Smooth muscle is a menace, an ever-present threat to the well-being of an aging man. You have been warned.

Cream or scream?

© Niderlander  Dreamstime Stock Photos & Stock Free Images

© Prometeus  Dreamstime Stock Photos & Stock Free Images

When my alarm clock screeched at 6.30 am the first sensation I noticed was the stinging of my piles (or hemorrhoids as they are more technically known). My second  realization was the awareness of my appointment today at the Colorectal Department of the local hospital to have my bulbous buddies investigated.

Hemorrhoids have stung the backsides of many generations of Jones. Like a clutch of cherries growing towards the light, they sting or leak, always one or the other, never both together. My arse alternates between sore and menstruating.

I spent 30 minutes in the shower this morning, 25 of which was devoted to spring-cleaning the area in question; if guests were going to spend time in the back-room it needed to be spic-and-span, as one must create the right impression, mustn’t one?

Upon arriving at the hospital’s General Outpatients’ Department, and showing the receptionist my official appointment letter, I was directed to waiting area 3 (not 1 or 2) and I wondered whether this symbolic niche, deep in the hospital labyrinth, was reserved for colorectal cases. While sitting in the waiting room I observed my fellow patients and tried to spot those with a similar affliction. A lady opposite had a continuous half-grimace and seemed a good bet, particularly as she shuffled from buttock to buttock in her seat. I was distracted from my game of “spot the hemorrhoid” by squawks of female laughter emanating from a nearby nurses’ station; I wondered if they were ridiculing the sight of the last patient’s butt.

Forty minutes after my appointment time my name was called and I was escorted to the clinic room by a nurse and asked to sit on the bed to await the doctor. Mr Evans, the consultant surgeon, entered accompanied by a young female medical student. Following a brief interrogation about my bowel habits and pain history, I was lying on the bed with my trousers and boxer-shorts around my ankles. As I laid there staring at the wall, the consultant probed and prodded my gaping arse - why do they always have chunky fingers? While doing so he conducted a tutorial with his student.

“Come and look at this; a big hemorrhoid on the outside and two more inside.”

I heard the female student approach for a closer look into my back passage. “Oh yes, I can see them” she said. I thought I could feel their breath on my buttocks. And I’m sure I heard an echo.

“So what’s the appropriate treatment?” he asked.

“I guess he could try applying a steroid cream …”

“You could if you wanted to caress the hemorrhoid and watch it grow,” he said. They both giggled; he was flirting with her with his finger up my arse.

“We could band them?” she said.

“If we tried to band this one on the outside” – wiggling it like a nipple to demonstrate – “he’d empty the ward with his screaming. No, this one we will have to lop off.”

So surgery it is, a day-case under general anaesthetic. I will be sent for within the next four to six weeks.

I dressed and left the clinic room. Walking back through the other patients in waiting area 3, I suspected that my gait might have resembled that of a bloke who had soiled himself. I was conscious of their eyes on me. Were they wondering what indignity I had undergone? I resisted the temptation to scream, “You’re buggered if you go in there!” and instead hurried for the exit.    

                

A Dalmatian assault

                                                                   

Tito, my Dalmatian dog, had been agitating for his walk. It was a frozen February afternoon and the roads and pavements were encrusted with ice, the previous week’s snow compressed by foot-fall into an undulating glacier.

A sane option would have been to limit the walk to the end of the road, a five minute jaunt on a flat, non-hazardous track. But no, my dog had abundant energy and my boots had rugged soles so I opted for the usual two-mile circuit. The inevitable happened on a downward slope by the nearby woods. The fall was spectacular; my front foot sped out from under me, my other foot (in trying to compensate) followed suit, propelling me into the air where I seemed to hover parallel to the ground before crash-landing on my back with a sickening thud.

Despite the acute pain radiating from my arse, my foremost anxiety was whether my plummet had been witnessed. As I gingerly lifted myself into a sitting position my humiliation was confirmed, a party of four adults and twice as many children were walking up the slope towards me, concern etched on their faces. I raised my hand to signal I was unharmed. At this moment 70 pounds of excitable Dalmatian leaped over my shoulders, his dangly bits coming to rest against the nape of my neck. Temporally marooned in this straddle position, Tito panicked and instinctively humped the back of my head as if I was a bitch on heat.

I still wonder how those parents explained Tito’s behavior to their offspring.

Tito wearing his football team's colors.
Rest in peace, my beautiful hound

I am participating in the Dude Write Starting Lineup this week where you can find some excellent posts by bloggers who happen to be dudes: http://dudewrite.blogspot.com)

        

               

The revenge of Mrs Jones

My wife is not a vindictive woman. Well, not usually. But a recent purchase of a toilet-seat allowed Mrs Jones to take retribution for 30 years of frustration.

Throughout our time together she has asked me to put the toilet seat down after I've had a pee. Although I suspect that millions of women across the planet urge their men to perform this simple act, I’ve never been able to understand why. After all, I’m thoughtful enough to always lift the seat before peeing so as to avoid splashes that would condemn Mrs Jones to a wet butt when she uses the loo. So why am I expected to put it down again when I’ve finished? Is it something to do with aesthetics, the bathroom being more pleasing on the eye for future visitors? Or is it because they feel contaminated if they have to touch the toilet seat prior to squatting? The underlying motivation behind her insistence on this piece of lavatory etiquette remains a mystery to me, like multiple other aspects of the female psyche.

After my three decades of non-compliance Mrs Jones has hit back. Last month she bought a new, black-and-white cowhide patterned toilet-seat for our downstairs loo. As I am to D.I.Y. what North Korea is to nuclear disarmament, my wife does all the practical jobs around the house. So, true to form, Mrs Jones fitted the toilet-seat. But an additional tweak of the screwdriver or a calculating twist of the pliers rendered the seat incapable of remaining upright; lift the seat into the vertical position and it totters, like a neurotic on the edge of a high-diving board, before crashing down with a dull thud.   

A toilet seat that refuses to stay up presents a conundrum to the peeing male. What approach can be used to channel the stream of urine into the bowl? When faced with this frustration my initial intention was to just piss all over the seat to punish Mrs Jones for her sloppy joinery. But then my self-preservation instinct kicked-in and I quashed that idea.

So what options remained in my attempt to pee through the contracted hole of a seat-down toilet? Well, I could have sat down to urinate like a girlie, the equivalent of Mrs Jones having castrated me, but that would have been conceding defeat. So I tried holding the seat up with my right hand while directing the hose-pipe with my left only to discover that the complex maneuvres of finding, releasing and aiming were too much to execute single-handed, particular when wearing tight underpants devoid of a fly-hole and requiring one to hold down the elasticated waist-band – males will understand the considerable dexterity required to achieve this mission without pissing down your trouser leg.

Creativity was required to overcome this challenge. Next I straddled the toilet bowl, one foot at either side, bent my knees and pushed my willy downwards into a perpendicular position as if operating a pneumatic drill on roadside concrete. Although not the most edifying sight for casual onlookers, this macho straddle-pose seemed to have solved the problem; that is until my knee-ligaments began to give way.

But then success! Seven days of practice at leaning forward without putting my hands on the toilet-cistern, thereby freeing them up for todger-management, enabled me to consistently hit the target while maintaining my masculinity. Picture the Winter Olympics 2010 in Vancouver, and the poise of the ski-jumper in mid-flight, tilting at an angle of 45 degrees, and you will replicate the image of me doing what comes naturally in our downstairs toilet in Lancashire, England.

I am participating in the Dude Write Starting Lineup this week where you can find some excellent posts by bloggers who happen to be dudes: http://dudewrite.blogspot.com)

        

My baby leaves home

“Are you ready love; have you got all your stuff?” I asked from the foot of the stairs.

A beautiful young woman, my 18-year-old daughter Becca, bounded down the steps, a small suitcase in one hand and a black plastic bag full of soft toys and books in the other. “Yes dad, but let me say goodbye to mum.”

I took her luggage and placed it in the boot of my car. When I returned to the hallway Mrs Jones had Becca in a bear-hug, both tearful, grasping at each other.

“Look after yourself sweetie,” blubbered my wife, surfacing from the embrace and holding Becca at arm’s length, as if to glimpse her for one last time.

“I will mum” said my tearful daughter.

“What are you two like?” I said, “Anyone would think she’s emigrating to Australia, rather than nipping down the M62 to Liverpool University! Get a grip; she’ll be home in a couple of weeks.”

During the one-hour drive few words were spoken. Despite my efforts not to, every few minutes I glanced to my left at Becca, in the passenger seat, listening to her iPod. I smiled, smug in the knowledge that the cute, compassionate lady at my side was mine. As I pondered how a flawed, hairy fellow like me could have reared such perfection, a warm tingle caressed my neck and shoulders, causing me to sit taller in the driving seat.

When we arrived at the university accommodation, I carried her bags to her room. Once inside, I tried to make myself useful; straightening the duvet, wiping the sink and picking imaginary specs off the carpet. I sensed eyes on me and I turned to see Becca grinning at my delaying tactics.

“Just go dad; mum will be wondering where you are.”

I opened my arms wide and Becca walked into them. I held on to her like a drowning man clinging to flotsam. I put my hands on either side of her head, tilted it forward and snorted her crown. Ah a musty scent to kindle so many memories: lifting a new-born bundle from the midwife’s arms; the infant in a pink baby-grow lying asleep, warm and clammy, across my chest; and the distressed toddler who, forgetting she had taken off her inflatable wings, had plunged into the deep end of a Spanish swimming pool and was telling me, while water dripped off her nose, “I wen tunder daddy, I wen tunder.”

And now I had to abandon her to fend for herself in a big city. I noticed my pollen allergy was flaring so I kissed her cheek, turned and carried on walking to my car without looking back. 

I am participating in the Dude Write Starting Lineup this week where you can find some excellent posts by bloggers who happen to be dudes: http://dudewrite.blogspot.com)

        

    

Bye-bye beer-belly

On Christmas morning I discovered an extraordinary slimming aid. It will inspire all rotund, middle-aged men to pursue an ambitious weight loss program and, as it will achieve a 100% success rate, it will earn me millions of dollars. 

For at least a decade I have known I’m a tad on the portly side. My trouser size is 36-inch waist. Forty years of guzzling fine ale has inflated my mid-riff. Last year, when I attended my doctor’s surgery for my over-50s health check, the practice-nurse announced that my 15-stone bulk put me on the cusp of the official obese range; to achieve a healthy weight required the loss of 50 pounds. My 22-year-old son has constantly sniped about my lack of fitness and how I hold my belly in at social events, especially when I’m trying to impress the ladies – “breathe out dad,” he taunts as he passes me at family parties.

Prior to the 25^th December 2012, none of these reminders of being over-weight had instilled any motivation to embark on a reducing regime. I have continued to eat what I want and avoid all exercise. But all this changed within 15 minutes of opening the Christmas present from my 18-year old daughter.

Becca had bought me a “onesie.” For anyone not familiar with a onesie, it is a one-piece hooded garment that zips up the front, usually worn as cozy night-attire. Becca has one and looks really good in hers. She insisted I try mine on and then proceeded to take pictures.         

                                                                      

Since 11.00 am on Christmas Day morning I have resisted spooning sugar into my tea and coffee, eliminated French-fries from my diet and endure a daily dose of press-ups and leg-lifts. I have reduced my beer intake (apart from the 10 pints on New Year’s Eve, but hey, that’s tradition). Even more worthy of note is that, since the turn of the year, three times per week at 6.00 am (when few people can see me), I jog the streets of my neighborhood.

I’ve already patented the “onesie and photo” combination as a phenomenal motivational aid for over-weight, middle-aged men and await the surge in my personal fortune.     

I am participating in the Dude Write Starting Lineup this week where you can find some excellent posts by bloggers who happen to be dudes: http://dudewrite.blogspot.com)

        

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