Stripping with dignity

Standing on the stage in front of 200 spectators, clad only in off-white Jockeys, I emitted a random combination of gasps and screeches in an effort to mimic a prolonged orgasm.

It was 2003 and we were holidaying in Tenerife, one of the Canary Islands. Mrs Jones and I had met Jim and June, a fun-loving couple from London, who were staying at the same hotel. In the evenings we socialized together and, on this particular night, we had opted for a social club hosting live entertainment. The star turn had been advertised on the billboard outside as a “whacky comedienne.” Our London friends had insisted we occupy a table next to the stage so as to ensure an unimpeded view.

The support act, a country-and-western singer, had delivered some Kenny Rogers’ classics and the evening was going well. A niggling doubt that a down-turn in the proceedings was imminent first arose when the comedienne appeared on the stage; in her late forties, with multiple tattoos on her arms and rings the size of a juggernaut’s wheels swinging from her nostrils, her opening line was, “I fucking hate men, so tonight I’m going to humiliate the bastards.”        

After assaulting her audience with a torrent of crude anecdotes about the sexual inadequacies of males, she asked for six men to get up on the stage to participate in an “exciting competition.” This was my cue to slip off to buy a round of drinks. I was in no rush to be served and monitored developments on stage from the sanctuary of the bar. A couple of bold young men had strode forward and were now standing on the stage alongside my friend Jim, who had acquiesced to his wife’s encouragement. I loitered at the bar as three more victims were cajoled and harassed into submission. With six men now on stage, I deemed it safe to return to my table with the drinks.

As I sat down, the she-wolf screeched, “I’ve changed my mind, as is a lady’s prerogative. Let’s have seven of the tossers up here on stage.”

I crouched behind Mrs Jones in an effort to avoid detection, and believed I had succeeded, until June stood up, pointed at me (almost on the floor on hands and knees by this point) and yelled, “Bryan, Bryan, Bryan, Bryan.” The comedienne marched towards me, grabbed my wrist and yanked me onto the stage. Pathetically, I did not resist; she had the appearance of someone with an extensive forensic history.

With seven men now captured on the stage, the games commenced. Who could do the best penguin impression – I thought my waddle was rather impressive. Our comedienne (and master), now armed with a cane, ordered us all to strip to our underpants as quickly as possible, and threatened that the slowest to do so would receive 10 lashes across the buttocks. Hence, there I was, on stage in just my Jockeys. The silliness continued with a competition to make the most authentic orgasmic sound. After six, prolonged exclamations of panting and gasping, a Swedish man at the end of the line won the contest with a monosyllabic, “Oo!”

And then the finale. We were directed to replicate the iconic scene from the film, The Full Monty, depicting the tale of how a group of British, unemployed steel-workers form a male striptease act. By this point I was getting into role. As the seven of us turned our backs to the baying audience, and the song "You can leave your hat on" blasted from the speakers, my 45-year-old hips were thrusting and gyrating as if the lower half of my body was in the throws of an epileptic seizure, sending the female onlookers into a frenzy of desire. (I still refuse to believe that their reactions were more to do with the two 20-something beefcakes dancing alongside me). Off came our undies, revealing seven bare arses. As we swung our briefs above our heads, we turned to face the baying mob; I shielded my genitals with my hand, while my more brazen compatriots revealed everything.

leotasjane1 CC-BY, via flicr

Later that evening, when we returned to our hotel, Mrs Jones told me how dignified I had been while on stage. In particular, she was so proud of me for showing modesty in not fully exposing myself in the final scene. My humility had impressed her. What she didn’t know was that, if I had been blessed with nob the size of a baboon’s, I would have been swinging it above my head like a cowboy’s lasso.              

Greece, without the kids

We realized we’d landed in Greece when we were denied egress from the plane for 15 minutes; the captain informed us that the ground-staff at Preveza Airport had fetched steps that were too short to reach the exit door. Five minutes after our release, the comatosed Greek passport-control man beckoned us through with a waft of his hand.

I love Greece. The standard of amenities might be inferior to the rest of Europe, it has the efficiency of an unlagged water boiler, the local wines taste like cat’s piss, and its sewage system is so feeble that you can’t flush paper down the toilet but have to plop it into a pedal-bin (not great when you’ve had the Mythos and Mousakka combination the night before). But none of this matters. The pace of life is soothingly slow and the Greek people ooze a warmth that is only surpassed by the unrelenting rays of the Mediterranean sun.

Mrs Jones and I had holidayed in Greece five times before, but this was the first time without our two children, who are both now young adults. As we journeyed on the coach to our hotel, we relished the prospect of the freedom to do whatever we wanted, liberated from the constraints of supervising our offspring.

“At last we can truly relax on our sun-beds without constantly checking whether the kids are drowning in the pool,” Mrs Jones said, as she rested her head on my shoulder.”

“Yeah,” I said, “no more worries about their play upsetting our fellow holiday-makers.”

“No more having to drag the kids away from their new friends each evening to come and dine with us in a restaurant,” said Mrs Jones.

“And then having to endure their faces, resembling smacked arses, across the table as they sulked and moaned all night,” I said. Yes this was going to be a fantastic, adults only, flop-and –drop holiday.

But then I started to see things. In the restaurant on the second night of the holiday, my gaze was drawn to a family at the neighbouring table with a baseball-capped son who looked disturbingly similar to a 9-year-old version of Ryan, my first-born. While on the beach the next day, I spotted a 5-year-old blonde girl, in her first bikini, scuttling out of the sea and excitedly asking her father if she could have an ice-cream – how many times had my own daughter, Becca, extracted Euros from her doting dad for the same purpose?  

Reminders of what I had lost recurred throughout the holiday: kids asking for chicken-nuggets in the local tavernas; kids looking miserable at the meal table at being denied time from their play to engage in something as tedious as eating with their parents; over-tired kids howling in the sunset, sleep-deprived and cranky; and kids perched on their fathers’ shoulders meandering through the resort.

Although we enjoyed our Greek, adults-only, fortnight, Mrs Jones and I repeatedly engaged in watery-eyed reminiscence about previous holidays with our son and daughter. I realize now that we were mourning the ending of this most vibrant phase of family life, the chapter entitled, “taking our children on vacation.”     

On a lighter note, throughput our stay in Greece I was told that my physical appearance strongly resembled a senior Greek politician named Romilos Kedikoglou. Given the current economic crisis ravaging the country, I feared for my well-being, but I was reassured that I would be at no risk of a sniper’s bullet as long as I stayed away from Athens. When I spotted Romilus on Greek television it was like looking in a mirror. I have since discovered that that he is 73 years old, almost 20 years my senior. Either he is wearing very well, or I am decrepit; I fear it is the latter.

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)