The Vasectomy

me, pre-vasectomy

You know, I wasn't going to write about this.  But then a couple of people pointed out how much they enjoyed my blog post about The Inside-Outside Penis Fiasco, and thought I should really over-share about my vasectomy experience too.

So I guess you can consider yourselves lucky, maybe, that's up to you, that here we are again talking about my junk and the trauma it has been put through.  Why you enjoy this kinda shit is beyond me, but if having my penis on your mind is the only way to have it somehow inside of you then I guess a blog post will have to do.

I decided last summer that I wanted a vasectomy.  I have two wonderful children - they're smart, beautiful, funny, creative, and loving.  They're also expensive, loud, and in serious need of finding the means to earn their own keep.  I love them so much that I couldn't imagine having any more.

Plus, after talking it over with a good friend of mine who had already gone under the blade, I learned that I would get a free shave of my manly area.  Fellas, if you aren't already keeping that area neat n' tidy, you really should.  If you're expecting a girl to put her face down there, it's just the polite thing to do.

But I digress.

I really had no idea what I was doing.  I thought getting a vasectomy would be a simple nut job - in and out, so I went to see my family doctor.  She had to make me an appointment with a specialist.  She didn't even want to see my penis and testicles.  Trust me, I asked.  I had given my balls a good clean shave to be prepared (and by the way, I wholeheartedly recommend the Intuition razor for such a job.  You may feel silly going to the drug store to purchase a lady razor, but when it comes to your balls, it's the best, smoothest, safest feeling shave you'll ever have.  They didn't pay me to say this, but if they need a dude to endorse their product to other men, I'd do it for them).

So a few weeks later I went to see the specialist.  Again, I shaved up nice and good.  My thinking on this was pretty simple - even though I had been told I'd get a free shave anyway, I wanted to be a gentleman about it.  If you were having a first meeting with a new lady friend, or a job interview, you'd clean yourself up in an appropriate manner.  The first time my balls are going to meet someone new, they're going to be shaved.  Simple as that.

Well, unless I was really drunk.

Anyway, this trip to the Vasectomy Specialist was pretty uneventful.  There were no sharp objects in the room, no plans to do any slicing and dicing, and he didn't want to see my penis either.  As it turned out, this was just a consultation.  It was more like an interview than anything.

me, the morning of the vasectomy

"So I hear you want to have a vasectomy."
"Yeah.  I hear they're all the rage."
"Do you have kids already?"
"I have two. A beautiful girl and a wonderful boy."
"Makes sense to me, let's cut you up."

He drew me a little diagram to show me what he was going to do.  It was both technical and rudimentary at the same time.  It wasn't to scale.  It was done on scrap paper.  It wasn't even done with a nice mechanical pencil or calligraphy pen.  The diagram Chris Morris gave me of the clitoris in 1998 was a more professional work than the diagram of my testicles.

"Sorry, I'm not much of an artist."
"I am.  I once drew my penis for a triage nurse."
"Really?"
"Yeah, it turned inside-out once."
".....Oh."

 We shook hands and I left the consultation.  I'm happy to say the doctor had a good, strong handshake.  It made me feel good about the fact that he'd be holding sharp knives and blades around my little buddy.  I was actually a little disappointed with the consultation, simply because I thought I'd be getting the operation right there and then.  I went home empty handed.  But still full-balled.

My actual operation was then scheduled to be in another three months or so.

It's like they were giving me plenty of time to change my mind.  Like, maybe over the Christmas holidays I'd decide that I wanted to father another ten or twelve kids over the next three years.    Or maybe it was just a jerk thing to do.  Because we all know that during those three months I'd likely have sex approximately three times with The Lovely Wife.  Those of you who are married will understand the math there.  Those of you not married - don't get married.  Don't bother doing the math, just don't get married.

Finally, the day came.  I had been trying for the days leading up to it to get some action from The Lovely Wife, thinking I could give her a little going away present.  It was very genuine and thoughtful, offering to give her something she would never be able to have again.  She politely declined for womanly reasons.  I argued that just because the monkey had a bloody nose didn't mean the circus wasn't in town.

No dice.

My father took me for surgery.  It was pretty cool to have him there.  It was like a royal funeral or something.  I'm the only male in my family to have produced a boy offspring, so because of me my family name will continue.  The trumpets blared as we said good-bye to my sperm.  Okay, it was nothing like that.  But it would've been cool if it was.

Actually, there was another D-list celebrity just like me waiting there to get a vasectomy.  I'm not going to name names because his business is his business, but it was pretty cool to know that we sorta had each others' backs.  When I mentioned this to The Lovely Wife she said, "if he's a D-list celebrity, then you must be an X-list celebrity."  I'd like to think she meant that I'd be a great porno star if I put my mind to it.

The doctor and nurse were finally ready to see my penis, and the accompanying testicles.  It's sort of a two-for-one deal, you know.  Naturally, I kept everything neat and tidy down there for them.  Respect, I tell you, respect.

The pain of the operation was... well, my testicles were invaded by complete strangers and they put clamps down inside to stop any sperm from going the distance.  Yeah, it hurt, but I'm not going to sit here and make an allegory for it.  Use your imagination.  It fucking hurt.  Luckily, I had just the right amount of freezing, a nurse from another area of the hospital who didn't normally do vasectomies, and one of my favorite Aerosmith songs on the radio to help distract me from the pain.

One thing that surprised me though, was that nobody asked me to leave a sample of my perfectly good sperm.  I always thought they kept a sample of it just in case.  Not in case I ever want to have a baby, but in case I lose a finger or something and they need some of my DNA to grow a new one.  Or if, like, Taylor Swift wants to be artificially inseminated.  My sperm would have totally been there for her.  But nope, they didn't ask for one.  And believe it or not, that kind of made me sad.  It had always been a dream of mine to have a pretty nurse ask me to jerk off for her.

They cleaned up some blood and told me to get dressed because they were done looking at my penis.  They recommended using a bag of frozen peas to deal with the swelling, and gave me some Tylenol-3s to deal with any pain.  I didn't actually use the pills.  I think I'll save them for something more painful, like if Scott Bryan ever figures out a way to defeat me in Monopoly.

this was actually a pretty decent read.

As I was leaving, the nurse handed me a little doggy-bag sort of thing with a lovely brochure entitled, "After Your Vasectomy".  The title seemed a little personal. Was everyone getting the same brochure about MY vasectomy?  She also sent me home with a little cup and bio hazard bag for me to bring back a sample of my semen after three months.  Awwwww yeah, she wanted me to jerk off after all.

Did you know that after a vasectomy you can still knock a girl up for up to three months?  That's right, folks.  I've insisted upon the slogan of, "up the bum - no babies" and The Lovely Wife keeps insisting that she's really tired and has been working a lot of late nights.

Recovering from a vasectomy is different for everyone.  Some people actually go back to work that day.  Some people take a few days.  I asked the doctor how long I should wait until I had hanky-panky again.  And yes, I referred to it as "hanky-panky".  After giving me the speech about the three month wait, I assured him I just wanted to make sure I didn't break anything.  "Wait a week or so," he said.  "You won't want to do anything with that for a few days."

I didn't know what he meant until day four of recovery.  Recovery for me was pretty good.  The pain was gone by day two, the swelling only lasted the first day, and I have a whole bag of frozen peas in the freezer that I can either use for a Sheppard's Pie or hold on to for the next time I have a vasectomy.  The bruising, however, took me by surprise.  The doctor wasn't kidding about not wanting to do anything for a few days.  My junk was so bruised up that it pretty much retreated back to basic training.  On day four, I woke up - typically - with morning wood.  No big deal.  Ask any guy, it's pretty much a daily occurrence.

not actually my penis

But I decided to take a look down there, knowing full well that I was bruised up pretty good.  I knew my dick would look like it had taken a beating, and not the type of beating you'd want your dick to take, but I wasn't prepared to look down there and see Two-Face from the Batman comics.  One side of the dick was totally normal, and the other side was bruised and purple and flipping a coin.

Two weeks passed, and I was all healed up.  I was happy.  Happy because I knew I wasn't about to have any more children.  Then The Lovely Wife started oddly craving Pepsi and puked her guts out with a sickness in the early morning.  As I brought her up a glass of water, she looked up at me as if to say, "uh-fucking-oh."

The Clear Blue pregnancy test came back as "Not Pregnant", which was great because:
A) we definitely weren't having more kids
B) I didn't have to throw my back out by throwing her down the stairs
C) I'm not a big fan of irony
D) all of the above

I was so excited that I almost went out and bought her a cake with "Congrats You're Not Pregnant" on it.

Thanks for reading.  I'm going to end today's blog post with a little Improexophonophelia.

vasectomy

by ryan matthew ewing

vasectomy, vasectomy, vasectomy

free health care, free health care, free health care

vasectomy, vasectomy, Vasectomy

one vasectomy is still cheaper than ten abortions

vasectomy

me, post-vasectomy

I'm Spreading This Reese's on Everything

There are really no words to describe the joy that is now filling up inside me, as I attempt to spread this new Reese Spread on... well, just about anything.

It was recommended to me by good friends Wessy-Poo and Monica, and I ran out the next morning to buy it.

The first taste had to simply be off a spoon.  Just on it's own.  Just to see what we were really dealing with here.  Then, I did what the label illustrated - I put it on toast and apple slices.  I gotta admit, if it weren't for those sly instructions I may never have put it on apple slices. Some folks might not like the idea of spreading this glory on something healthy like a piece of fruit, but I figure if it's on the label then it's one of the primary uses.

Next came a celery stick, because when I was a kid I used to put peanut butter and cheese whiz on celery sticks.  This seemed like a natural progression to me.  And it fell in line with the "healthy" exploration that began with the apple slices.   The juncture between healthy and fun came with spreading it on a Sweet N' Salty almond granola bar.  That was damn good.

Then it seemed like a good idea to just spread it on my lips so I would be extra kissable.  Not that I'm not already kissable - I'd like to think that I'm pretty kissable.  I mean, if I weren't me, I'd probably kiss me.  So anyway, I put some on my lips and made the kissy-face at The Lovely Wife.  She didn't make the kissy-face back.  In fact, she made the ever-so-popular what-the-fuck-are-you-doing face, followed by the equally arousing why-am-I-still-married-to-you face.

All plans to spread this Reese on my junk in hopes of some sweet mouth lovin' went out the window.

Back to the food, I decided, and I spread it on a Reese Chocolate Bar.  I should mention that this was my first time ever trying the Reese chocolate bar.  I was very excited for it, but found it lacked the chocolate to peanut butter ratio that the regular peanut butter cups have.  My favorite Reese is the larger sized, two-pack of peanut butter cups. They have more peanut butter in them.  I once tried that 1-pound peanut butter cup and, while it was magical in its own right, I found it was heavy on the chocolate side.

At my recent No Vegans Allowed BBQ, I bought an eight-pack of peanut butter cups and a bunch of us spread this Reese on those.  A couple of us had orgasms.  One of us had two (I'm looking at you Wessy-Poo). 

There are a few other tests I'd like to do, but just haven't gotten around to it yet.  I'd like to use this Reese on baked potatoes, pretzels, and as a marinade for steak.  Ultimately I see myself using this spread for making peanut butter cookies. 

And let's be real, I'll get around to spreading it on my junk at some point.

- ryan

PS - I think I should go on record by saying that spreading any kind of food on your private areas isn't a really good idea.  I'm not talking from personal experience here (unless you count that time an old girlfriend and I decided to experiment with honey, which was a stupid idea for a man with a hairy chest) but more from cautionary common sense.  You don't want your penis or vagina to start attracting ants - especially RED ANTS! - or flies or homeless people looking for any table scraps they can find.  I'm about 95% sure that when the good people at the Reese company developed this tasty spread they had no intention of anyone spreading it on their bodies to make oral sex taste better for their partner.  And if they did think of developing it for sexual reasons, then wow, someone's got a wicked sense of creative imagination, and I'd be half-scared to see their internet browsing history.  So, be safe folks!  Don't attract those red ants!

Birth Control

I have two wonderful children whom I love dearly.

But that's plenty, thank you.

Recently there were some weirdo protestors in my area flashing pictures of dead baby fetuses to make a point about abortion.  Gross shit.  And really, nobody wants to see it.  There are better ways of getting your point across.  Some people say abortion is wrong and others say it's the woman's choice.  While I do believe it is the woman's final choice to have an abortion, my complex opinion really doesn't matter because I'm not the one with a baby growing inside me.

So I got to thinking about birth control. 

Since having our second child in December of last year, my wife has been on birth control.  There were so many options to choose from.  Choosing the best birth control method must be like picking out new curtains.  Choose wisely, because you'll be stuck with them for a while, and you don't want to see them every morning and regret your choice.

this looks more like the Popomatic Trouble game.

There's pills, needles, patches, a lightning rod that goes up the vagina, or the option of just cutting my penis off. 

Yeah, I kinda like my penis where it is.

Whatever happened to the good old days when you could just tell a girl to jump up and down after sex and she wouldn't get pregnant?  Those were simpler times to be sure. 

Condoms are a great option, though not 100% effective, and after being married for half a decade wearing a condom again for the first time in years is like finding your favorite pair of ripped jeans hidden by your wife in a box in the basement.  Or your old, comfy Aerosmith tour shirt from when you were seventeen.  You worry about what it'll be like to put it on... will it still fit after all these years.... will it look awful with your more modern hairstyle... or maybe it's one of those cool retro things that has come back in style.  But maybe wearing condoms again is like seeing that favorite band today, twenty years later - they're older, a little out of breath, and still doing the same songs, tricks, and moves they were doing twenty years ago - and you end up just a little disappointed. Like you didn't get your full money's worth.  But let's be realistic, any Aerosmith concert is better than no concert at all.

Before somebody brings up the notion of abstinence as a means of birth control, let me just politely tell you to fuck off.  Let's see you eat three quarters of a bag of chips and not want to finish.

Anal sex is another option, but it's risky.  I'm not talking about the possibility of disease, but rather the probability of evolution.  Let's suppose every woman on the planet started insisting on anal sex, 100% of the time - eventually, over a span of a thousand years or so, the human body would evolve and change and we would start reproducing Bum-Babies instead of regular babies.  And no matter how cute and adorable that child might be, he or she will always smell just a little bit like a bumhole.


The whole problem of birth control could easily be solved if women would just encourage their men to put the almond explosion on their faces.  That would fix everything.  But for some strange reason they never consider it.

- ryan

The Inside-Outside Penis Fiasco

... I can't believe I've never blogged about this before, especially considering it's one of the great stories of RFC lore.

...me in the year 2000.  Yep, look at the hair...

Let's bring it on back now to September of the year 2000.  Y2K was done.  The world didn't explode.  And the Artist Formerly Known As Prince had just become the Artist Formerly Known As The Artist Formerly Known As Prince because he changed his name back.

So there you have it.  2000 was a big year for big stories.  And here's mine:

I was working in a University cafeteria, washing dishes for just a little bit more than minimum wage.  They gave me free meals and made me wear a hairnet.  I had been doing this job for about two years and was pretty efficient at it.  That dish room was fucking hot.  The machine that washed the dishes was about fifteen feet long, and one dude would put the dishes in one end and they'd come out clean on the other.  I was usually stationed at one of those two ends.

So there I was one random Monday night, loading dirty dishes into the machine when I started to feel a little queasy.  Lightheaded.  Possibly puke-ish.  The old man working the clean end, Ignacio was his name, got me some water and a peppermint candy.  I kept doing my job.  The thing about those dish rooms, is if you're short one person then you're pretty much fucked for the entire night.  I started blinking profusely like I was going to pass out and thought I felt a little weird down there.  You know, the place where the manscaping takes place.  I excused myself to the washroom to see what was going on.  I pulled up to the urinal, unzipped, gazed down, and nearly fainted.

Something was really wrong with my dick.

Now, at the risk of giving too much info away, I don't exactly have a usual shaped penis.  Bear with me here, because this is actually important to the story.  I was never circumcised, and I have an extra fleshy part at the tip... but not right on the tip.  It's more like a hook.  Or an alan key.  Actually, I've always compared it to one of those toy ducks that drinks water.  Some of my closest friends actually call me Duck Dick.

Here.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yk71GY02diY Use your imagination.

But back to the problem at hand.  There was something really wrong with my duck.  I have a really good grasp on what it "normally" looks like, and this wasn't it.  Can you imagine what thoughts were going through my head at this point?  Allow me to share:

Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck

And then I vomited into the urinal.  Not sure who had to clean it up that night, but I'm really sorry about that. 

I went right to my boss' office, stunned and at a loss for words.
"Hi Ryan.  What can I do for you?"
"Hospital... I'm going to the hospital... now, I think..."
"What's the matter?
"...uh.... something...?"
"Something?"
"I think... something's wrong... with my.... uh...."

I had a female boss, and she was a very nice lady.  If my boss were a dude I would have just blurted it out.  Call me sexist if you want, but you try to say "penis" to a woman of authority and tell me how it goes.  So I just gestured toward my crotch instead.   I don't remember what she said, but I practically flew to the hospital.  Luckily, the hospital was only a block and a half away from my work.

The emergency room is not a fun place.  The first thing you see when you walk in is everyone else waiting to see a doctor and you immediately start to wonder how long you'll be waiting to get looked at.  As far as I was concerned, my penis was practically being sucked into another dimension by an evil demonic force.  But before I could see a doctor, I had to deal with the triage nurse.

"What's the problem?"
"Something's wrong with my dick."
"Excuse me?"
"Sorry, my penis."
"No, no, what's wrong with it?"
"It doesn't look right.  It feels weird.  And I'm very lightheaded."

She looked at me as though I'd never had an erection before.

"What do you mean by, it doesn't look right?"
"Well, to begin with it doesn't look right.  But for me, it really doesn't look right."

Another odd look.
So I grabbed her pen and drew her a before and after picture.  Right on my admission form.

"Wait.  This is what your penis is supposed to look like?"
"Can I please just see a doctor?"

I wasn't in the waiting room long, but long enough to phone my father and let him know that I may be dead by morning.  My dad rushed down for moral support because that's what guys do for each other.  If one of my best buds called me up to say he was bleeding from his dick or he thought his dick was falling off, I'd be there in a heartbeat.  I'd make fun of him later for it, but I'd be there when he needed me.

The doctor had me take off my pants and underwear, and he was accompanied by some student interns.  Great.  There's something wrong with my dick and two pretty nursing students are going to get an eyeful of it.  Okay, okay, I'm giving myself too much credit.  They'd only get half an eyeful at best.

The doctor went on to explain that my foreskin had pushed it's way down the shaft of my penis, and that's why it was looking so weird.  I kept waiting for him to say that it was a pretty common thing, but nope.  That never happened.  The look on his face was suggesting that he didn't know what he'd gotten himself into that night.  I completely avoided any kind of eye contact with the hot nursing students.  If I had been circumcised this would have never happened.  Imagine wearing a long sleeved shirt and pushing the sleeves up to your elbows.  That was my penis.

Yep, my muscle of love was completely exposed.  My penis was inside-out.  I don't think it's possible to feel any more naked than that.

The doc looked at it for a bit then handed me a big thing of gauze.  "Bit down on this.  Hard."
Before I could ask why he was yanking my foreskin back up my penis shaft.  I made a noise I had never made before.  "Please, try to keep it down.  You might frighten the other patients."  He actually asked me to try and not scream as he was pretty much giving me the worst tug-job of all time.  He yanked again and I vomited a bit in my mouth but somehow managed to swallow it back down.

"There.  All done."
"...um... no.  There's usually a little more."
"What do you mean?"

He clearly didn't look at the before and after picture I had given the triage nurse.  That's when I reached down and gave a little tug to put my hook back into place.  It was the least painful part of the entire experience.

When I asked the doctor how this all happened to me, he couldn't give me a straight answer.  He'd never seen it before, but gave me some bullshit about moisture and heat and maybe I leaned up against something the wrong way.

....?

He then went on to say that I should give that extra bit of foreskin a little pull a few times a day, just to make sure it was feeling right.  Yep, the way I see it, the doctor (a certified medical practitioner) suggested I spend more time playing with my penis.  I should've asked him to write me a note.

I went home, watched a few minutes of WWF Raw and went to bed.  The next day at work was a little awkward, and whenever anyone would ask about what happened to me the night before I told them straight up that my penis had turned inside out.  When the pretty girls I worked with asked, I added in that I was lucky to be alive.

What's really funny though, is how a couple weeks later I received a cheque in the mail for $13.86.  Apparently, one of those forms I'd filled out with the triage nurse was related to worker's compensation and I was reimbursed for my time away from work.  So in essence, I was paid almost fourteen bucks to get the worst hand-job of all time.

I'm such a whore.

- ryan