The Awkward Discussion

When I was a kid, my dad decided to have the sex talk with me at a crowded steak and egg place on a Sunday morning. Well he didn’t exactly decide…my mom made him do it. She’d been bugging him for years to talk to me about the birds and bees but he’d been putting it off because he wasn’t the type of guy to talk about sex with his son or anybody! My dad was not communicative at all.

He’d come home from work, read the paper, watch some T.V. and go to bed. If he took me to a ballgame he’d buy me a hotdog, cheer on the home team, ask me if I was having a good time and maybe buy some peanuts although they made him choke. The man was not a talker. So the thought of having the sex talk with me must have been tortuous for him. So there we were, over omelets and biscuits with gravy when he looked at me and said, “Don’t get a girl pregnant.” I looked up from my eggs and said, “Okay”, and that was it. It was over. We’d had the talk!

Now it was my turn. My son was getting older and my wife was insistent that it was time to discuss sex AND drugs with the boy. I was pretty sure that junior had many opportunities to find out anything he needed to know about sex from his friends and the internet so I had to figure out what message I needed to send him. He’d also mentioned to me that one of his friends was caught with some “pot” but he assured me that he’d never tried any. Well I was determined to have a better talk with my son than the succinct one my dad had with me but what exactly should I say that would influence an impressionable young man.

I asked some friends what they told their kids and found out that most avoided the discussion completely or simply asked their kids to tell them what they knew and left it at that. So I was on my own. I searched the internet for info and then I hit on the idea of a combo sex/drug talk. I took my son out for breakfast (to honor my dad) and asked him if he wanted to talk about what men and women do behind closed doors, or in a car or sometimes in a …he turned bright red and immediately shushed me. So I figured I’d better make it quick. I told him that I saw a study that said men who smoke pot daily had a hard time reaching orgasm. He choked on his hash browns and shushed me again. I told him another study said some smokers experience premature ejaculation and I blurted out that he was too young to be a dad and that condoms don’t always work! He looked at me like he was going to pass out. So I guess that was it. I had the talk with my son and it covered both sex and drugs in a weird and disjointed way. Maybe I had scared him a bit about the evils of marijuana and just possibly our little talk would make him think twice before he got naked with a girl.

The one thing I didn’t mention to my little man was that the report on sex and pot smoking I’d quoted from also said that men who got high generally had more sexual partners than guys who didn’t. I didn’t feel that part of the research was something he needed to know…EVER!

When you look down, if you’re too fat to see your “stuff” you’re probably not able to use your “stuff” any way. Those are the words of a very cold and vicious person…my doctor. I’m at his office, stark naked and we’re doing the yearly exam thing when he mentions that he’s concerned about my weight. What? I’m exactly the same pants size that I’ve been for years! Alright, maybe my pants have moved down a couple of inches to make room for a very cute, almost beer gut, but that shouldn’t raise any kind of red flags, right? Come on, everybody’s gained a bit of “stress weight” due to the recession.

I pointed out to the good doctor that when things get tough, the tough get going…to Subway, KFC, Mickey D’s. Not at all amused, my doctor decided to scare the calories out of me. He pointed out, with zero warmth or compassion that obesity and erectile dysfunction go hand in hand and that I was on my way to a lifetime of limpness. Being a sweet and loving physician with a tremendous bedside manner he went on to explain that several of his patients who weren’t much fatter than me had trouble getting and maintaining an erection even with the help of the popular erection pills on the market. I wondered how many of his patients discussed their erections with him and made a note to myself to never ever discuss mine.

I quickly dressed and tried to get out of his office by promising him that I’d start dieting and exercising so I could live a long and healthy and reasonably erect life. But before I could make it out of his exam room he added, “And you should see what you look like naked, from behind. If I was your wife I’d pray for cataracts.” At that moment I wondered if I could have his license revoked. But he had made his point. The very next day I started eating less, exercising and having sex with my wife a bit more often. However it’s going to be quite some time until I let her see me naked … from behind.