Peyronie’s Disease — Hey Man! What’s the “Arc” of Your Covenant?
There comes a time when you look into the mirror and you realize that what you see is all that you will ever be. And then you accept it. Or you kill yourself. Or you stop looking in mirrors. J. Michael Straczynski, Babylon 5: The Scripts of J. Michael Straczynski, Vol. 2
Prequel — Hair and Reverse Osmosis
I’m not quite ready to kill myself, but I’m sick and tired of every manly-man ad telling me I need another new remedy, potion, gizmo, surgery, or what have you, to ensure the rest of the planet will finally respect me (so I might feel better about myself and score more sex with someone other than myself).
In the 1960’s, having a 5 o’clock shadow or scraggly beard was a telltale sign you were a hippie loser (like my old man). Hell, who couldn’t afford a decent shave? While the TV ad played the then hit jazz instrumental, The Stripper, the hot Swedish blond promised Noxzema’s Medicated Comfort Shave Cream would take it off, take it all off! No more loser, time to get laid? Not so fast!
Now, the neat and expensively coiffured shadow is en vogue to enhance that guy’s inherently genetic gallantry and testicular fortitude. Meanwhile, your smooth, sterile-cheeked, loser face sits at home with no dates for at least three to five years (your personal prison term) or until the Eight Dollar Shave Club comes back with a vengeance! In the interim, no love for this guy!
In the 1980’s there was the breakthrough discovery of minoxidil, formerly branded as Rogaine, the cure all to male baldness. It cost a bazillion dollars for an eye dropper full. Unfortunately, you’re likely still bald, but now with a heart arrhythmia. Then came Finasteride, originally used to shrink an enlarged prostate. This crap grew hair but also breasts in men. You could have a mane on your dome and avoid attaching the name “loser” to your mug, but you might end up with nipple discharge, testicle pain, or trouble urinating. Do I really want to be a hairy, big-titted, balls-aching, good-looking hunk of a man? Or should I go with a rug dome?
Today, bald is a thang as more and more men shave their heads for that clean and fresh look. Shaving one’s head can be liberating, so they say. I guess it worked for Mr. Clean in the 1950’s, with his bulging biceps, wife-beater T-shirt, and hoop earring — one bad muthafucka! Shave your head and go to Italy. You might gain fame as one of a thousand Stanley Tucci lookalikes. You know, there’s nothing like a freshly waxed dome to say how much you love yourself.
With the newfound celebrity associated with a bald head and, here we go again, a soup ladened beard, men are now allegedly flooded with wooing suitors, suitresses, and identifieds. (By the way, if you’re biker, a teardrop shaped beard is the most aerodynamically efficient shape to ride at high velocities, minimizing turbulence so you and your back warmer can cut through the air like butta!) Bald head, beard — it’s like reverse osmosis pushing those hair follicles down through the back of your neck to your chin. Add a nose ring, earring (no frickin’ ear plates), and teardrop tattoos and you’re one badass, smokin’ hot hombre.
Prequel Deux — Tired of Being a Pussy
What it is about men that drive them to invest their life savings with carnival barkers simply because they don’t look like that brain-dead Adonis who stars in every movie, commercial, and porn video? Step right up numb nuts!
It’s not just about looks, is it? You’ll need a boost of testosterone to ensure your partner has those twinkling, winking, eyes when, you know . . .. Personally, I don’t need Frank Thomas and Doug Flutie, two seriously old pro athletes, telling me how to spend my cash in perpetuity to restore my allegedly lost virility. Are you kidding me? Thomas weighs three spins on the scale and Flutie, maybe, a spin plus 10 pounds. A fat guy and a skinny guy telling me I need to change or be destined to a lifetime of playing alone? Screw them! In 2015, the FDA found that there are no true quantifiable benefits of taking testosterone supplements. FDA studies suggest that older men, who are prescribed testosterone, may have a higher risk of dying from any disease in addition to heart attack or stroke. Those bedroom eyes don’t mean jack if you die in the act!
The Main Story
So, after my monumental digression, let’s talk about your bent carrot and the booming industry aimed at straightening it out by surgery, drugs, and/or both.
Francois Gigot de la Peyronie was a French quack errr surgeon who lived from 1678 to 1747 (which alone should raise a skeptical eye about a disease no one has heard of for 350 years). Now, rising from the ashes of centuries (as the profit margins in the hair, hairless, and bogus vitamin industries wane), Peyronie’s 21st Century acolytes are saying: Mista’, dat penis of yours be in deadass bad shape! Appealing to the primary male organ, which supersedes the brain, so-called medical professionals and digital traveling salesmen are attempting to strike another low blow to your male hardiness by the mere suggestion that your crooked penis is ruining your life. Vanity, vanity, all is vanity!
Peyronie’s disease is caused by vigorous sex that leaves fibrous plaque in the penis. Ironically, this begs the question as to why men take testosterone boosters? But, hey my bruthas, I’m going to speak some truth to power cuz I ain’t no shameless medicine man! My foot ain’t in your front door!
According to the bent carrot in the ads, Peyronie’s disease must be running rampant, kind of like Covid or monkeypox. For about fifteen thousand bucks, you can get surgery or pay twenty “K” a year for injections (ouch!). Let’s get it straight. According to the ads, without treatment, your rocket will hook away from the target shooting into outer space and rendering you a loser once again. Who wants to be an embarrassing stain upon society and other inanimate objects? Surely, neither you nor your only two friends (Gary and Hank) wish to continue on an aimless search for love never to be requited.
According to WebMD, shots only reduce the crookedness of your carrot by 34%. Fake shots (placebos) reduce it by 18% and save yourself and your 401K from bankruptcy. Paraphrasing a 2016 article published in the National Library of Medicine, the prevalence of Peyronie’s disease is estimated at only one-half of one penis per 100 penises. I suppose in some instances, one’s one-half may equal another’s one, but let’s not run off half-cocked or jump to a premature conclusion.
So, how do you know you if have this loathsome disease that some Generation Alphas might describe as an STD? How does one measure the carrot to determine the angle at which one should be concerned? 30° good — 45° bad? How about a 90° turn skyward?
I took geometry in high school and got an “A” only because Dave Burgos stole the tests from the teacher’s file cabinet with his feet while class was in session. There were 30 out of 30 “A” grades — 27 cheaters, 1 eventual physicist, and 2 basement gamers! I do remember that to measure an angle, I used a protractor. You have to line up one ray along the 0° line then line up the vertex with the midpoint of the protractor to determine degrees. However, much of this depends on what type of angle you measure. Is it straight, acute, right, obtuse?
Seriously concerned about my condition, I bought a new protractor. Now the math. Shit! I’m not dealing in two dimensions, though some former lovers would disagree! I couldn’t get the damn protractor in the right spot! Plus, timing is everything. The angle of the carrot one dangles assumes, you know, constant blood flow to its surface area. For me, I just couldn’t get in the mood after trying forty or fifty times. No stroke of luck here!
However, during the course of my strokerama, I noticed my carrot was more of a gradual incline rather than a U-turn, kinda’ like a beautiful sloping mountain, maybe a Mount Fuji or Kilimanjaro. Or was that just my imagination running away like a bat out of hell? I suppose I took a literal and liberally figurative stretch when the mountain looked more like a molehill.
Since the protractor didn’t work, I bought a miniature surveying tool (the operative word is “miniature”), a tape measure, string, and a level (one of those things with the bubbles). I looked for a mathematical formula and almost put a bullet in the head: Slope = (y2-y1)/(x2-x1)! WTF (not part of the formula)?
Thank God for the internet, or so I thought. I found a YouTube video of a guy measuring the slope of his yard. I figured I could use his technique and extrapolate. First step, you pound a stake into the ground while you stand on one end of the yard and your girlfriend stands on the other and pounds her stake in the ground. Immediately, I turned it off! The thought of my imaginary girlfriend laughing wild-eyed, while drilling a sharp object into the root cause of my dilemma, was too much to bear. Never got to the second step.
Hopped in the car and drove down the road a few miles where a crew has been surveying and fixing the same street for about twenty years. I asked the guy with the big surveying tool for a brief tutorial. First, he corrected my reference to the tool to give me its correct name — a theodolite. (Yeah, same to you pal!) He told me to take my tool (now I’m confused), measure the horizontal and vertical angles between points then combine those angles with distances from a chain or tape measure so you can triangulate the location of any point using trigonometry. Seriously! I wished I were a troglodyte never having heard of that inglorious French bastard Peyronie!
Not understanding shit about what road gang dude was saying, I used visual cues to derive a poor man’s version of his surveying technique. Are you ready men? Ok, stand up (on your feet). Sitting or reclining might obstruct the measurement, even if you have a six-pack or, in my case, a kegger! Fully engorge your carrot (this might take a while and several attempts). Take the string and tie one end to the base and the other to the pinnacle of your carrot. I bought way too much string. Now, if you are using an actual vegetable, tattoo a capital L on your forehead and make your way to Snake Island, just off the Brazilian coast (look it up).
Otherwise, place a drone in the sky or your cell phone next to your carrot. Locate the exact GPS coordinates on each end of the carrot. Take into account the curvature of the earth, gravity, the refraction by the atmosphere, surface temperature, relative humidity, and the coefficient of drag (no comment), being careful not to scratch the carrot like a baseball player. While erect, in the dual sense of the word, stick your right foot out and then your left. If you attempted to do this simultaneously, you are now on your ass with a ball-sack hernia! Assuming you’re not a loser like I was when trying this the first time, turn 90°to the right four times. You’ve now done the hokey pokey and still don’t know if that French snake charmer will forever haunt your dreams, wet or dry.
All of these machinations gave me a massive bangover, not to mention blunt force trauma! Now, my Ferrari libido is a bombed-out crapwagon! Screw these carpetbagging, miracle curing, medicine show, pirating, peckerhead peddlers! I’m taking my bald dome, bearded mug, and twisted shank on a long vacation — far away from TV ads, pop-ups, social media, and quackery. A monastery in Nepal has my name all over it! Maybe I’ll meet the Lama, forget about my carrot, and achieve total consciousness, which would be nice. Maybe that Nigerian Prince will finally show up to give me the ten million dollars I inherited. If not, India is a short flight away and the surgery and injections there are super cheapo! After all, I don’t want to be a loser my entire life! Oh, and by the way, will you save my Gucci grass-stained pants, crossover fanny pack, Kentucky Fried Chicken Crocs, FastSize Penis Extender, every brand-labeled sweat suit and sneaker, leather jacket, shark tooth necklace, baseball caps, straw hats, bucket hats, Old Spice, Testo500, Semenax, fat pills, skinny pills, diet pills, memory pills (not sure where they are), and the Brylcreem that’s been in my old man’s medicine cabinet for fifty years (some greasy shit that a little dab will do ya). Much appreciated.
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