My First Vasectomy
...and then the imaginary wig, in the guise of his left hand, the wig that had abandoned him and relocated to the top of Donald Trump for the last four years, the wig that was now desperate to make up for lost time and was surreptitiously crawling, spider-like, up his right arm towards his shiny head, suddenly stopped.
“And I looked at this traitor trying to wheedle his way up my arm and back into my good books. I shook my head and said Nooooo! I know where you’ve been.”
Simon flicked it to the floor of the stage then stamped on it while shouting manically.
“Dirty! Nasty! Vile! Disgusting creature! I’m gonna put you in a pit and build a big, beautiful wall around you. You’re not going to abandon me again in four years’ time.”
The audience lapped it up. The lights reflected on Simon’s glistening head as he paused before moving on.
“You know, what we aim to do here on stage is to create an involuntary reaction in the audience...”
Simon focused his attention on a group of three couples who were in their late 30s to mid 40s.
“...which is why I’m going to tell you, with some gratuitous and graphic detail, about...my first vasectomy.”
Two of the men he was looking at reacted: both squirmed, one crossed his legs.
“And that there is an involuntary reaction. I didn’t say I was going to make you laugh, just cause an involuntary reaction. Now, shall we go into the details?”
Simon got up close and personal, initially with the man who had crossed his legs but then shared his attention with all three couples.
“Now, the medical details I’m about to give you will be accurate if a little gruesome. But come on gentlemen, there will be a time when you’ll be required to step up. Isn’t that right, ladies? After all, childbirth isn’t a walk in the park, is it? It can be painful. I know. I understand. Yes, you’re nodding your heads. We know about pain. We’ve all been kicked in the shins.”
The women changed from nodding their heads and cajoling the men to venting exaggerated anger and guffaws at Simon.
“It’s alright, ladies...”
He knew what he was doing, winding up the women, one of whom even looked a bit put out by the word ladies. He knew how to yank an audience’s chain.
“...wait till you hear the details of the operation and perhaps you may feel things start to even up a little. OK, for me this was 20 years ago. But I remember the needle as if it was yesterday.”
He feigned walking gingerly across the stage looking at the two men who’d previously responded with a squirm and were both now crossing, uncrossing and recrossing their legs.
“We’d had our children and it was time for me to sort myself out, said my wife, and I could tell she was in agreement with her decision. So off I popped to the doc’s. After a preliminary chat, he added ‘Is your wife in agreement with her decision?’ then before I replied, ‘OK, hop on the bed, trousers down and we’ll check a few things out,’ was followed quickly by ‘We can fit you in... about now...is that OK?’ syringe in hand. And then ‘Will it be OK if Dr Simmons assists? She hasn’t done a vasectomy before.’ Dr Simmons was a very attractive young Dr who looked down at my - my vulnerability, and then turned her nose up, looked at my Dr and sighed. I thought - hang on, I’m not really at my best here. I only popped in for a chat! This is all moving very quickly! Of course, I’m exaggerating, Dr Simmons wasn’t that attractive. But back to that syringe. ‘OK so we have to numb the area first before we start snipping. Are you OK with that?’
“Am I OK with that? Yes! Yes! Numb away! Please! Lot’s of numbing! Do not hold back on the numbing!”
Simon looked at the two men in the front row again.
“You’d want to be numbed, wouldn’t you - before the snipping? It’s no good after the snipping, is it?”
There was much nervous shuffling, uncrossing and recrossing and closing of legs and nodding of heads from an increasing number of men in the audience.
“Of course, this does require the application of the anesthetic into the target area (hence the syringe). And the Dr, conscious of my apprehension, decided to ameliorate the situation with his joke - the joke issued to all Drs in Dr training school in the section headed Break out joke when vasectomy patient looks a bit nervous. You know the joke, don’t you? I don’t even need to say it, do I? You’re looking like a rabbit in headlights.”
He stared at his two audience participants and added
“It’s only a little prick.”
The audience yawned, then laughed then yawned and laughed at the same time.
“And into the scrotum the needle does penetrate.”
The audience winced.
“And on into the testicle. I could feel the needle penetrating my testicle. A needle! In. My. Testicle. This bit is real. This bit is not exaggerated. You need to be prepared for this!”
Simon looked at one of the women next to one of the squirming head-in-his-hands men.
“Am I right? Does this start to even things up a bit? Forget about the kick in the shins quip. Bad joke. But you can see this is going to take commitment, isn’t it? And there’s more to come. No! Don’t look gleeful.”
He gave the women a chastising look.
“So anyway, after a few minutes the doc checks it’s numb. ‘Can you feel that?’ Feel what? I look down to see the doc tapping my testicle. Not an everyday experience. “That’s fine,’” I tell him, “can’t feel anything.” Now this is when the activity takes place. But it’s OK. It’s fine. You can’t feel anything. It’s a bit of keyhole surgery where the doc makes an entry through the scrotum, finds the vas deferens - the tube that delivers the sperm, two snips, one at each end, a bit is removed, and then the tube is sealed both ends. And you don’t feel anything. Well, I say you don’t feel anything. Now, I wasn’t watching what he was doing. I assumed he hadn’t learnt this at night school or an online course and I couldn’t see whether he did his snipping and sealing within the scrotum or if the vas deferens was pulled out to give himself space to complete his task. To be honest I felt numb: I didn’t care. But despite the numbness, I was aware of a tugging going on. I say I was aware as this may have been psychosomatic but I did feel my face muscles twitch every now and again. It was as if there was some sort of connection between the sperm carrying tube and my facial muscles. I supposed I should have looked. But, call me squeamish if you want, I wasn’t really interested at looking at bits of the inside of my testicles on the outside of my testicles with a couple of Drs tugging and then snipping them.”
Simon focussed his attention on the man who had crossed his legs at the beginning. Stood close to him. He gesticulated his thumb and forefinger near the man’s face and spoke gently.
“Tug tug. Tug tug. I think my Dr liked his work.”
He paused for about three seconds then added the tugging dialogue one more time in an almost whisper and paused again before exploding with manic exaggeration.
“ ‘Oh I’m sorry!’ the doc shouted, ‘Whoops, a bit too much - let me rein that in a bit!’ ”
Simon stumbled backwards miming the doctor gathering up more inside testicle tubular parts than was necessary.
“ ‘So let’s remove some of this,’ and that doc was all over the place with it, throwing it over his shoulder as if he was the anchor in a tug of war. It did seem that he’d bitten off more than he could chew. OK, perhaps not the most appropriate term but he was sweating profusely. Then it was snip here, tie a knot there, snip there, tie knot here, then with the other Dr’s assistance they knitted all the excess tubes into a warm shawl which was very presentable given they were making this up as they went along and pushing it back in (a part of the operation I was really pleased with). Then he stood back and gave what I hoped was a satisfied smile of a job well done, although, I was half expecting a car mechanics style sharp intake of breath, a rubbing of the chin and the comment ‘We may need to order in some new parts.’ But that didn’t happen. He said we were all done. I felt fine, the anesthetic was still working, and I’m now starting to get up. I’m ready to go home.”
Simon looked at his adopted member of the audience and spoke softly.
“You’d cope with that couldn’t you? Now that I’ve prepared you. No problem, eh? So this little routine, I call it, My First Vasectomy. The implication is that I’d be willing to go through it again because you can get a reversal you know - if - if you’re mad! The thing is, there was something that put me off that idea, - a reversal and another subsequent vasectomy. And I can see looking at your face, you’re thinking ‘Just one thing?!’ ”
Simon was now up close and really personal with his audience victim again.
“I’ve sort of lied a bit. This wasn’t my first vasectomy. It was my only vasectomy - it was just the first half. That anesthetic is only for testicle number one, as I realised when looking at the doc with a syringe that seemed bigger and more fearsome than the first. ‘OK, so let’s do the other side,’ the doc said. ‘I know what I’m doing now. Shall we numb the other testicle before we go in?’ ”
Simon let that land with the audience before finishing off.
“Yes, the whole thing is repeated on testicle number two. Well, I hope you’ve learnt something here this evening. Unfortunately, repeated sharing of this information somehow resulted in me losing my day job as a member of the NHS vasectomy patient preparation team. I’ve been Simon Harverson. Thank you, and good night!”
Written by Sean Hodgson
Sean Hodgson lives in Oxfordshire, with a garden that has three plastic pink pigeons because this is Faringdon, Oxfordshire. He used to be a police officer but since getting better he generally keeps quiet about that. To see more of his work, visit his website here:
www.seanhodgson.co.uk