9 responses to “Goodbye to all that.”

1. 

   Lance Mannion said on March 23, 2004 at 11:27 pm

   Hogswallop. And there’s nothing poignant about it. It’s a lyrical and narcissitic expression of sour grapes.

   It also strikes me as something close to fiction, in that I don’t believe he was the Hawkeye Pierce or Sam Malone he would like us think he was. I mean that I doubt he had the same trouble giving up women that Sam would have. His romantic history suggests that he probably didn’t like sex or women much when he could get it up for them. We all have a nutcase or two in our past, but an entire romantic history full of lunatics? He was trying for some kind of record. A constant attraction to unsuitable partners makes for a very good avoidance strategy. It’s also pretty strange that the sexual partner who insisted on the invasive act in violation of the blue laws gets invaded in the passive voice so that the writer gets out of the paragraph without actually saying whether that “companion of the moment” was male or female. What we seem to have here is a man who spent a lot time sleeping with women he would never be tempted to marry and then having an apparently gay encounter that left him feeling grossed out and disgusted with himself. No wonder he’s glad to be done with sex. No more fears that he’s gay, no more pretending to be straight.

   And, note, there is no mention of a wife (or longtime companion) anywhere in his past, and all his romantic and erotic memories seem to be from 20 years ago. What was he doing for the last two decades to relieve those terrible urges he is now glad to be rid of? And how old is this guy anyway? He says he’s at an age when many men are still fathering children. What age is that? David Letterman just became a dad. Tony Randall’s wife had a baby when he was 80. Ritchie’s well into middle age, for sure. Lucky for him his diabetes waited to castrate him after warm embraces from woman friends became the most likely physical contact he was going to get anyway.

   As for the idea that many men would admit to be glad to be through with it as he is: He can try telling that to my friend whose prostrate cancer left him impotent.

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2. 

   wade said on March 24, 2004 at 9:06 am

   While looking for something to relate to in the linked article, I came across (poor choice of parlance under the circumstances, sorry) this paragraph —

   Consider also an American illustrator whose brilliant use of color I admired. He died, I learned, of auto-asphyxiation in pursuit of an enhanced orgasm. The leather contraption around his neck reportedly failed to release him at the critical moment, and he perished. Can a man be called a martyr when he dies for an erection? Not everyone would say yes.

   It’s gotta refer to Vaughn Bode. In my younger days, I considered getting a tattoo of Cheech Wizard, a character in constant danger of ending up much like Ritchie himself. Goomph!

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3. 

   wade said on March 24, 2004 at 9:10 am

   http://www.markbode.com/site/vaughnbode.html is the correct link to the Bode page…

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4. 

   4dbirds said on March 24, 2004 at 10:13 am

   “He died, I learned, of auto-asphyxiation in pursuit of an enhanced orgasm.”

   This reminds me of when I was in the army and conducting a “Line of Duty” investigation on the suicide of a young soldier found hanging (feet barely off the floor)from the rafters of an ammo bunker with his pants down around his ankles. The young man had fashioned a noose around a beam in the bunker ceiling (ammo bunkers are usually low structures set in the ground to keep them cool) and secured the noose around his neck so that while on his toes the noose was loose but if he lowered himself on his heels, the noose would tighten. He then proceeded to masturbate and tighten the noose by lowering the heels. Something went wrong, he blacked out and without the ability to stand up on his toes, died.

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5. 

   alex said on March 24, 2004 at 11:06 am

   Wow, this is sure taking a fun turn!

   I was originally going to tell Lance not to beat up on us guys whose love lives thus far consist only of a long string of lunatics, then thought better of it.

   Back in the ’80s, not long before Dan Quayle was thrust into the limelight by the reign of George the First, some scientists discovered an odd statistical spike having to do with Quayle’s hometown of Huntington, Indiana. They dubbed the place “the world capital of auterotic asphyxiation.”

   Such deaths are exceedingly rare�one in a million-plus, I seem to recall. When it happens multiple times in a single year in a population of fifteen thousand, it’s quite a story.

   That poor town. Its favorite son and its reputation a joke. And then there was the Ed Bodkin story. This one broke the day Quayle was going to throw his hat in the ring for the 2000 presidency. He called off his press conference in Huntington and delayed his announcement for a few weeks because he didn’t want to be upstaged by a man who’d just been arrested for practicing surgery without a license�in a motel room, where police found numerous mason jars full of human testicles removed from willing clients.

   They let Ed Bodkin go after only six months, the joke around town being nobody had the balls to testify.

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6. 

   Dick said on March 24, 2004 at 12:48 pm

   When diabetes made me impotent thirteen years ago, it was truly awful. Never for a minute was I grateful to have my extremity – number 1, in my case – fail me. For the next ten years, I tried every damn remedy I could find, including vacuum pumps, pills, testosterone injections and patches, even direct injections to the penis. Some worked, but none very well or reliably. I was angry and depressed and felt a lot less like a man. Yeah, that’s shallow, I know. But wait till it happens to you or to the man you love. Cuddling is nice, but it ain’t DOING it.

   Finally, three years ago, I had an inflatable device implanted in that failing appendage. It cost big bucks and took several months to recover from the surgery. I could not be happier with the results. Hell, it works more reliably now than it ever did. With the return of erections came a complete return of desire.

   Few things in my life have given me pleasure like a joyful romp with a willing woman. Yeah, relationships are hard, breakups are painful, and I have sometimes followed my pointer into dangerous situations. (Mostly drunk, I might add.) But truth be told, I remember the good parts, not the bad. If I were the writer of that peculiar and over-revealing article, I’d happily give up sex too. I agree with the first post. He sounds like a homophobic gay.

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7. 

   ashley said on March 24, 2004 at 1:04 pm

   As a friend once told me when I lived in New Orleans: “Ash, your dick takes you places I wouldn’t go with a gun.”

   I don’t think the same could be said about the author…ever. That’s probably his problem.

   All hail inflatable transplants. My dad couldn’t afford one, and with the history of diabetes in my family, I should probably begin saving up.

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8. 

   Nance said on March 24, 2004 at 2:02 pm

   This conversation is getting good, so I’m going to stay out of it, except to clarify a little on the Huntington autoerotic asphyxiations.

   As I recall — and my recall isn’t what it used to be — a couple of those deaths were of police officers, who had recently been given a training session on the practice, so they could better distinguish between accidental a.a. and true suicides. This is a well-known side effect of such training, and the people who lead them warn participants explicitly. That said, there’s always one or two who have go out and give it a whirl, and hence.

   I’m reminded of Woody Allen’s line about orgasms: “Every one has been right on the money.” Maybe when you have to half-strangle yourself to make your orgasms more intense, you ought to consider getting, oh, back to basics.

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9. 

   KCK said on March 24, 2004 at 5:41 pm

   I certainly agree that sex can be involved in simple foolishness to major big trouble, been there, done that.

   On the other hand there’s William & Patty

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