I cannot honestly describe my life without talking about urology. So many have written to beg me to take on these important but previously hidden "areas" - the male bladder, the urethra, the mysterious but powerful prostate and their places in my life as a man, and my new life as a geezer.
Let's get down to it: Aging prostates commonly begin making tissue- not unlike ricotta- which enlarges the walnut-sized gland and squeezes in on the old bladders and the nearby tubing. (human plumbing for both genders is a "series of tubes," not like the Internet as described by Full Geezer, former Alaska Senator Ted Stevens). The ricotta displaces space where urine once gathered, squeezes off vital waterways, and, as a real world matter, means old men have to pee all the time. I mean really have to pee. All. The. Time. It means getting up 3-5 times a night, or more. It means dashing out the movie at the good part. It means peeing your pants sometimes and threatening violence upon the hapless convenience store clerk who says, relishing his authority, that he can't allow you into 7-11 staff pisser.
"OK, muthah, I'll just piss in your parking lot, then."
I'll call the cops, he said...
"I'm faster than that," I said. I was lying, of course. They could have had a swat team suited up and surrounding me before I was finished "vacuating," as my urologist would say. (Another thing to know: it tales a long, long time for old men to pee).
I seethed against the inhumanity of this weaselly, little six-pack-dispensing sociopath. Withholding his meager shitter from an obviously suffering, elderly man? Was he fearful I'd steal his toilet paper? I walked out, circled back and pissed on the back door of the place, leaving a righteous puddle where I hoped he'd eventually tread. (There were, BTW, times and circumstances, my friends, when I could not be trusted in your public restrooms, when I would stuff as much of your TP as I could possibly stuff into my person, especially if it were a European or African bathroom that strived to serve Americans. We US-ers love our soft, fluffy paper; European paper is thin, waxed or both; African TP is mostly non-existent, replaced by a tin can of water. I was a hippy wanderer in the '70's, and we coveted real toilet paper. We'd haunt places like American Express or American consuls- specifically to rip off the TP).
The puddle I left, btw, was brilliant, the color of the juice of blood oranges, product of Phenazopyradine, a precription bladder pain drug I was taking. The stream was technicolor, bright and shockingly so; pooling in the colors of what you'd imagine a murder scene might look like. In the Palermo airport, at a magnificent circular marble urinal, my pissing made quite a splash- there were mutterings by my fellow pisseros throughout, and as I exited, behind-the-back-of-the-hand remarks followed me to companions waiting outside. It made me feel special. Even when we returned to Palermo for the flight home, I was recognized- there were whispers in awe: there's that guy.
My own personal tub of ricotta mounted up in my Southern backwaters over decades, making my urination experience shall we say, less than awesome? (perhaps we shan't- since gland enlargement by my lights is definitely not momentous enough to use the word 'awesome'). The condition had waned and waxed over the years; a doctor suggested I quit coffee, another said that I step up my sex-life to at least 6 ejaculations per week. These, especially the coffee piece, were real sacrifices; the sex part wasn't all that easy at the time, hanging, as I was - a single 50-something man - with a crowd of 20-something poets. I was avuncular to these young poets and any other role I might fancy, would run the risk of me being deemed "creepy," an accusatory the post-modern geezer must avoid at all costs.
I walked a narrow beam: I am a peculiar... which is OK- especially among the poets. But you add sex into the mix and out comes "creepy," which could become an indelible stain. So I walked with intention, and avoided slipping into what might be interpreted the creepy side.
Of course, I did my social/sexual play with a totally different social group and women closer to my age. But that didn't stop me from having improbable fantasies about the younger women with whom I read poetry every week, so I guess you might say, in my heart, I was "creepy." Expert, at the time, at obfuscating what was in my heart, I was successful in never revealing my innate creepiness.
A veteran of years of sexual/urological adventurism, I was more aware of my prostate than the average guy as I approached geezerdom. Now, that's not imply I'm a urolagniac- into golden showers, "pee play," (or "watching the forsythia bloom," as they say in the mean streets of Capitol Hill). But it is to say: sexual adventurism turned urological early in my life.
The adventure started on a Victory Ship, the SS Brooklyn Heights upon which I was riding in the mid-1960's, working as waiter in the crew mess. I was 21, and hornier than a 3-peckered owl, as the saying went. But also ripe for all manner of adventure- I didn't yet see sex as adventure. (I won't go further into this topic- the specifics of my sexual encounters- I promise. My children read this, and they serve as my moral compass which so often went kerflooey before they were old enough to intervene. Urology, however, is not sex, at least to me, so it's fair game, though it still may embarrass them).
On this trip, the freighter schlepped military cargo to and around the Far East. Cargo was dumped in Vietnam where that colossal mistake, the Vietnam War, was a-building.
Most merchant marine trips are/were usually but 3-4 months long. But not this one. Once we'd dumped our cargo in Da Nang, we scooted to Okinawa to pick up ammo, then to Danang, then Bangkok, then to Guam, where we picked up something mysterious in black crates protected by Army Rangers. Then back to Da Nang, to Hong Kong, back to Bangkok, Manila, Taipei, Saigon etc., We became a local delivery service, serving the US mongers of war. The ship was out there for most of a year.
It was great for us- sailors love to be ashore- especially us young ones. We freely partook- or maybe I should more realistically say, plunged dick long into the night life of these great Asian cities, sucking up exotic beers and sweet young girls by the brothelsful.
Bringing this indulgent tale back to urology, in the aptly named Bangkok, I got a dose of the clap.
"The clap" is the common (very common) name for gonorrhea, a veneral disease no longer considered very serious now there's penicillin. It causes itching at first, then burning when you pee (burination), and the dripping of pus. It wasn't pleasant, but my shipmates, all ancient mariners, (over 30) considered the clap a rite of passage and regaled me with horrific tales of the many venereal diseases I might have got with which my various privates would simply fall off. Or incurable ones where I'd be covered with running sores, bleed out my eyeballs, then crater into murderous insanity. They relished these tales, as I did. I tucked them way in my sea stories folder, knowing that now, on one subject at least, I could be the Old Man of the Sea for the next young guy coming up. Some of my fellow younger shipmates were jealous.
At first, I didn't mind the relatively minor symptoms, nor the step-up in the manly admiration of my swashbuckling colleagues. Another "experience" notch on my Big Boy Belt holding up my Pants of Manlitude. In the fo'c'stle, I was one hell of a man, and I had the drip in my drawers to prove it.
The Second Mate, a scoliatic little know-it-all named Mr. Poxie, gave me a shot of penicillin, and the symptoms receded somewhat, and I brandished my bragging rights upon request.
As with my shipmates, I recalled with fondness my nights in the Thai brothels. The perfectly beautiful and generous young women with their 'flower smoke' and tinkly laughs who'd serve as tour guides and companions by day and as another kind of guide for us near-virginal young bucks at night. They were young... and we were young, they were less innocent than us only in one respect. (We were generous with them as well...I'd like to think I helped send one or two of them through medical school and that they spent their adult lives helping their people. I've often wondered, however, if the grandma sitting back in the corner cutting noodles in my favorite Thai restaurant once strolled with me hand-in-hand down Royal City Avenue).
Weeks and hundreds of water miles later, we were still smitten, and there was no question we forgave those marvelous creatures the diseases they'd shared.
Meanwhile, the ship, instead of heading back where we came from, the West Coast, headed on East to circumnavigate the world non-stop through the the Gulf of Aden, the Red Sea, the Suez Canal, the Mediterranean, and the Atlantic towards Norfolk, VA. But for a corpse in a box picked-up in Aden, we were empty, riding high in the water like cork in a wash-tub.
Unfortunately, down below my personal decks, the pus stream increased, the urinary stinging got more painful; I dreaded peeing. I began wishing my dick had fallen off. Back to Mr. Poxie. "Oh," he said, " you must have got a real strong strain there, matie. I'll give you something stronger." So he gave me tetracycline pills, an antibiotic I knew from dosing calves for scours.
After a day or so, it was obvious the tetracyline wasn't working. I was down to saying no to taking liquids to avoid the agony of peeing. The stinging would wake me at night. Erections, typically spontaneous and frequent and welcome to a 21-year old, were hellish nocturnal intrusions.
Poxie brought out his "big gun," or so he claimed. "This is strongest medicine I got." Then he said something that echoed through my consciousness for the next month or two. "If this don't work, nothing will." Nothing will? That didn't leave me exactly bursting with hope. Picturing my throbbing dick and pus-filled underwear as permanent left me in despair as the ship bobbed precipitously over the early winter waters of the mid-Atlantic. His "big gun," was sulfa, the grandaddy of antibiotics, and like the tetracycline, exquisitely useless in the treatment of gonorrhea.
Of course it didn't work. Poxie gave up, and the old, slow, WWll freighter plowed toward the East Coast like a garbage scow. And I felt sort of like garbage... the shame of coming home with a raging venereal disease finally overcoming l'avventura of it all.
When we reached Norfolk, I was promptly arrested and thrown in jail on felony (!) marijuana possession charges. That's another fascinating story of innocence and degradation I'll save for another day, but long story short - or long story that could be longer but I won't indulge myself- I didn't get real treatment (massive penicillin) for weeks and weeks until I finally got home to Seattle.
I was left with a slightly scarred urethra and a lifelong dribble which caused not me not a dime's worth of trouble for the next 45 years. Though, now and again, it does cause me to smile fondly at the memory of those blessed Thai nights I thought would never end, and In a way, suppose, they didn't.
(Coming: Urination nation: Part 2, Forty-five years later).
