![]() Would it be weird? Would people ask how we met? What would be cooking on the barbecue? We could be hanging out at a barbecue in his backyard, my penis no longer in his hand. I liked him straight away and as he chatted away, I thought we could easily be friends. The doctor was younger than me, which I found shocking, even though I'm 41. Where did I think I was? An orgy? I apologised and pulled them self-consciously back up to my knees, where I was very aware of them throughout the operation. ![]() I took my jeans off and was starting to pull my underpants over my feet when the doctor interjected, "Not all the way off." I was deeply embarrassed. I wasn't afraid, though I was a little appalled. I took a deep sniff and realised he was talking about the odour of burnt male genitalia, presumably resulting from the use of the hyfrecator, the device he used to open a tiny hole in the scrotum to access and subsequently seal the vas deferens, the tubes that usually carry sperm to the penis. When I walked into the surgery room, the doctor apologised for the smell. "Everybody else came with a wife," I texted my wife. I picked up a magazine but that was no good either - I was too aware of everything around me: the gentle conversation of the loving couples enjoying their last moments of fully functioning genitalia, the strangely sexual light fitting, and the smooth jazz stylings of the quiet saxophone/clarinet cover of The Cars' classic, Drive, the last song I would hear before I had whatever a vasectomy was. I got out my phone and tried to continue my reading of Karl Ove Knausgaard's My Struggle (Book One), but I couldn't focus. There were two other men waiting, and both had their wives/partners with them. The clinic was part of a shared quasi-medical complex on Remuera Rd and the waiting room was upstairs with some very nice sofas and an enormous light fitting that seemed to represent fertility in some ineffable way. There were some functional things ("Could I drive myself home?" "Can I lift my children afterwards?") but the questions I really wanted to ask, about ejaculation and scrotums, just wouldn't come out of my mouth. I had a phone call with a nurse ahead of the operation, during which she told me some things about the operation and asked if I had any questions. Snip didn't have any places available until mid-January but, again, they were charging $425. ![]() I discovered a place called Snip, a great name implying that the process is clean, easy, quick - like a haircut in your genitals. It was early December when I suddenly panicked and decided, for no good reason, that I had to have it done before Christmas. ![]() They never replied to my email, so I went back to my previous diet of procrastination and occasional nagging from my wife. City Med charged $550 and The Vasman $480, but after some light googling I found a place in Henderson knocking them out for $425. He was leaning toward City Med for the reason, I assume, that it sounded less like a character from a horror movie. One, who was also planning one, knew more about it than I did and he seemed to believe there were only two options: The Vasman and City Med. I put it off and put it off, for no good reason really. It wouldn't be right for me to say her pregnancies have been harder for me than for her. "I just cannot be pregnant again," she had said. My wife and I had first seriously discussed the necessity of this procedure a year and a half ago, soon after she unexpectedly became pregnant with our third child. Vasectomies don't always work: about one in 300 fail early and about one in 5000 fail eventually, but they're about 200 times more effective than the pill and that's a level of security that I crave at this often-desperate stage of my life. For instance, can you still ejaculate afterwards? So let's not pretend any of us really know what a vasectomy is. There were other things I couldn't have said for sure, either. Furthermore, although I had learned that the incision would take place at the front of the scrotum, I couldn't have said with absolute certainty what the scrotum was, let alone which part was its front.
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