After he stitches me up, I’m in no pain, although I say, “I’ll bet this is going to hurt tomorrow,” and he says no, he’ll give me some pain medication, and I’m thinking, What a great doctor. He’s giving me pain medication. And while he’s in a giving mood I hit him up for some prostate antibiotics because my left testicle feels very heavy.

“Your left testicle feels heavy?” he says skeptically.

Yeah, every guy gets it, shit; I tell him my left nut feels like an anvil. I mean, I want to cradle it in my hand when I’m out and about, or rest it on a little silk pillow when I’m stationary. It doesn’t really hurt, but I’m very much conscious of having a left testicle, whereas I have teeth and a belly button and a right testicle and I don’t even know. I tell him I don’t want a finger wave, because I’ve been through this a thousand times. My prostate is backing up into the seminal vesicles, and if you don’t jerk off it builds up and gets worse, and the doctor agrees—that does happen, and he doesn’t really want to give me a finger wave, especially when I tell him that a urologist checked it out a couple of months back. He puts on a plastic glove and feels my testicle, pronounces it swollen, and writes a script for antibiotics, after which he tells me to quit drinking coffee. I was going to tell him that I don’t jerk off because I’m a sex fiend; I have low sex drive, and it’s actually not that much fun. I just do it to keep the prostate empty. Or should I tell him I’m a doctor myself, albeit defrocked, that I just got back from Africa and my nut could be infected with elephantiasis? Highly unlikely, but you never know. But he won’t know diddle about tropical medicine—that’s my department, and I decide I will just shut my mouth, which is a first for me.