The decision to stop at two kids was an easy one for my wife and me. We had a boy and a girl, and we were pretty darn sure that having only two meant we could shower them with every last morsel of affection we had which meant we wouldn’t spread our love too thin. However, the decision on how to prevent a third child wasn’t quite as straightforward. At least not for me.
My wife did all she could by bravely stating that if for any unfavorable reason the doctor was forced to do an emergency C-section and cut her open, that she would ask them to go ahead and tie her tubes. Unfortunately for me, she experienced a relatively uncomplicated and effortless childbirth in which our son came shooting out of her like he was on a water slide at Raging Waters, USA.
Tragically, this left me with two choices: get a vasectomy or go out for milk and never come home. I didn’t like either of those options, so I tried to beg and bribe and reason my way out of it. I’ll have to admit that my arguments sounded pretty lame compared to hers. She would remind me that she had passed an 8 pound human through a hole the size of a quarter. Twice. And I would I counter with, “Yeah, but I built you that planter box last Mother’s Day.” Ok, I’ll admit it, bad strategy.
For those men out there who may encounter this same predicament, I think it’s only fair that you know exactly what you’re getting yourself into when you commit to a vasectomy, or as I like to call it: The 10 Stages of Hell.
1. Denial: Like me, you’ll put it off for awhile because deep down you’ll foolishly believe that there must be another solution that you’re not thinking of. You’ll ignore the impending doom and go about your day while thinking occasionally, “I’ll figure something out,” until eventually your wife will grab you by the balls and say, “If you want to keep these, you will make an appointment!”
2. Acceptance: Now you will turn cold and numb and you will sit in a class with other stupid men and learn all about what will happen during the procedure. At this point you will realize that the only thing worse than having your balls sliced open is taking a class in which they go into graphic detail about having your balls sliced open. There will be women in the class as well, holding their husbands’ hands and saying things like, “It’ll be ok, I promise.” The teacher in the class will make your acceptance official by having you sign a piece of paper promising that you have not been coerced in any way by another person, say a spouse or a mother-in-law, to allow someone to cut you open, sew you up and prevent you from ever creating another child on this planet. Then you’ll look over at your wife who is smiling that tight-lipped smile and looking at you with a face that says, You are signing that fucking piece of paper and you’ll realize that moral support is probably not her primary reason for being here.
3. Fear: On the day of the surgery shit will really start to sink in. You will sit in the waiting room with other men who are trying to look cool and nonchalant but who are actually terrified and you’ll think, Is that how I look? They will all have their legs pressed tightly together, as if daring someone to try and pry them apart. You will look down at your balls and actually apologize to them for getting them into this mess. Reality sets in and you realize that unless you board a plane to Peru right now, this is going to happen.
4. Massive Embarrassment and Shame: Once you enter the torture chamber, they will show you to the bathroom and ask you to put on a robe, which makes no fucking sense because the moment you lie down they lift it up to see what you’ve got under the hood, except instead of dismantling a carburator, they’ll be dismantling your junk. An overweight nurse will come in and start fiddling with you. She’ll clean you up with soap and iodine, while carelessly flopping your dick around with the same interest as one does while skinning a chicken for dinner. I’ve had people ask me if I got a boner while this was going on, as if being naked automatically leads to arousal. This is like asking someone who has been lit on fire if they are hungry for s’mores. Then before you can stop it from happening, you’ll hear yourself start to tell a story about the time you went camping with your friends in the woods behind your house, and about halfway through the story you’ll realize just how retarded of a person you become when placed in awkward situations.
5. Violation: The doctor will make a brief appearance and introduce himself to you and your dick, and then he will look down at your penis, then back up to the nurse and they will share a smirk which will shake your confidence more than you could ever believe. The nurse will then inform you that it’s time to shave your “region”. In reality it’s only a can of shaving cream and a razor, but in your mind all you’ll think of are the hundreds of movies you’ve seen where the guy who works for the mob pulls out a suitcase full of scalpels and pliers and every kind of tool you can think of that causes the type of pain that makes people scream like the mentally insane. You’re quite certain that this nurse has been teased her entire life for being fat and she’s now going to avenge every woman who has ever been violated by a man with a penis by taking a razor to your balls. What makes it worse is that she will hum benevolently while she works, like the lady in Misery before she crushes James Caan’s ankles with a sledgehammer. That’s just creepy.
6. Pain: The doctor will come back in with that little smirk and ask you how you are doing, and you will lie and say, “Fine.” Then he will pull out a giant needle and stick it into your balls. And then he will pull it out and do the same thing three more times in different locations. Four shots. In your balls. I don’t think I can overstate this enough: A LARGE NEEDLE WILL BE INJECTED INTO YOUR BALLS ON FOUR SEPARATE OCCASIONS! In reality, it doesn’t hurt as bad as you would think. Wait, yes it does, moron, because it’s a giant needle being injected into your balls!
7. Anger: Once you are properly numb, the doctor will go to work and you will feel a lot of tugging and pulling as he proceeds to cauterize and dam up the passageway where your sperm once swam happy and free. Now that the shock is starting to where off, you will think of the time you took your dog in to get neutered and how you had laughed at the sad look on his face and told him, “You poor bastard, it’s for your own good.” Then you will start to get angry because you now know exactly how old Gus felt: These are my balls and I shouldn’t have to give them up if I don’t want to. You’ll look up at the doctor and it will suddenly occur to you that he has been giving you that same “Poor bastard” look since you got here and that you have probably been giving him the “Sad dog look” too, and that will piss you off so much it will be all you can do to not jump off the table and run off howling into the forest.
8. Relief: Then it will be over. The doctor will stitch you up and lower the hood and say, “That’s it, all done,” and you will feel like an anvil has been lifted off your chest. You’ll feel a grin start to spread over your face that you couldn’t stop even if you wanted to. Like you’re mad with hysteria. Like you’re Jim Carey on crank.
9. Joy: The doctor will ask you to go into the bathroom to clean up because the iodine they used to sterilize you with looks like a bear peed on your entire pelvic region. Dark yellow pee. But you’re so happy it’s over that you don’t care about the bear pee and so you go into the bathroom and lock the door and look at yourself in the mirror and that’s when you start to bounce on your toes and shadowbox with your reflection because you’re BACK. You’re a man again. Then you will raise your arms in the air like Rocky after he ran up those concrete steps in Philadelphia with all those idiot kids chasing him, like you just won a championship, and finally you will flip off your reflection with both fingers because your reflection represents all the guys without vasectomies who made fun of you for having to get one but who still have to deal with the inconvenience of condoms whenever they have sex. ”Fuck you, A-holes! Who’s laughing now, motherfuckers?” (I’m serious about this celebration thing. You will be so happy it’s over that you will do some weird fucked up shit in the bathroom mirror the first chance you get to be alone. Enjoy it!)
10. Therapy: The joy will eventually wear off and you will walk around for a week feeling like a fifteen pound weight has been tied to your balls. You will slap some frozen peas or a steak on them, but it won’t help much. Then you will start to feel a little mentally fucked up as you think back to the violation that happened to you and you will start to block it out the best you can but it won’t help much because you were pretty much sodomized except without any actual penetration. You’ll catch yourself rocking back and forth a lot and staring off into nothing, like a mental patient. Going to a shrink will make you feel all girly and emotional and less like a man, so instead you will push it down and repress it and only possibly discuss it with your wife or write about it in your blog in hopes of exorcising the demons within.
Still, every time I have sex with my wife and I don’t have to reach for that little foil wrapper, it feels worth it. If you’re still not sure whether you should have a vasectomy or not, here’s my advice to you: DON’T FUCKING DO IT! No, do it, it’s totally worth it. RUUUUUUUNNNNN!!! No, no, it’s ok, you’ll be happy in the end. GODDAMMIT, TAKE A STAND FOR MEN EVERYWHERE!
Fuck, I don’t know. Do whatever the hell you want. Either way…you’re fucked! And that’s the truth.
Cheers, until next time.
The RB
