Song book: Lyrics with Words

Don’t Let the Old Man In

                          Toby Keith

My parents used to say, “It’s hell to get old.”

We have one of those decorative pieces of wood with a funny saying on it in our home. Ours says,

“We will be friends until we are old and senile, then we will be new friends.”

One evening, my old friend Nick and I were standing in front of a restaurant waiting for our wives.

“Since we’re here alone,” Nick started, “can I ask you about that time after your prostate surgery when your PSA went up?” And so it went. For a few minutes, we were able to talk man to man, old friend to old friend, about our shared prostate cancer experiences. We were alone, no wives, no sons or daughters, no one else but the two of us. We focused on those unexpected, private things which happened later-on, post-op. 

Don’t let the old man in, I wanna leave this alone
Can’t leave it up to him, he’s knocking on my door

As we stood there outside the restaurant, the conversation brought to mind a recent phone call I’d gotten. It’d had come from an unfamiliar number within a familiar area code. Toronto. My brother, John, lived in Toronto, but this was not his number. I answered my phone.

“Hey, Mike,” the old man’s voice said. It had been John, calling, so I was glad that I had answered the unfamiliar number.  He sounded down, sad. He spoke haltingly.

“Can you tell Mother that I won’t be able to get home this weekend?” he asked.

“Sure, I can do that.”

“Just tell her that things came up, and that I won’t be able to drive down.”

“No problem,” I reassured him. “What’s up?”

“Oh nothing. I’m just kinda tired and busy.  Thanks.”

We said good bye. That was basically all the conversation there was for that call.  

My brother and I talked regularly. The conversations were sometimes difficult, but that call had been different. My brother, who was quite a bit older than I, suffered from dementia and lived in a wonderful assisted living facility. He had called me.  As he no longer had a cell phone, and the phone in his room was part of his residential system, he did not generally call out. But that day, somehow, he did. He wanted our mother to be sure to know that he would not be getting home over the weekend.

In my head, during our brief conversation, I had been screaming, “She’s dead, John! And you can’t drive! And none of us live at home anymore!” But I didn’t say any of that; I played along. I had experienced similar conversations in the past and had learned it was best to stay calm. Play along. Say a prayer. Reassure. That was good.

Later, I recalled a similar conversation John and I had had when Laulani and I were visiting the long-term care residence where he was living. At that time, just he and I were in his room. “Mike,” he asked hesitantly, “is Dad dead? I never seem to hear from him.”

Since he had posed the question, I said simply, “Yes.” And added, “He died many, many years ago.”

“That’s what I thought.” That was all. Conversation over.

Conversations with elders can, indeed, be hard. Laulani called her mother. It was her mom’s birthday, and I heard her say, “Mom, Happy birthday!” Her mother was turning 90 years old.  At the time, she was living with Laulani’s sister in California. For several reasons, Laulani and her mom hadn’t talked on the phone as much as used to, or as much as they’d have liked.

I heard her ask, “Do you know which birthday this is?”  Apparently, Mom didn’t. “It’s your 90^th! That’s big, Mom. Happy birthday!”

I then heard her ask, “Do you know what today’s date is?” She didn’t. “Do you know what day of the week this is?” She didn’t. “What are you going to do to celebrate?” The answer was a combination of “I don’t know” and “Nothing.”

It was a sadly frustrating conversation.

Ask yourself how old would you be
If you didn’t know the day you were born

It brought back memories of other difficult conversations – different times, memories of my youth. Old Uncle Tony used to come to our door early nearly every evening. He only lived a few houses away; we could see his house from our front door. He came by to watch TV with someone other than his unpleasant old wife. She would get frustrated with Tone, and she wasn’t very nice about it. Old Tone liked to watch TV – the news, sports, sit coms. But he also liked to talk to the people on the TV. It was his only human interaction, his only conversation on any given day.

As the news was presented, he’d ask questions, make comments or sometimes just swear at what he was hearing. He’d add his own dialog to the sit coms, not always following the story line, not always using language that most people would be comfortable with. He’d get a bit feisty when the newscasters or actors didn’t respond to what he’d said; it all made perfect sense to him. His impatient wife wanted nothing to do with these conversations. After a few shows or news segments, Uncle Tony would slowly get up, and we’d watch him as he slowly walked back home.

I thought of a beautiful older couple we used to see in church every Sunday. They were long ago retired, their children grown. The husband always looked dapper in his sport jacket and tie. The wife was always very nicely dressed, hair brushed, and well made up. They sat in the same pew every week; we all expected to see them. Friends surrounded them. They smiled, greeted people, sang along with the choir. For people who were not paying close attention, they looked like a happy, loving old husband and wife team. For those of us who know them, though, we saw that the husband was the only one who actually spoke to their friends. The wife smiled, waved across the aisle, and shook hands or hugged at the kiss of peace. She sang the hymns she has known for years. But she did not speak. For those of us who knew them, we also knew that her husband had lovingly dressed her and done her hair and make- up every week for a long time now. They were a beautiful old couple, but only one of them was there.

Try to love on your wife
And stay close to your friends
Toast each sundown with wine
Don’t let the old man in

I received another call from my brother, John.

“Hey, Mike,” he started. “I don’t have any toothpaste and I really need to brush my teeth. Can you stop and pick some up for me?”

“I’ll make sure you have it!” I reassured him. I knew that my brother had plenty of toothpaste, and that if he were running low, Denis, his wonderful caretaker would also be sure to get more. I had learned from these random calls, though, that it was best and least stressful if there were no challenges to the situation, no push back.

I thought about another old family friend. Always the involved and fun-loving grandfather, he had lately become noticeably quiet at family get-togethers. Whereas he had once been the loveable jokester to his children and grandchildren, the lead cheerleader for all their successes, now he sat quietly by, only occasionally joining in conversations.  Laulani and I spent an afternoon with him and his wife. It’d been a wonderful day, catching up, learning family secrets, and planning parties down the road. During the hours we spent together, the old guy smiled, and nodded, but, save for rare injects into stories from many years past, said very little. There was an empty middle distance to his expression, so unlike his ready smile and quick wit.

Laulani got another call. It was her brother, again, this time asking her if she had heard that their mother was in rehab. She wanted to scream “What the hell are you talking about?” Or “Your damn question answers itself!”

But instead, she calmly said, “No. What’s going on?”

Her brother explained something about a stroke, something about Mom being in the hospital, and now, something about being in rehab. This was not the first time. Apparently, this had been going on for a while, but nobody had bothered to tell us. Mom been at the rehab facility for a couple weeks when he’d called.

This was serious. Laulani and I traveled to the Bay Area where her mother had been living with her daughter.  We went to the rehab center. It brought back memories of visiting with my brother, John. Although now, not a new experience, it was still eye-opening.

Entrance doors are guarded or locked, making ‘escape’ difficult. Alarms sound frequently – especially in the evening hours. (Don’t let the old man out.) Staff was very nice and helpful. Food was good, but not what I’d call appetizing. Artwork lines the walls; the same artwork, it seemed, was in every venue where old folks live. Residents lie in beds, sit in wheelchairs, sometimes meander the halls.

One of the patients, an old man at Mom’s residence, made our visit especially fun as he rode his wheelchair up and down all of the halls of the center each evening, screaming obscenities and curses as loud as he could. More than once, he directed his diatribe at us.

Sundowning. That’s what it’s called. Alzheimer’s and dementia-related, late afternoon and evenings sometimes bring on challenging changes in demeaner and behavior. Thus the name. The damned old man gets pissed when he can’t come in for the night.

My phone rang. Toronto, again. This call was, “Hey, I can’t find my car keys. Thought I left them in my pocket, but they aren’t in there. I wanted to go out and run a couple errands, but I’m afraid I can’t – and my car might be gone.”

“Don’t worry, Bud,” I reassured him. “I’m sure they’re around. I bet Denis knows all about it. Just wait til he gets there.”

“Oh, right. OK. Thanks.”

Although John and I talked frequently, we often repeated the same conversation several times within a single call. I also came to understand that, for as many times as he visited our home in Washington over the years, he had no idea where we lived. I became somewhat concerned with the number of calls I had received in a fairly short time. In checking with his support system, as I suspected, he was fine. However, he was a bit anxious for some reason.

It was not long afterwards that my phone rang again. Another call from Toronto. This time, though, I knew who was calling. It was John’s good friend, Dermot. He didn’t call very often but we did talk fairly regularly.

After a few pleasantries, Dermot, in perfect Canadian, asked, “Mike, are you familiar with sundowning?” And so the conversation continued. “They’ll have to move John into a more secure area…..”

Nick and I waited outside the restaurant for our wives. The conversation shifted to hearing loss, to hemorrhoids, and other shared experiences that come with age. “Damn!” I said, “We sound like a couple of old men on our last legs.”

Shortly, our wives arrived. We all went into the restaurant for dinner. I don’t remember what we ate, but it was good.

Right now, I am feeling old. Somebody’s knocking at the door. That damned old man is relentless. It is hell to get old.

And lest I forget, let’s be sure to be friends until we are old and senile, then, with any luck, we can become new friends.

And I knew all of my life, that someday it would end
Get up and go outside, don’t let the old man in….

Werewolves of London

Warren Zevon

Werewolves of Woodinville

Jim, Glen, Brett and me. That translated into TC’s dad, Griff’s dad, Clark’s dad, and Shea’s dad. We sat together prepping and pumping ourselves up for another home game. The four of us each had his little slice of turf in the tight 2-person score booth behind home plate at the Woodinville High School baseball field. It was cramped, but we were a team. Today was the last home game of the regular season of our sons’ senior baseball year.

Each of us dads had his particular function in the booth. Brett had put together the music tapes, so he was in charge of making sure that the right song was played at the right time. Somehow, Werewolves of London seemed to play during every warmup. And yes, back in the day in the booth, we still used cassette tapes.

Glen kept the score board updated. All he had to do was hit keys to add balls and strikes, runs, and keep fans updated on which inning we were in. It may sound like a pretty straightforward task, and it should have been. But, back in the day, the existing technology coupled with the ancient wiring at the field made that about the most challenging part of our collective work.

Jim talked. He talked about his son; he talked about the other team, about calling pitches, about the weather, about the Boston Red Sox. Jim was their #1 West Coast fan. #1 fan in the country! Jim talked.

I kept the score book, which meant keeping track of at bats, pitches and pitch counts, runs, hits, errors. I also announced the game and called plays. I was The Voice of the Falcons.

Each of us knew the other guys’ jobs, but it played out better when the tasks were divvied up. In our other, regular lives, each of us did very different things. Glen was a very successful business owner in the tech industry. Brett was a political lobbyist. Jim was in corporate sales. I was in education. We had come to Washington from all across the country over the years, had different political views, and different life experiences. But there in the little booth, we were a team.

This was one of those days when the electrical connection between the score booth and the score board out in center field was acting up. Luckily, Glen had gotten to the field early enough to play around with the system. After checking everything within the booth, he went around the ballpark and climbed up onto the narrow ledge in front of the score board. Sure enough, he found the problem. But once that was fixed and lights lit, he also saw that there were a few light bulbs which had burned out. Not surprisingly, he had a few spares with him, and in no time, all the lights were on and the score board was ready for the game.

Along with everything else which kept Brett busy, he was also the president of the Falcons Boosters’ Association. Lots of fundraising! One of the big-ticket items on his Boosters’ to-do list was getting the electrical system at the ballpark fixed.

By that time Glen had fixed the scoreboard, Brett and I were in the booth. Brett was busy loading up the right songs for the Falcons’, our boys’, pre-game warmups. By the time Glen got back from the outfield, the warmup tape was blasting across the field. That was always fun. Before each season started, each player on the team was asked to select a couple of his favorite songs for the warmup tape. There was some guidance, of course, and all the songs were subject to review and exclusion.  Our coach, Coach Agnew, was particularly sensitive about no offensive lyrics coming through his sound system. The entire warmup tape would have run for about an hour and a half without a repeat – if we had that much time.

Ah-hooo, werewolves of London
Ah-hooo
Ah-hooo, werewolves of London
Ah-hooo

The day was also Senior Day, the game where our graduating team members were individually called out and recognized before the start of the game. The boys lined up on the 1^st base line outside their home dugout as their names were called, starting players first, then the rest of the seniors. All received a standing ovation. That was more than appropriate as they had been playing together for years, and had become an amazing and successful team.

After the seniors, the rest of the home team and the visiting starters lined up along their 1^st and 3^rd base lines and were introduced. Since I knew all of our boys, I had no trouble with names. That was not always the case with the visitors. I tried to do a name check with the visiting coach prior to the game – especially when I saw names I handwriting I couldn’t read or some potential pronunciation challenges in the line-ups. It didn’t always work. Regardless, I introduced each player, his position and batting order.

With all the boys lined up along the baselines, it was time for the Star Spangled Banner, our national anthem. We had a beautiful version on tape. More than one, in fact. There was the instrumental version, and two or three sung versions. Today Brett played one of the sung renditions. In all honesty, I do not remember who sang it, but it was a perfect selection. Everyone stood, hand over heart, and many in the stands sang along.

It was time to, “Play ball!” We headed into the top of the 1^st inning.

Our boys took the field, hustling out of their 1^st base side dugout. The warm-up music was over; the anthem had been sung. The top of the 1^st was about to start. Brett kicked in another taped play list. Music was a big part of the game at our field. Along with the team warm-up music, each player in the lineup had his particular, personally-chosen walk-up song. Song selection was both fun and arduous. The walk-up reflected that player’s personality, his taste in music, and it was played every time he walked up to the plate for his at-bat. If he did something especially noteworthy at the plate or on the field, the song was played again. All walk-up selections had to have been OK-ed by Coach Agnew, of course.

Brett’s filler song faded out as the pitcher’s walk-on song came rolling across the field.  At this level of play, most pitchers were not POs, pitchers-only. However, they didn’t get a chance to bat if they were throwing that day. American League rules. The walk-on was the song which the pitcher had chosen for those few seconds when he would walk toward the mound and start his warmups with the catcher. Today’s pitcher was Marty, aka Sticks. He was called Sticks both for his long lanky frame and for the fact that he wore #11 on his uniform. I have no idea what Marty’s walk on was.

As the team took its place on the field and as the visiting team lined up to bat, my job kicked in. I started to call the game. The four of us had been warned by Coach Agnew, as usual, to keep it friendly and clean. For the most part, it was. We were dads, and it was natural to get excited by a great play or a productive at-bat. Every now and then, someone might forget to turn the mic off between calls, and sometimes something might … slip through. Our fans usually loved it when that happened!

Outside the announcer’s booth, it was busy, too. The booth, itself, had been carved out of the space beneath the bleachers between the home and the visitor sides of the field. It was slightly below ground level making our view of home plate about the same as the catcher’s. We entered from an outside door on the side.

Behind the booth, in a separate, larger space built under the bleachers was the snack shack. Run by the team moms, it was well-managed by Brett’s wife, Marda, and well stocked with a really wide variety of candies, hot and cold drinks, hotdogs, hamburgers and other treats popular with kids and parents. It was a money maker, to be sure.

Today was Senior Day, and we expected a lot of extra spectators. Therefore, today’s selections were even bigger and broader than usual! A couple parents were pretty steady volunteers, but almost all the team moms and dads took their turn working the shack over the course of the season. Folks couldn’t see the game from the front of the shack, nor could they hear the announcer, but they did love to congregate and catch up with one another…until their son was up to bat or making a play on the field.

After one game, my wife told me that a woman, a stranger to the group, asked who “that announcer” was. She said that he had such a deep sexy voice that she wanted to know what he looked like. Fortunately, she missed him.

Most of the boys on the team had gone to school together and played with or against one another, in one sport or another, since elementary school. Most of the boys we knew played one or two sports. Over time, we had gotten to know them and their families quite well.  There was always lots of time waiting around after practice, lots of team parties, and lots of road trips. Over time, too, there had been lots of parent parties.

Knowing everyone had not always been the case, though. I remember a few years earlier when Shea had been in 7^th grade. He came to me one day and said, “Dad, there’s this kid at school who is a pain.” That was not like my son. “I don’t want to have to talk with him, but I feel guilty if I don’t.

He always comes up and butts into our conversations when I’m talking to the guys. He doesn’t… he doesn’t just wait around to talk – to me or to anybody. He just starts talking! Mainly to me. He mainly just wants to talk to me!”

I suggested that stounded like the kid needed a friend.

“ I really don’t want to be mean to him – but I ….but he…. What am I going to do, Dad?”

 “Dude, you are The Man,” I said. “You have more best friends than anybody I’ve ever seen before. Here’s a kid with maybe no friends. Just be nice to him. Talk to him sometimes. I know you. Just be nice to him.”

And so he did. Shea and the kid became friends, and as a result, he soon became friends with everyone else. Although he didn’t play baseball the rest of the guys took him in and accepted him as one of them.  Soon, he became the Team Manager for baseball and for any and every team he could squeeze into his schedule and his capabilities. His interpersonal insights became invaluable. At games, he always took time to come over to say hello to me. At every game, he’d come my way in the booth, and we’d have a little conversation. Then he’d find his favorite – lucky – spot and watch the game.

Parents and family friends sat in the bleachers. Each person had his or her favorite, lucky spot. If I wasn’t calling a game, I sat at the top of the bleachers, in the middle. It gave me a good view of the field and generated great mojo. TC’s mom, Karilee, stood near one of the light poles along the cyclone fence. It was her lucky spot. Sometimes, one parent or another would move a few inches to the right or left, or up or down one row. All doing his or her part to bring on good luck for that game.

Other guys who played other sports tended to like to sit on top of the knoll behind the bleachers. There the football, basketball, soccer and lacrosse players gathered to cheer on their own boys of summer. Many of them had played baseball in Little League days, but with the commitments of each individual sport, it was a challenge to play more than one. Sometimes, it worked out with football, but even that was tough.

The guys on the knoll knew the baseball team all too well. Sometimes, they had their girlfriends join them at the games. Lucky for most of the adults that they couldn’t hear all that was said from the hilltop. A lot of it was incredibly funny, but it would never pass the coach’s litmus test.

Ah-hooo, werewolves of London
Ah-hooo

Today’s game had a lot of additional moving parts. Along with the regular 7 innings of high school baseball, it was, as noted, Senior Day. The guys on the knoll dressed in their Shreds. Shea’s older brother and sister also got to come to this game. There was also the potential for a weather delay.

And there was. The weather delay was, fortunately, short lived. Rain had been predicted, but not a thunderstorm. Between the 2^nd and 3^rd inning, it looked like the sky might just totally open up. The rule said that if lightning were spotted during a game, there was a mandatory 30-minute delay after the last flash was seen. The clouds became dark and heavy. The smell of ozone was in the air. The umpire halted the game to assess the weather. Somehow, though, the lightning never materialized, and although the sky was still heavy, the game went on. The hope was that they’d finish at least 4 innings – and we’d be up – to make it an official game.

The boys on the knoll were happy about that. They’d used Senior Day as an excuse to haul out their shreds, wild and crazy “Front Line” school colored costumes and makeup which senior boys wore to cheer on football games in the fall. Most of the seniors on the baseball team were part of the Front Line, and they got a kick out of seeing their classmates all decked out. No lightning and no rain meant dry shreds – and no runny makeup.

After all the years the boys had been in school and playing together, most families knew each other pretty well. Most knew that our son had older siblings, but not all. Some of those who knew had never actually met Shea’s older brother and sister. Both were much older, out of school and living and working in other places around the country. As it was Senior Day, they’d both made it home for the game.  That was great fun, but also a huge surprise to those who had thought Shea was an only child!

The game went on despite the weather. Shea, Beau and Max turned several of their famous 4-6-3 double plays. TC had some amazing catches in center. Shea went 3-4 at the plate with 2 RBIs. After the top of the 7^th, we were ahead 6-3. That made it official. Our boys had won, and had finished the season with a resoundingly strong W-L record.

All that was left was the Team Party.

And so it went. Our time in the booth was coming to an end. Jim, Glen, Brett and I had done our jobs together for three seasons. Music had played. Walk ups had changed. New ones had come to us in short order in the booth. Glen had kept the lights and scoreboard working. The scorebook had been kept, and games announced. A tradition had come to an end.

Baseball is a spring sport. The season ends close to graduation time. After graduation, almost every member of the team headed off to college. Many played ball – D-1, D-2; some played just for the joy of the game. After all the years have passed, the boys of on the team and those on the knoll still get together. They gather from all over the country for one thing or another – fantasy football drafts, bachelor parties, guys’ get-away weekends…. Nowadays, it’s not unusual for some of them to bring wives or girlfriends. And even today, their families get together for parties and celebrations.

We no longer sit in a little booth with our jobs to do. Nowadays, we are more likely to be sitting around fire pits, or on decks having a few beers – now, often with the boys – talking. Like Jim used to do. Once in a while, a song might come on the radio which has been on somebody’s play list.

“Hey, didn’t that used to be Griff’s walk up?” some old dad might ask.

Ah-hooo, werewolves of London
 Ah-hooo…

The Leader of the Band

Dan Fogelberg

Johnny’s Last Gift

On Sunday evening, December 26, the first day of Christmas, 1965, while Billy Mumy and June Lockhart dealt with being Lost in Space, my father died in the kitchen of our home while my mother called the priest.  It was the unexpected end to a long illness and a full life.

My father’s name was John, but everyone knew him as Johnny. In a lot of ways, I didn’t know my father well. I knew him, of course, and loved him, but back in the old days, fathers and little kids were not as involved in each other’s lives as they are today.  Nor were we as close to his family as we were with my mother’s.  All those maternal aunts, uncles and cousins were a part of our every day lives.  No so my father’s.  One brother lived close, but that brother’s wife was distant, cold, unfriendly.  And they had no children.  His other brother, sister, and their families lived far away.  They had big families, lots of cousins, but the distances kept us apart.

What I do know, though, was that my father was movie-star handsome.  Pictures from his younger days, and years of comments from “the girls”, the ladies of the couples my parents socialized with, testified to the truth of that.  I knew that deep inside he would have loved to sail off to a tropical island.  And I know that he and his good friend, Jay, did almost that; they’d taken a road trip during the Great Depression because there was no work.  Rather than sit home and stagnate, they pooled their resources, loaded up an old Maxwell and set out for California.  And Mexico.  There are parts of that adventure which noone but the two of them would ever know about.  While they were on the road, though, he wrote daily to his beloved, Margaret, while Jay wrote daily to his Hester.  Not everything was shared.

I know, too, that not long after they were married, Johnny gave up his own home so he and Margaret could move back into the house where Margaret had been raised in order to care for her parents, both of whom were in the throes of terminal illnesses, passing quickly, one after the other.  Johnny and Margaret raised their family in the same house in which Ed and Molly had raised Margaret and the rest of their family a generation before.  I don’t know if that ever bothered my father; it never seemed to.  Our family was happy.

My father worked hard and was well respected for what he did.  He was as a tool designer.  I never did know just what that meant except that he seemed to have designed some pretty cool things which his company then manufactured.  He played well, too. He and my mother had a full, rich social life in our little town. For years, my father rose through the chairs of the local Elks Lodge until he finally became the Exhalted Ruler at a time when that meant something.  He and my mother traveled the country to attend conventions in far-off, exotic cities like Chicago.  As a child, I could only imagine what it must have been like to go to chicken-in-the-car-and-the-car-won’t-go-Chicago.  I got to stay with my cousins when they traveled, so it was also fun for me.

My dad liked beer.  As a child, he’d been raised on the Ballentine Farm with the Ballentine boys.  I don’t know where that was or who they were, except that they made Ballentine beer.  Purity. Body.  Flavor.  It always sounded like they’d had a great time.  My grandparents had worked for the Ballentine family until they didn’t anymore.  That’s when they moved their family to our town to work the railroad.  I suspect that the Farm was where he acquired his taste for beer, though.

Smells are powerful memory joggers. The Flatiron Bar and Grill was a crusty old place about a block away from the heart of downtown.  It was not much of a place, but it had a bar.  In Pennsylvania where we lived, there was no beer in grocery stores.  It came either from a distributor or from a bar. My dad would drive down Lehigh Avenue, a slightly seedy street which paralleled the railroad yards, park the car in front of the Flatiron, go in, and have a glass or two with buddies I never saw.  He wouldd buy a quart bottle or two of Ballentine Ale, come out, and we’d go back home.  I say ‘we’, because if all the stars were aligned, I wouldd get to go with him.  While he was inside, I would sit in the car smelling beer and cigarette smoke while he drank his glass, saw his friends, and made his purchase.  Then we would head home together.  I loved that.  To this day, passing a grimy old bar, and smelling the aroma of beer and stale smoke wafting out the door is comforting.

Every year, on October 14 – or close to it – our family would go to the Brush & Pallet restaurant to celebrate my parents’ anniversary.  It was their favorite restaurant.  Since it was not in our town, and since we had to drive quite a ways to get there, I don’t know where it was.  Whether or not the food was good, I also can’t say, but one of us always had pan-fried brook trout.  We all tasted it; it was, of course, always delicious.  One year, as the date rolled around, my mother called the Brush & Pallet to make reservations only to learn that it had closed.  A fire, I think.  It never reopened.  We settled for another place closer to home, and although the food was very good, it was not the same.  One part of their anniversary celebration remained intact, though.  My parents would dance their dance to the ‘Anniversary Song’.  When the Brush & Pallet was open, someone would play the song while we were there, and they would dance as they had on their wedding day.  After the restaurant burned, they danced their dance in the kitchen, each singing the word to the other. “Oh, how we danced on the night we were wed…”

My father liked beer, but he also smoked.  There were no health fears, no warning labels, no non-smoking sections in public places.  Ash trays were considered a thoughtful gift, and we had plenty around the house.  One of my tasks, when I was little, was to run the block or so up the street to our neighborhood grocery story.  My usual list was a quart of milk, a loaf of bread, and a pack of Camels.  Angie, the old Italian lady who owned the place, never questioned it; back then, no one ever would. For my efforts, I would get a penny to spend on anything I wanted.  It was the cigarettes which ultimately killed my father.

I was a junior in high school when he was diagnosed with a brain tumor.  He’d been driving eratically and complaining of headaches.  My mother made an appointment for him to see a doctor, and it wasn’t long after that test results found the tumor.  Surgery followed to remove it.  Recovery was grueling.  Further tests also indicated that the brain tumor was secondary to the primary cancer – in his lungs. His doctor, Dr. King, had been clear, cold, blunt.  Six months. Cobalt radiation in the meantime. Good-bye.  Soon after, but too late for my father, the Surgeon General began to warn people of the danges of smoking. 

My father approached all this with the same, measured, unperturbed attitude with which he approached everything else.  He stopped smoking, cold turkey.  There was no looking back.  After surgery to remove the growth in his brain, he suffered through weeks of miserable, burning, debilitating radiation.  Back in the day, radiation therapy was very unpleasant, to say the least.  For months, he didn’t drive, didn’t go to work; he did dishes to stay busy and did not complain.  He switched his addiction from cigarettes to butterscotch hard candies, and took longer and longer walks around the neighborhood.  As time went on, he grew stronger; not strong, but stronger.  Six months passed, then a year.  He was gaining strength and doing better all the time.  He made it to my high school graduation and saw me enter college.  He began to talk of returning to work, possibly after the holidays.

Damn that Dr. King.  Johnny’d show him what six months looked like.

My freshman semester in college went well.  I had an odd roommate; he worried about having no hair on his chest. We got along though.  I was happy to get home for Christmas, but was not looking forward to returning to school in January to face semester finals.  It was great fun to see all my old friends who were also home on break.  Different schools, different experiences, different stories.  Much to tell.

Christmas was wonderful.  There were lots of presents under the tree, but there is only one which I remember. It was my father’s gift for my mother. My father had walked downtown himself and picked out a gift for my mother, a place setting to complete her china set. She had been happy when she spotted it in the window of our local jewelry store; now she loved it all the more as it sat under the tree.  On Christmas day, dinner with lots of family was tradition and traditionally delicious.  That night, we rested.  It was Saturday.

“Are you going out tonight with your friends?” my mother asked on Sunday. My friends and I had talked about it.  Tommy’s In Crowd was the current, hot place in town to see and be seen.  Tommy, himself, was an old friend, a man I’d worked with at a restaurant during high school.  He now had a bar of his own, and it was doing pretty well.  All the college kids would get together, visit, toss a few down and support Tommy at the same time.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I might just stay home.”

“Oh, go on,” she urged. “Get out with your friends.  See some young people. You won’t get the chance much longer. We’re fine.”

I don’t know why, but I opted to stay home.  Maybe I was tired.

Dad was sitting in his usual spot.  Over the years, his chair – new, old, same or different – was always in the same place in the room.  My mother was on the couch in her same place.  I was sitting in the big wing-back across the room.  We were watching television.  It was time for Lost in Space, not one of our usual family shows, but it sounded like fun.

The program started, the situation developed, the characters were all seriously involved.  Billy Mumy and June Lockhart were saving the universe.

Commercial break.  The show started again.  Dad coughed.  Nothing special, just a loose cough.

Then he coughed again.  And again.  But now there was blood.  I looked at my mother; she back at me.  I grabbed a box of Kleenix to take to my dad.  In the second or so it took to do that, it was clear that a box of tissue was not going to help.  I ran to the kitchen to get a towel and ran back.  More blood was coming, faster.  I went for more towels and a bowl, a pot, something.  Again, seconds passed.  When I got back, my mother ran to the kitchen to call an ambulance.  She could eaily have used the phone which was in the next room, just a few feet away, but she did not want my father to hear what she was going to say.  “Come right away….  No sirens, please….  Hemorraghing fast…. I think he’s dying.  Thank you.”

I felt helpless to stop the bleeding.  I held the towels and the pot I had grabbed from the kitchen.  I had never seen that much blood pour out of one body.  I could not remember how many pints the human body holds, but I was afraid that I was seeing that much in front of me.

My father sensed the absence of my mother.  Wordlessly, he asked me where she was.  I told him, the kitchen.  He started to get up to go to where she was.  I told him not to try to move; she’d be right back.  But he continued to stand.  Once on his feet, he walked toward the kitchen, I propped him up as he went. 

I will never know how he was able to walk from the living room down the short hall into the kitchen. But he did.  Truth be told, I do know how he did it.  He willed it to happen.  He willed himself to be in the room with Margaret just as he had willed himself to survive more than six months.

Once in the kitchen, he sank down onto a little white rocking chair in the corner.  This was the rocker in which his own mother had cradled her babies to sleep.  It was the rocker which my mother had used to do the same with us.  Sitting in the rocker, his color changed as the last of his blood left his body.  Flesh pink to ashen to yellow to white. My mother was on the phone with our parish priest.  “No, meet us at the hospital.  The ambulance is on the way.”

He looked to her and she to him.  She put the phone down, came to where he was slumped in the little rocker, and took his hand.  It was the gesture of affection which they had shared for over thirty years.  It spoke volumes. A smile and a gentle squeeze.  It said, “I love you, Babe.  Shall we dance?”

It was over.  Sail away.

The ambulance came silently.  The priest met us in the ER.  My cousins had all the Christmas decorations taken down before we came back home.   There is a lot I never knew about my father, a lot we would miss together in the coming years.  In so many ways, though, he taught me more about himself that night than I had ever known before. He taught me life.

His greatest gift.

The lesson – the gift – has lasted a lifetime.

Here Comes the Sun

The Beatles

Here Comes the Sun, The Skin, The Burn

“Our records indicate that you are due for a visit to our Dermatology Department…..” That’s what my notice said.

Yep, that’s probably true. I go back regularly only to be cut and pasted in yet another spot or two – or three – somewhere on my body. I can’t remember exactly when these visits began, but I do remember the circumstances.

I had gone to my regular family practitioner for my regular, annual physical. As with many other things, the visit had taken some prompting from my wife. I was not sick. I didn’t have any obvious ‘things’ going on. However, it was time. And in the meantime, she had some concerns about a couple of spots she saw on my back. I had to use a mirror to try to see what she was talking about, but I knew that it was time for my checkup. I made the appointment, saw our family GP. That check-up ended up with a follow-up first visit to Dermatology.

The appointment was with Doctor Barbara Oldham. As we had never met, she asked why I had come to see her. I had been referred to her, so I suspect she knew.  But I explained. It was probably a story she’d heard many times over the years.  She was preparing to give me a thorough going over. Before starting the physical exam, though, Dr. Oldham gave me an oral exam, a personal history of my relationship with the sun.

She looked at me. Not my skin, exactly. Just me, my face. Then she started asking questions.

“Tell me,” she began, “do you have any Celtic in your background?”

This was well before the day of Ancestry.com and individual DNA testing. But my name is Donlin, and as my mother used to say, “You have the map of Ireland on your face.” Our family names run along Donlin-Dugan-Madigan-Fitzgerald lines. My great grandparents had come over “on the boat”. Aunt Maggie Dugan’s big old coat, the one she wore on that boat, had been in in our attic for 100 years or more. “Yes,” I answered. “I’m pretty much all Irish – Celtic Irish.”

She gave my face another quick once-over. “I see,” was all she said.

She went on to explain that that meant that I was in a higher risk group as people with an Irish ancestry tended to be at a higher risk for skin cancers. She mentioned Australia, full of all those Irish folks sent there a few generations back, having some of the highest rates of skin cancer in the world. That was a very positive way to start this exam.

“Did you grow up here? In the Northwest?”

“No, I didn’t.” I replied. I added that I’d grown up in the Northeast. Her reaction was somewhat nondescript. I wasn’t sure if she knew much about that region of the country, climate-wise. We most often had bitter cold and snowy winters with hot, humid, sunny summers.

“I see.  So – when you were a child, did you ever have any sunburns?” was her next question.

“Yes. I did.”

“Ok. Did you burn more than once?”

“Yes, I did.”

“How many times did you have sunburns when you were growing up, do you think?”

“Well…Every year,” I said honestly and with a straight face. “Usually a couple times or so a summer,” I added. In my mind, I was saying that it was just what we did; it helped to establish a base tan. After the redness went away, we built on the foundation. I didn’t say that out loud, though.

“I see.” I saw a slight grimace. In poker, that’d be called a ‘tell.’ Not much of a poker face, I thought.

“Did you ever blister from these burns?” It may have seemed the logical next question from her perspective, but it seemed redundant to me.

“Sure did.”

She seemed to be waiting for more. After a brief pause, she pursued the question I assumed was answered already. “How often did you blister?”

“How often? Well, about every time I burned, I guess.”

“No sunscreen?”

Apparently, she hadn’t done the math on the number of years since I’d been a child. I explained, “Back in the day, we didn’t have any sunscreen really. We did have baby oil and some suntan lotion. I never used baby oil, but I did use the lotion to help turn the red to tan. Bronze Tan, as I remember.”

The slight grimace was more pronounced.

“OK, so where did you usually get those burns?”

“Oh….at the pool. It was a big outdoor community pool. Also at the lake; we usually went to a lake for a family vacation at least one week over the summer. I guess also at home – when I mowed the lawn without a shirt on…. Then when I lived on an island in Palau, but there it felt like I tanned up more than I ever did at home. I did burn there, too, but less so.”

There was another slight grimacy look, and a bit of confusion, maybe. “Actually, what I meant was where on your body did you usually burn? But – what’s Palau?”

I knew that was what she’d meant, but I wanted to see how this would play out.

“Palau? Oh, it is a group of tiny islands in the western Pacific pretty close to the Equator. I was a Peace Corps Volunteer. It was spectacularly beautiful! And the ocean water was so warm that we’d have to get out to cool off in the sun.”

Then I went on to answer her previous question again. “As for where on my body? I got burns on my back, of course. And then my shoulders. And my nose. My mother worried most about my nose; seemed like it started to peel almost as soon as the sun came out in the spring and all through the summer. She made me put lotion on my nose all summer long. Then there were my arms, ears, lips – oh, and my knees and the tops of my feet. No shoes.”

Poor Doctor Oldham was all but shuddering. I’m not sure just when or how it came up in the conversation, but I did also mention that I’d been a lifeguard at the same outdoor pool I’d swum in as a kid.

“You were a lifeguard, too? Did you wear a shirt? Cover up? Use sunscreen?”

“Yes, I was. No shirt. No hat. Maybe some early sunscreen. But a tan was a priority.”

By the time the interview was over, I could see the doctor just wanted to bless me, order a coffin, and send me on my way. But she continued with the actual skin exam. Not surprisingly, she found something. More than one something. She took biopsies to send off the lab. The rest is history.

In the coming days, I learned that there are several kinds of skin cancers. Basal cell carcinoma is the nost common in places on skin which get a lot of sun. For me, that was just about everywhere. The good part, though, is that it’s very slow growing and the least risky kind of skin cancer to get. It’s also fairly easy to deal with. Basically, the doctor cuts or scrapes it away. That was what the doctor found that first time around. Since it was on my back and out of sight, the spots just got skimmed off. Scars? What scars? Can’t see a thing.

And with that, my annual dermatology visits began. There were times when what the doctor found was squamous cell cancers. And once, at least, one of the buggers was a melanoma. That’s the one we really want to avoid. It can be spread and can become very nasty.

As I got older, I experienced a sunburn or two over the years which I had not been prepared for. The top of my head, once well protected by a thick coat of dark hair, had become … exposed. The first time I realized that was after a day outdoors. Not a particularly hot nor sunny day, just a day outdoors. It wasn’t until I stepped into a shower at the end of the day, and felt the warm water hitting my head, that I realized how burned my scalp had gotten. It hurt like hell! Hats became a priority.

I haven’t seen Dr. Oldham in years, but I now have a list of new docs whom I do see. I wish that it had been possible to label each of my scars. They’re all over my body; some of pretty obvious and easy to see like the long zipper-looking one on my left arm. Others are all but invisible.

There is one in particular which no one ever notices – my nose. It’s new! I have had it for a couple years now. What ordinarily would have been a simple Mohs procedure morphed into a multi-layer skin removal. In the end, with so much bad skin sliced away, my nose was reconstructed with good skin from my upper chest area. The nose looks great, but I do have to pull chest hairs out of it every so often.

Over the years, we have had “the talk” with each of our kids. They are all half Celtic Irish, but susceptible to sun issues in differing degrees. Each responds differently to the sun. Sean, our oldest son, has the naturally darkest complexion.  He gets that from his Hawaiian mom. He merely thinks ‘sun’, and he tans almost instantly. Our daughter Noe is a bit fairer but loves to be tan. Fortunately, she stopped visiting tanning salons. Now, sprays do the trick for her. Shea is our youngest and most fair. His brother and sister tease him about coming from “old eggs.” He, like me, has dark hair and fairer skin, and he burns.

These days, I wear hats in the sun. I have a selection of baseball caps that will do for almost any occasion. Long sleeve t-shorts and umbrellas also help. And of course, sunscreen. Real SPF-loaded sunscreen. I didn’t mention earlier, but I absolutely hate putting anything other than after shave on my skin. If I were a woman, I would not be able to wear makeup. As a result, I slather up on sunscreen when going out in the sun, and I take a shower as soon as I get home.

So, “Our records indicate that you are due for a visit to our Dermatology Department…..”

Slice and dice. Cut and paste. Send to the lab to test.

Here we go again.

Tom, Dick, Harry and Toby

As Good As I Once Was

Toby Keith

The Brotherhood: Tom, Dick, Harry, and Toby

Toby Keith just sang “As Good As I Once Was” as I was driving along the freeway. It hit home, and  it kicked in memories with a vengeance! The memories were of how things once were, of those things ‘they’ never tell you, and of the strange and enlightening conversations I have had with other men.  The stories are true; the names are changed. As for me, like the song says, “I ain’t as good as I once was, but I’m as good once as I ever was.”

It all started several years ago.

My wife is a cancer survivor.  She was a great patient and is still an inspiration..  She should not have survived her rare and aggressive form of cancer, but she did.  More than survived, she thrived.  So a trip to the dentist was really and truly no big deal.  On one of her regular checkups, she mentioned to our family dentist that I had been having some back pains.  She mentioned, too, that I often woke up in the night drenching wet.  “You know,” he said, “I’ve known guys who have experienced similar things – only to find that they had prostate cancer.  Maybe he should have his PSA checked.”

Never argue with a wife on a mission.  Before too long, I had my PSA checked.

On a bright July Saturday not too long after that, my wife was sitting beside the community pool in our neighborhood.  That, in itself, was a rarity.  We very seldom visited that particular pool, but our youngest son was there for a friend’s birthday party.  I had just gotten a phone call from my doctor’s office.  The tests had come back, and they were positive.  It was prostate cancer.  “Damn dentist,” I said.  And so it started. 

There were rounds of doctor visits and preparations, tests and more tests.  There were also plenty of options to consider.  Options.  When a guy is diagnosed with prostate cancer, there is a menu of choices.  Today, there are even more. To me, though, as a non-medical person on the receiving end of the explanations, this is what the options sounded like.

The first option was often something called watchful waiting.  The least invasive choice, this takes a wait-and-see approach to prostate cancer.  Prostate cancer, itself, is fairly common and often slow growing. As a result,  many, many men have prostate cancer when they die, and since many men die of something else – like old age – before the cancer gets them, watchful waiting allows men to continue with their regular lives while the damn thing slowly, slowly grows and spreads.  If it doesn’t grow too fast or spread too far, so be it. The guy lives and dies with it, but not from it.  However, he is also likely to have other “male problems” as he grows older.

A second option was radiation.  Zap the suckers.  Nuke ‘em from the outside in.  This takes time and is less of a sure thing.  But there is no cutting out or sticking in involved.

Seeds were another option.  Doctors implant radioactive seeds and the radiation kills the cancerous cells from the inside.  That is the premise.  More invasive than watchful waiting, it is also “nerve sparing”, a good thing.

Finally, there was surgery.  A radical prostatectomy.  Or the more artful da Vinci robotic method. Cut it out.  That way, the man knows that the cancerous gland is gone, out of the body.  Pretty much, anyway.  Nothing is absolute, however.  Sometimes, it takes a combination of the above, surgery and radiation, for example.  There were ranges of effectiveness, but there were no guarantees. 

That was not the only ‘but’, however.  Along with a range of effectiveness, there was also a host of issues, issues of incontinence, lowered sexual drive and an even lower sexual function, for starters.  And each of these has a range of impact. However, again, newer, nerve sparing surgical procedures and doctors with more experience can minimize the negative impacts to a large degree.

For me, there was no question.  It was going to be surgery.  I wanted the damned thing out of me, and fast.  I was less concerned with the side effects.  I was in my 50’s.  My family was complete and healthy; my wife and I were definitely not planning to add any more kids.  My doctor was recognized as one of the very best in the country for his handiwork, and based on what I was told and what I’d read, I could expect to return to almost full functionality before too long after surgery.  After some discussions around the what-ifs, my wife and I decided that surgery was the safest long-term option.

This is not a story of surgery, however.  There was a lot of excellent pre-op information and great during- and after-care resources.  The surgery went well.   I went into the hospital on a Monday and was out by Thursday, catheter bag in tow.  There was one nasty side trip back to the hospital afterwards.  A blockage, a lymphocele, which meant something was not draining – except into my swollen leg.  Not a good thing.  I went back to the hospital where a team of male technicians who told me, “This won’t hurt a bit,” as they wryly smiled and rammed a tube up into my groin.  Pain-wise, they did not know what they were talking about, and they did not become part of my new brotherhood!

Once the blockage was taken care of, I was almost back in business.  An initiation of sorts was about to begin. I bore the scars of the cuts; I carried the pee bag of public identification.  So far as I knew, I was cancer free.   That was when I began to learn things, things the doctors never tell you. That was when I began to hear from people – men – who did know what they were talking about. It was my “Welcome to the brotherhood.” 

Listen up, guys.  

First of all, I have to say that what I am about to relate is based on conversations around topics I never thought I would be having with other men, other brothers.  The stories are true; the names have been changed to protect….  They are realities.  Again, they involve things the doctors never told me.

As I was recuperating, just beginning to feel like myself again, I had a phone call from a man I still have yet to meet in person.  He was a high school classmate of my wife.  Somehow, through the wonders of social media, he had found out that I had joined the brotherhood.  A bond was borne out of the cut.  I will call him Tom, Towel Rack Tom.

“So, how you doing, Brah?” Tom asked me from 2,000 miles away.  Coming right along, I told him.  “Getting it up yet?” he asked next.  He wasted no time.  “Huh?”  “You know, Brah.  Hard yet?  Stiffies?  Boners?”  Never in my life had I had ever had anyone ask me that, let alone another man, a stranger, no less.  I realized this was something special, a brotherhood.  “Not yet,” I admitted, “still not yet.”  “No problem,” he reassured me, “it’s still early. Don’t rush it.  If you have a good doc, you’ll do fine.  Takes time.  But I gotta tell you,” he went on, “and nobody’ll ever tell you this…” And so it began. 

Tom went on to explain with great pride that, back in his prime, he was The Man.  He’d been able to have and sustain such a strong, hard erection that he could hold beach towels on his dick and walk around the room. “Damn, I was a hell of a pool boy!” he said.  Now, though, he went on, after a couple years and with help from his little blue pills, his hard on was ‘serviceable’. That was his word, serviceable. About all he could carry anymore, though, was a dry wash cloth.  On a good day.  Maybe.  “Remember: serviceable.  Critical word. They’ll never tell you that,” he said.  And so we closed that conversation.

Word spreads fast sometimes.  Tom had given me something to think about, but my good friend Dick added yet another dimension.  Not long after talking to Towel Rack, I was having a beer with Dick.  We started laughing as I recounted Tom’s story.  That’s when Dick added another bit of wisdom from the brotherhood. 

“You need to get ready for something,” he said. “What that other guy said is true, but there’s more.”  More?  “Did anybody tell you about coming dry?”  Coming dry?  I wasn’t quite sure of the context.  I said, “Um…no.”  “Didn’t think so,” Dick nodded.  “They never do.”  So he took that task on, himself.

Dick explained some basic biology.  Erections.  Orgasms.  Who’s on first.  What’s going up and what’s coming down.  Prostates and seminal fluids.  Dick went on to say that once I was ready for sexual relations, my orgasms would be different.  Different? “Yep, bottom line,” he said, “the pipes are bone dry. (No pun intended.) There’s nothing going down ‘em anymore.  No more dog-water. No more squirt and release. The faucet’s on but the pipes are dry.” He smiled and added, “No more wet spots.  No more clean up, though.”   Then with more of a giggle, “Unless, of course, you pee.”  Thank you, Dry Dick.

He went on to say that that didn’t mean that sex wouldn’t be good, that it wouldn’t feel great.  He just wanted to prepare me for the reality that it would feel different, and that it would probably take some getting used to.  He was right.  Post-prostrate orgasms are not the same as pre-op pops. Obviously, I can’t speak for all the brothers, but based on my experience, they are somewhat more difficult and take longer to achieve, but they seem to come from a deeper place in the body. They are, as a result, in some hard-to-define way, more pleasurable than the old, messy ones. Nobody had told me that before, either.

Following procedures, there are check backs.  PSA checks.  Likert scales having to do with getting up at night, getting it up at night, urine flow, sexual ‘ability’ and the like.  On a scale of 1 to 7, how’s your flow?  On a scale of 1 to 7, how serviceable is your erection?  (That word again; this time from the medical person.)    My buddy Sean told me about one of his check back visits. “So about 18 months or so into the whole process, as the doctor’s helper – the physician’s assistant – was hefting my testicles in his hand,” he said, “the guy casually asked, ‘So, how’s everything going?’”  Sean told him that, overall, things were actually pretty good.  He’d had never had to wear Depends, generally slept through the night without getting up to go, peed well, and sexual ability was OK – 4 out of 7 –  with some pharmaceutical help.  Sean did say, though, that sometimes, when he looked at himself in the mirror, it just seemed that he was looking … shriveled.  Smaller.  Less.  Then Sean told me what the doctors never had, “That damn PA guy looked me straight in the eye, and with a very ‘didn’t anyone tell you’ expression, he said to me, ‘Of course.  That’s natural.’”  The PA went on to add, “After prostate surgery, men often lose up to an inch or more off the length of their flaccid penis.”  Really?  Nobody had mentioned that bit of happy news before. He went on to explain some more of the biology to Sean, but all Sean was thinking was, “NOBODY ever mentioned THAT before!”  Sean tried to tell himself, “Who cares?”  He thought, “Nobody ever sees me naked.  Nobody looks at me and thinks: Stud.  Nobody cares how big and manly I look.”  By this time in our conversation, we were both laughing pretty hard. Nervously, but hard. (I think I peed a little.) He closed, though, with one last comment, “As a guy who’s always been more a grower than a shower, I just gotta say, “Who cares how I look!?  Damn it, I do!”  Nobody else ever told me that.

I was beginning to think that there ought to be a manual for the brothers.

One night at a high school football game, I ran into my buddy Harry.  Harry, a fairly new brother, had opted for the seed implant.  Since that was not what I had done, we began to share some experiences.  Apparently, the seed thing also has its impact of sexual ability.  Harry told me a story of a recent trip he had taken to an ED clinic.  He had seen an ad on television for a remarkable new medication for men with erectile dysfunction.  “No need to wait for the pill to kick in; just a drop under the tongue,” it promised.  “That’s for me!” Harry thought.  The little blue pills were sort of working, but like those of us who had had surgery, they didn’t fully make up for lost ability.  The TV ad mentioned a free visit, an exam, and a trial offer.  It all sounded good.  Harry worked nights, his wife worked days; he had motive and opportunity.

The clinic welcomed his visit and directed him to an exam room.  A “doctor” came in shortly after.  “Drop our drawers,” the doc told Harry.  Harry did.   “Drop your shorts.”  He did.  “What’s going on?” he was asked.  “Not too much,” he answered sheepishly.  “Saw your ad and thought maybe your under the tongue pills might help.”  “Well, let’s just see!” the doctor said.  Simple as that.

Rather than receiving an under the tongue sample as the TV ad had suggested, the doctor hefted Harry and gave him a shot of the medication in the end of his penis.  “That was weird,” Harry told me a little more softly than the rest of our conversation.  The doctor left the room while Harry waited.

“It didn’t take long,” he said.  Within 10 minutes, Harry had an erection that would have made Towel Rack Tom jealous.  Before too long, the doctor returned.  He flicked and tweaked Harry’s penis a bit, apparently pleased with the reaction.  Boing.  Flick.  Diddle. Yep! Hard, all right.  To hear Harry tell this story near the end zone during our sons’ game was hilarious!

Harry and the doctor talked under-the-tongue pills.  They talked costs.  For all its promise, the magic med was going to be way too expensive and not covered by Harry’s insurance. He and the doctor started to close the conversation. Harry pulled up his shorts and began pulling on his pants.  His erection was popping out through the fly of his boxers.  He dressed around it.  Harry began to wonder when his heroic hard-on would die down.  It was already becoming a hard-on from hell.  He told me that he snuck out of the office, back to his car and headed toward home.  The damn thing never went away.  The dream-come-true was becoming a nightmare. We laughed. “What’d you do?” I asked.  He and I were barely able to contain ourselves.  Since his wife was not going to be home for several hours, he took a cold shower and did whatever it took to get his penis back to normal. 

Nobody had ever told me a story like that before – or since.

Time passed and conversations took other turns.  Towel Rack Tom, Dry Dick, Short Sean and Hard Harry all prepared me for some things I needed to know.  Then there was Bob, Bob the Banker.  Bob told me about a conversation he was going to have with his son, his 13 year old son.  As it turned out, prostate cancer seemed to run in Bob’s family.  His dad had had it, although, back in the day, nobody realized it.  His dad’s ‘problems’ were blamed on the aging process.  When you got old, you have a harder time holding your pee.  When you get old, you have a harder time getting it up.  When you get old, who cares.  It wasn’t until his dad had been diagnosed with something else that his prostate cancer was diagnosed.  Bob’s older brother had been diagnosed earlier than their dad.  He’d had his prostate removed; he was doing well. 

Now, Bob was getting ready to have “the talk” with his son.  But his talk was going to be a bit different from the usual father-son-birds-and-bees talk.  Bob fully intended to spend some time talking about salting a few away for a rainy day.  Sperm, that is.  He was going to talk to the boy about sperm banks.  “You never know,” he said.  “The boy’s got it in his genes.  He might want to put a few aside while he’s still got ‘em in his jeans.”  Nobody had ever prepared me for that possibility.

But one night, after a few beers, another friend, Frank, and I reached a whole new level of sharing.  Yet another conversation I had never thought I’d have with a buddy.  Frank admitted, frankly, that he had learned to fake his orgasms.   He felt terrible about that.  He felt bad because his wife realized what was happening and tried to console him.  “That’s OK, Honey,” did not help. “It’s not your fault,” only made it worse.  Frank had not told anyone else about his situation.   To a man who is used to satisfying and being satisfied, there was not much to say. We talked about ways to make and express love without sexual contact, and ways to make sure that our women were satisfied.  When we had pretty much finished, he said that it had helped to talk, but, unlike the other stories, for me there was little humor here.  Maybe talking had helped, but man to man, no one had prepared the words for me to help the brother here.

There is one more thing they never tell you.  Actually, in truth though, they sometimes do.  As part of all the reading material and online resources available as preparation for prostate treatment, one might come across this wonderful bit of information.  Young men who achieve orgasm multiple times a week in their teens and early twenties have a much-reduced chance of developing prostate cancer later in life. 

Yes, they did finally tell me this.

About three decades too late.

I ain’t as good as I once was…..