Long Lake, Wisconsin

Anyone joining the party here should go back here and read the story from the start. I really wish the blog tool allowed one to write things from the top down.

As you recall, dear readers, when last we left Tripp he was feeling trepidation, knowing that his future would follow one of two paths - he could face pain, humiliation, male fondling, and female hacking, or he could turn tail and he could run like a coward. Let us resume the story at that point . . .

As you can tell from my selection of words, I really had no choice. No choice at all. I dropped trou, dropped my drawers, and dropped my big butt down onto the medium-sized Pampers. I was thinking, among other things, "A medium Pampers? Really? At the world famous Mayo Clinic? I don't believe it!" I mean I didn't really expect, say, soft linens, or a chair cushioned with velvet, but couldn't the world famous Mayo Clinic have used a flat pad of some kind, or couldn't they have even used an adult-sized "Depends" sanitary garment?! Had the Clinic succumbed to some ill-advised suggestion from an employee so that the Mayo Clinic could save a few pennies by using baby products as a replacement for adult pads?! Was this the beginning of socialized medicine, weak coffee, and sugar rationing?!

As I was thinking this the male Nurse, whom I will now refer to as "Barry," because I have always disliked the name Barry, starting at my Senior Prom, and for a very good reason, which is a story for another post, the male nurse Barry was shackling my legs to the chair with the leather straps. "For your own safety and comfort," he told me. "Yeah, sure," I thought.

Then Barry told me how he needed to shave me before the procedure, and he told me he needed me to wait a minute, and he told me he needed to get the soap and water, and I thought "Wow, you are very needy," because I was starting to dislike him, but while that is what I thought, what I said was "I already shaved this morning, heh heh," which was a halfhearted attempt at banter, which he didn't hear, because he had already left the room. Sigh. I struggled, just a bit, to see how tight the leg restraints were, and they were plenty tight. Barry soon returned to the room with a bowl of water, a washcloth, some soap, and a razor.

Barry dipped the washcloth into the water and he applied the water to my most favorite paired body parts and ZOWEE - flashback number two - Long Lake, Wisconsin, in June.

At one point in my young adult life my parents had bought a boat, a very nice boat, a very nice boat with an inboard/outboard motor powerful enough to pull a water skier and which could go 35 mph, which is a very fast speed for a boat to go. That particular summer, the summer of my flashback, I had joined my parents, along with my younger brother and his friend, at Long Lake, Wisconsin, in June, for a much needed vacation. My parents allowed me and my younger brother and his friend to take the boat out for water skiing, and we had a blast. We had a BLAST.

There is one important thing that you need to know. The weather in June was pleasantly warm, perhaps 80 degrees, but the lake was in Northern Wisconsin, so the lake water was cold. In the shallows the water was tolerable, but in the deep part of the lake the water was cold, and I mean COLD!

So I was water-skiing for something like the fifth time that day, having a grand old time, when my brother decided it would be fun to try to make me fall. He started whipping the boat into tight turns, sending me flying around the corners, then swamping me, then sending me whipping around the other side. This was all great fun. GREAT fun. Until I fell. Wham!

Two things of note happened when I fell. The first thing that happened was merely a minor nuisance - the flotation belt that I had been wearing around my waist was forced up my chest and underneath my arms. I have always had a chest which is larger than my waist, which is very good in a manly way, but which is also very bad when a waist-sized belt is forced up one's body and around one's chest.

All in all, though, that was the least of my problems. My breathing was slightly constricted, as you might expect, but my biggest problem, which I sensed immediately, was that my family jewels, my testicles, my prized possessions, my source of all my future children, were retreating, fast, retreating to a place I never knew I had!

All you medical students already know that, during development in the womb, the male testicles descend from the abdomen into the scrotum, and the scrotum is a temperature control device, caring for the testicles like a mother Kangaroo cares for her Joey in her pouch. Well, without the nursing, of course. And the mother Kangaroos are female and not male. And, aw, forget it, bad analogy.

The thing was that when the freezing water hit my jewels those cojones retreated, instantly, ascending the path which they had previously descended so many years before, and they were literally knocking on my abdominal wall, battering it in a futile attempt to crawl back up through it in order to cuddle up next to my small intestines, seeking any warmth they could find.

That kind of feeling, that deep, strong clacking of innards, that futile attempt at an internal homecoming, that wrecking ball slamming into a steel wall feeling, that kind of feeling stays with a fella, like a flaw in a diamond, and that feeling is carried everywhere, and that feeling is usually forgotten, but every now and then, when the universe turns just right - ah, yup, there is that feeling again!

Yup. Back in the Procedure room at the Mayo Clinic, when Barry bathed my balls with icy water, I remembered that feeling. I FELT that feeling. My eggs turned to plums which turned to cherries which turned to pits. Barry explained that it was easier to shave the skin when it was 'firm.' "Ah," I thought, "Well, then, by all means, make things easy for yourself. Firm those puppies up like leeches in icy water. Poach those eggs. Get that fudge to the soft ball stage. We wouldn't want the shaving to be difficult for you now would we? Easy Peasy Lemon Squeezy, that is what *I* always say. Bastard. Bastard Barry!"

So I sat, legs clamped down, jaw clamped shut, teeth clenched together, balls the size of cherry pits, and I watched a man shave my cold scrotum with a safety razor. And I thought about things. I thought about words, such as 'procedure' and 'just.' Yeah, I thought about words like that. And feminists.

And when Barry was finished, and when Barry was satisfied with his work, he dried me off with a towel, and he brought over a blessed heat lamp, to warm things up, and he said that the Doctor would be in shortly, and then he left.

As I sat under the heat lamp, warmth returning to my masculinity, I slowly unclenched, and I became more comfortable, and I relaxed, and I thought "Really, Tripp, that wasn't so bad was it? I hear the 'shaved' look is in now. Chicks dig smooth skin. Why, you are nearly European now." I wasn't really sure what "European" meant, in the scrotum sense, but I knew that I was now somehow exotic, and perhaps, somehow, chicks would dig my new exoticness, although I was not yet sure how I could work that feature into a conversation.

And as I relaxed, so did my scrotum, and the world became proper again, a place for everything, and everything in its place. Ahhh. Yeah. The procedure was almost over.

Thus ends this chapter of "How Tripp Manned up and met Mr. Sparky." Tune in tomorrow when we get to flashback to "Phantom baseball played with a tennis ball."