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If libido falters, 'lifestyle drugs' leave no way out
By RICH MARIN
New York Times News Service
July 17, 2004, 6:49PM
The comic hero of Jake's Thing, Kingsley Amis' painfully funny novel
about what was still quaintly called "impotence"
in 1978, is put through all manner of ludicrous and humiliating
psychotherapy. His troubled thing is wired up to a "nocturnal
mensurator," and groups of strangers poke at his privates until
he finally tells off one of the Viennese quacks in charge of his
treatment.
"In the old days a lot of people, men as well as women, didn't know quite what to expect of sex so they didn't worry when it didn't work too well," Jake says. "Now everybody knows exactly what's required of them and exactly how much they've fallen short down to the last millimeter and second and drop. No wonder you boys have got enough trade."
It's even better trade now that "erectile dysfunction" has been relocated from the mind to a more obvious organ. Viagra and its rivals are being marketed not merely as medical remedies, but as "lifestyle drugs" to all men over 40.
As a guy whose libido isn't ticking with quite the time-bomb urgency it used to, I'm a prime candidate to "ask my doctor" about Viagra, Levitra or Cialis. But I haven't. Nor do I plan to.
I choose not to be the most virile guy in the room. Why? Because artificially enhanced virility for anyone without a legitimate clinical problem, I would argue, doesn't count. Because I feel the same way about Viagra & Co. as I do about baldness potions. If it's my fate to lose my hair, then the manly thing to do is suck it up and live with it, or without it.
Watching Something's Gotta Give on DVD, I lost all respect for Jack
Nicholson's "never date a woman under 30" Lothario when
it came out that he was on Viagra.
Jack, the lifetime achiever of carnal knowledge, with ED? Equally
disillusioning is the passage in The Human Stain when Philip Roth's
central character, Coleman Silk, 71, explains his ability to land
a 34-year-old mistress: "Without Viagra none of this would
be happening." Classics scholar that he is, Silk suggests the
drug should be called "Zeus."
But if it's all chemical, not true Zeus-ian vitality, big deal.
To view the sorry decline of the modern male libido, look no further than the founder of the Playboy empire. In interviews promoting a new compendium of priapic wit and wisdom called Hef's Little Black Book, the 78-year-old Hugh Hefner credits Viagra for keeping him up to his neck in centerfolds named Brandy, Mandy and Sandy.
It's not just the golden guys. College kids and 20-somethings are
popping ED drugs
recreationally, or as an "insurance policy" against one
too many Budweisers, or against a woman who's seen one too many
episodes of Sex and the City and thinks her date might not measure
up.
At an annual booksellers' convention last month, New York University Press handed out rulers and Viagra-blue M&Ms to promote one of its fall titles, The Rise of Viagra. When I called the author, Meika Loe, an assistant professor of sociology and women's studies at Colgate University, she told me she got interested in the "masculinity and shame area" working at Hooters in the early 1990s. Who wouldn't? To her, Pfizer's Viagra campaign is all about "sexual empowerment."
"Manhood goes through ebbs and flows, and some would say we're experiencing a masculinity crisis," she said. "Women have made great strides, and men haven't really caught up. The paycheck is no longer the way to prove one's masculinity."
If this is male sexual liberation, you women should be marching in the street in protest. You already profess to be mystified, even appalled, by men's ability to divorce sex from love. You often express outrage at fake breasts — "Like touching plastic!" Shouldn't you be equally offended by any artificial enhancement on our part?
Apparently not, judging from my least favorite ED ad: Levitra's "it's about the quality" campaign — the one that looks like a European coffee commercial. A smug 40-something woman purrs with simulated embarrassment about things like quality response time while her silver-haired mate giggles shyly in the background, evidently rendered mute by his newfound manhood. Isn't that rather e-masculating?
I canvassed a handful of usually opinionated males in my demographic ballpark on this subject. They were almost as nonverbal in their denials, evasions and jokes.
"Never used it."
"Never taken it."
"It's hidden in a gold box in a bottom bathroom drawer for 'emergency use only.' "
Only the writer and ladies' man emeritus Bruce Jay Friedman offered a candid reply, quoting from a work in progress called Sexual Pensees — his own, higher-toned little black book of wit and wisdom:
"With the help of Viagra, he returned to sexual form, so to speak, at age 70. Oddly enough, he had mixed feelings about this sudden renewal, having felt, with some relief, that he had left all of that behind him. Also for all of his robustness, the use of the pill seemed to be a kind of 'cheating.' "
Of course, it can also lead to another kind of cheating. "At a lunch with Mario Puzo and Joe Heller," Friedman added, "someone said that nine out of 10 men use Viagra with women other than their wives. Heller's instant response: 'Ten out of 10.'"
Maybe I'm the exception who proves that rule. The one time I tried it was on my honeymoon. My wife brought a few pills along, as a novelty accessory to her lingerie collection, for some recreational high jinks. After a romantic seafood feast on a secluded Australian beach, we each took one, not realizing they don't mix well with fatty foods. My bride passed out cold, and I was left staring at the ceiling with a bad case of EF — Erectile Fiasco — that wouldn't go away. No mythical all-night lovemaking session. Just, eventually, the normal eight minutes of naughtiness I married her for.
Men are expected to crave an unlimited supply of sex. But do we? In the real world, not some Hefnerian hot tub overflowing with bubbling bimbettes, it should be possible for a man to admit mixed feelings — at any age. Now if you're not in the mood, for whatever reason, there'll be no excuse. A pill will be curtly prescribed from the other side of the bed. "Chemistry" will be reduced to chemistry.
At the end of Amis' novel, Jake's doctor finally offers him a simple medical cure. My answer is the same as his.
"No, thanks."
source :-http://www.medicalnewstoday.com | 
