BOTCHED CASTRATI
1) I once read a harrowing account of the good ol’ days of opera when the thing to do was castrate pre-pubescent boys so they could develop ethereal high voices. You can look it up on Wikipedia.
This was probably published ’round the time the film Faranelli came out.
The article said the operation was not always completely successful, medical science still being in relative infancy. And it claimed, perhaps outrageously, that there were entire gangs of botched castrati roaming around menacing the citizenry of 19th century Italy.
I’ve been contemplating the gangs of botched castrati on account of my own botched vasectomy, in which I seem to have developed a hemotoma in my inguinal canal, where my hernia used to be. The condition is painful and depressing, although only when I sit, walk or do anything.
I’ve been treating it with Naprosyn (perscribed by my doctor) and alcohol (perscribed by me). The alcohol treatments are distressing to my long-suffering girlfriend, who has had just about enough of me.
2) In addition to pain and depression and an angry girlfriend, I also have fear. A close friend of mine has had chronic testicular pain since his own vasectomy, over a year ago. His symptoms began exactly as mine have. Chronic testicular pain.
3) However, I can offer you this nugget of comic relief. Before you go in, you must shave your scrotum. I cleverly decided to use the clippers that I shave my head with. And with the first cut they spectacularly bit into my scrotum. Blood everywhere. Big gash. When he was finished the vasectomy, my doctor laughed, saying, “You left a much bigger mark down here than I did. ”
I remember with a sigh when that gash was my biggest ball-related problem. Before the hemotoma.
4) Do you know about the push gift? It’s what some men get their wives for going through the pain of having a baby. Killer got me a knife. Get it? It’s a small Global utility knife, to go with the Global cook’s knife she got me a few years ago. We had a good laugh when I opened it.
5) But now we’re not laughing. We’re crying. Holding each other and crying on the bed last night, because I’m in pain and I’m scared and she feels guilty and scared too and when is this going to go away?
Saturday, February 02, 2008
THINGS OF WHICH WE STRONGLY APPROVE THESE DAYS
The Time-Warner building in New York City, although we hear some people hate it. The Hudson Hotel, where we stayed recently with the Killer and which, a visiting friend of ours pointed out, is too cool to even have a sign outside. Patricia Barber. Our own tuna tartare. Peruvian Boogaloo. The paint color of our main floor; Willow Wood. It’s a vivid yellowy green. Our cosmopolitain, which we believe is better than those we drank in chi-chi bars in New York. Chicago. Our new look, “graphic trash rock”, which involves lots of black clothes with grungy graphics and very dark jeans. The Complete On The Corner Sessions by Miles Davis. Handmade pasta. Philip Glass, more than ever. The Local Bar, a new wine bar with terrific food and a lovely visual appeal that opened in the lobby of the new Great Canadian Theatre in our neighbourhood, Hintonburg. The movie poster, album cover and idea of Control, the Ian Curtis/Joy Division film. Although, it must be said, we have not yet seen it. The smokey margarita that we stole from John Grey’s place in Playa Del Carmen. Hell, John Grey’s Place in Playa Del Carmen, on the Boulevard Del Corazon.
THINGS UPON WHICH, ON THE OTHER HAND, WE HAVE TURNED OUR BACK
Jonathan Lethem. Michael Chabon. Williamsburg. Beckta restaurant and wine bar. Blade Runner, a little bit, although it chokes us up to say so. The Replacements, who seemed to us so important during the strange, stunted second adolescence that we went though in our 20s, when we were devoted to them, REM and Husker Du. We do, however, intend to read that new book about them.
