nthWord - Adjust your Thinking. I Was a Poster Boy for Sex Addicts

Poster Boy for Sex Addicts (cont'nd)

Phallo for cock, putz, pud, wang, shlong, dong, dingle, dick, willie, peter, johnson. Graph for, well, graph. Yes, Vanderbilt University, deep in the groin of the Bible Belt, is graphing me and my penis, as part of a study they're doing on sexual addiction. So, after my manly wangdangdoodle is zip-locked and tightly phallographed, Lab Man has me slip on a pair of huge dark glasses one usually sees on a cataract-clouded shuffle-boarder, then straps my head into a contraption that will measure my brain waves. He then they locks my head still with restraints, Clockwork Orange-style, and plugs my ears. He has me lie down on a slab that would look quite comfortable in a mortuary. They're going to slide me into an MRI machine, show me dirty movies, then study how me and my penis respond. America, what a country! Now, apparently some people freak when they get slid into the MRI machine. So Lab Man gives me a little bulb attached to a tube. If I freak, I'm supposed to squeeze the bulb. I hadn't even thought about freaking, but now that I have my freak-bulb, I'm thinking maybe I will freak after all.

As I slide in, the machine whirrs and hums like a post-modern pre-historic monster swallowing me whole. Suddenly this is not seeming like such a good idea, and I feel my ziplocked cock shrivel. Headfirst I slip into the long black womb tube. But rather than feeling like a freak is coming on, I'm strangely comforted by being in this metal uterus that cradles me like a sex addict zygote. Suddenly a blank blue screen appears on the inside of the goggles. The MRI machine emits a loud steady buzz, interrupted by a thumping sound, like an old man with a steady snore hiccuping at regular intervals. I find myself drifting into sleep, but I don't want to go there, afraid I'll have sex dreams of Angelina Jolie as Lara Croft, Tomb Raider, sliding into the machine with me, de-ziplocking, then liplocking on my cock. Stay awake you sex fiend, I tell myself, don't want to skew the research.

Finally a hot air balloon appears on the screen on the inside of the huge dark glasses.

Photography © D. Austin

The hot air balloon takes off, and I sail up with it, peering down on the Serengeti Plains: gazelles bounding, elephants bathing, giraffes loping, and wildebeests wilde-ing, like Lion King, only not a cartoon, and no sound. That's when it first hits me, there's no sound.

As I take it in, I feel an instant, intense sense of deep disappointment. I was expecting some hothothot porn, cocks slurped and clits diddled. Hey, when you're the poster boy for sex addicts in America, you have standards. Turns out this is the section of the study where they record my base brain waves when I'm watching boring nature footage. Then they show a bunch of lame America's Funniest Home Video-type clips, like a hen sitting on a vacuum cleaner and laying an egg, someone falling out of a boat, a kid dumping spaghetti on his head. Apparently this is the humor section of the study. The only problem with the humor is that it's so not funny. Next, we're off on a jaunt down Intoxication Way.

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