Dr. Weiss doesn’t waste time. He slipped an elastic around the head and stretched it up to a shirt button. A second later — Pop! went the anesthetic needle. O U C H
After that I stared straight up, sucked into the soft moss of the rainforest poster on the ceiling.
“What do most guys usually say at this point, Doctor?”
“Nobody wants to make a home video, if that’s what you mean.”
I distracted myself by thinking what a great story this would make: “What men say during their vasectomy.” Maybe Reader’s Digest would buy that.
Snipping. Tugging. A trickle of hot liquid escaping down my perineum. Is that a mackaw in the branches up there?
Then the smell. Something about burning flesh is primal, even if it’s a cauterized vas deferens. Dr. Weiss finished by sealing my tubes with two tiny titanium clips.
A few minutes later I was back in the waiting room. The whole visit was Fifteen Minutes from Fertile to Feral. I felt a great liberation, and an incredible creeping buzz from the single valium pill prescription. Why couldn’t he prescribe two?? Man, I could see why people got hooked. One moment I was telling the receptionist I felt nothing, the next I was singing Candida (in retrospect, a rather inappropriate choice).
Suzy picked me up. On the way home she turned left on a yellow at Kilborn and was stopped by the cops. Simon was screaming in the back. I fumbled in the glove box for the registration, not overly concerned or alert, still singing.
“Officer, I’m SO sorry! My son’s screaming and my husband just had a vasectomy and I’m really tired …”
He let us go.
Dr. Weiss is in the Glebe. He performs 50 no-scalpel vasectomies per week in the basement of a beautiful Clemow Drive house.
The Ottawa Citizen reported this week that Dr. Weiss has pioneered a new no-needle anesthetic. No more Pop! Sheesh.
Tonight I’m meditating on the fact and fabulousness of infertility, and that all that will be left of me in 100 years are some mercury fillings, a no-grind dental device, and two tiny titanium clips.
