Edging Toward Dysfunction
By Drew Gallagher
HUMORIST
I once took a creative writing class where the teacher broke the class up into small groups and each was tasked with starting a story and, after writing for five minutes, a buzzer would sound and the group would pass that story on to another group to continue writing.
In whole, there were five different stories being passed around the classroom, and no matter what story our group received, I convinced my fellow creative writers that the exercise was foolish and every time we received a story the true creativity would be in inserting a Port-A-Potty into the storyline. Afterall, you never know when a character might gotta go in a Gotta Go.
Our instructor, Mr. Jones, was furious with our group, and since I was the budding humorist, I fell on my collapsible sword when he asked who was responsible (at this point in life, I was still uncertain if my future lay in prop comedy or New York Times bestseller). He strongly admonished me and memorably told me that I would never find a publication that would find that kind of sophomoric humor amusing.
This is a rather long way of telling you that my editors, like Mr. Jones before them, asked that I limit columns on erectile dysfunction. Like Mr. Jones before them, they will not be happy with me.
When last we discussed erectile dysfunction, Sylvester Stallone was coming into my bathroom via YouTube to ask about my little buddy. Now that Stallone has taken a position as Donald Trump’s emissary to Hollywood (along with Mel Gibson and Jon Voight—please, please make them dress up in uniforms!), he apparently no longer has time to check on me and my little buddy. Fortunately, there is an AI-generated woman to fill that void during my mornings.
One sun-kissed morning, she arrived through the mist of my shower like the Lady of the Lake from Arthurian legend. She had the voice of an angel (if angels talk without emotion in computer modulated tones) and started talking about how boring sex had become with her husband until he tried a little trick that he found online from a male porn star for just under $100. There is a saying in advertising—Don’t tell me, show me—so the Lady of the Lake provided visuals, and this is where I started to get a little confused about the message.
The first image made sense if her husband was laying under a thin, white sheet next to Pinocchio after the wooden boy had told an especially large untruth. If it’s not Pinocchio as bedmate, the image was troubling because that size appendage was going to make daily undertakings quite difficult like holding a laundry basket or walking through doorways. The band Spinal Tap once claimed to have armadillos in their trousers, but this simple online trick apparently puts a narwhal in your trousers.
The producers of this YouTube advertisement recognize that they don’t want their client base to contemplate the Pinocchio effect too long and quickly switch to a different video clip and this one has nothing to do with sex as far as my two Psychology courses got me in college. As the disappointed lover relates the failings of her husband, the video shows an edger cleaning up a stretch of sidewalk. The edger does a remarkable job in just a few seconds of restoring a clear and welcome concrete path, but I’m not sure how that corresponds with her husband’s transformation from loser to Lothario.
While the edger is doing its magic, the newly-satisfied robotic iteration of a trad wife is talking about how she and her husband now have sex for two hours straight. I know that former Police frontman Sting and his wife Trudy have extolled the virtues of seven-hour tantric sessions, but he recently admitted that those sessions usually consisted of dinner, a movie, and five hours of begging. When I think of something to do for two hours my mind goes to hopping in the car and driving to Camden Yards in time for the first pitch.
The narrator helpfully advises that this little trick was developed by Harvard scientists, and the porn industry does not want this secret to get out. (Because I’m sure that when Harvard gave this medical breakthrough to the porn industry they made them pinky swear that they weren’t going to share it with the general public.)
Then she tells the listener that this little trick has already helped out 9,723 individuals. That is a remarkably specific number, and, apparently, I’m the only one getting the advertisement because I’ve listened to it a dozen times and that number has not increased. I was not a marketing major, but this kind of static movement in a product would indicate that maybe AI models haven’t quite figured out how to convince men that they are underperforming in the bedroom.
The ad concludes with a Princess Leia-like plea to click on the button at the bottom of the screen as quickly as possible because one titan of the porn industry does not want you to have access to this secret of sustainability. My selfless bot even drops a clue as to which porn industry heavyweight does not want me clicking on the link and it starts with a “P”. Sure, there might be a few vehicles of pornography that don’t start with a “P” but most of them do.
As I was toweling off, I looked to the east and the slowly rising sun splashing my snow-covered backyard with a spectrum of colors. In that moment of poetry, I realized what was truly important in the short time we shuffle upon this mortal coil. There was indeed a word that started with “P” and that was Patio. Soon the green grasses will start to grow, and I will need a finely-made piece of garden equipment to keep those sprouting grasses from spilling over the edges of our concrete-stamped patio. And now I knew such an anonymous edger existed. I just hoped the customer service rep at Home Depot knew exactly which video on erectile dysfunction I was talking about when I asked for help finding it.
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