While I’m on vacation, I’m letting some associates, friends, and two lovers steer the ship for me.  That means there will be guest bloggers this week.  Today’s is The Letter D.

While Uncle Jason is on his West Coast swing, no doubt power lunching with the Weinsteins and doing lines of blow off the silicone-laden breasts of wannabe starlets, he’s passed his golden keyboard on to a few guests.  It’s like when you turn in to Letterman and somebody else is sitting in the host chair.  We all love those shows, right?  Right?  Anybody?

So who am I?  As mentioned above I write The Letter D, which Jason was kind enough to list as an “Awesome Blog .”  I’m a freelance (read – largely unpaid) writer and dabbler in stand-up comedy.   I’ve seen Prince’s penis.

I came across this blog randomly.  Like a lot of you, I was on the Internet killing time at work, googling “Hot Guatemalan Amputee Porn,” when his previous site on Blogger came up as the top search result (I think this was because of his now classic post from August 17th, 2004, “Man, I Love Hot Guatemalan Amputee Porn.”)

I can’t say that I really know Jason.  I’ve never met him or actually spoken with him, but we read each other’s blogs and occasionally e-mail each other pictures of our penises (usually capped with festive party hats). 

Most people who are funny are bastards deep down, usually from some deep insecurity or prior emotional trauma.  I think it was legendary funnyman Henny Youngman who said “Show me a guy who tries to make people laugh and I’ll show you a guy who was touched inappropriately as a child by a man wearing a Chuck E. Cheese costume.”  But Jason appears to be a decent guy, as opening up his pride and joy to relative strangers would indicate.

Either that or this is all some devious plot to get back at those of you who piss and moan when he doesn’t post for awhile.  He can now say, “Shut up, out I’ll have D come back and guest blog!”

I’m sure it’s one of the two.

Kids, Don’t Do Prescription Drugs:

One of the benefits of being a soulless drone of the capitalist machine is that you generally have access to health care insurance.  This means that instead of having to score mind altering substances from the local self-employed alley pharmaceutical rep, I can get the functional equivalent from a pharmacy, paid for by my HMO. God bless America.

Shortly after graduating from law school, I went through a phase of profound dissatisfaction with my life.  I did everything that I was supposed to do – finished school, stayed out of trouble, and managed not to knock up that girl at Baskin-Robbins. I’ve been a responsible person.  But no matter what, I realized that I was never going to have sex with Tyra Banks.  Enter depression.

I asked my doctor if he could recommend an anti-depressant.  I thought that he would suggest that I see a therapist to work out my issues rather than relying on a chemical crutch.  But who has the time for all that?  Fortunately for me, he had whored himself out to the pharmaceutical industry and wrote out a prescription for Paxil without asking me any questions.  In retrospect, he probably would have written me a prescription for Rohypnol and birth control pills had I pressed him.

He told me that it would be a few weeks before I started to feel any different.  And he mentioned that there may be some side effects, including those of a sexual nature.

I found out what those side effects were about a week or so on Paxil.   I was having a sexual encounter with my then girlfriend when I realized that I wasn’t even close to “arriving.”  This went on for about fifteen minutes or so. I’m usually already in REM stage sleep by that time so I was in uncharted territory.   But I kept going until I felt like one of the people in the first episodes of “Survivor” who have to start a fire by furiously rubbing sticks and rocks together.  So I stopped.  Sure had I kept on going, she may have actually had an orgasm herself, but hey, I had other shit to do.

This problem continued even when I tried to…ahem… take matters into my own hands.  There I was, frustrated as all get out trying to complete the task at hand, but to no avail.  I tried everything, watching porn, mood lighting, listening to Anita Baker, watching the video where Hulk Hogan bodyslammed Andre the Giant in Wrestlemania III.  Nothing worked.

I did a little research and saw that one of Paxil’s side effects was the inability to reach orgasm.  Are you kidding me?  How did the FDA ever approve this?  How was depriving me of the one thing that I actually enjoy in life supposed to cure my depression?

I went back to the doctor to awkwardly describe my dilemma, which included a fair amount of pantomime.  He described the condition as “retarded ejaculation.” That seemed like an insensitive term to me.  I didn’t even know that retarded guys couldn’t ejaculate.  I mean, it’s probably for the best for the gene pool and all, but that’s just sad.

I stopped taking Paxil.  It took a few days to clear my system.  But when it did, and in a truly a magical moment, weeks of frustration were dealt with.  Old Faithful immediately comes to mind.

And that is the story of why I didn’t get my security deposit back that year for my apartment.

I read once that about 60% of health care costs for prescription drugs are for anti-depressants.  One, that seems awfully low.  Two, that means that there is a significant portion of the population that can’t achieve orgasm.  Which, in retrospect, explains the last few presidential elections.

The moral of the story is just say no to selective serotonin uptake inhibitors.