Billy’s experience: The Nutcracker Suit

Billy is a translator based in Denmark, who works from home via the Internet.

In the Copenhagen high summer, the early morning commuter train was almost empty. A girl getting on looked at me, took in my foreign appearance, shoulder bag, and set expression, thought better of it, and got off again. You could hardly blame her – a man on a mission to irrevocably damage part of his body tends to get a strange gleam look in his eyes.

I had decided to have a vasectomy. Charlotte and I have three kids, and neither of us is getting any younger. And anyway, the thought of going through the nappy age again, pacing the floor at 4.00 am with a howling infant on your shoulder like some kind of demented bagpipe player – well, that’s surely motivation enough for anyone.

Still, as the fateful day dawns, it takes a lot of black humor to get you out of the door and on your way to the hospital. It’s a straightforward procedure, but let’s face it, for most men the idea of someone taking a knife to that part of your anatomy is a pretty intimidating thought.

We’re wimps, of course. No-one who has witnessed three births could be in any doubt about which way the scales are weighted when it comes to Suffering For The Cause. No wonder we men invented the idea of Original Sin; there had to be some explanation for why women are so unfairly treated by Nature. They must have done something really terrible … stealing an apple, something like that …

Arriving to the hospital

Although I harbored a faint hope that the girl on the train might have reported me to the police, there were no bomb scares or other delays to impede my inevitable progress towards what part of my subconscious insisted on regarding my Impending Doom. At the hospital, I was amazed at the general efficiency of the department. I had arrived at eight with a book under my arm, not expecting to be seen for a couple of hours. In fact, I barely had time to pour myself a cup of coffee before my name was called out. I was led into a private room and told to get into the usual ludicrous hospital clothes and lie down on the bed. “Do I have to wear these?” I asked the nurse, holding up thigh-length white cotton stockings. “‘Fraid so,” she replied. “You might get cold feet.” If this wouldn’t give you cold feet, I muttered to myself, I don’t know what else would. But I obediently got into the nutcracker suit, swallowed the proffered valium, and lay down on the bed like Isaac on the altar. Good Lord, what happens next.

What happened next was that a big strapping girl walked in, took hold of the bed, and wheeled me out the door and down the corridor to the operating theatre. I can think of a few humiliations keener than that of a man with absolutely nothing wrong with him being wheeled along by a young girl, but of course, worse was to come. “Did you remember to shave yourself?” she asked brightly, addressing the world in general. “Yes,” I bleated, in a high-pitched voice, attracting a few smiles from passers-by … and they hadn’t even started yet.

Everyone kept introducing me to everyone else, shaking my hand as though I was a guest at a dinner party. With the valium kicking in, it was all getting quite festive by the time they got me into the theatre. Hello, pleased to meet you, do you come here often. The surgeon, I was relieved to see, was not a young medical student but a man in his fifties who looked like he had performed hundreds of these operations before.

A nurse “had a look at me”, decided I had shaved sufficiently well, and then proceeded to paint evil, yellow, astringent disinfectant all over my newly-shorn genitalia. It was at that point that I decided I was willing to tell them whatever it was they wanted to know.

The green curtain was then extended across my chest, giving me unfortunate connotations with the Punch and Judy shows of my childhood. Any minute now the crocodile was going to grab Mr Punch and …

“Ow!”

The surgeon’s head reappeared. “Sorry about that. Now. Can you feel this?”

“N-no, I ca … AARGH! BLOODY HELL!!”

“OK, not to worry, we’ll wait a few minutes.”

One of the nurses seemed to have the sole function of sitting beside me and reassuring me. She did that rather well. I don’t remember what we chatted about while we were waiting for the anesthetic to work, but the feeling at the back of my mind now is similar to that of waking up after a party with a vague recollection of having been a complete blithering idiot the night before.

After that, they set to work again and I didn’t feel a thing. Ten minutes later I was finished, sewn up, and wheeled out the door. I felt almost cheated. Was that really all there was to it?

I wasn’t so much bandaged as gift-wrapped with napkins. As a result, I went home with a large bulge in my pants, walking like John Wayne. That attracted some attention all right.

Getting home

This being the summer holidays, the family was at home when I arrived back. My teenage son met me at the door. “Well Dad, I guess I’m the man in the house now,” he announced cheerily. “Why is Daddy walking like that?” the six-year-old girl wanted to know. “He’s had his balls removed,” replied ten-year-old Big Sister with a worldly-wise air. “They’re not removed! They’re just … disconnected,” I protested. “Like batteries,” added Big Sister, by way of explanation. Little Sister’s eyes grew wide – this was adding considerably to her knowledge of Weird And Disgusting Facts About Grown-Ups. “It’s so that we don’t have any more babies,” I added in a last-ditch attempt to drag the conversation back onto the pedagogical track. “You wouldn’t like that, would you?” “Couldn’t you just … not do it anymore?” asked Little Sister (making babies: see Weird And Disgusting). “Or why not just use a condom?” drawled the teenager. “We’re not getting into this!” I blurted, deciding that where this family was concerned, you might as well throw the Good Parenting Manual away. “I’ve had an operation. I’m going to bed. Now!”

My plan was that having been such a hero, I was to be spoilt for the rest of the day. It sounded like a good plan to me. I had told most of my customers that I would be gone all day, and Charlotte agreed to field the rest. Unfortunately, of course, things didn’t quite work out like that.

Today of all days, the phone just wouldn’t stop ringing. Lying in bed, trying vaguely to read a book, all I could hear was, “No, I’m afraid he’s not home yet. Yes, I’ll tell him it’s urgent. Yes, as soon as he gets back …”

Eventually I sighed, got up and sat down at the computer, for what turned out to be a very busy day indeed, with rush jobs coming in every other minute. Oh well, I said to myself resignedly, if you’ve had your balls off in the morning you might as well work your ass off in the afternoon.

Submitted by Billy