Salon.com > Stephen G. Bloom

Sex-free bliss?

Wed, 17 May 2000 16:00:00 +0000

My friend April, a 24-year-old graduate student from Pittsburgh, began taking the popular antidepressant Zoloft in February, and says the drug is fabulous. April's calmer and much less anxious -- although when she pauses to think about it, the 50-milligram blue tablet she takes every morning seems to be causing her all kinds of anxiety.

"My sex drive is still there and the arousal is the same. But when I have intercourse, it takes way longer for me to have an orgasm, or I don't have one at all. That never happened to me before," says tall, willowy April who, like others in this story, has been given a pseudonym.

April's drug-induced frigidity is causing her enough anxiety to consider taking an additional drug to relax her. "I'm afraid my partner will ask me to go off the Zoloft, but I feel too good on it. I'm starting to think I'm going to have to fake it, and I don't want to do that, but I don't really know what else to do."

April is not alone. The antidepressant she is taking is an SSRI (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor) and, like other drugs in the same family (Prozac, Paxil, Luvox, Effexor and Celexa), they clobber sex drive in up to 80 percent of those who take them. But SSRIs are so awesomely effective that, for most people who take them, the pleasures of sex take a back seat to a sense of calm and serenity that the drugs create.

Facts of life

Tue, 11 Apr 2000 16:00:00 +0000

When I was 13 I was girl crazy but, like most 13-year-old boys, I had very little action. Maybe it was my curly hair during the era of the Beatles. I was not athletic enough to play on any of the junior high school teams. My grades sucked. Girls were foreign territory. They terrified me. They were something to steal glances at in math class: strange, wondrous, fragile objects. Approaching them was out of the question.

"Talk to him, Harold! Talk to him!" my mother used to nag my weary father, dog tired from yet another day at the shoe store cajoling Cobbie pumps onto fat ladies' triple-E corn-callused feet.

My first real encounter with girls was during the summer of '64, which my family spent in Miami Beach. We drove our beige 1959 Chevrolet station wagon with the fins past Pedro's South of the Border, past the "IMPEACH EARL WARREN" signs, past the Georgia fireworks stands and onto Miami Beach in all its orgasmic splendor.

Pack of wolves

Mon, 20 Mar 2000 17:00:00 +0000

Today's Cub Scout Handbook takes 8-year-old boys through a maze of sinister scenarios designed to prepare them for the dangers of the modern world:

"Juan is on a walk with his little sister. A car stops and a man asks them to come over. What would you do?"

"Chris and his little brother are home alone. A man knocks on the door and says he wants to read the meter. He is not wearing a uniform. What would you do?"

"What would you do if you were in a public restroom and someone tried to touch you?"

Answer these touchy questions correctly, build a rain-gutter model boat, go on a nature walk and you earn a Wolf badge.

When my son, Mikey, announced that he wanted to join the Cub Scouts, I fully expected the Cub Scouts to be about knots, camping trips, tag-team races -- as it was when I was 8. These relics of past scouting days are still there. But scouting today also includes lessons in how to avoid the neighborhood pedophile. That, I suppose, is a lamentable sign of the times, and I understand it. But I did not expect the leaders of our local pack (being wolves, of course they call themselves a pack) to embark on a series of lessons that scared the bejesus out of my son and the rest of the boys.

Dr. Fart speaks

Thu, 24 Feb 2000 17:00:00 +0000

When I told my wife I was going to write a story about farts, she said that if I mentioned her name I was dead meat. Fact is, there is nothing to be ashamed of. Everyone farts. The amount of gas and the volume at which a fart is expelled are another issue. My wife does fart and she farts loudly but, thank God, her farts are mostly odorless. This is not the case with mine.

To understand the nuances of farting, or flatulence, I called upon Dr. Michael D. Levitt, a gastroenterologist and associate chief of staff at the Minneapolis Veterans Affairs Medical Center. Levitt, 64, could well be called Dr. Fart because he is the world's leading authority on flatulence. He has had 275 articles printed on flatulence in medical journals, as either the principal author or the co-author.

In fact, Levitt's career could only happen in America. "In other countries, no way would a scientist study farts. But for reasons I can't completely figure out, farting is considered wrong in America and people are worried about it. Farts have been good to me. I've done very well, thank you."

Busy signal

Thu, 07 Oct 1999 16:00:00 +0000

Four years ago, I'm packing up my stereo, putting it into a cardboard box, back arched, arms outstretched like I'm giving parking directions to a 747, and I think I hear something snap in my lower back.

This is not some muscle you pull while trying out Position 62 of the Kama Sutra. The pain comes from deep within the core of my spinal cord about five inches north of the crack in my buttocks. I drop to the floor, feeling like a deer walloped by a semi going 60 mph.

Still on my back two hours later, I'm finally able to inch my way to grab the phone. The University of Iowa Hospital and Clinics (UIHC), one of the largest university-owned teaching hospitals in the United States, is about a mile away from where I live. This medical center is no doc-in-the-middle-of-the-cornfields. It employs 7,000 doctors, nurses and professional staff. U.S. News & World Report ranks the department of orthopedics eighth in the nation.

After getting a busy signal for 15 minutes, I finally get the orthopedic clinic. Actually, they spell it "Orthopaedic." "This is an emergency," I croak. "I must get in to see a doctor. I can't move."

Fantasy Isle

Tue, 28 Oct 1997 20:00:00 +0000

my mother-in-law pulled her Subaru wagon up to the wharf with five minutes to spare before the private ferry was to leave for Fisher Island -- one of the nation's most posh and exclusive spas, and probably the only one with its own island.

The mother-in-law parked next to three Mercedes, a Range Rover and two BMWs, all with tinted windows. As we schlepped our newly purchased Hammacher-Schlemmer suitcase on wheels past the half-million-dollar queue of cars, a security guard with faux nautical stripes on his shirt spotted us. It didn't take a genius to realize that we were strangers to paradise.

"May we help you?" he asked suspiciously.

"We," I quickly surmised, was the Almighty Spa God looking down at our poor lot: the sandals, Gap-issue shorts and tie-dyed T-shirts, our blanched skin that had never enjoyed a thermal mineral kur mud bath, Vichy shower body polish, Yon-Ka eye treatment, deep pore cleansing facial or algae body masque.

We bid mother-in-law and the rest of our middle-class life goodbye for the next four days as we sped across Miami's blue waters to William and Rosamund Vanderbilt's Xanadu island, built in the 1920s, accessible only by Fisher Island ferry, yacht, seaplane or helicopter.