Viagra wasn’t around in the mid-’90s to save me from embarrassment. Until that fateful night in a public park, erectile dysfunction might as well have been the name of a student punk band.
It wasn’t on my radar as I engaged in some frenzied fumbling with a young woman, beneath the cover of an English oak tree, desperately hoping that our upcoming 27 seconds of pleasure, roughly, wouldn’t be spotted by a nosy dog walker.
And then, the earth moved. A bomb went off.
No, that’s not a euphemism. An actual bomb went off several miles away, as the Irish Republican Army (IRA) detonated an explosive device outside a major East London business district.
Even a couple of randy teenagers struggled to keep up their end during a terrorist attack. Though the conversation hardly helped.
“Was that what I think it was?”
“No. I’ve still got my clothes on.”
“No, the explosion.”
“There wasn’t an explosion. I’ll be fine. Promise.”
“Didn’t you hear the bomb?”
Of course, I’d heard the faint, distant rumbling. But I was an inexperienced rookie in regards to the matter at hand and wasn’t entirely sure if the low growl was the result of an alien bodily function from either of us.
Still, the moment had passed. We had a takeaway instead.
There is still a part of my teenage soul that will never forgive the IRA. Apart from anything else, I can’t hear of a terrorist attack now without thinking of erectile disappointment.
And it makes me smile.
What else can I do? What else can any of us do when faced with such alien circumstances, when the reality is so utterly grotesque and incomprehensible?
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