I like to think of a man’s scrotum tucked away neatly in the surrounding bed of hair or flapping long and loose as he rises from my bed and goes into the kitchen to get us another beer. I like to think of my lovers scrotums and all mens scrotums as magic carpets or sacred

places containing all the riches of the Orient. I believe that within the scrotum lies the access code to eternal life. This belief is not popular among contemporary feminists but I am not

comfortable around women who do not love men or who blame men for their own unhappiness; maybe I am making up my own feminism as I climb the twisted road of my own existence.

Sometimes I stop at an interesting plateau named Kevin or Michael where the vegetation is lush and intriguing, where I hope to linger and refresh myself with a new (to me) and exotic variety of the fruit of life. Sometimes I read a book, often a book of Allen Ginsberg’s poetry because I sense he also lives in this fashion, climbing and climbing and climbing, then pausing for refreshment and reflection, then shouldering his pack of delusory hope and smartass self deprecation before going on but I worry about Ginsberg and wonder what in his journey from iconoclast to icon he has had to leave behind.

Did he throw away his old torn B.V.D’s or his dog eared copy of the Kama Sutra? Is he wearing paisley cotton boxer shorts today and is his scrotum which I imagine was once oily and smelled like limburger cheese, now as plump and rosy as a tenured persimmon?

A man can compose his face, put on a confident smile or grimace of disdain but a scrotum is something else again and may present a better portrait of a man’s character. I have found 

that men with taut, little scrotums, the kind that hold the testes together like two peanuts in a shell only tip five percent, while men with loose, bulbous scrotums come quickly and then like to cuddle for hours. I have found that men with many visible blue veins

cross-hatching their scrotums are the ones with velvet tongues that tickle me like 10,000 fingers as does Ginsberg’s poetry when he calls himself a “cocksucker, a decay, a talking lust, a creep in the eyes of the universe.” But when I read in the newspaper that he is co-chairing a panel discussion at N.Y. U. on “The Beat Generation – American Prophecy” that cost fifty dollars to get into all I can think is Oh, Boddhidharma, where are your dancing shoes now?

It may be inevitable that today’s iconoclasts become the icons of tomorrow who will in turn be shattered by kids in sneakers shooting baskets or twelve year old computer hackers. Maybe in twenty-five years I’ll be doing American Express commercials but it is more likely I will be eating crusts of pizza out of garbage cans unless I can parlay my fascination with scrotums into a best seller. Maybe I should write a book, Scrotums Of The Beats, and interview Caroline Cassady, or maybe I should become a photographer and do a photo essay,

“Beat Balls – The Survivors” and photograph the testes of William Burroughs and Lawrence Ferlinghetti, but my best chance of success would be to get a handle on my own obsessive behavior long enough to do some sustained work.

Whenever I let a man into my life, I become too frantic to do yoga, my writing schedule is shot to smithereens and I terrify him with my obsessive desire. My lover, the man who quotes Shakespeare in bed, has a scrotum that tastes like a peach. When I see him flirting with another woman in the bar I pass him a note that says, “you blew it.” He comes over and says he is glad this happened now and not two years down the line and gives me back my keys. He 

is not answering his phone and I can not stop flagellating myself because I am not the Buddha. When I close my eyes all I can see is the strong clean line of his back bending over.

My friend Jan tells me it is now or never, get professional help, go see a psychiatrist, a

headshrinker. I tell her I don’t need a headshrinker, in the last three days my head has shrunk to the size of a pea. I say I must be with him again and I wish I was a pimple on his scrotum. I tell Jan what I need is to consult a visionary, a mystic, I need to summon up Walt Whitman or

William Blake.

I pick up my book of Ginsberg’s Collected Poems and see that on page 235 there is a poem, “I Beg You, Come Back And Be Cheerful.” I turn to that page and read, “what if the worlds were a series of steps, what if the steps joined back at the margin leaving us flying like birds into time.” I decide to call Ginsberg up right away and ask him if he is willing to share what knowledge he has about combating the ogres of obsessive behavior. I know he lives on the lower east side of Manhattan but not exactly where. When I pick up my Manhattan phone directory, I see that there is an Aaron, an Achmed and an Aristotle Ginsberg listed, but alas no Allen.