Sex, Sleep or Scrabble

by Hammond, Phil

  Any abnormal discharge also needs checking (the white stuff that shoots out at some speed accompanied by a feeling of intense well-being is perfectly normal, at least in private). Men with sexually transmitted infections often have the dangerous triad of pretending not to notice, hating going to the doctor and hoping it will go away. A man with gonorrhoea can be dripping with pus, getting it all over his shorts and the chaise longue, and still expect to have sex. Don’t join in until you’re both checked out, treated and given the all clear.

  Are some men genitally too aware?

  Yes. Like many of life’s variables, genital awareness is distributed on a bell-shaped curve, with those happily caked in last year’s smegma at one end, and those with chemical burns from obsessive over-washing at the other. You should never separate the penis from the person (no matter how angry you are), and anxiety often accompanies a pristine pole. Some men become obsessive squeezers, gripping the shaft repeatedly to convince themselves that they have a discharge. Unsurprisingly, the penis gets sore and inflamed. Washing with soap on the outside is fine, but shower gel or bleach squirted down the hole can really sting. And pipe cleaners are best left for cleaning pipes.

  HER PIECES

  Vagina or furry hoop?

  I’m a vagina and vulva man, myself. Parents rarely agree on what to name their children, never mind their children’s genitals. Daughters present a particular challenge if you’re shy about anatomy. One person’s ‘mee mee’ is another’s ‘moo moo’, ‘fu fu’, ‘felooloo’, ‘tuppence’, ‘bits and bobs’, ‘down below’, ‘Mary’, ‘front bottom’, ‘little twinkle’, ‘blossom’, ‘vajayjay’, ‘jina’ or ‘leg pit’. And let’s not forget the (cockney rhyming) ‘fine china’. ‘Minge’, ‘fanny’ and ‘twat’ just don’t sound right, and neither does the ‘C’ word, even when it’s said in an Australian accent.

  None of these dispel the common anatomical confusion about what’s in and what’s out. The Vagina Monologues, an iconic play aimed at allowing women to reclaim their genitals, spends much of the time musing on the vulva. The vagina is tucked away inside and the labia (fleshy lips, two pairs) and clitoris (pearly button of joy) are all vulva. There’s even a mons venerens, a vestibule and a fourchette in a vulva, if only we knew where to look.

  Nobody uses ‘vulva’ in polite discourse, nobody’s quite sure what it means and nobody likes to mention that women are beautifully designed for surface joy without a visit from Mr Dyno-Rod. If you can’t manage vagina and vulva over Cornflakes, try V and V. It at least sows the seed that there’s more to be found than an opening, and it’s perfectly OK to go exploring (but finish your Cornflakes first).

  If women had to climax to produce an egg, would humans die out?

  Certainly there’d be fewer of us, but that may not be a bad thing. And men who wanted to be fathers would have to try harder (as if producing an erection every time a thermometer says so isn’t hard enough).

  Does a clitoris have legs?

  Yes. There’s far more to a clitoris than meets the eye. As Frank Skinner observed: ‘It’s about the only thing with a hood I’m not frightened of these days.’ It’s also got lips, ligaments, a glans, a shaft, a sponge, a bulb, a diaphragm, a good blood supply and around 8,000 nerve endings, so if you do manage to find it, don’t overdo the celebrations. It’s likely to be extremely sensitive. Ask before you touch. And don’t drop it.

  Why can’t women pee standing up?

  Women can pee standing up perfectly well, as anyone who’s viewed the world from under a coffee table will testify. But due to certain anatomical constraints, they can’t go it alone without baring themselves. There are however a number of ingenious urination aids on the market, such as Shewee, a moulded plastic funnel which you place discretely under the crotch, with underwear pushed aside, to divert the flow in a man-wards manner. This allows you to pee upright or squatting without getting a chilly arse and you don’t have to touch base with disgusting public or portable toilets. You could, for a laugh, go into the gents and pee all over the floor like a man. I haven’t tried Shewee but I’m told it’s rather good (although the website does oversell it: ‘Travel the world with the comfort of home in your pocket.’ Yeah, right). Other brands are available (Wizz-away, P-mate etc. etc.).

  Does jogging make your boobs droop?

  Can do. One study found that when women jog, your breasts move ‘in a three dimensional figure of eight’, as if you needed another reason for men to stare at them. Depending on the weight and shape of your breasts, you can even calculate the size of the strain on the supporting tissues, but suffice to say that the average 36C, 300 gram breast will sag a bit with prolonged jogging. On a brighter note, bounce and sag can be reduced greatly with a very supportive sports bra.

  Does breast size matter to men?

  Much less than you think. Most men find all breasts and nipples attractive, whatever their size or shape, and whether or not they’ve got a few hairs on. And we’d hate to inhabit a world where all breasts looked identical.

  Is it worth having a nip, tuck and tidy down below?

  The vulval lips come in a wonderful variety of shapes and sizes. Sometimes the outer ones are bigger than the inner ones, sometimes it’s the other way round. One way to find the clitoris it to trace the outer lips until they meet at the top, and peer gently under the hood. Another is to ask. Just as men are given performance anxiety by porn-fed cucumbers, some women feel their vulvas have to be non-protruding. But who’s going to notice? Most men have enough trouble remembering your birthday, so they’re hardly likely to recall the shape of your vulva (the average time spent down that way is thirteen seconds, eyes shut and accompanied by a prayer).

  If you want advice, start by going to the local sexual health clinic. They’ve seen every shape of vulva going and they’re pretty good at reassurance. Remember, nothing hangs like a scrotum and you don’t see men lining up to have theirs clipped. If you’re sure you want some form of reshaping, ask the clinic to recommend a cosmetic surgeon who knows what he or she is doing. The genitals are no place for a dabbler.

  If women had no discharge, would they squeak?

  No. There are no hinges in a vagina, but lots of lubrication. The vagina stays moist to clean itself, and the healthy discharge clears out dead cells and bacteria. Don’t help it along with soap or douching – this just causes soreness and thrush. The discharge comes from glands at the neck of the womb and is clear or white, and painless. We all have our own natural odour, and curry and asparagus can apparently affect women down there. The discharge is acidic to fight infection and some women believe that pineapple (orally) adds to the acidity and makes them taste more fruity. No large trial has confirmed or refuted this.

  Discharge normally varies in amount and consistency during the cycle: non-existent or thick at the start; clear, slippery and sperm-friendly in the middle as the egg is released. It oxidises in air, so it’s not uncommon to find a yellow-brown stain on your pants mid-cycle that’s easy to confuse with blood. If your discharge is itchy, very smelly or a new colour (white, yellow or green), it can nearly always be cured by a trip to the right doctor. And it’s always worth feeling around for a forgotten tampon.

  BITS AND PIECES

  Can you beat a good poo?

  Not easily. The anus is a wonderful piece of kit and well worth keeping in shape. Thanks to its intricate sphincter and rich nerve supply, it tells you when you need a poo and generally makes it very enjoyable to hold on for a bit. Then when the ‘call to stool’ becomes overwhelming, all you need to do is sit forward and relax. Your amazing anus can also tell the difference between a solid, a liquid and a gas, and usually gets it right first time (unless you’ve got gastroenteritis, when a sly fart can quickly develop into something more substantial).

  Unfortunately, your anus can’t tell you how badly your poo is going to stink until it’s too late, but then often neither can you. As the Icelandic proverb goes: ‘Every man likes the smell of his own farts’, so even
if you’ve been firing off warning shots to others all morning, you may have experienced nothing more than a soothing inhalation.

  Poo smells because the bacteria in it produce sulphurous gases. Why man-poo stinks more than lady-poo is something of a mystery. In evolutionary terms, it could simply be marking out your territory. Perhaps the smell evolved as a warning to hunter-gatherers to not confuse a turd with a truffle. Or it may just be that men consume more of the things that make poo really stink (meat, fat, beer, beans).

  Some men are strangely proud of a spectacularly bad odour, but if it’s getting to be a relationship breaker, there are a number of options:

  • Close the door and open the window. Strange as it seems, less than half of men do both.

  • Flush and go. Flush the toilet the second the shit hits the pan. Only partially successful, you end up with a wet bum and it takes a lot of the pleasure away.

  • Burn off the gas. Posh houses often have a box of matches on top of the loo-roll holder. You don’t have to ignite the gas as soon as it comes out (spectacular, but a high risk of singeing), merely burn it off when you’ve finished. Again, the sooner you do it the better, and the closer you get it to the plimsoll line of the poo, the brighter the flame. Less educational, but more hygienic, to flush first. Again, it’s all a bit of a chore and the toilet then has that give-away stink of a burnt match.

  (TIP: Don’t leave it floating in the pan, but don’t put it still smouldering in the bin either.)

  • Fresh Drop. A single drop of this ‘magic smell eater’ takes out even the worst culprits. It contains ‘perfume, plant extracts, disinfectant, chemical deodorizer, surface active agent and alcohol’ and I’ve no idea how it works. But it does. For best results, you put a drop in before you go, but if you want to wallow in your glory, it’s still pretty effective if you add it afterwards.

  What’s the correct position for a poo?

  Ideally, squatting so your hips are lower than your knees. The French drop-off holes may look a bit sparse, but they get the anatomy just right, allowing a natural unfurling of the sigmoid colon and rectum so the poo slides out with minimal encouragement. The low squat is also a great position for having a baby, particularly behind a bush.

  As you get older and your hips stiffen, you may have difficulty getting up from a low toilet. Raising the seat can help, but then you may find the poo is less gratifying. One solution is a stool-stool, that allows you to raise your feet and hence knees to poo, then you can kick it away and slide off swiftly to light a match.

  Should you stand up or sit down to wipe?

  There is no moral imperative here, it’s just a matter of personal choice, mobility and manual dexterity. There’s more variation in arse-wiping than just about any sport. From the type of paper used, number of sheets selected, folded, scrunched-up or moistened. A sit-down wipe requires a point of access and a long arm going in blind, but your buttocks are spread nicely. Standing up is superficially easier but unsatisfying as the buttocks are clenched. So most people opt for a semi-squat, strongest foot forward, wiping front-to-back. Some analyse the wipings closely for blood, worms, contact lenses etc. Others can’t wait to flush them away.

  Posh people don’t bother with any of this nonsense and head straight for the bidet. If space is cramped, you can even buy ‘a toilet with bidet functionality’ (NOTE: Read the instructions carefully). Those less fortunate make their own bidet with a shower head, either dangling precariously over the bath or squatting, but nearly always ending up with very wet pants. Some men don’t even bother wiping and when they do, only half wash their hands afterwards.

  Is it OK to rinse out a toilet brush in the sink?

  Not in my sink. Toilet brushes are a terrible design. One minute you’re earning brownie points by removing brownies from the pan, the next you’ve got a multi-bristled nylon monster covered in bits of shit. Hide it back in the container and you’ve lost all your brownie points. Wash it out in the sink and your bits flick all over the toothbrushes. If you’re desperate, you could maybe use the bath if there’s one to hand. Or just leave it in the pan to soak overnight in bleach, with a post it note on the door to remind yourself what you’ve done, so nobody sits on it in the middle of the night (uncomfortable if it’s you, minus 1,000 brownie points if it’s not).

  Why are the British obsessed with their bowels?

  The ruling classes have always wanted to rule their bowels too and, for centuries, tried to train them to be regular as clockwork, at the same time every morning. Matrons lined up small boys in public schools and forced syrup of figs down them. In the First World War, this bowel fixation spread along the trenches, from the officers to the foot soldiers, and we’ve never quite recovered, which is why we still waste a fortune on laxatives every year. What matters is not how often you go, but whether it slips out easily when you do. Fruit, fibre, fluid, a knees-up and a happy disposition are generally all you need.

  Is Bristol proud of its Stool chart?

  It certainly should be. The stool chart was developed by two Bristol doctors, Heaton and Lewis, who proposed you could tell how quickly food passed through your digestive tract by peering at your poo. Common sense would suggest that if you’re passing liquid, it’s racing through on the back of a vindaloo; if you’re taking eons to squeeze out a solitary rabbit pellet, then you could do with the hurry-ups.

  But common sense alone is not enough for scientists. They need proof. So Heaton and Lewis took sixty-six volunteers and measured their ‘whole-gut transit time’ with radiopaque marker pellets and weighed their stools, as well as keeping a diary of their form and frequency on a seven-point ‘stool scale’. The transit time (i.e. the time for marker pellet to go from mouth to anus) was then altered with senna (speeds it up) and loperamide (slows it down), and the measurements were repeated. Surprise! There was a good correlation between the fluidity of the stool and how quickly it took to appear.

  You can download the Bristol Stool Form Scale from the internet, and it makes a delightful, educational and cheap credit-crunch game to get you through the long holidays. Type 1 are separate hard lumps, like walnuts and as uncomfortable to pass. Type 2 are like a home-made or organic sausage and all bumpy. Type 3 is an easier, production-line sausage with cracks on the surface. Type 4 is a smooth, soft easily-coiled snake. Type 5 are soft Mr Blobbies with clear-cut edges, Type 6 are mushy, fluffy, raggedy-edged pieces. And Type 7 is the entirely-liquid-you-won’t-be-going-far-today sort.

  To make it more interesting, you can correlate what you eat and whether you wash your hands before meals, with your stool form. And for the real enthusiast on a rainy day, try check out the colour. Poo is usually brown because of the combination of iron and the pigment bilirubin in the bowel. But the shade of brown can vary enormously. Get a Dulux chart from B&Q and see if you can spot a hint of African Dawn or a touch of Moonlanding. Keep a diary and show it to your GP. I’m sure she’ll be fascinated. For anyone with access to radiopaque marker pellets, you could study the form first, and then bet on how quickly you think it will take the next one to pass through.

  NOTE: None of these puerile games are advocated by Heaton or Lewis in their serious research, published in the Scandanavian Journal of Gastroenterology (Volume 32, Issue 9, September 1997, pp.920–24).

  ANOTHER NOTE: Obvious red blood in the poo needs checking out, as does a very pale poo (could be down to jaundice) and a black one, especially if it really, really, really stinks. Meleana – the result of altered blood passing through the bowels – is both a domestic and medical emergency. Dial 999 and open the window.

  Can farting spread disease?

  Possibly. A study reported in the New Scientist of young men dropping their trousers and farting forcefully onto a Petri dish found that some germs were transmitted. The clinical significance of this is unclear – bugs normally get trapped in corduroy – but it’s certainly unhelpful to fart loudly in someone’s face, even without your trousers down (unless you’re invited to).


  Is farting always someone else’s fault?

  Sadly, we live in a blame culture. In families without a dog, a disproportionately large percentage of farts get blamed on the eldest male, which is one of the few advantages of having relatives over for Christmas. Healthy men let one go between 14 and 25 times a day and women half as often, although women occasionally produce a stronger smell.

  In socially embarrassing situations (e.g. Midnight Mass), it’s possible for those with good musculature to keep the sphincter tight but pressure always finds a way out, and some of the gas is absorbed through the gut wall, into the bloodstream and out via the lungs. So you really can speak out of your arse. Others, particularly the older relative and mother of four, are a bit slacker down below and find it impossible to hold on. As with comedy, the secret is timing. You’d be surprised what pops out in the chorus of ‘Ding Dong Merrily on High’.

  So, how does the wind get there? Every time we swallow, we gulp in air too and fizzy drinks compound this. Bicarbonate in the saliva and pancreatic juices react with stomach acid to produce carbon dioxide and many of our gut bacteria react with whatever’s passing through to produce methane, hydrogen and more C02. All of these cause wind, but it’s the tiny amount of sulphurous gas that make it smell.

  Farting and belching in the absence of other symptoms are entirely healthy. Indeed, the Dutch Liver Foundation once launched a publicity campaign encouraging people to break wind fifteen times a day. A happy medium would be to go easy on food with a high proportion of unabsorbable carbohydrate, that provide a feeding frenzy for the lower gut bacteria. These include beans, peas, broccoli, cauliflower, Jerusalem artichokes, root vegetables, raisons, prunes, apples and fruit juice (which is heavy in fructose). You’ll note that all of these are supposed to be very good for you, and wind is often the price you pay for a healthy diet.