My Urologist Is The Smoke Monster

With the impending finale of LOST only a few hours from its conclusion, I am struggling to find something to fill the void of taking seemingly random occurrences and tying them together in order to solve near impossible mysteries. What’s more, despite the current list of pseudo-replacements already on TV, I’m not convinced these quite measure up to the originality or sophistication surrounding the plight of Oceanic Flight 815’s now iconic cast of characters. This is just my opinion. Others are welcome to disagree, but whatever the case, I am still left without a suitable replacement—or I was anyway, until a recent series of actual events too strange to be ignored took place. My brain is now preoccupied by this new challenge of connecting these enigmatic dots in the hopes of forming a coherent theory as to what’s going on and why I appear to be a central figure.

Here’s what I have to work with. The Friday before last, I was working out at the fitness center when in walked a man who easily could have won a Saddam Hussein look-alike contest. Striking as this was, it’s not that detail that qualified him as unusual in my mind; that would be reserved for the two large, white cockatoos riding on his shoulders. My initial thought was that the man was checking the place out, a notion proved wrong when he launched into series of bench-presses with the birds perched on either end of the weight bar. Interesting.

Out of politeness, I really try to ignore these sorts of things; however, this becomes infinitely more difficult when such a person steps onto the running machine directly beside you and places his spike-feathered birds on the TV monitor affixed to the treadmill’s console. In fact, I’d dare say it’s damn near impossible, especially when these menacing creatures are staring straight at you as they violently bob up and down a mere eighteen inches from your head. This is when I decided to skip the cool-down portion of my run and casually exit the premises, but not before catching the narrow gaze of the bird’s owner.

The next incident occurred less than a week later during a quick trip to Wal-Mart which is a well-known hotbed of oddity unto itself (kind of like the Dharma Initiative gone wrong). As I was entering the store, a perfectly sane looking woman, pushing a two-seated baby stroller was headed out. There was nothing particularly remarkable about her—mid-twenties, modest dress, well-groomed. Then she swerved directly into my path.

“Do you speak Spanish?” she asked in a tone that would’ve made me feel criminal if I actually did hable the Español.

“Uh, no. Can I—“

“I need a ride home!”

All at once something struck me as not right. The boldness in her demand combined with the absence of such amicable qualifiers as, “Pardon me, sir,” and, “You might think me crazy for asking this, but,” caused me to invent a spontaneous, yet plausible excuse as to why I could not ferry her off to only God knows where. The resulting expression on her face made me think I had denied her a wallet full of money (not that I had one on me), rather than refusing to assist her in a time of need. Strange.

This brings me to the “phone call,” which was anything but ordinary. Before getting into the specifics, however, I need to take you back to my high profile vasectomy in December. I’m not sure whether it was due to the lingering embarrassment suffered from the lengthy peek my urologist’s young female assistants were afforded by my man parts, or simply the indignity suffered from shuffling with my head hung low like a neutered dog through an attentive waiting room, but whatever the reason, I was long overdue in returning for my follow up.

At the insistence of my wife, I finally scheduled the required visit in order to drop off what the young lady (one of the two mentioned earlier) referred to in a hushed, cryptic voice as “the package.” “The package” as it turns out proved to be wee bit more difficult for me to produce than I had expected, an issue that may or may not have been influenced by the distracting litany of errands I had on tap for the day, the foremost of which included picking out a present for my stepdaughter’s upcoming birthday.

Somehow, despite the obstacle, I managed to come through, and soon I was headed to the drop off point. The exchange went smoothly with neither the assistant nor myself making eye contact in the handoff, although this is also when I noticed that bag containing “the package” was emblazoned with the logo for a new medication meant to help men with lower than normal levels of testosterone. But whatever, I just needed a green light from the doctor and all would be forgotten (until my next and final visit anyway).

By the time I got back home, the office was already calling with the results—and here’s the part where it gets weird. A female voice on the other end of the receiver passed along the following instructions—and I quote: “The doctor wants you to ejaculate as much as possible for the next month before seeing him again.” Yes, that’s exactly what she said, and I’m betting your reaction's the same as mine—it’s a code for something. Intriguing.

No one in their right mind would ever utter such a sentence and actually mean it. How else could that young lady have delivered such a message and done so with a straight face, which is more than I can say for my wife who laughed for a full twenty minutes after I relayed the news to her.

Still, I’m convinced there’s some sort of tie-in to the earlier mentioned incidents. The evidence pointing to this is overwhelming. And I haven’t even mentioned the errant Beanie Baby polar bear found in the girls’ bedroom, or the hostile band of people know as the “whoevers” inhabiting the other side of the apartment complex, or stranger still, the unexplained gravitational force that sucks silverware and food clean off the kitchen table and down onto the floor underneath.

Since “the phone call,” though, I’ve been working my brain into knots trying to piece together the clues, and I’ve arrived at a few theories. The guy at the gym? He’s a former Saddam Hussein body double who escaped to the U.S. and now works as a hit man hired to keep me away from learning the truth. (Come on. White cockatoos? That’s a dead giveaway). As far as the lady who approached me at Wal-Mart, my guess is that she recognized me because we knew each other in some alternate, sideways dimension; the babies in her stroller, however, I am quite sure are not hers, and she’s only raising them until their mother can be found in the jungle where she was last seen.

Admittedly, it was the secret message in “the phone call” that baffled me the longest. After hours of over thinking, it dawned on me how simple the explanation was. Ejaculate for a month before returning to see the doctor? Obviously this is the timetable for when the seamen in the submarine would be returning to the island a month from now. Of course! This all became clear to me once I realized the true identity of my urologist. Yeah, he’s the smoke monster.

* * *

Get your copy of Sugar Milk: What One Dad Drinks When He Can't Afford Vodka