msb-0002a -An Answer For Mark Yashimoto Nemcoff

Mark Yashimoto Nemcoff asked me a question and the aswer will definitely be something that he will have learned this week; and I'd fuckin' better hear about it on Friday.

You hear me Mark? I'd fuckin' better hear about it on Friday.

Mark asked how MS affects my sex life... You would, you sick fuck you. Christ only knows what intern-boy has to put up with.

Well, sit down kiddies, (I'm over fifty, you're all kiddies, even the Yuppie in the corner, stop arguing with me,) and I'll tell you a story all about multiple sclerosis.

Are you sitting comfortably?

Then I'll begin.

Well, MS is an auto-immune system disease where otherwise healthy T-Cells respond to some trigger, (in my case its a particular and specific genetic strain of influenza,) and the T-Cells get confused as to the identity of the offending substance or organism and start attacking the myelin sheath surrounding the neurons and axons of my nervous system and the oligidendrocytes which produce the myelin.

In English, stripped of the medical mumbo-jumbo, its like taking a pair of wire strippers to the control cables that run your body and the wires that feed back to tell you how your body's doing.

Any competent high-school graduate will tell you that that's really gonna fuck you up.

Any competent dancer will tell you that it messes up your kinesthestic sense.

Any competent audio engineer will tell you that this will introduce cross-talk and modulation distortion as signals leak in and out of your cabling and span across your wiring.

Any competent robotics systems analyst will tell you that the feed back and control mechanisms will be approximations and require constant monitoring and recalibration to a baseline.

Any competent physiologist would tell you that it would wreak havock with your 'somatic cage'.

I hear Mark crying out from the back... "But what about your sex life?"

There are some occasional effects on the sheer mechanics of the situation, but right about then I don't feel like having sex at all. Those extremely rare days when I can't get it up are usually those days when I'm too fuckin' busy trying to stay alive.

The other 99.99% of my life, MS sort of has no real effect, but the unreal effects are, uh, unreal.

Dude, I wouldn't wish MS on my worst enemy, but if you know what you're doing...

Here's a flashback:

The reaction of a nurse at the Ottawa General back in 1985 to my question of "What will this do to my sex life?" was an embarrassed giggle.

Fuck that, and fuck your embarrassment, bitch! We're obviously NOT all adults here.

I sincerely hope that they're not still shoving patients out the plane's back door and into the great unknown without a 'chute. 'Cause that just sucked ass man.

Back to the present, I was a dancer, an audio engineer and a computer systems analyst...

I figured out what my soma was actually doing with the stripped wires and crossed signals.

Like I said, Dude, I wouldn't wish MS on my worst enemy, but if you know what you're doing...

As long as the stimulation was not overwhelmingly repeated, which leads to sensory fatigue, and which required me to become an inventive sex partner, and the 'signal source' not too strong, which required me to become a gentle sex partner, I could then take advantage of the 'fuzziness' of my nervous system and its unintended routing of signals for my own pleasure.

I had just discovered sexual Nirvana and could orgasm with breath-taking, earth-shattering, mind-blowing, toe-curling, sweaty after-glowing intensity.

Spaniard call orgasm "The Little Death." (With a last name like "Robvira" and you couldn't figure out that my father's father was a Spanish Civil War draft dodger?)

Well, some times it felt like I'd died while shooting the uncensored European version of a Victoria Secret commercial, gone to heaven and was just kicking back with a drink in one hand, a joint in the other, just lying on a whole bunch of naked angels, legs and tits and pussies splayed out every which way, while I slowly detumesced.

My sex life is un-fuckin-believable dude.

I have the most intense, rip-your-guts-out, fry-your-brains-out, incredible orgasms.

If you gotta be sick, might as well be with MS, 'cause if you know how to handle it ... there are definite compensations.

Of course, life's a bitch otherwise.

My feet are always cold right up until I touch them, and then they're no colder than any other part of my body. I've learned to just disregard the fact that my body's always telling me to step out of the Champagne bucket.

(I read somewhere that Montel Williams's feet always feel like they're burning. That his exuse for smoking up. I can see why and even explain the effects of such psychotropic substances in signal processing terms. But just spark a Doobie and chill dude, I won't launch into it. I don't smoke though. I gotta stay sharp to stay on top of this disease.)

Walking's a pain in the ass now, and a slow, with a cane, one at that.

I don't dance anymore because my kinesthetic sense is now too fuzzy and my 'somatic box' doesn't correspond to what my senses report. (Which is also behind my occasional spasticity.)

I aim my body well but my I need constant visual correction to the somatic feed-back and in dancing there just too many things to track at once for it not to descend into chaos and a tangle of legs, arms and torso.

But I'm okay.

It's my immune system that's slightly screwed up and I have episodes when it occasionally tries to kill me.

Remember, Mark Yashimoto Nemcoff, ya sick voyeur, I wanna hear all about this on "Things I leaned this week."