About a year ago, I had a heart surgery. Spoiler alert: I didn’t die. The thing about heart surgery is that it’s not so much the surgery itself, it’s the recovery. That means lots of time sitting around in bed.

When you spend a lot of time doing nothing, eventually your mind wanders and when my mind wanders, I think of ideas. Ideas for bits. Some of these bits are good, some are bad. Some are just the briefest of fleeting thoughts. Some not even that. But some are quite elaborate.

Sometimes I spend days just thinking of ways to add to these bits, to build a whole world around them. This is a story about that kind of bit. But, it’s important to keep in mind, I am not saying this guarantees that the bit will beg good. Not at all. Just that it’s a product of obsession, boredom and maybe working the painkillers and adrenaline out of my system.

“H-A-T-T-O-G-O”

I am a big fan of Chappell Roan. I think she is one of the most exciting new artists of the last twenty years or so. I love her music, but I also love who she is as an artist. I love when catchy pop songs bely their subversive message.

Around the time that I was recovering, her song, “H-O-T-T=O=G-O” was everywhere. It’s not my favorite or hers, but it is a very solid tune and it weaseled its way into my brain and sparked an idea for a bit.

What if it wasn’t an original song, but rather a Weird Al-style takeoff of a song that already existed? And this song was a jingle for a hat store that offered what they thought was a novel approach to buying a hat, but in actuality, was standard practice for the hat industry as a whole? Hilarious, right?!

Well, I certainly thought so, as I lied down in my hospital bed. That’s why I spent so much time dictating notes into my iPhone.

The crux of the bit is that instead of “Hot-to-go,” the original song was “Hat-to-go.” Because the chief advertising point for this particular hat store was that unlike all the other hat stores that existed, this hat store had all sorts of hats available to buy and wear the same day. You know, because you usually had to order a hat and then wait five to six weeks for your hat to come in.

That’s how hat stores work, right? “Hat stores” are a real thing that exist, right? What do you mean, “not anymore?” What do you mean, “everybody just goes to Lids in the mall now?”” Shut up and stop trying to ruin my bit!

Dictating away, I imagined all sorts of hilarious places this bit could go. Maybe even Ms. Roan herself would have to weigh in on the phony controversy! I really thought this.

I had a whole backstory about the owners and the founding of the store, which had been in existence for over seventy-five years or something, but it actually didn’t make it any funnier.

I went so far as to look into buying the domain name for hattogo.com. Don’t bother clicking on that, thankfully, I came to my senses before my wife gave me back my credit card.

So you see where this is going: I got better and started to see that maybe this whole thing wasn’t going to set the comedy world on fire the way I initially thought it would. But I kept it in my back pocket of my mind pants, especially the jingle, which I change the words to each time I hear the actual song.

“H-A-T-T-O-G-O

You can wear a hat to go!”

"Is that some kind of a joke?" I thought. What the hell kind of urologist is named "Dr. Penis Puncher? Is that his actual name? What kind of marketing scheme would that be? Who's looking through urologists to examine their penis and thinks, "Hey, I'll give that one a shot!"

But then it dawned on me that I had just spent three hours thinking about a urologist when I had never thought about a urologist before in my whole life for even a second. Genius! I had to give this guy a call. 

When I got to my appointment, he seemed normal enough.

"Dr. Penis Puncher, eh?" I chuckled. He was short and balding with a slight build and glasses. He explained that his mother had severe, undiagnosed mental illness and that indeed,  was his legal name, given at birth. 

He had always resisted the calling to be a urologist but his mother had to have had some unique foresight in that delusional mind of hers because he was just so perfectly suited for this career. We shared a laugh about life and all its crazy twists and he had me lay back while he examined me. 

What happened next brings tears to my eyes, even three years later. I experienced a pain unlike any I had ever known. The mothers I have spoken to about it say it's probably the nearest a biological male can come to the feeling of childbirth. 

Worst of all is that it was so intense and also so 'present,' if that makes sense. I've gotten punched in the head before and it makes you fuzzy or foggy, as part of the body's self defense. There was no such escape here. On the contrary, I was hyper-focused not only on the pain but every single thing around me.

That's how I saw that he punched me. In the penis. It was incredibly fast. Almost inhumanly so. It was like watching a nail gun. There's maybe just a blur and then all of a sudden, there's a nail there. Or a missile. I doubled over and he just smiled.

"You have calcium deposits. Perfectly normal. I'll write you a prescription." As I gasped for air, I tried to yell for help, after all, this man had just assaulted me. "There, there, just breathe, you want a lollipop, you little bitch?" He chuckled and said, “Nah, just kidding” and left the room.

To my relief, a nurse came in. I looked to her with desperate eyes, as I choked on the words,"He--he---" She looked upon my face with kind eyes. "He what? Diagnosed your problem expertly?" She handed him some forms, smiled at me and walked away.

This is what I have pieced together from my 34 month ordeal: Dr. Penis Puncher is protected by people in the highest levels of government because regardless of his methods, he has almost an otherworldly knowledge of urology.

Frequently, whenever a case is considered a 'lost cause,' they will refer the suffering party to Dr. Penis Puncher for a miracle cure. He's done this with so many high-ranking officials that nobody can touch him. From what I can surmise, this is almost his 'superpower.'

In that split-second he punches you in the groin, he is able to tell your whole penis-related medical history instantly. And I have to admit, he diagnosed my problem right off the bat more accurately than any of the second opinions I had gotten, subsequently.

Maybe you can also chock his success, at least partially, to garden-variety homophobia. The punch is quick and once the shock wears off, there's no permanent damage and for those with a fragile sense of their masculinity, this is probably easier to bear than having another man fumble around with your junk for a few minutes. 

So my lawsuit was thrown out. I endured death threats and my life was destroyed both personally and professionally but I don't regret a thing, because I can ride my bike to the gym without puking blood.

It was “hard copy-only” for a while but that got too time-consuming and expensive so I just started sending out .pdf files via email.

It just wasn’t the same and I eventually just let it peter out.

But with the advent of Substack, Skizzleplex lives again!

So I am gonna put up the first 12 or so issues so you can check it out and see what I am all about, but look for brand new exclusive content coming very soon!

Thanks for your support. Eric.

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