A word about libido: it’s been something like three weeks for Randy now. He was just beginning to address this situation when a highly intelligent and perceptive Catholic ex-priest was suddenly introduced into the cell next to his and began sleeping six inches away from him. Since then, masturbation per se has been pretty much out of the question. To the extent Randy believes in any god at all, he’s been praying for a nocturnal emission. His prostate gland now has the size and consistency of a croquet ball. He feels it all the time, and has begun to think of it as his Hunk of Burning Love. Randy had a spot of prostate trouble once when he was chronically drinking too much coffee, and it made everything between his nipples and his knees hurt. The urologist explained that Little Man ’tate is neurologically wired into just about every other part of your body, and he didn’t have to exert any rhetorical skill, or marshall any detailed arguments, in order to make Randy believe that. Randy has believed, ever since, that the ability of men to become moronically obsessed with copulation is in some way a reflection of this wiring diagram; when you are ready to give the external world the benefit of your genetic material, i.e. when the ’tate is fully loaded, even your pinkies and eyelids know about it.