Such serendipity. In the week when President Cruise Missile himself graced our shores and the punditry queued up to express the nation's oral gratification, The Health Report (RTE Radio 1, Tuesday) addressed the vexed question of erectile dysfunction.
That's ED, or impotence to you and me. After a summer when the second-hand stories from the States (when they weren't about Monica) concerned a certain wonder drug, Health Report producer/ presenter Yetti Redmond launched her new series by leading the new wave of home-based Viagra stories.
This remarkable half-hour documentary on impotence had the traditional problem-documentary format: three fellas with the "complaint" and three experts, their stories and comments all intercut. One difference: a decidedly happy ending, because all three sufferers took part in the Belfast trials of Viagra and were satisfied customers.
Not surprisingly, given the transatlantic hoopla of which we've heard so much, the only thing truly new about this report was the Irish accents. So the testimonies assembled here had the same limitations and lacunae that have characterised most of the discussion about Viagra.
The word that's most conspicuous by its absence? "Orgasm." Or, if that's a bit too intimate and clinical in a discourse that routinely includes "erection", "penis", "intercourse" etc, what about "pleasure"?
Imagine an enlightened discourse about female sexuality that didn't include these words, and you get a glimpse of how much alienation and avoidance continues to lurk in the way men "openly" discuss sexual matters. Their (our) "performance" rather than pleasure is the focus; the words "intercourse" and "intimacy" seem to be virtually interchangeable.
That, of course, is not the fault of the courageous men who told The Health Report about their problems. "I was unable to conjugate (sic) my relationship, which prior to that had been . . . very successful for 30 years," one said. "I came to almost accepting our relationship would end sexually and from the love side," said another.
Erection equals intercourse equals sex equals love. It's more than 20 years since Shere Hite concluded that most women do not achieve orgasm through intercourse, yet the destructive equation continues. Even the third sufferer, who said he and his wife "found ways around" his impotence in their love-making, concluded post-Viagra: "My wife probably had a smile on her face, thinking `this is what I've been missing'."
Undoubtedly, ED is a disturbing problem, but surely the culture's dominant mode of discussing male sexuality simultaneously exacerbates the anxiety and misses the point about what's "missing"? "Twenty or 30 years ago it was thought that 90 per cent of persons with impotence had psychological problems," one of the experts told us. "It's now known that 80 or 90 per cent have actual physical problems." The choice of words - "thought" versus "known", "actual" - leads us inexorably toward the little blue pill.
Yetti Redmond suggested that there is "concern" about Viagra's use as a leisure drug, but since its dangers were played down by the experts here and since the same underlying assumptions about sexuality also point toward a more-is-better conclusion for those who are simply exhausted rather than impotent, it's hard to see any solid arguments against such use.
Health Report fills the 3.30 p.m. slot with the silly strand-name, Life and Living. Its all-encompassing nature means that the Friday filler is the utterly different Paddy O'Gorman with Paddy's People. As usually happens in Ireland, people are inclined to draw a conclusion about O'Gorman's character and then apply it promiscuously to his programmes. Personally, I'm agnostic on the first question but a thorough admirer of the radio verite work.
I'm a sucker, especially, for the stuff he leaves in: last week at Fairyhouse horse fair he met a woman who works with horses and deaf children, and O'Gorman blatantly took the first steps in setting up a future programme with her: "and when will you be doing that again?"
Similarly, when he met Matt Morgan of Randalstown, Co Antrim, the interview stopped, then restarted: "I switched off my tape recorder for a little while, but since then you were telling me you're a songwriter." Of such small transgressions - "tape recorder" being virtually a banned phrase on most radio programmes - is a critic's pleasure crafted. Pretty soon we were hearing one of Matt's sweet love songs.
The latest in this column's occasional series of public-service announcements: Dublin's community station, Anna Livia FM, is hosting a particularly star-studded "Autumn Evening of Jazz" (Honor Heffernan, Hugh Buckley etc) at Renard's in South Frederick Street on Sunday, September 27th. Book early and often.
