What are you thinking now?

Soon I was led to a room and told to strip, and I donned a smock. "I broke my penis!" I said to the doctor. The whole thing was starting to seem hilarious. He poked me with a toothpick to make sure I still had feeling. Ouch. I did. A female doctor walked in and let out an involuntary gasp, which did not inspire confidence. They both fetched a urologist while I lay with my eggplant penis propped up on a towel, hooked at a 15-degree angle. It was unreal, the kind of thing you might see at a seaside freak show or in a rare Victorian medical textbook.

Susan and I started giggling. "Take a picture," I said. "I do have my camera phone," she said and snapped a few photos for posterity.

The urologist's diagnosis put an end to the fun and games. He explained that three tubes run the length of the penis. When you get an erection, two tubes engorge with blood, which makes them stretch. And abnormal bending can cause them to tear. Pop.

Most often a penile fracture occurs when the woman is on top and the penis slips out during rigorous sex and slams into the perineum -- you know, the little no-man's-land between the vagina and anus. A recent study on penile fractures reports more than 1,300 cases. A startling number have involved sex on office desks. A few resulted when men rolled over onto their erection while asleep. One, involving a ranch hand, mysteriously occurred in a horse corral. And in 2001 a Massachusetts man unsuccessfully sued an ex-girlfriend, alleging negligence when he suffered a penile fracture after she repositioned herself "without prior specific discussion" during sex.

In the past a penile fracture was treated like a sprained ankle, with cold compresses and splinting. But that often led to some undesirable side effects, including what doctors call penile angulation. I did not want my cock looking like a boomerang for the next 40 years.

"We're going to have to keep you overnight for a procedure," the urologist said. My heart was in my mouth, and my eyes were watering. Until this point I'd been fooling myself, figuring Susan and I would get home before her mother was even back.

The doctor explained my two options: We could do nothing and the blood might drain, given enough time. Or he could drain the blood during surgery and repair the damage. Either way, the risks included nerve damage, reduced sensation and erectile dysfunction.

I looked at Susan. Now we both were crying. "Guys who forgo the procedure have more pain and more problems later on," the urologist said. He described the operation: They'd make an incision along my circumcision scar, then slide the skin down to the base of the penis. This would allow them to drain the blood and clean up any clots.

I admit it -- I'm fond of my penis. I always have been. I haven't given it a pet name or anything dumb like that, but it's one of the few things I've been able to rely on. It's a big part of me. And I was just now realizing it would never be the same.

I paused for a deep breath. "If you say this is the best thing to do, okay," I said. "When do we start?" Almost immediately they began to prep me for the first operation I'd ever had. I was extra nice to every nurse and orderly; these people were about to fillet my cock, and I wanted them to do the best possible job. A little extra karma couldn't hurt.

Six hours after I broke my cock I was in surgery. The anesthesiologist told me he was from Sydney, Australia, which reassured me. They like their cocks in Sydney, right? Okay, maybe the anesthesia was warping my mind. "You want this surgery because you want your cock back, right?" he asked. I was right! They do love their cocks in Sydney! With a flick of his thumb he started the IV drip