It’s not often that a writer sits down and candidly discusses his morning erections. If you’re a male, I’m sure you’ve had a morning erection. If you’re a female, chances are you’ve accidentally bumped into a morning erection. What are we to make of it all?

Scientists—who rarely know anything about writing—call the phenomenon of sleepy-time erections “nocturnal tumescence,” and I think I saw them open for Cannibal Corpse about ten years ago. Scientific theories abound for why men pop boners while asleep, but if you take a good look at most scientists, I wouldn’t trust them to know anything about sex. So I—a man so unbearably sexy, I stink up the room—am left to roam the dark perimeter beyond polite society and ponder morning wood as if it were a philosophical dilemma. The idea that men are slaves to their dicks is a social truism. The notion that men are powerless to contain their gorilla urges is a popular one. More than one girlfriend has told me that because I’m a man, I have absolutely no control over my sexual impulses. I like to think this is untrue except in the case of the morning erection. For that, I have absolutely no explanation. And this is why it upsets me. I look down, and there it is. I can’t rightly deny it. It’s a proud sunflower reaching upward toward all the warmth and light the world has to give. It stands like a gleaming rifle cocked to blast through the nearest little white dove. It leads me around like the big steel handle on a little red wagon. It’s big and sturdy enough to ride away on like I’m a witch on a broomstick. It’s my proud stalk of Hawaiian sugar cane. My bold Mongolian fighting stick. Ready for action. Ready to penetrate. Ready to rip, mangle, and pleasure. Ready, whether I like it or not. And that’s the problem.

Now, the wake-me-up blowjob is an entirely different beast. An unexpected mornin’ beej, in which a man rouses from slumber to find his member fully swollen and nestled within his partner’s eagerly slobbering mouth, is one of the finest things a man can experience in this cold, dreary life. But although the wake-me-up blowjob may be involuntary on the recipient’s part, this is more than compensated for by the fellatrix’s bold, decisive action. At least there’s a good dollop of the ol’ triumph-of-the-will involved. The wake-me-up blowjob is an existential act.

What disturbs and upsets me about morning wood is its involuntary nature.

I haven’t had a sexually graphic dream that I’ve remembered since I was, oh, four years old or something. I get all of my action during my waking hours. Or maybe I’m having dreams that are so perverted, I blot them from my memory before I awake. But to the best of my knowledge, waking up with morning wood has no immediate antecedent in my nocturnal fantasy life. I honestly can’t remember the last time I awoke from a dirty dream. But I wake up every morning with a nine-pound hammer between my legs. It defies me. It’s the very model of determination.

I don’t typically enjoy morning sex. I usually need a swig of vanilla-mint mouthwash and feel like I have to take a shit. I’m all groggy and cranky, and until I get some coffee and eggs in me, I’m a potential serial killer. Given those parameters, I hardly ever want to have sex when I wake up.

But that doesn’t stop the morning wood. My body has other intentions. It wakes me up with a hard-on that bypasses my mental functioning—that whole imaginary blob the experts call my “sexuality”—and simply wills itself into being.

And because it occurs with a seeming lack of will on my part, I’m highly ashamed. Mind you, not much embarrasses me. I’m not even ashamed of the fact that I use emu oil when I’m shaving my balls or that I sometimes let my wife stick her finger up my ass, but I’m ashamed of my morning erections because I have no control over them. I don’t necessarily have to use emu oil when shaving my balls, and if I don’t want my wife to stick her finger up my ass, I can just pull it out, but I have no control over whether or not to wake up with a bone-bone. And that’s highly embarrassing to a man of my mien.

It’s as if my cock is telling me, “See me? I am your fundamental project today. I don’t care about you and your precious ‘plans’—go ahead and stick me somewhere pronto.”

We like to think we’re driving the car, but the morning erection is a runaway bus that careens along with us trapped inside. It’s sad to contemplate that in the end, our bodies don’t give a fuck about what we think or feel. Our bodies wind up killing us every time.

The only sure thing I could do to prevent morning erections would be to sever my penis, and I don’t think I’m ready to take that step.

Related posts:

1. FADER: BRIGHTBLACK MORNING LIGHT
2. DO WE REALLY NEED YOU AND YOUR MORNING ENERGY?
3. GOOD MORNING!