Trying not to choke on my smoked fish, I replied: "You mean, restoring male vitality by surgery?"
"You got it!" he responded. "Penile prosthesis procedures keep the wolf from the door."
Smirking, I recounted a gem of a story about a Brazilian gentleman who underwent a penile implant operation, only to discover to his embarrassment that his mechanically-assisted organ sprang into life every time his neighbour changed channels on their TV set.
"You don't believe that crap, do you?" laughed my dinner companion. "That chestnut goes back to the mid-'90s and was snapped up by the world's media, without any factual research."
As one of the gullible hacks responsible for repeating the story, I meekly asked, "how do you know it wasn't true?"
"Well," he explained, "even today, it's still difficult to find a satisfactory way of electronically controlling erectile dysfunction and certainly in the mid-90s there were no known methods that worked.
"Most of the earlier successes were simply malleable. We inserted a couple of bendable rods ... and the patient merely needed to bend them into the erect position to initiate sex.
"Today, most of the surgery involves a hydraulic, inflatable prosthesis, which is easier for the patient to manage and seems more natural."
"How do you inflate the organ?" I asked curiously.
"We insert a small chamber ... when you pump the tap, it releases fluid and inflates the prosthesis, while a deflation valve returns the fluid to the reservoir."
"Sounds about as much complicated fun as blowing up an over-sized kiddies beach toy," I mused.
"Well, sex is the driver and at a certain age many men have undergone the procedure," he replied, staring at me with a knowing look.
"Well," I replied defensively, "as I'm only 81, I'm not quite ready to turn any part of my anatomy into some sort of inflatable rubber dinghy."
