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"Have you tried it?" he asks. I look up from my desk to find a middle-aged friend leaning toward me conspiratorially, his face an odd combination of deadly seriousness and abject glee. "Viagra...have you tried it?"

Christ.

Earlier today, I made a lame joke about Viagra. A coworker walking by snarked an offhand comment about the droopiness of a floral arrangement on my desk, and I jokingly suggested dropping a Viagra in the vase to "perk things up" a bit. I expected to hear a courtesy chuckle as he walked away, but I didn't. And now here he is, lurking ominously over me, essentially asking me if I have trouble getting it up.

"No!" I finally say defensively.

Why would I have tried it? That stuff is for old men whose spouses sleep in the spare room. I'm a virile, healthy, 29-year-old American male. Sure, there has been a time or two when, for reasons ranging from lack of interest to methamphetamine, little Tyson hadn't quite been ready to get in the ring when the bell rang. But that happens to everybody, right? Okay, yeah, so I recently acquired a 19-year-old girlfriend (let's call her "Lolita") and maybe I've been feeling just a tad insecure about not being capable of some of the erectile heroics I was capable of at 16, when random stiffies occurred more often than not, and were so solid they were almost prehensile: you could hang umbrellas on them (if you felt you had to).

But things are fine....I haven't been worried about it.

"You should try it. Trust me," he says, "it's amazing."

But I...

"Doesn't matter...try it. You will thank me."

Hmmm. "Do you have any?"

"Nope. I just tried it last weekend. A buddy gave it to me. It's easy to get. Try the Net." He winks and walks away.

Hmmm.

Six hours later, I'm at home in front of the computer looking at one of about 47,000 Viagra Web sites I found and answering a confidential medical questionnaire over a secured Internet connection. Pretty basic stuff at first: name, date of birth, medicinal allergies. Then we get to the good stuff: No, I am not "experiencing erectile dysfunction" (really!), but for the sake of this experiment, I click the YES button. I hear a voice of dissent begin to growl from areas trousal. Soon it's crying out in rage at the slander that is being committed online. I tell it to calm down, that this is just an experiment, blah, blah, blah.

And then I realize I am speaking out loud to my penis. Jesus, maybe I do have a problem.

So I submit my form and my credit-card number, and am told that an online physician will carefully review my questionnaire, and, if his expert diagnosis determines that Viagra is right for me, my order will be shipped immediately via commercial carrier.

Two seconds after I click the OK button, I receive an e-mail saying the online physician has carefully reviewed my questionnaire (and presumably my credit-card number) and after much deliberation has decided that yes, Viagra is indeed for me.