Life is strange, sometimes. Themes and symbols run through our lived experience of time in a way that defy Cartesian rationality.

At Christmas, our extended family got together and got a bit silly, as you do. We swapped presents and caught up on each other’s stories and news. They’re a great bunch, and always good fun. One of the funny stories that was going around (the precise details of which escape me now) involved an indeterminate number of aunts, the word “priapic” being puzzled over for a crossword, and a telephone conversation being overheard and misunderstood. It was the source of much merriment, and wouldn’t have merited a response, but for the fact that I happen to be planning a seminar in the Spring, mentioning the horny god of virility, fertility, viniculture and horticulture, Priapus himself. So I found myself piping up and trying to explain archetypal psychology – and of course ended up feeling like I was a party-pooper bore, explaining a joke to reductive death. The word “priapic” is funny in itself. End of story. No explanation needed. But the coincidence was amusing.
Imagine my astonishment when I woke up yesterday with a permanent stiffy, that wouldn’t go away. Priapism, the medical condition, suddenly reared its ugly head, and it most definitely wasn’t fun. It was painful, and not in a pleasure-pain sort of way like a toothache can be – my entire crotch area ached as if I’d been kicked in the goolies. And I hadn’t been. I’m sure I would have remembered. I’d only had a quick wank the day before, no special sexual gymnastics that could have been suspect. It just wouldn’t go down.
Now all men are familiar with the morning glory that sometimes wakes us up, nagging at us for relief, most often when we are bursting for a pee. This wasn’t it. I wasn’t horny. It was stiff and sore and a bit cold and it felt weird.
I made my breakfast, had a warm bath. Tried to take my mind off it. I was reminded of Michael Gambon in The Singing Detective when he was having the psoriasis around his crotch area moisturised by a sexy nurse. He went through a litany of deliberately non-sexual things in his head to prevent himself getting hard – to no avail. It was funny on the telly.
I tried to watch telly. I tried to meditate. I talked to myself, sang to myself. I went online to research it – which of course is always a mistake when anything is wrong with you. I discovered that those with Sickle-Cell Anaemia suffer from priapism quite a lot. I am thankful for having watched enough episodes of ER to know that only black people get that. I discovered that if it lasted longer than six hours it was, most definitely, an emergency, requiring immediate intervention to stop any permanent damage. I read about the interventions in grisly detail, the diagrams, where the injections would go, where the blood would have to be drained. Urgh.
I went for a jog, thinking: exercise, get the blood flowing, heart pulsing. Nothing. And it’s damn uncomfortable running with a hard-on, I can tell you.
After five and a half hours, it finally started to soften. It’s the first time I have welcomed that event. The emergency over, I came across a page of possible causes – and one of them was simply: cycling. Aha. The penny dropped. For, the day before, I had started back at work, back on the saddle for the first time in a fortnight, 30 minutes there and 30 minutes back. I had bruised myself without knowing it. I contacted NHS Direct to find out whether I should worry, and they said I should mention it to my GP, but it most probably wasn’t a cause for alarm if everything was back to normal. I gave it a little test-drive, and normality had indeed returned.
So, what is there to say about this well-hung god Priapus, who has so invaded my psyche over the past few weeks? The puckish post-Jungian analyst James Hillman has said “It is the Hera archetype that causes us to see Priapus as distorted as we do.” What he’s saying is that the more we look at relationships and sex from a matronly, family-orientated perspective, the more grotesque, threatening and repellant the male sex drive seems. Hera, the Queen of Heaven in the Classical Greek pantheon, was forever trying to rein in her lustful wandering hound of a husband, Zeus, who would basically shag anything that moved. Hera’s punishing scorn, directed at her husband and his lovers, is something that precipitates many a calamitous myth.
It is perfectly natural that if one’s priority is to maintain a traditional faithful monogamous marriage, with the aim of maintaining a secure home for the raising of children, then the most appropriate moral position one can take on sex is that of Hera’s. And, mostly, men go along with that when they make their marriage vows.
But, increasingly, I am beginning to realise that this “going along with” the prevailing attitude to relationships comes at a cost to quite a few men - because those of us who are, shall we say, more sexually active than most, have a hard time trying to square the sexual imperative with the need for emotional security. Seen from Priapus’ perspective, the notion of eternal fidelity to Hera can seem like a symbolic death. For, when it comes down to it, what is wrong with being a sexual adventurer? What is wrong with two or more people rubbing their sensitive bits together in pleasure, as long as they don’t put themselves in harm’s way? What is wrong with viewing someone in a sexually objectifying light and getting pleasure from it? Having many sexual partners is only wrong, an “addiction”, a problem, if there is a wife at home to make it wrong.
Of course the danger of this discourse is that it’s risking stereotyping. I know that there are many priapic women (see the Holiday Reps at play, at a resort near you). I know there are many faithful home-loving men. But so many problems in gay men’s lives come from trying to apply a model of relating, a view of sex, that is unthinkingly like their mother’s, or the culturally dominant archetypal Hera’s. The part of us that is virile and Priapic is often perceived to be shameful, destructive to relationships, and generally a sign that something is wrong, that we are sick or addicted or just another victim of internalised homophobia, hating ourselves so much that we deprive ourself of the joys of a meaningful long term relationship.
But dare I say that I enjoy lots of sex with different people? That I enjoy variety and am insatiably curious about what makes men tick, sexually and emotionally? Oh dear. My mother’s reading this.
The permanent stiffy is only a problem when it hurts, and that is really quite rare. Mostly, Priapus has a ball.
And so should you.