Pretty serious news the other day for cyclists. At least, for chaps who are cyclists. According to US research, riding a bike reduces the blood flow to, ahem, vital regions, causing first numbness, then impotence. In the Journal of Sexual Medicine, Dr Steven Schrader wrote that it was no longer a question of "whether or not bicycle-riding on a saddle causes erectile dysfunction". In other words, it's a fact.
Ouch.
I wish I had more to say, but I suspect that any elaboration on this subject would fall into the more-than-you-wanted-to-know category of confessional journalism. I can't even ventriloquise: I don't have a "close friend" who could tell more. Oddly enough, the conversational gambit "I went for a six-hour ride last weekend and, you know, the damnedest thing, but I couldn't get it up that night" does not have great currency among my cycling acquaintance.
Aside from my lack of competence to comment on it, erectile dysfunction is a serious medical problem, not to be made light of. But there is another type of cycling-related male sexual dysfunction on which, sad to say, I can report: total cycling-obsession syndrome.
It, too, is protected by a conspiracy of silence, although I know that the corrosive misery of this affliction is an unspoken sorrow visited on all too many couples. Consider, for example: that "other" wardrobe of figure-hugging fetish wear. The furtive visits to retail outlets and secret purchases, undisclosed but for the tell-tale credit-card statements. The untimely early-morning departures for bizarre assignations with nameless mates in seemingly respectable suburbs. The compulsive poring-over of subscription-only specialist publications. The stolen hours of solitary fiddling.
It is a truly distressing condition, this utter sublimation of the male libido. It can strike at any time, but men of a certain age seem particularly vulnerable. For them - and for the women in their lives - the bitter truth is that it is no longer a question of whether or not bicycle riding is to blame. It's a fact.
