(Vast amounts of penis-talk, and frank discussion of sexual acts, so not for kids or the sexually modest.)
Appearing in the last few days, a spot tv commercial for Roman — or Ro, or ro — generic ED (erectile dysfunction) medication. It goes by very fast, but involves the administration of some medication with a needle, accompanied by a breathless voiceover, approximately:
Who would have thought that a little tiny prick could be so powerful?
I’m sure about little tiny prick / tiny little prick; in the sociosexual culture that surrounds me (in which big dicks are highly valued), my dick (which is on the lower end of normal) is pegged, sometimes contemptuously, as small (I’m happy with it, and I have some fans, but I’m understandably a bit sensitive on this point); and, in addition, like most men of my advanced age, I’m erectilely dysfunctional — hardonless — and have been for about 20 years, something I’m not particularly sensitive about (since during this time all my sex has been solitary, and there’s been a hell of a lot of it — one to three times a day, prompted by my fantasies, my dick gets a bit firm, my balls get tight, and I shoot, whoopee, like Billy the Kid) — and I wouldn’t want to add a powerful drug to the roughly 20 medications I’m taking now (but I appreciate that other guys might be anxious to get it up to please their partners and ashamed when they can’t, so ED medication is a wonderful thing at the personal level, and also to be applauded as a genuine social good).
But the commercial, with its obtrusive crude pun — prick, vulgar slang for ‘penis’ and for ‘contemptible man’ — on prick ‘a piercing, puncture’, what about the commercial?
The ads for Roman products that I’d experienced up to this one had all been serious, comforting, and reassuring, offering treatments for premature ejaculation, hair loss, and more, as well as for hardonlessness. But this one had to be a joke, one that Adweek hadn’t yet gotten around to reporting on.
Well, it wouldn’t be Roman’s first ED joke ad. There’s their 2017 number “Thinly Veiled Metaphors”. It’s a hoot.
