The Life and Times of the Counterfeit Erection

The head of the Intellectual Property Investigation Bureau for the Hong Kong Customs Office, recently reported that eighty percent of the counterfeit drugs seized are  used to treat impotence.  This means that despite all the diseases out there that require treatment, from heart disease to restless leg syndrome, the main concern is penis performance.   The heart arteries could be blocked, and the diabetes count could be four hundred and change; lungs could be like toasted marshmallows from years of cigarette smoke, and the brain riddled with mad cow disease, but if the penis works, then all is well with the world.

Stiffening the penis is big money wherever you look.   Between the lap dances and the porn sites, the sex junkets to Thailand, even the somewhat tame Victoria’s Secret Catalog, much of the international marketing thrust is designed for Chubby.    There are colognes promising sex attraction through Pheromones and monkey sweat.   There are any number of herbs and foods considered to be aphrodisiacs.  Where the penis is concerned, the world is its oyster.  We are not talking a few bucks here    We are talking mega-billions.

In fact the manufacture and sale of imitation Viagra and other such drugs used to treat erectile dysfunction generates more profits than any other drug sold in China.    Much of it is also exported.   But there is for the world wide boner effort, plenty of pills to go around.   Viagra and Cialis are the two most pervasive counterfeit drugs confiscated by customs officials.  Needless to say, these drugs are not regulated, so they either consist of harmful adulterants that can give the user damaging side effects, or they are merely placebos that have little affect whatsoever.   In all, it is a gamble that most customers are willing to take.   The hope of a hard on is more promising than the fear of, say, a liver disease.

I find this remarkable on at least one level.    The fact that consumers will take health risks for elusive or ephemeral benefits is really unremarkable.  In fact, it is commonplace.   People will use Botox in spite of some of the possible nerve damage it can cause.    They will smoke, drink, take drugs to excess.   They will  have themselves peeled and snipped and will disregard any possible dangers.   Hell, they will overlook all the warning signs of transmittable disease and come closing time go home with a disaster just waiting to happen.   So, I suppose, why not at least have a pharmacological  erection to accommodate that ill fated night you may long remember?

No, nothing remarkable about this.   What is remarkable is the fact that after hundreds and even thousands of years of the Chinese pursuit of the heavenly hard on, they are resorting to Western medicine to achieve their desired erections.  All those centuries of eating everything from deer antler, tiger penis, bear bladder, and even gall stones has not compared to the majestic little blue pill.  Or the yellow one.   So has all the years of imbibing Shark’s Fin Soup, Bull Dick and Testicle Soup, Ginseng,  Rhino’s Horn, Sea Cucumber and Bird’s Nest Soup not produced the results that we were led to believe?    One has to wonder if the desire for Western treatment for erectile dysfunction is because all that other crap doesn’t work, or it is largely the notion that downing Tiger Penis is a much tougher project than swallowing one small pill.   Even with hot sauce, it is hard to imagine what culinary delights the Tiger Penis has to offer.   Common sense would dictate it’s a lot easier to take the Viagra or Cialis and leave room in your stomach for some veggie fried rice or a nice, juicy steak.   But then the exotic lure of Tiger Penis is something that has escaped me, to date, so maybe there is in the end an acquired taste.

Chinese medicine has been venerated for a fair number of years.  Skeptics of Western medical practices, and there should be, believe me, have often extolled the virtue of Chinese Medicine.  We are not just talking acupuncture here, but the herbs and foods that offer curative power.   Chinese medicine is regarded highly in holistic circles as both reputable and in certain ways advanced in its understanding of the human body and the way certain diseases should be treated.   I have used Chinese Medicine.   So why, when there are nine million herbs, body parts, food sources and whatever that are over the centuries devoted to raising a woody, have the Chinese decided to eschew all that and switch over to the pill?

Perhaps it is the nifty commercials where a boomer band sits around singing “Viva Viagra,” at the top of its bar band  lungs as if a group grope at closing time is their collective reward for playing bad cover songs.  Or the kinder and gentler Cialis commercials where “when the moment is right for you.”   Yeah, like painting a room might suddenly inspire the two of you to put down the rollers and climb down off of that ladder.   I have wondered if the suggestion behind double bathtub commercial is that once the Cialis takes hold of Johnny Wonder it will drill through one tub into the other.    Better than Popeye’s spinach.

You would think with all the Viagra buying, the Chinese would have  a lot of sex on their minds.  The idea of buying counterfeit Viagra, or Cialis, or Levitra, for that matter, I would think is to keep the cost down.   If you are messing around just here and there, what’s few bucks more for  the real thing.   Okay,  one reason for buying counterfeit may be the confidentiality.   In China, where losing face, or whatever, is a big issue, the Chinese man may want to keep it on the low down that his thingie ain’t working.   It’s not like here where we are not only singing about it, but bragging to our friends.
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Perhaps it is a quantitative thing and Chinese men have become a bunch of horny souls who thanks to the national surge in their economy are looking for love in all the wrong places.   It could be they went from the bitterness of short money and a lot of starvation to feeling flush everywhere but down below.   Deer Antler letting you down?  Try Cialis.   So there in the need for quantity comes forth the need for economy.  Viagra and such is expensive.   Counterfeit pills have to be a lot cheaper.  But then it is more than a tad ironic that a nation trying to retain population control is defying the odds of pregnancy that is strongly propagated by  an insistent erection.

But the Chinese have for at least the modern age been largely a prudish nation.  Movies are often censored.   National policy forbids pornography.  Yet when it comes to illegal brothels the government looks the other way.   Usually, the illegal brothels are fronted by a hair salon.  What a rude awakening for the unsuspecting soul ventures there for a cut and perm.     And since the “hair salons” proliferate Chinese cities, perhaps a pocketful of Viagra is necessary to just to work your way down the block.

In fairness, every nation has had its aphrodisiacs.   There are oysters, chili, dog meat, yes, dog meat, more oysters,ginkgo, turtle eggs, and  the skink.    After awhile, it seems just about everything but liquor and ice cream will help men get it up.   Of course, Western culture being what it is, nothing makes more sense than a single pill you pop an hour before your are ready to roll of the sofa and turn off the TV.   Can’t argue with that.

Although there are certain Westerners who are taking issue with the Viagra culture.   As the Daily Beast has dubbed them The Viagra Brigade, here are the women who at a certain age have had their sex drives diminished to levels of  a more  sedentary convenience.   Now here they are, content to pursue other interests, coping with a horny husband.  Some  of these men make increased demands on these women, depending on the size of the prescription.   And some go astray, complicating long term relationships by jumping the reservation and heading for the younger women world  for that one last time around.

Geezers with an attitude.   And then there are  the younger women who married the wealthier older man for security, companionship, and a lot of nice things his money could buy her.   Sex wasn’t really part of the package.  but now she suddenly has to perform.   Talk about an inconvenient truth.

Maybe had a way of telling us to slow down.   Maybe, in the original master plan,  with aging we were not about to reproduce so there was not much need for erections.   Maybe, after a certain point, the penis may be working with a little help from its friends, but the rest of us is not quite up to snuff.    There are aches and pains.  The aging body hurts just when you get up in the morning, yet alone when you are having sex.  So maybe we are in defiance of nature and the master plan.

But then again, maybe not.  Maybe the crap we put into our systems that we call food creates diabetes and assorted ailments that are well known to cause erectile dysfunction.  It’s possible being obese or a least a couple dozen pounds overweight may have something to do with the way the blood travels through the body.   Maybe the sedentary life and our self-absorptions, preoccupations and worries, real and imagined, impair the sexual reflect.   One could justify that screwing in the face of age and adversity is a grand act of defiance and of telling impending mortality to kiss our collective ass.   Maybe after the BMW and the decorator everything sex and its resultant pleasure is one of the only things that really matters.    After all, we have how many sexual thoughts per hour?  I have long lost track.

So for the horny Chinese and the horny rest of us around the world, if you can’t take the heat, stay in the kitchen.  Viva Viagra.   If nothing else, it is one of the few things in this world that actually works.

Author: Gordon Basichis

Gordon Basichis is the Co-Founder of Corra Group, specializing in pre-employment background checks and corporate research. He has been a marketing and media executive. He is the author of the best selling Beautiful Bad Girl, The Vicki Morgan Story, a non-fiction novel that helped define exotic behavior in the late twentieth century. He has recently published The Cuban Quarter, The Blood Orange, and The Guys Who Spied for China, dealing with Chinese Espionage in the United States. He is the author of The Constant Travellers. He has been a journalist for several newspapers and is a screenwriter and producer.