BY FRANK TERRANELLA

Being a young male means never having to say you’re sorry because you can’t get it up. For the rest of us, there’s now Viagra. I will admit to relying on it occasionally since my prostate surgery. But I resent having to use it, and I especially hate the television commercials that promote it.

We like to think about the 1960s as the time of the sexual revolution, but it was also a much more innocent time. The “Greatest Generation” was greatest at seeing to it that their Baby Boomer offspring were shielded from ever hearing about how babies were made. Sex education was minimal or non-existent. Playboy was sold in a brown wrapper. Despite the “free love” attitude of the ‘60s, no one discussed sex on television, even obliquely.  Rob and Laura Petrie slept in separate beds.  There were no condom ads. Midol commercials never identified the purpose of the product. Even cutting edge shows aimed at young people like the Smothers Brothers and “Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In” never referred to sexual intercourse.  The most that Arte Johnson’s dirty old man said he wanted to do with Ruth Buzzi was kiss and hug her.

This was brought home to me recently when a Viagra commercial came on television.  I can imagine the fun the writers of “All in the Family” would have had with Viagra commercials.  Archie would have turned 50 shades of red, and Edith would have dashed off to the kitchen. Yet here we are in 2012 with commercials about erectile dysfunction on prime-time television.  Now I could accept that, and even embrace it as progress, but what adds insult to injury is the fact that we Baby Boomer men now sometimes actually need these drugs to have sex. Of course, the combination of drugs and sex is an ancient one. But in the ‘60s the drugs were needed to loosen your inhibition; now the drugs are needed to stiffen your exhibition.

And the erectile dysfunction commercials on television (that seem to become more pervasive every year) just serve to remind us over-50 males that our bodies are not what they used to be. And that stings. That’s the thing that women really never seem to get about men – just how important this is.  We walk around with this appendage that from teenage years expands whenever we think about sex. It’s the most important part of what defines us as men. And yet, the time comes when the expansion doesn’t.  And even when it does, it soon fades. That’s intolerable for our male identity and unlike our fathers, we got old at a time when we can do something about it. And so the erectile dysfunction ads proliferate and compete for our Baby Boomer dollars.

But the advertisements that tout being ready for “the right time” fail to mention that it’s not like taking vitamins.  The drugs have a very limited effective period, and that deals a major blow to spontaneity.  After all, how “free” is the love when you have to schedule it? And this is something that doesn’t apply in the same way to our female partners.  Oh sure, their bodies are also not as quick to arouse as they used to be.  But women can fix most of what’s wrong with a quick application of lube. For guys, there is no magic boner cream.

I guess I should be grateful for drugs like Viagra, but instead I resent needing them, and seeing the ads on TV only rubs it in. It makes a man long for those more innocent days of television where the most racy commercial featured a sexy woman who asked men to “take it off, take it all off.” And all they were selling was shaving cream!