I Treated Hundreds Of Men For Erectile Dysfunction. Most Of Them Told Me A Version Of The Same Thing.

The morning of my first appointment, I showed up late.

Typical.

My daily Uber took forever to arrive.

I’d sold my car to fund a short film, so rideshare drivers were now my unofficial coworkers.

I used to joke that I had a chauffeur, which made the seven-minute ride to work feel a little more glamorous than it was. 

Every ride was a micro-adventure with a new stranger, and honestly, I needed the distraction from my grief after my father’s recent death.

The passivity of riding in a car, maybe the quiet or a song that would play, always stirred feelings.

I’d rather talk to randos than process my emotions. 

So, I arrived late: flustered, apologetic, and full of shame.

It didn’t matter that this job sounded more like a punchline than a profession.

I still wanted to take it seriously.

Even a dick fixer has standards.

Especially when you’re the only dick fixer on staff.

The Clinic where I would be working specialised in something called shockwave therapy: targeted sound waves that are supposed to improve blood flow and, theoretically, fix erectile dysfunction without pills or surgery. 

I wasn’t a doctor or a nurse.

I’d gotten certified to use a machine that looked like a space gun in one very long day in Tucson, in a ballroom full of urologists from around the country who pay their mortgages by treating dick dilemmas.

My official title was Extracorporeal Shockwave Therapy Technician.

Unofficially, I was about to become extremely well acquainted with a lot of strangers’ dicks.

The Clinic owner looked up from the desk as I entered and said, “He’s already in the room.

And… you might know him.” 

Apparently, he was semi-famous.

They said the patient’s name, and I immediately recognised it.

Perfect.

Let’s add pressure to the pile, shall we? 

Heart pounding, I tossed my purse behind the front desk and headed toward the treatment room.

I walked down the hallway that separated the entrance to the room from the actual treatment area.

From there, I saw two large feet dangling off the edge of the table, patterned dress socks stretched over long, hairy legs. 

Socks say a lot about a man.

He either picked them with intention or threw on the first clean pair he found.

My clients all had sock stories.

Weirdly, they became my first impression.

My personal intake form for the kind of man I would spend six sessions with. 

My eyes followed the socks up the legs to the paper drape barely covering the man’s crotch.

Tom, let’s call him that, lay flat on his back scrolling through his phone like this appointment was a routine dental cleaning.

And there it was: my first paying penis. 

Sorry, I had to break from “dick” because I liked the alliteration.

It won’t happen again.

I swallowed hard. “Hi, I’m Kristina.

I’ll be working with you today.” I flashed a polite smile; the kind I used to serve tables and fake orgasms.

The kind of smile you give when your father’s body has just been turned to ash and you’re still not sure if this job is a nervous breakdown or divine intervention. 

Tom barely glanced up.

I could feel his nerves vibrating off him.

Mine were worse, trapped in a satin blouse already damp with sweat.

Satin.

For my first day of dick duty.

What the fuck had I been thinking? 

I snapped on a pair of latex gloves with all the elegance of someone trying to open a pickle jar with wet hands.

Tom asked something, but my brain, mid-panic, missed it. 

Oh fuck.

Oh fuck.

What the fuck am I doing here?

I stared at the paper drape. Don’t stare at his dick.

Don’t be a creep.

He’s just a man.

A sad man.

With a sad dick.

Who probably already hates you.

It’s just skin, Kristina.

Grow the fuck up.

Tom kept his eyes glued to his phone like this wasn’t the strangest thing that had ever happened to either of us. 

“How are you today, Tim?” I chirped in my most cheerful customer service voice. 

“It’s Tom.” 

Shit. “Tom, sorry!” Nailed it. 

I wheeled the shockwave machine closer to Tom’s body and flipped it on.

It whirred like it was warming up for battle, absolutely no help to either of us. 

“How long will this take?” he asked. 

“About 45 minutes,” I answered, wondering if that was correct. 

Tom let out a long, annoyed sigh. “And it works, right?” 

“There are a lot of studies…” 

“I mean in your experience.

With your clients.” 

Oh God.

How the fuck should I know, Tom?

You’re my first dick, man.

No one told you this.

You’re my first.

Fuck, that doesn’t sound promising.

No one wants to be the first.

I smiled. “No complaints so far.” 

He scoffed.

I tried not to take it personally. 

Then with all the grace of a baby deer on roller skates, I peeled back the paper drape. 

There it was.

A stranger’s dick.

Flaccid.

Lifeless.

And looking for answers. 

I tried to look away but couldn’t.

It looked… normal.

I mean, older.

But still. 

Was this the oldest dick I’d ever seen?

Should I be keeping track of these dicks like a weird reverse sex list?

Shut up, Kristina.

“It’s cold in here,” Tom muttered.

Cue the male-ego defense. 

“Sorry about that.” Cue me taking responsibility for the clinic’s thermostat. 

I grabbed the ultrasound gel and squeezed.

The bottle farted, loud.

Of course it did. 

I swallowed the giggle and kept my face clinical.

Normalise the fart.

Be the professional.

I worked the gel between my gloved palms like I was plotting a murder. 

I’d never touched a penis clinically before.

Not like this.

Not under fluorescent lighting. 

This gel was basically lube, right?

How do you put lube on a stranger’s dick and make it not sexual?

Thanks for nothing, Dave-from-training. 

Oh my God.

I’m drooling.

Why am I drooling?

Is this some Pavlovian response?

If a penis gets this close to my mouth, does my brain think I need to put it in there?

This is NOT your penis to please, Kristina.

I made a crab claw with my hand and picked up the shaft like it was a rare museum artifact. 

Gentle.

No, aggressive.

Aggressive is medical.

Right?

Just don’t stroke it.

And don’t curl your fingers.

Gripping is for handjobs.

Not for this.

Suddenly, and thankfully, I remembered when you feed a horse you flatten your palm against its mouth so it won’t bite you.

Somehow, the connection made absolute sense to me at this moment. 

For the first time in my life, I felt grateful for growing up in the country with horse friends. 

So, I flattened both palms and slapped the gel on like I was making a mayonnaise sandwich.

Gross, yes.

But sexual?

No. 

Tom flinched.

I froze. 

Oh God.

He can feel me touching him.Is he turned on?

I don’t know.

His dick’s broken.Oh look, pubic hair goes gray.

I wiped my gloves with a Kleenex.

It disintegrated.

Now my hands were covered in sticky gel and tissue lint.

Awesome. 

I peeled off the gloves, gel smeared all over my forearms, tossed them, and grabbed another pair.

I was basically an amateur magician at this point, pulling anxiety out of thin air. 

“Okay,” I said. “This might hurt a bit.” 

I picked up the gun-shaped wand, pressed it right into Tom’s fretful shaft and pulled the trigger.

The machine jackhammered to life, sending forceful shockwaves into Tom’s dick. 

“Wait!” 

I jumped and killed the switch.

Tom wasn’t in pain.

He was crying.

My hand froze mid-air. 

“Did I hurt you?” 

“No… no.” He looked away, ashamed. “Can you just… give me a minute?” 

I nodded and set the wand down. 

“Don’t go,” he said quickly. “Please.” 

I paused. 

“I forgot how to do this,” he whispered. 

“Do what?” 

He swallowed. 

“I haven’t had another woman see me like this in forty years.

Just her.

Diane.

And now she’s gone.

Don’t ever get cancer, okay?

It’s fucking brutal.” 

His words sliced through me. 

“Everyone says I should start dating again.

That I’m not dead yet.

But I don’t want time.

I want her.

I should be dead.

Not her.” 

I didn’t speak.

I let him talk. 

“I feel selfish for wanting to move on.

But Diane?

She’d want me flirting with every woman I could find.

She was like that.

She had a big spirit.” He chuckled, despite himself. “Like I’m a catch at my age.

Look at me.

Jesus.

Don’t get old either, alright?

It’s awful.” 

I smiled, charmed, and handed him a tissue.

Not the dirty one.

A clean one.

I’m not an animal. 

“I tried,” he continued. “I joined that ridiculous dating site for people my age.

Met some nice women.

Even liked one of them.

But every time I get close to someone, I think of Diane.” 

He pointed to his penis. 

“This guy acts like I forgot him at home.

Like he’s still hibernating.

Useless.” 

He exhaled hard. 

“I just need some reassurance.

That maybe there’s a chance.

That if I’m going to stick around, maybe I can feel alive again.

I’ve got kids.

Grandkids.

I don’t want to miss that.” 

He looked at me like I was holding a miracle in my latex-covered hands. 

And as my heart pounded in my chest, I realised something: this job was never just going to be about dicks. 

Tom wasn’t broken.

He was grieving, and his body hadn’t gotten the memo that it was allowed to stop performing and just feel. 

I didn’t know it yet, standing there with gel drying on my forearms, but Tom was the first of nearly 400 men who’d say some version of the same thing to me that year I worked at the clinic.

Not always with their words, but with their bodies, they told me about marriages that had gone quiet.

Years spent avoiding a doctor’s office because walking in felt like admitting defeat. Many would rather lose a relationship than say out loud that they were scared.

So they showed up in a treatment room asking if the machine worked, while the real question, the one about being loved, or broken or forgiven went unspoken. 

That year I didn’t just refurbish dicks.

I deconstructed the male ego. 

Not only did the job make me more money than any job I’d ever had (and expose me to more dicks than I’d ever thought I’d see), but it came at the time in my life when I needed it most.

As unlikely as it may seem, The Clinic became my spiritual classroom, where I began to untangle the most complicated relationship I’d ever had with any dick: the one with my father.

This excerpt was adapted from “You Don’t Know Dick: How I Healed My Daddy Issues Fixing Broken Dicks,” Kristina Denton’s debut memoir, published June 30, 2026 by Storyteller Publishing, distributed by Macmillan.

Drawing on a year spent treating hundreds of men for erectile dysfunction at a Los Angeles wellness clinic, Denton examines what men carry in silence, and what it taught her about the father she spent a lifetime trying to understand.

Available https://www.amazon.com/You-Dont-Know-Dick-Healed/dp/B0FT3SG9R7?tag=huffuk-21&ascsubtag=6a61d8c2e4b0c2f78d01f8ec,-1,-1,rss,0,0,hp-fil-am=0,0:0,0,0,0" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">everywhere books are sold.

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