Brad did NOT want to be drafted into service in the Vietnam War.He had three reasons. First, as he saw it, the US had involved itself in a civil war that was none of its business just because one of the factions was Communist. Second, he detested Lyndon Johnson, and third, he was a hippy whose motto was "Wage peace, not war." To Brad, waging peace meant doing drugs and fucking.

His grades at Willystown Community College were unimpressive, at best, mainly because he was always stoned in class. Naturally,therefore, he was concerned about losing his student deferment and being drafted into the Army.

He happened to read that a certain Senator had been 4-F in World War II because he was ruptured on both sides and the government had no authority to force him to undergo surgery to correct the condition. So, as long as he was willing to put up with the ruptures, he couldn't be drafted.

Brad remembered that his high school gym teacher had told the boys that the main reason they were required to wear jockstraps was to prevent a sudden downward pull on the testicles which could rupture them. So, it occurred to him that, if he could arrange a sudden downward yank on his balls, he could rupture himself and be exempt no matter how bad his grades were.

It seemed to Brad that what he had to do was attach a heavy weight to his bag just above the balls, hold it up with his hands, and suddenly let go if it. He had no idea of how much weight would be required or how far it should be allowed to fall.

Brad's father, who had been a plumber, had abandoned his feminist wife and son one day by simply not coming home from work . He had left

a lot of plumbing supplies in the cellar, among them many 5-lb. lead ingots.

Brad decided that all he had to do was tie the bail of a bucket to his bag above his balls and pile lead ingots in the bucket until he had enough weight ( however much that was.) He could hold up the bucket with both hands until he was ready to release it. He decided to stand on two boxes straddling the space between them like the Colossus of Rhodes

to give the bucket enough distance to fall.

He still had no idea of how weight was needed, so he decided to fill the bucket up with ingots until it was as heavy as he could hold up with both hands. If his reasoning here seems rather muddled and shortsighted, bear in mind that, while planning and executing this scheme,he was stoned.

Brad set up his auto-rupture arrangement in the garage while his mother was at work, after which she had a feminist meeting. Brad didn't have to go to work packing grocery bags at the Food Lion until 4:30, so he had plenty of time to carry out his plan.

He smoked another joint while tying the bucket to his bag and piling lead ingots in it. Nine ingots, 45 lbs.,were all he could hold up while walking out to the garage and getting up on the boxes . He held the bail of the bucket up close to the fly of his torn jeans. For a moment, he stood there, one foot on each 12 X 12 X 18 wooden box , straddling the 15-inch gap between them.

With his balls hanging out of his fly, Brad stood up as straight as he could and let go of the bucket. It had not even occurred to him how it might hurt to pull his balls that forcibly. He felt as if he were being torn apart inside. Instead of his groins letting go as he had expected, he felt and heard two "snap"'s inside of them accompanied by stabs of unendurable pain.

The bucket dropped below his knees as Brad screamed in agony. He felt something slither out of his inguinal canals as he fell off the boxes and collapsed atop the bucket shrieking in pain. "Oh SHIT " he cried out.

"I think I ripped my balls out."

Brad swiftly untied the sash cord with which he had tied the bucket to his scrotum and felt his balls. Though he squeezed them, he could feel nothing. There seemed to be something piled upon top of them which he suspected might be his broken cords. His balls were dragging down near his knees. Brad pulled up his briefs to support them and staggered out to his car in the driveway.

Despite the intense sick pain up inside him, Brad managed to drive to the Emergency Room at Wheeler Memorial Hospital where he told the staff that he had been trying a stunt hanging weights from his scrotum to see how much his testicles could take and that he feared that he had pulled them out.

It was the kind of stupid teenage stunt that the ER staff had come to expect of young fellows of Brad's age and nobody doubted his story. The physician examining him confirmed his self-diagnosis. The cords had broken and were lying at the bottom of his scrotum on top of his disconnected testicles.

Brad asked if they could be re-attached and was assured that it was impossible. "No", said the surgeon, Dr. Blumenfeld, "I'm going to have to try to find the broken ends of your spermatic cords in your inguinal canals and tie off the blood vessels to arrest hemorrhage, but your testicles are history. You will never have any chidren."

"But, will I be able to, well, you know ?" asked Brad, anxiously.

"If you can take hormone replacement therapy and most men can, the answer would be yes. I'll test that after I remove your testicles and tie off the arteries and veins in your spermatic cords."

Brad declined an offer to have his now useless testicles preserved in formalin. After the surgery was completed, Dr. Blumenfeld injected a small amount of testosterone under Brad's skin. Almost immediately, the site became inflamed and began to blister. Brad complained of pain and a burning sensation.

Dr. Blumenfeld shook his head and said "This is bad; apparently you are allergic to the medium in which the testosterone is dissolved. I'm it's the same for the transdermal testosterone patches, but I'll try one elsewhere, and see how you react to it. " He applied a patch to Brad's left

arm and snatched it off again when signs of inflammation appeared.

"I have very bad news for you. You are allergic to something used in hormone replacement therapy. Therefore, you can't use it. This means that you are going to be a eunuch. You may be able to have erections for a while, but they will become progessively weaker until they are useless

for sex. You will no longer be able to ejaculate or to experience orgasms.

There will also be undesirable secondary effects. You will lose your facial hair and body hair and about half of your strength, though much of your strength can be regained through a proper program of exercise.

Unless you watch your diet very carefully, you will become grossly obese.

Worse yet, you are likely to grow breasts.

Though the breasts can be removed surgically, the operation is disfiguring, and it is better to conceal them. They are usually not very large.

If you do become obese, the fat will accumulate on your hips , thighs, and buttocks. This would feminize the shape of your body and would affect your gait It would be difficult to avoid walking like a woman,with

swaying hips."

To say that Brad was appalled would be an understatement. He was horrified. He might as well quit college. As a eunuch, he couldn't be drafted anyhow and he, fer sure, didn't want the studs in his PE classes

to see him nutless with the body of a woman.

So, Brad had beaten the draft, but at a cost he would never have imagined.