Ah, morning wood.
(Really, I’d expect nothing less from someone who walks around pantless all the time)
Any straight femme who’s ever done the long term relache thing is well aware of this phallic phenomena (in fact, I’m just now wondering if that’s why they’ve graciously endowed it with the “cock” moniker – ‘cause like a throbbing, veiny, rooster – it’s up and crowing before you are?) Yes. That’s the one and only instance when it’s okay to awake to a phallic flesh stump humping your back dimples, I believe. After you’ve been dating someone for two point four million years, you fully appreciate the facts that A.) It’s subconscious and B.) It’s involuntary (or else the aim’d be better, one hopes). However, like many other peen-igmas (I still don’t know how much I believe in blue balls being a thing – but, ya know – c’est la tease), it still baffles our laboratory deities we look to for all answers. So much so that all we’ve been able to come up with thus far, apparently, is a buncha really good… ideas. Or, as my favorite euphemism for it goes: “theories”.
Here’re a few of those theories:
R.E.M. SLEEP
And, no, I don’t mean falling asleep to chart toppers from the 90’s.
”Everybody’s hard…. Sometimes”
When you enter R.E.M. sleep, what happens is this baton pass race of events where the neurons that let you enter this crucial phase of snoozery also happen to turn off the chemicals that inhibit tent pitching. Without that inhibition there, the excitatory stuff can have a free for all until you wake up to see you’re laying parallel to a dermal maypole. That’s one theory.
Yeah… that’s good and all. But, like, don’t we enter a different phase for a bit after REM – before waking up?
Which gives it enough time to deflate?
It may be time to look at another theory…
NITRIC OXIDE
You know the stuff dudes use to supplement their workout routine?
Seems like they’ve got their own internal GNC that opens up at nap o’ clock, too. During sleep time, the pons (part of the brain) sets off this whole somatic itinerary for your body to ultimately release the stuff. And what’s that got to do with siesta stiffies? It relaxes the smooth muscle down below, which translates to dilated blood vessels. Boom: flesh fort. I guess this seems like the most sensible yet…
But, just for funsies, what else is there?
PISS PREVENTION
Right. So… the idea’s this: There’re these nerves sitting at your sacrum (on the back part of your pelvic bone – coming off the spine) that, when stimulated, can ultimately hoist your sausage skyward. And among the catalysts are… a full bladder. Since men generally don’t whizz and jizz simultaneously, I suppose this is as good a “either or” hypothesis as any. But I remain skeptical. Especially with Efron’s erection dangling into dirty toilet water there.
Besides, if that’s the answer, then why don’t chicks piss themselves?
Welp, if those three ideas are the best we can do, I think I’ve made my decision.
Ya know, I adore science as much as anyone else constantly seeking answers to mysteries like turgid man meat with a mind of its own. And, honestly, there was at least one thing I gleaned from this: that there are two types of tents that happen: psychogenic (the sort short skirts and porn watching induce) and reflexive (like what we’re talking about here). (“Geez… I didn’t know there were options.”)
But, in the end, when it comes to morning glories themselves?
Seems we know as much about what’s happening as one of my exes doing the shut-eye thrust into my spine at dawn.
Not much.