I don't know why this particular memory sticks with me, like a pebble in my shoe I can't shake out. I was sitting there, clinic fluorescent lights buzzing a low tune, trying to explain to Dr. Anya Sharma why the engine wasn’t firing like it used to. She's, what, late twenties? Early thirties? Got that fresh-out-of-med-school shine, all bright eyes and no wrinkles. And me, I’m over forty, built like a brick shithouse but inside, somethin’s… rusting. I tried to make a joke, somethin’ about the old jalopy needing a tune-up, but it fell flat, clattered to the linoleum floor like loose change. She just looked at me with this serious, professional gaze, and I wanted to crawl under the examination table, disappear into the cracks. It felt like I was explaining why my credit score was in the toilet, but for my dick. The worst part, I think, wasn't even the actual words, though "erectile dysfunction" feels like something you only hear on daytime TV ads for pills you can’t afford. It was the way she just… wrote it down. Like it was another data point. No judgment, no surprise, just the click of her pen on the clipboard. For me, it felt like the whole damn world was ending, another little piece of me drying up and blowing away in the wind. I remember my old man, always bragging about his stamina, even when he was pushing sixty. Said it was all in the mind, a real man never loses it. And here I am, practically half his age, and it’s like a deflated balloon. The funny thing is, a few years ago, this would have KILLED me. Eviscerated me. Now? It’s just… another thing. Another bill, another broken appliance. We talked about prescriptions, about stress, about "lifestyle changes." I wanted to laugh. Lifestyle changes? Lady, my lifestyle is waking up before the sun, slinging concrete, coming home to bills and a wife who works just as hard, trying to figure out how to stretch a dollar till it screams. There’s no yoga studio in my budget, no fancy green juice. Just the grind. And now, this. One more thing to fix, one more expense I can’t quite swing, one more conversation I'm too tired to have. I just nodded, took the pamphlet, and walked out feeling… empty. Like a soda can crushed flat, ready for the recycling bin. Only there’s no recycling bin for men whose engines just quit.