Bonus Episode: The Imperfect Enjoyment

The Imperfect Enjoyment sounds like a polite complaint about dinner.

It is actually a seventeenth-century poem about premature ejaculation, impotence, wounded pride, and a man becoming so furious with his own penis that he starts addressing it as a military deserter.

John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, wrote the poem in the 1670s. It begins with two eager lovers and every expectation of spectacular sex. The narrator finishes almost immediately, cannot recover, and reacts as though something much more serious than disappointing sex has occurred. Corinna, who has considerably more reason to complain, is remarkably patient.

What makes the poem funny is the gap between the problem and the response. Rochester’s verse remains elegant and controlled while his narrator completely falls apart.

This short bonus episode follows the disaster from optimism to shame, rage, treason, and one extraordinarily generous proposal for solving Corinna’s problem.