you know, in retrospect, getting icy-hot on my scrotum wasn't all that terrible of an experience.

oh sure, everyone goes on about how agonizing it is, but really, it felt pretty mild to me.

the initial dread when i realized what i'd done was probably the worst. that feeling of 'oh lord, here it comes...' was pretty severe.

but then it hit me... a few minutes of graceful cooling, peaking at just below a felt temperature that would delicately wrinkle the skin.

and then came warmth. not the flaming heat of a fire, or even an uncomfortable heat. no, this heat was the soothing heat of a perfectly hot bath. soothing and comforting.

after a few minutes the heat went away. i shrugged to myself and pulled on my underwear, thinking that that was simply that, and all of the hype was simply that.

that's when it came over me. a feeling of incomparable briskness. a feeling not unlike gently but firmly teabagging a stream of glacier meltwater in iceland on a crisp fall morning.

my first instinct was to reach in and cup myself, hoping to warm my now-chilled flesh and restore a more normal sensation, but fear stopped me. fear that my testicles would snap off, much as the limb of the T-1000 snapped off after he'd been super-cooled by liquid nitrogen.

that fear stayed my hand.

in ten minutes, the cold had passed, and i felt that things were alright with the world.