I love being a woman because I love being in control. And we are (almost) always in control of all our sexual functions.

We are in control of when we get wet, where we get wet and what makes us get wet. On the other hand, there is the hapless male who is rarely in control of most of his sexual functions. By this I mean he has the unfortunate tendency to produce and lose an erection at all the wrong times.

Let’s take, for instance, my friend Robnasty. Robnasty has the unique ability to make every girl genuinely like him – i.e., my mother likes him – despite the fact that he has earned every ounce of the nasty in his name. For the last six months, Robnasty has been on the prowl, cruisin’ for a particular she-nasty to mate with. Over Memorial Day Weekend, opportunity knocked and the horizontal was at its full potential. Unfortunately, at the peak of what was to be his “Return of the Mack” performance, Robnasty’s Titanic turned to a tugboat and alas, there was no horizontal to be had. He was lost. He was like Corky Romano at a spelling bee. “How could this have happened?!” he pondered.

I had two words for him and his Limp Bizkit.

“Performance anxiety.” All men suffer from performance anxiety from time to time. (Or drunkenness, too many bong rips – take your pick). It doesn’t necessarily have to be a fear of the horizontal itself, but rather the length and intensity of the prelude. With too much pressure, anything turns to mush. I would feel sorry for men in this instance if they didn’t have other cases when their Titanic should be a tugboat.

Like on the dance floor, especially if it took you more than two minutes to convince the girl to go out there with you. Although I may be dancing with Jimmy Hardware, it doesn’t mean I want him pitching his six-man tent on my campsite. Granted, there is the occasional time when a dance-floor boner is welcomed. You know, like when the girl actually likes the guy and she’s feeling saucy after a drink or two. But for the most part, men use dance floor boners as their personal stun guns.

Dance floor boners are an embarrassing and unfortunately common situation to be in as a girl. We know they’re there, but we rarely talk about them. Kind of like Westmont College. I personally like to approach the situation like the boner is not there at all, at least until the song is over, in which case I always have to “go to the bathroom.” Other girls keep dancing, using the new ornament as the center of their dance routine.

I – as did most of the women that I spoke to about it – think that men should really do something about the dance floor boner. Tuck it away, get a few more drinks, hide in the bathroom, something. One girl noted, “Guys use it like it’s a freakin’ power drill. Since when did I want my thigh drilled?” The girl next to her added, “Yeah, like, it’s not a drill, it’s your dick, asshole!”

Very astute observation, I thought.

Some guys are genuinely embarrassed about dance floor boners. Others seem to think it’s a part of their game, as did one individual – who by the way, was wearing a matching Braves jersey and hat, as well as a gold chain – “Yo, ya gotta let da hoes know whazzup. You gotta let da ladies know datcho diggin’ on dem. Dat’s my dick and it’s happy to see you, girl.”

Thanks, I hadn’t thought of that.

With all this constructive commentary I get from my readers, it’s hard to imagine that I still haven’t resolved the mystery behind the Jekyll and Hyde erection. Why do they come when they’re unwanted and go when you need them? On the one hand, limp dick is like having a dime when you need a quarter for the meter. On the other hand, boners are like the UCSB Parking Services of the dance floor: cocky bastards that are always patrolling and always ready to stiff you.

I have one conclusion: I tend to think of erections like parallel parking – it just looks simple.

Daily Nexus sex columnist Beth Van Dyke doesn’t like parallel parking anyway.