Longer Harder Faster

As Peter H., a bisexual bodybuilder attending Blue Flash, says, "I always took the view that, if you're going to do drugs, there's a right and a wrong way. There was a while when I was taking too much X and the quality was down. It was cut with acid or it had heroin in it or sinus pills, who knows? The cumulative effect was a bad high. You go out wanting to party and hook up and then you get too trashed. So many people are cocktailing now that you can just get where you forget to have sex. Finally I realized that I could do less of the so-called love drugs, just enough to be really mellow, and then take a Viagra and I'd be sure to end the night in a, like, really pleasing way."

Framing Viagra's future in terms that alternate therapy and recreation creates an artificial binary: After all, isn't sex always one or the other, or both? To men who, for one reason or another, are unable to achieve an erection, Viagra appears to be a magic bullet, a wonder drug. For the rest of the population it's become-to use a word Pfizer doesn't like-an aphrodisiac. "I can easily see it becoming widely used," says Johnny Dean, a 36-year-old Los Angeles escort whose Web site offers a Viagra link. "I use it. I try not to do it on an excessive basis, because I can see where psychologically it could become an issue. But, if I'm out dancing until 6 a.m. and I hook up with someone, I'm not going to wait until the point where the play starts to say, 'Uh, this isn't going to work.' I can see where anyone planning a big night would take it along. For me, it's like a switch. I'm there in 10 minutes. I don't even need to be specifically stimulated. What man in the world doesn't want that?"