LEXINGTON, Mass.  Tom Sholes is a certified public accountant and a certifiable golf nut for whom the first week of April is a holy season.  "During the Masters, I don't want to be bothered by anything," he says.  "Including sex."

"Why don't you just go to bed, honey?  I'm re-watching a Cinderella story unfold for the second time."

Tom likes to watch the fabled tournament live, then turn to the Golf Channel for highlights, then revisit each day's play by watching again on the digital recording he makes on his Tivo.  "Sometimes you don't get a sense of the rhythm of a round until you watch it the second time," he says. 

"I don't care if it is the best damn sports show, period!"

In the past Tom's obsession has interfered with the promise he and his wife made as part of marriage counseling a few years back that they would have sex "once a week, whether we need it or not, unless I'm having my period," says his wife Theresa.  "You need intimacy in a marriage, not just a sharing of expenses and appreciation in the value of jointly-held real estate," Tom admits.

Potassium nitrate, or saltpeter:  Ineffective unless you're making toothpaste for sensitive teeth.

Still, he considers it unfair that his wife gets a free weekend a month, while he must perform on command the remaining Saturday nights, "with no time off for good behavior" he notes.

"And with the high-performance speakers, you can drown out your wife's whining."

Past efforts to curb the male sexual drive have depended on natural remedies such as potassium nitrate or "saltpeter", which folklore credits with anaphrodisiac, or lust-depressing powers.  "That's an old wive's tale, which didn't do much to help wives regardless of their age," says Dr. Phillip LoPresti, founder of Anaphro Pharmaceuticals.  "If we can put a man on the moon and teach sign language to ####, we should be able to invent a pill that will give a man a 'free space'--like Bingo--on a Saturday night."

"The prototype is ready--we've compressed thirteen sports events into this weekend sampler."

So LoPresti and his product development team developed the first over-the-counter male disenhancement drug, MyWeekend, which renders a man incapable of sexual activity for forty-eight hours.  "If taken on a Friday evening, MyWeekend kills all sexual desire until Sunday night, when a guy's wife will be too tired from chauffering children around, doing laundry and cooking to stay awake for sex," LoPresti claims.

"No, I'm not coming to bed--why do you ask?"

Clinical trials this spring were successful, incapacitating a number of male Ohio State fans who wanted to savor their team's first trip to the Final Four since 1960 following a Saturday victory over Georgetown.  "I wanted to spend Saturday night thinking about Florida," the eventual champion, "without having to pay attention to my wife until the final was over on Monday," said Chad Everett, an insurance broker in Columbus, Ohio.  "Is that too much to ask?"

"What's a nice girl like you doing at a golf tournament like this?"

The drug worked for Sholes as well, as the golfer said thoughts of sex didn't enter his mind until the traditional green blazer was slipped on first-time winner Zach Johnson's shoulders Sunday afternoon.  "I'd see my wife standing there in a see-through negligee," he says, "and all I could think of was 'ball washer'."

Copyright 2007, Con Chapman