So I was awakened around 3:30 in the morning to what sounded like a reciprocating saw. It was coming from next door; from the neighbor under eviction notice, so of course my first thought was "she has her tweeker kids over and they are stealing the plumbing!" While I was thinking over whether I should call the sheriff or not, the noise stopped, and then the water was turned on full blast in what sounded like the bathtub, and naturally my mind pictured red rivulets being frantically whisked down the drain.
I've seen enough movies to know what reciprocating saw followed by running water in the bathtub means--especially when it is done in the goddammed middle of the night. I tried to think what I would say to the sheriff, and figured it wasn't worth the bother. It was already too late for the chap anyway after all. Maybe I should have some ice cream....
Saturday, September 28, 2013
Friday, September 27, 2013
A Memoir of my Penis
My earliest conscious memories involving my penis were around four or five years of age, and these only because they involve other people commenting on the subject ...for whatever reason they felt so compelled. I don't recall the precise chronology of which came first so well, but one involved being in the nearby town of Willard, WA. My brother and I were playing with some of the local kids whose parents my mom was visiting. We were in the outdoors, and at that age I understood that as meaning that one could whip it out anywhere in the brush and bracken and pee. I use the term "whip it out" quite liberally here, because it was more like drop the pants a few inches and point the little nub away from body, but hey... Anyhoo, I said that I needed to pee, and did this out there in the grass and bracken beside the road, and one of the kids felt the need to say "Oh that's your penis! Holy crap, I've never seen such tiny penis!" or something to that effect. I was thinking like "Oh, fucking thanks, bitch!" or whatever the four-year-old equivalent of that would be, since I hadn't such a sophisticated vocabulary yet.
The other memory around the same age was when changing clothes around my older female cousins after swimming. And one of them pointed to the baby acorn and said something like "be careful with that, it's tender!" I don't recall precisely how old I was at the time, but it was after the age when I found out that girls don't have that particular body part, and consequently, how the fuck would they know. But I was actually thinking "no, that is not correct!"
You see, I was born in that barbaric age of yesteryear known as the 1970's, and like some 90% of boys born at that time, I was subjected to a not-so-very standardized procedure known as circumcision. These were the deep-darkest ages of barbarity too, when they "didn't know" that newborn babies could feel pain. To counter the flailing and screaming that necessarily accompanies the said procedure, in the early minutes of the torture--before shock finally sets in during the most gruesome business--the baby was strapped spread-eagle to a board, alone except for the quacks getting their clamps and blades ready nearby. Then the foreskin was sliced, the connective tissue between penis and inner foreskin (like that under the fingernails) was ripped apart with a blunt probe, then a clamp was applied and screwed down, and finally the assortment of flesh caught up in the contraption was excised as if it were a mole, or tumor, or some other useless tissue.
I do not say that the foreskin was sliced off, because that would be most imprecise. As I am now, as and adult, the skin that covers the shaft of my penis actually retains much of the inner foreskin lining. It takes up the third of the skin on my shaft that is immediately below the head--as a proxy for some of the shaft skin that was clamped off. Of the six or so inches of shaft I have now, only about one and a half inches is actually comprised of the skin that naturally occurs on the shaft at birth. The lower two and a half inches of my shaft have borrowed the coarse hairy skin from the scrotum, and/or surrounding pubic area. So when you hear ignorant folks say shit like "it is just a flap of skin" what they are really saying is that I did not need three quarter of my shaft skin. Thanks dip-shits (yes Bono, this means you).
So, anyway, even at that young age (not so tender, mind you) I had this dried out, rough little penis head (and most of whatever shaft there would be if it became erect was the inside-out foreskin lining with the other ends of of the violently-separated cuticle attachments mapping it. Frenulum? Forget about it! There are these three tiny strands of scar tissue with worse than no feeling, that hadn't grown and stretched like the skin around them did, and in the middle a little divot of what appears to have been a scalpel digging in from one side, deliberately trying to amputate the very nerves that lay beneath! And by-golly, my fingertips, wrists, thighs, flanks, feet, ears, neck, backs of knees all have more sensation in them even today with my proper care regimen.) And here these non-penis-owners are telling me to be careful of it. What ever.
Eventually, around age seven or so I discovered that there was another mode to it, besides just tiny, barely-aimable pissing nub. There was a children's book which contained the description of a girl being spanked, and though I had certainly been spanked enough that I should have empathized, I found it evocative of other feeling that I couldn't identify yet. I'll let the amateur Freuds out there decide for themselves why pain and pleasure were confounded in my mind, but regardless, the result was a little 3-inch erection. I remember asking my parents why it was like this, and was told that it meant that I had to pee, and that I had better wait til it relaxed so I could go to the bathroom. Um... sure... okay.
When I was eight or so, I had been sick for the better part of a week, and it was late spring or early summer, and everyone was doing stuff outside most of the time, and I was mostly being kept company by easy-listening radio (and it was during this time that John Denver's 'Sunshine on my Shoulders' became the first song I was ever sick-to-death of... but that's another story) and it hurt my head to read, but I did a lot of day-dreaming, and eventually my thoughts came back to this idea of a girl my age being punished, and again the same physical result accompanied. I tried to figure out what was wrong with my penis, because I didn't really feel like I had to pee. I felt it with my hand, and it was most uncomfortable. I pulled my pajamas forward to give it some room, and then felt it again, and it was uncomfortable to the point of being painful, and there seemed to be very unnatural stretching going on. I decided to just continue my daydream, maybe it would go away, and when finally my thoughts moved to another subject, it finally did.
When I was twelve years old, I had been soaking in a hot bathtub for some time--long enough for fingers to get wrinkly, in fact. I had been washing my junk for a little longer than necessary, when it got that stiffness going on again, except that now that it had soaked in the tub long enough for the skin to soften, it actually felt sorta... good. The following spring I would find nice places to hide in the forest, to try this business out again. The first couple of times I tried soap. After all, that is what was used in the tub. Then I commandeered a dusty bottle of unused lotion from under the bathroom sink, and this worked really well at softening up the keratinized skin long enough to have some fun. By those days I actually knew about sex, I was daydreaming about pretty girls at school, and after working the lotion in for a half-hour or so, I achieved...um... success.
During my teen years, I used it quite regularly, but there never seemed to be enough skin it to get as erect as the inside of it wanted to, and this interfered in what would otherwise have been carefree hours of wanking it til it softened up enough for climax. Fortunately I was able to distract myself from this trouble with visual-aids, which also provided their own stimulation. I sometimes even found that I didn't need to soften my member up long enough to feel the really sublime pleasure, if I had stimulating enough visuals to look at. By my late teen years, all that tugging finally seemed to have stretched that stubborn skin out enough to have an erection that I could be confident of.
When I was twenty, I got married, and everything went mostly smoothly (at least sexually) in the first years, when my penis' usage was quite regular. But after having children and things slowing down in the bedroom, it started to dry out again. So when relations did occur there was some discomfort. The then wife thought it was on her end, and I hadn't given it enough thought to know better. You see, as an adult, much more of the skin was left unprotected and consequently chapped. So when it was erect and inserted, it would just soak up most of her moisture. We started using KY Jelly, and it seemed to solve most of that, though we sometimes had to reapply.
Once I got divorced, I began rubbing the lotion in much more regularly, and I found that the overall comfort improved during all parts of the day. And I couldn't figure out why I hadn't realized that I needed that level of maintenance all along. I started becoming physically involved with a few different ladies during this time. A couple of them liked to show off their oral skills, and seemed a bit disappointed that I was impervious to this sort of charm. I tried explaining that my penis was just not very sensitive, and they would say something like "well, you probably jerk off too much." No, that is not the case. In fact, it is only after rubbing in a considerable amount of lotion that it is as sensitive as it is. But our culture doesn't recognize male sexual dysfunction if a person is still able to get rock hard, so there never seemed to be any sense in arguing with them about it.
Fortunately, now that I've researched the subject a bit, I understand my various problems well enough to compensate for many of them. I know to treat my penis with lotion, even if I'm not getting busy with myself that day, and particularly to treat it before meeting someone for sex. I know to explain to concerned partners that "flicking my frenulum" doesn't do anything because all I have there is three tiny strands of scar tissue. I know that the hair that grows almost halfway up the shaft isn't normal, and that removing it is better for all involved. I understand that the better I take care of the skin so that I can feel something close to natural pleasure, the less dependent I am on visual or other secondary stimulation. Most of these lessons would have been enormously helpful, if I had known about them twenty years ago, and so I decided to swallow my pride and tell my story in case it helps anyone else.
The other memory around the same age was when changing clothes around my older female cousins after swimming. And one of them pointed to the baby acorn and said something like "be careful with that, it's tender!" I don't recall precisely how old I was at the time, but it was after the age when I found out that girls don't have that particular body part, and consequently, how the fuck would they know. But I was actually thinking "no, that is not correct!"
You see, I was born in that barbaric age of yesteryear known as the 1970's, and like some 90% of boys born at that time, I was subjected to a not-so-very standardized procedure known as circumcision. These were the deep-darkest ages of barbarity too, when they "didn't know" that newborn babies could feel pain. To counter the flailing and screaming that necessarily accompanies the said procedure, in the early minutes of the torture--before shock finally sets in during the most gruesome business--the baby was strapped spread-eagle to a board, alone except for the quacks getting their clamps and blades ready nearby. Then the foreskin was sliced, the connective tissue between penis and inner foreskin (like that under the fingernails) was ripped apart with a blunt probe, then a clamp was applied and screwed down, and finally the assortment of flesh caught up in the contraption was excised as if it were a mole, or tumor, or some other useless tissue.
I do not say that the foreskin was sliced off, because that would be most imprecise. As I am now, as and adult, the skin that covers the shaft of my penis actually retains much of the inner foreskin lining. It takes up the third of the skin on my shaft that is immediately below the head--as a proxy for some of the shaft skin that was clamped off. Of the six or so inches of shaft I have now, only about one and a half inches is actually comprised of the skin that naturally occurs on the shaft at birth. The lower two and a half inches of my shaft have borrowed the coarse hairy skin from the scrotum, and/or surrounding pubic area. So when you hear ignorant folks say shit like "it is just a flap of skin" what they are really saying is that I did not need three quarter of my shaft skin. Thanks dip-shits (yes Bono, this means you).
So, anyway, even at that young age (not so tender, mind you) I had this dried out, rough little penis head (and most of whatever shaft there would be if it became erect was the inside-out foreskin lining with the other ends of of the violently-separated cuticle attachments mapping it. Frenulum? Forget about it! There are these three tiny strands of scar tissue with worse than no feeling, that hadn't grown and stretched like the skin around them did, and in the middle a little divot of what appears to have been a scalpel digging in from one side, deliberately trying to amputate the very nerves that lay beneath! And by-golly, my fingertips, wrists, thighs, flanks, feet, ears, neck, backs of knees all have more sensation in them even today with my proper care regimen.) And here these non-penis-owners are telling me to be careful of it. What ever.
Eventually, around age seven or so I discovered that there was another mode to it, besides just tiny, barely-aimable pissing nub. There was a children's book which contained the description of a girl being spanked, and though I had certainly been spanked enough that I should have empathized, I found it evocative of other feeling that I couldn't identify yet. I'll let the amateur Freuds out there decide for themselves why pain and pleasure were confounded in my mind, but regardless, the result was a little 3-inch erection. I remember asking my parents why it was like this, and was told that it meant that I had to pee, and that I had better wait til it relaxed so I could go to the bathroom. Um... sure... okay.
When I was eight or so, I had been sick for the better part of a week, and it was late spring or early summer, and everyone was doing stuff outside most of the time, and I was mostly being kept company by easy-listening radio (and it was during this time that John Denver's 'Sunshine on my Shoulders' became the first song I was ever sick-to-death of... but that's another story) and it hurt my head to read, but I did a lot of day-dreaming, and eventually my thoughts came back to this idea of a girl my age being punished, and again the same physical result accompanied. I tried to figure out what was wrong with my penis, because I didn't really feel like I had to pee. I felt it with my hand, and it was most uncomfortable. I pulled my pajamas forward to give it some room, and then felt it again, and it was uncomfortable to the point of being painful, and there seemed to be very unnatural stretching going on. I decided to just continue my daydream, maybe it would go away, and when finally my thoughts moved to another subject, it finally did.
When I was twelve years old, I had been soaking in a hot bathtub for some time--long enough for fingers to get wrinkly, in fact. I had been washing my junk for a little longer than necessary, when it got that stiffness going on again, except that now that it had soaked in the tub long enough for the skin to soften, it actually felt sorta... good. The following spring I would find nice places to hide in the forest, to try this business out again. The first couple of times I tried soap. After all, that is what was used in the tub. Then I commandeered a dusty bottle of unused lotion from under the bathroom sink, and this worked really well at softening up the keratinized skin long enough to have some fun. By those days I actually knew about sex, I was daydreaming about pretty girls at school, and after working the lotion in for a half-hour or so, I achieved...um... success.
During my teen years, I used it quite regularly, but there never seemed to be enough skin it to get as erect as the inside of it wanted to, and this interfered in what would otherwise have been carefree hours of wanking it til it softened up enough for climax. Fortunately I was able to distract myself from this trouble with visual-aids, which also provided their own stimulation. I sometimes even found that I didn't need to soften my member up long enough to feel the really sublime pleasure, if I had stimulating enough visuals to look at. By my late teen years, all that tugging finally seemed to have stretched that stubborn skin out enough to have an erection that I could be confident of.
When I was twenty, I got married, and everything went mostly smoothly (at least sexually) in the first years, when my penis' usage was quite regular. But after having children and things slowing down in the bedroom, it started to dry out again. So when relations did occur there was some discomfort. The then wife thought it was on her end, and I hadn't given it enough thought to know better. You see, as an adult, much more of the skin was left unprotected and consequently chapped. So when it was erect and inserted, it would just soak up most of her moisture. We started using KY Jelly, and it seemed to solve most of that, though we sometimes had to reapply.
Once I got divorced, I began rubbing the lotion in much more regularly, and I found that the overall comfort improved during all parts of the day. And I couldn't figure out why I hadn't realized that I needed that level of maintenance all along. I started becoming physically involved with a few different ladies during this time. A couple of them liked to show off their oral skills, and seemed a bit disappointed that I was impervious to this sort of charm. I tried explaining that my penis was just not very sensitive, and they would say something like "well, you probably jerk off too much." No, that is not the case. In fact, it is only after rubbing in a considerable amount of lotion that it is as sensitive as it is. But our culture doesn't recognize male sexual dysfunction if a person is still able to get rock hard, so there never seemed to be any sense in arguing with them about it.
Fortunately, now that I've researched the subject a bit, I understand my various problems well enough to compensate for many of them. I know to treat my penis with lotion, even if I'm not getting busy with myself that day, and particularly to treat it before meeting someone for sex. I know to explain to concerned partners that "flicking my frenulum" doesn't do anything because all I have there is three tiny strands of scar tissue. I know that the hair that grows almost halfway up the shaft isn't normal, and that removing it is better for all involved. I understand that the better I take care of the skin so that I can feel something close to natural pleasure, the less dependent I am on visual or other secondary stimulation. Most of these lessons would have been enormously helpful, if I had known about them twenty years ago, and so I decided to swallow my pride and tell my story in case it helps anyone else.
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