Your Genitals Will Dissatisfy Someone: A Rant
(NOTE: I generally don’t back-post my essays on FetLife over to my “main” journal, usually because they’re a little too graphic for what I consider my public face these days. But this one took off on Fet, generating over 1,400 loves and 275 comments – and not a negative one in the bunch. And since body positive one is, I think, an important topic, I’m doing the unusual and taking a graphic essay on sex and posting it riiiiight here.)
FetLife’s writings are ablaze with women coming to terms with the fact that their vaginas possess natural odors, and that these scents are not in fact disgusting but outright alluring to many. That is awesome.
What FetLife is not ablaze with, but private sessions are, are men who are secretly worried that their cock is funny-shaped, or too small, or not up to snuff in some way. They’re not gonna volunteer this, because cocks get made fun of enough of on FetLife for being crude avatars, and they’re trying to attract a crowd of women who, as porn has taught us, only want Moby Dick. But I guarantee you: a lot of guys are just as worried.
Sadly, we can extend this terror to every part of the body: My tits aren’t symmetrical. My teeth are weird. My laugh is funny. My skin is the wrong shade. My asshole is too dark. So let’s cover our mouths when we laugh, slather ourselves in makeup, buy bras with special padding, douche maniacally, and buy p3n1S pills from these oh-so-reliable Nigerian doctors.
What many of these sad origin stories have in common is usually one person going, “Guh. That part of your body? I really don’t like that.” And then, because we’re all sensitive to criticism, we extrapolate and go, “Well, person X didn’t like it, so everyone must be disgusted by it.” Sprinkle a little societal terror in brought on by companies who profit richly off your body shame, and pretty soon it feels like everyone in the world vomits at the thought of your squishy bits.
You know what?
Fuck them.
Or, rather, don’t fuck them.
Look, if someone doesn’t like your nethers? That’s just one opinion. It may be a hurtful opinion, if it comes from someone you want to impress… but don’t extrapolate it to the whole world. It’s a big fucking universe, and out there is someone who is mad for exactly what you possess.
Seriously. I know a lot of women who prefer average to smaller cocks because they can fuck for longer without getting it sore and they can take it all the way own their throats. Personally, I love chubby women with strong scent. I’ll admit to imperfections in Little Elvis that I’m not thrilled with, but some have personally adored.
If you look around on FetLife, you’ll see people who do not just tolerate your particular body style, but actively crave it. It’s a big world. You are not unattractive to everyone. You’re deeply attractive to someone.
Now find ’em.
Keep in mind that there are a ton of businesses out there who make money by yelling, “OH, GOD, YOU’RE HORRIBLE!” and then saying, “…but we have this bunch of chemicals that can help you hide this shame, for only $6 a bottle!” These people are not your friends. They are not society, either. They are carpetbaggers hoping to make a buck off of your insecurities, and you should not listen to them.
Life is too short to spend with people who are revulsed by your bits, man. What you have? It’s awesome for someone. It’s a turnon. And I’m not saying your partner is obligated to love every bit of you… but I am saying that you should not read that single person’s preference writ global, and you should not read that preference as a lack of love or attraction for you, either.
Hey, my wife loves Viggo Mortenson and other men with strong chins and calm blue eyes, and yet she fell for Googly-Eyed Mister Potatohead here. Somehow all of my other features add up to sexy for her. I am more than the sum of my parts; it is the whole of me that is sexy, and goddammit on my better days I’ll own that.
That’s cool. What I have is awesome. What you have is awesome, and shame is not a turn-on. Stop spending time trying to hide this natural part of you and let it fucking fly.
"Ya Look Good": A Flurry Of Reactions To A Changed Body
So I’ve lost thirty pounds, and when people see me they’re kind of startled. “Whoah!” they say. “You look good!”
At which point I have several contradictory reactions going off like fireworks in my head.
First is, how feeble am I supposed to be? Because, yeah, big ol’ heart operation two months ago, I was very frail, and here I am feeling half-decent again and now someone’s reminded me that I’m convalescent. Which isn’t their fault. I’m often the first youngish person they’ve known to have a bypass surgery, and so their expectations are low, and to see me popped up and walking about again is a pleasant surprise for them. Still, I wonder what I looked like in their mind. Maybe in a wheelchair, with an oxygen mask, clutching a cane in trembling hands.
Then: I don’t want to look good. All this increased health? The result of near-terminal illness. I stand straighter, because my chest hurts when I slouch – a habit that makes me look taller, thinner, and also makes me feel stiff and Frankensteinish. My weight is because a) I’m eating much better, b) exercising more, and c) have zero appetite because when they cut your fucking chest open like a crab, it takes a few months to feel hungry again. I eat out of obligation for about four out of five meals, and will often forget if Gini doesn’t mention it.
So I’m not really looking better. It’s just that my injuries take on societally-acceptable forms.
Then: this is bullshit. Fucking weight-obsessed society revomiting. Because when people say “You look good,” nine times out of ten that means “You’ve lost weight,” as nobody ever compliments someone on gaining a few pounds in strategic locations. Maybe it’s the new hat, or the snazzy mustache, but I can’t help but think if “You look good” wasn’t such a synonym for “You looked bloated and pudgy before, but now your whale-like figure is approaching a societally-acceptable shape,” then everyone would be a lot happier. And I hate, hate, buying into that idea that “good” is “skinnier.”
Then I go, “Oh, really?” and go into the bathroom and preen, as my new mustache looks good on my slimmer face, and my clothes fit better, and with this newer, more in-shape body, aren’t I just dapper. How nice.
It’s nice looking good, it really is, once you force past the wave of revulsion.
Let's Talk About Suicide
When I was a teenager, I fantasized about suicide in the way one might consider a good night’s sleep. My life thrummed to a constant backbeat of “Oh, wouldn’t it be nice if I wasn’t around.” I’d think about ways to do it, decided all of them involved too much pain or messiness, and I really couldn’t do that to Mom and Dad and Tommy anyway, and I’d set it back on the shelf like a favorite DVD, to be replayed later. Suicide was my copy of Princess Bride, a luxuriation of thoughts of nothingness and coffins to sink into when I was stressed out.
It took me a long time to understand how rare and bizarre those fantasies were.
LiveJournal woke me up; I did some poll on suicidal thoughts, and I discovered that the idea of self-harm hadn’t even occurred to most of the people on my friends’ list. And my friends’ list was filled with freaks like me. So I did some checking, and sure enough, the vast majority of people, even when faced with massive stress, never think about offing themselves. The idea never presents itself as an option.
How weird.
Yet here I am, a supposedly healthy adult, and about once a week when something wrong happens, I go, “Oh, that’d be nice, wouldn’t it?” The idea is like a pretty garden, walled off with barbed wire and high taxes; the cost of getting there is ridiculously painful, but sort of sweet in its own way.
When I talk to other suicidal people, though, they often feel the same way. Their lovers have betrayed them, their job is full of stress and uncertainty, they can’t pay the bills, and their health is fluctuating. And so they seek suicide, and some of them get it.
Here’s the problem, though. What many of them don’t want is suicide.
They want a vacation.
For me, these thoughts of suicide often arise because I’ve got so much stress in my life that I can’t possibly stop the hits from coming. If I’m in the middle of a huge emotional fight with my girlfriend and work is filled with deadlines, I can’t take a day off – and even if I could, I’d be filled with so much worry about oh my God what’s going to happen with Doreen, what does it mean that she’s so mad can we work this out oh God she’s calling now please let us not fight that the day off would be useless. There would be literally nowhere I could go to get away from my worries; I’d carry them with me. The only thing I could do would be to try to sleep (which I couldn’t) or maybe take some pills or alcohol to try to blot it out.
And I think: If I was dead, none of this would matter.
That blankness seems so glorious.
But I don’t go down that barbed path, because while suicide does technically stop all those troubles, it also ensures that I would never get to hit the unpause button and find new lovers, work through my unhappiness, and find joy again. Which I have done, time and time again. Life seems so overwhelming and futile, yet if I buckle down and work at it, I usually find a way to get somewhere better.
It’s not a promise, of course; nothing is. But I can think of several times I was like oh my God I can’t handle this where if I’d hit the perma-kill button, I never would have seen the other side. Me, as an awkward lonely teenager, convinced I would never find a girl willing to hold me. Me, as a twentysomething crazy person, convinced I’d never get it together. Me, at the helm of a failing division at Borders, convinced I would get fired and never have a career again. Me, in the first year of my crumbling marriage with Gini, convinced we’d never work this out.
That’s an awful lot of nevers in my life that proved to be totally untrue.
And you know, I’ve known a lot of suicidal folks. A lot of them wind up happy later on. It can happen. Does more often than you’d think, really. Those nevers actually often turn out to be merely formidable problems – not the impassable barrier of a never, but a wall that can be chipped away, one fleck at a time, until you break a hole in it big enough to slither through.
And no. You don’t get to rest while you’re working on that wall, and it’s exhausting and frustrating and hurtful, oh so hurtful. But that work, more often than not, is rewarded in my experience – not just my personal experience, but watching other people go through it time and time again. You want to just lie down and fucking rest and not have people ask you any questions, and no, you can’t have that now.
But there is some peace waiting on the other side. More importantly, there’s more joy to be mined out of this life, more beauty, more chances to try again than you’d ever believe in this moment of despair.
So what I’m saying to you right now if you feel overwhelmed is, don’t confuse your need for a vacation for an actual life-ending. Hey, if I could give you a magic box to put yourself in where you could just pause the world and read books and breathe for a week, I totally would. That would probably make things a lot easier for you, because right now you feel like a boxer, with blow after blow hitting you and that goddamned referee refusing to ring the bell and give you a break.
Sometimes suicide looks like that break. But the problem with suicide is that you never get to hit that unpause button, and more often than not that’s a tragedy that affects everyone around you and you.
So think about your vacation. Revel in it. But be realistic about what that very permanent step would actually mean. Okay?
Body Horror In Week Seven
This story starts out with me picking at a blister. So if that’s too much for you, stop now.
But the blister had been swelling on my stomach for three days, just underneath my ribcage and to the right of my belly button, and it was starting to really hurt. So I picked at it, and…
…a stitch popped out, like a meerkat poking its head out of a hole. I pulled at it gently, since my body is full of dissolvable stitches, and most of them have degenerated to the point where they pull away like wet cotton.
But no. This one was rooted deep in my belly; I could press down on the wound and see the stitch sliding back and forth in it, maybe three-quarters of an inch revealed, like a pillar being revealed as the tide went out. “Oh, just yank it out,” said Gini, reaching over to give it a good hard tug.
“No!” I yelped, slapping her hand away. And in bending over, the stitch slipped back into my body. And, sliding around under the skin, created another blister.
By the time I finally managed to pick it out of my body three days later, I was ready. I asked Gini to get me a pair of small scissors so I could at least cut the offending portion out – and when I did, I realized something chilling:
This wasn’t a stitch.
It was copper fucking wire. Clad in white plastic insulation.
“Uh, Gini,” I said. “I think that’s the wire they used to tie my ribs together after they cracked my chest open.”
Which didn’t make much sense, as I knew they had to use a lot of strength to seal my shattered chest back into place, and this wire was the size of – well, a small thread. But by the time I could investigate, the remaining bit had retreated into my body.
Gini, worrying that my insides were now wormed through with pointy bits of sharp copper wire, perforating my liver, instructed me to call the doctors. So I did. They were quite jolly.
“Oh, that’s not related to your ribs,” they said. “That’s a wire that leads to your heart.”
“What?”
“It’s the wire that we use to hook you up to a pacemaker during surgery, just in case something goes wrong. But the pericardium seals up quickly, and taking it out risks small bleeding. So we leave it in you. But you’ve lost thirty pounds since the operation, so it’s not a surprise it’s coming out.”
I remembered Gini, about to yank real hard on the wire, and felt sick.
“So… what would have happened if someone had pulled on it really hard?” I asked, envisioning something very much like this.
“It would have come out. Probably had a little internal bleeding. Nothing serious.”
“No, no, nothing serious at all about someone removing a wire attached to my still-beating heart,” I muttered.
“Say, when you cut the wire, did you sterilize the scissors? Because if that portion of the wire is back in your body again, we’re going to have to put you on a course of antibiotics….”
So now I’m on Keflex again, and inside me is a copper wire threaded through to my heart. If I lose more weight again, it might re-emerge, and then I can tug on it like a bell clapper – a route for me to poke my internal organs directly. Which is a thought that fills me with pure ick.
THE SICKBEARD IS DEAD
Before.
After.
I’m still frail in some ways. I need drugs to sleep. I can’t lift heavy things. I can’t… oh, you know the drill.
But I went to my barber, and he fixed up my face, and today I feel born anew. It is a glorious feeling. You can see it in my smile.