Yet Another Journal
Posted: Wed Apr 28, 2021 11:05 pm
Three days ago, Dr. Eid’s secretary, Ruby, scheduled me to have an inflatable implant put into my penis on Tuesday May 11. That’s just thirteen days from now. She offered me other dates too, a little further into the future, but I controlled my voice and said May 11 is fine. If I’m going to do this, I might as well get it done.
After I hang up, I teared up. Not out of sorrow, not out of happiness, but out of nervousness. I’m scared, and several times since then, I’ve asked myself: What the hell are you thinking? Shouldn’t you give this some more thought? It’s been less than three months since my urologist suggested I consider getting an implant. Isn’t this decision way too rushed? But seen from another angle, it isn’t rushed at all; I’ve been dealing with this problem for over thirty years.
Background: I’m a 55-year-old gay man, living in New York, and married to a caring, handsome, muscular man I’ve been together with for nineteen years. Our marriage is committed -- and sexually open. My problems far predate my husband. I’ve had difficulties getting -- and, above all, staying -- hard at least since I became sexually active, which was rather late: I was 23 the first time I had sex with a woman. It wasn’t really my thing, so perhaps it wasn’t so surprising that I performed so badly. But a year later, I started having sex with men, and to my consternation, my performance was just as bad. (Well, almost as bad.) When I was 25, I had my nocturnal erections measured. (Two loops are put around your dick, connected to a device tied to your leg. Every minute or so through the night, the loops pull tight, measuring your circumference.) The hardons I had in my sleep were deemed to be normal, so it was concluded that my problem was psychological.
That was thirty years ago. Whether my problem back then really was psychological or not, I don’t know. Perhaps it was a combination of psychology and physiology, and to some extent, in some cases, psychology and physiology are just two different ways of looking at the same issue. In any case, Dr. Eid diagnosed me with a 20% veinous leak -- not huge, he said, but substantial; a lot larger than the normal healthy number of 0%, and certainly large enough to explain my problem.
A problem I’ve been dealing with for my whole sexually-active life. I started using injections when I was 25. When Viagra came around, I switched to that, and it worked okay (though never great) for ten years or so. Then it worked less well, so I went back to the injections. And then they worked less well too, so I upped the dose, and upped it again, and again. Lately, I’ve been using a combination of 100 mg Viagra, 1 full cc of Bimix (the syringe won’t hold more), and a tight cock ring -- and still, the result is disappointing. So my urologist thought it might be time for a more radical solution.
Many aspects of the idea are enormously appealing: not having to plan ahead, always having my equipment with me, inside my body, ready to be deployed at any time; not having to interrupt the proceedings with a hot hookup with some lame excuse, and go to the bathroom and stick a needly in my dick (which was never my idea of foreplay).
For the last year or two, I’ve been more open with sex partners about my injections. A couple of guys freaked out, but for most guys, it’s no problem; as long as it gets you hard, they don’t mind at all! But that is the problem: the injections no longer get me hard, just hardish: full and turgid, nice to look at, but if the guy hopes to be topped, I will end up disappointing. I’ll probably succeed in getting it in. But soon, I’ll slip out, and it gets more difficult to get it in again. And after a few minutes, I just want to cum and get it over with. It seems to me that it would be so much easier to tell sex partners that you’re using what might seem like an extreme measure -- whether it’s injections or an implant -- if you then could offer up the most amazing, long-lasting hardon. But telling someone that you need to inject, and then you still just get turgid ... Then what’s the point?
Before Dr. Eid injected me in his office, to measure me for the implant, he said that if I got too hard (and he knocked his knucles against a cabinet door to illustrate), he would give me an antidote. Not going to happen, I told him, and it didn’t. Afterwards, when I asked him if the implant would give me a better erection than the one I got from his injection, he scoffed: “Well, you can’t really do anything with an erection like that.” Perhaps he didn’t even deign to call it an erection, but just said “penis;” I don’t quite remember. In any case, it was clear what he recommended.
So yes, the idea is enticing. And yet, it’s scary.
So what exactly am I afraid of?
Well, I guess I’m afraid that some crazy doctor will incapacitate me with drugs and put a scalpel to my dick and slice it open and poke around inside with hard instruments and stuff it full of foreign objects and then -- oh, the absurdity of it! -- just stitch me up and send me home! Who the fuck would not be scared at such prospects? Especially as Dr. Eid said that my surgery would be “a bit of a challenge,” due to the weird shape of my dick (much thicker in the middle than in either end). Should I be worried? I asked him. No, he said, I’ve yet to encounter a penis I couldn’t fit an implant into. Well, I guess that will have to do.
The appointment has been made, and, baring new information, I will go through with it. So I figured that, in the tradition of merrix and other guys on here, I’ll start a journal.
After I hang up, I teared up. Not out of sorrow, not out of happiness, but out of nervousness. I’m scared, and several times since then, I’ve asked myself: What the hell are you thinking? Shouldn’t you give this some more thought? It’s been less than three months since my urologist suggested I consider getting an implant. Isn’t this decision way too rushed? But seen from another angle, it isn’t rushed at all; I’ve been dealing with this problem for over thirty years.
Background: I’m a 55-year-old gay man, living in New York, and married to a caring, handsome, muscular man I’ve been together with for nineteen years. Our marriage is committed -- and sexually open. My problems far predate my husband. I’ve had difficulties getting -- and, above all, staying -- hard at least since I became sexually active, which was rather late: I was 23 the first time I had sex with a woman. It wasn’t really my thing, so perhaps it wasn’t so surprising that I performed so badly. But a year later, I started having sex with men, and to my consternation, my performance was just as bad. (Well, almost as bad.) When I was 25, I had my nocturnal erections measured. (Two loops are put around your dick, connected to a device tied to your leg. Every minute or so through the night, the loops pull tight, measuring your circumference.) The hardons I had in my sleep were deemed to be normal, so it was concluded that my problem was psychological.
That was thirty years ago. Whether my problem back then really was psychological or not, I don’t know. Perhaps it was a combination of psychology and physiology, and to some extent, in some cases, psychology and physiology are just two different ways of looking at the same issue. In any case, Dr. Eid diagnosed me with a 20% veinous leak -- not huge, he said, but substantial; a lot larger than the normal healthy number of 0%, and certainly large enough to explain my problem.
A problem I’ve been dealing with for my whole sexually-active life. I started using injections when I was 25. When Viagra came around, I switched to that, and it worked okay (though never great) for ten years or so. Then it worked less well, so I went back to the injections. And then they worked less well too, so I upped the dose, and upped it again, and again. Lately, I’ve been using a combination of 100 mg Viagra, 1 full cc of Bimix (the syringe won’t hold more), and a tight cock ring -- and still, the result is disappointing. So my urologist thought it might be time for a more radical solution.
Many aspects of the idea are enormously appealing: not having to plan ahead, always having my equipment with me, inside my body, ready to be deployed at any time; not having to interrupt the proceedings with a hot hookup with some lame excuse, and go to the bathroom and stick a needly in my dick (which was never my idea of foreplay).
For the last year or two, I’ve been more open with sex partners about my injections. A couple of guys freaked out, but for most guys, it’s no problem; as long as it gets you hard, they don’t mind at all! But that is the problem: the injections no longer get me hard, just hardish: full and turgid, nice to look at, but if the guy hopes to be topped, I will end up disappointing. I’ll probably succeed in getting it in. But soon, I’ll slip out, and it gets more difficult to get it in again. And after a few minutes, I just want to cum and get it over with. It seems to me that it would be so much easier to tell sex partners that you’re using what might seem like an extreme measure -- whether it’s injections or an implant -- if you then could offer up the most amazing, long-lasting hardon. But telling someone that you need to inject, and then you still just get turgid ... Then what’s the point?
Before Dr. Eid injected me in his office, to measure me for the implant, he said that if I got too hard (and he knocked his knucles against a cabinet door to illustrate), he would give me an antidote. Not going to happen, I told him, and it didn’t. Afterwards, when I asked him if the implant would give me a better erection than the one I got from his injection, he scoffed: “Well, you can’t really do anything with an erection like that.” Perhaps he didn’t even deign to call it an erection, but just said “penis;” I don’t quite remember. In any case, it was clear what he recommended.
So yes, the idea is enticing. And yet, it’s scary.
So what exactly am I afraid of?
Well, I guess I’m afraid that some crazy doctor will incapacitate me with drugs and put a scalpel to my dick and slice it open and poke around inside with hard instruments and stuff it full of foreign objects and then -- oh, the absurdity of it! -- just stitch me up and send me home! Who the fuck would not be scared at such prospects? Especially as Dr. Eid said that my surgery would be “a bit of a challenge,” due to the weird shape of my dick (much thicker in the middle than in either end). Should I be worried? I asked him. No, he said, I’ve yet to encounter a penis I couldn’t fit an implant into. Well, I guess that will have to do.
The appointment has been made, and, baring new information, I will go through with it. So I figured that, in the tradition of merrix and other guys on here, I’ll start a journal.
