Foreign rectal bodies. Say it out loud — project your voice, now! Everyone in earshot will be batting away GIF images of husky men weaseling broomsticks and quarter sacks up their bums. Not everyone’s cup of tea, I know, but for us gay men, our rectums function as two-lane highways for various “foreign” but compatible “rectal bodies.” Naturally, I would assume we all share, at least, a closeted fascination for prostate pioneers who go to infinity and beyond.
What’s that? Is that the “Hallelujah” of every gay man who has ever lived soaring through my body? Very likely, yes.
Speaking of “infinity and beyond,” some nights ago, my roommate showed me an X-ray of a 10-inch Buzz Lightyear figurine that a guy, somehow, jockeyed up his ass. We chuckled, and I exclaimed, “Damn, I would kill to have a Buzz Lightyear toy up my ass!”
I was joking — then I wasn’t.
For the past three months, a churlish gang of rectal raiders has been ransacking my bucolic butt burg. The town’s militia of creams, cauterizations and pills have not only failed to restore peace, but have strengthened the raider’s ranks and surrendered my perineum (taint) to their territory. Given the militia’s failings and the sore state of affairs, the town council has approved the nuclear option: colorectal surgery.
I’m in pain, scared, horny, slightly depressed; sometimes, when I speak, snaps of pain from my asshole manifest as snaps of asshole in my speech. The winter weather is harsh and unpredictable. Working out feels Sisyphean and manic. And in the center of this brave new world lies one very parched prostate surrounded by a sprawling dick desert.
What brought this all about, you say? I let a guy fuck me too hard, too long, in the wrong way. Hey, I had a great time. And mistakes happen. Am I not deserving of the same sympathy if this all just kind of happened, or if I simply said nothing?
Now I know how Wolverine feels every time he brandishes his adamantine claws: When Magneto’s afoot, I defecate, brandishing not silvery blades but fecal ribbons that come tearing out of my ass knuckle. I crane my neck in anguish. I wag my tongue like a lunatic, shake my head side to side spitting curses at the gods as sweat furrows across my brow.
“Take warm baths for temporary relief,” the doctors say.
Look, doc: The pain pills you gave me make me constipated and drowsy, so I have to take Colace to soften my stool and Adderall to keep me awake. Then, every time before a bowel movement, I have to lube up my ass with a lidocaine-nifedophine cream, which you also gave me, to help dilate my sphincter and numb the outside of my rectum. Now that I’m more drugged up and lubed up than a power bottom at a sex party, one last step remains: I have to use my middle finger — ironically — to canvass my hole for a rectal tear, which, upon finding, I press and cover very gently, just as a cylinder of shit squishes out of my ass and cakes itself to part of my finger.
Now that the “Annie Get Your Dung” show is over, I have to spit on a ply of toilet paper so that I don’t irritate my already sore, scabbed, oozing anus.
By the way, I put on this production about three times a day.
Since this manure magnum opus has become the center of my daily grind, I’ve been pondering an essay by Virginia Woolf about the complete absence of illness-centered narratives in our literary canon. She describes how we extol odysseys of mind and heart, but rarely — if ever — do we contemplate the potentially life-changing impact of even everyday illnesses. Cancer and HIV are plausible exceptions, but why can’t “Annie Get Your Dung” become a Broadway hit, or a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel or one of Oprah’s Top-10 Favorite Things?
My ass means the world to me! My brain gets me by, and my heart bristles and jumps like everyone else’s. But my ass — it’s like a detonation point of bliss and agony, cupping in its tight wet crucible the closest incarnation of happiness I’ve ever experienced. Having sex is beside the point: my ass, my pain, my decisions, my joy, me on the crapper in the fetal position, lookin’ for hope, lookin’ for love.
I can be a real shit sometimes, but so can we all. And you know, I’ve been getting pretty good at dealing with shits. So to infinity and beyond, you bunch of steaming piles of …
We’re all in this together, folks. Now get out there and talk about it.
Aaron Stella is former editor-in-chief of Philly Broadcaster. He has written for several publications in the city, and now devotes his life to tackling the challenges of HIV in the 21st century. Millennial Poz, which recently won first place for excellence in opinion writing from the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association and best column writing from the Local Media Association, appears in PGN monthly. Aaron can be reached at [email protected].