Question-Begging

“So, what about ‘beg the question’? This is probably the most widely misused expression in the language. I don’t propose to explain what it means. People with degrees in philosophy have no trouble understanding it. The rest of us find it virtually ungraspable. There are only two things you need to know about ‘beg the question’. The first is that it is not the same as ‘raise the question’ — which is the expression the writer of the Johansson item should have used. The second is this: don’t write ‘beg the question’ — ever.”

Awl pal Simon Dumenco has put together a group called the Council on Ethical Blogging and Aggregation, which will promulgate standards about how to credit, quote and synthesize the writing of others. “The group will have neither carrot nor stick, but could end up with a kind of Good Housekeeping seal,” as David Carr puts it today in the Times. Dumenco himself suggests that the group will work their way towards “a set of perhaps a dozen-ish common-sense guidelines” about how one should blog. I was invited to join the list of signatories, and declined, but solely on the principle that any club that would have us as a member is something something. The membership, as well, was already too bigwig-heavy, including as it does the likes of David Granger and James Bennet and Adam Moss. I am not sure I want their seal of approval, particularly as these were for the most part the people in media who originally scoffed at bloggers. (Although that’s probably all just my contrarian streak.)

So while we’re sympathetic to their aims, for sure — who likes being ripped off? Who likes watching corporate blogs lumber and clear-cut their way through the Internet? — there is always something impossible about this sort of mission. It seems like the sort of thing that’ll end, at best, with in-fighting, or at worst, with some sort of Night of the Long Blog Knives.

B’Day

by Cecilia K Corrigan

Beyonce was dreaming that a white wolf was chasing her through a shopping mall. She’d escaped a room in the mall where someone was being tortured by bureaucrats, and now was running in a state of panic, trying to stay on the lookout for their spies. The wolf was at least five feet long and probably weighed 200 pounds. He had run up the escalator from the food court as Beyonce was passing, and snarled at her.

Beyonce ran into the road and hid under a car, like Javier Bardem in No Country for Old Men. It was night and the streets were empty. She looked out from under the car and the shopping mall was gone. She was on a small and desolate street, in a Southern town like the towns from No Country for Old Men.

Beyonce didn’t want to die. She was overcome by a great longing for her entire life, suddenly realizing the beauty of all her past idiocies and mistakes as essential to the organic fabric of her existence, like deviations in the patterns of a maple leaf or a snowflake. Underneath the car, she shuddered and stared, afraid of the spies and the white wolf, and whatever else might be coming for her through the dark.

She woke up in her canopy bed with her head under the pillow. She pulled off her sleep mask and blinked at her room. The all-white room was overly illuminated with sunlight, which belied the too-early hour of her awakening. It was no later than ten. Beyonce shut her eyes again and shoved her head under the pillow. Her mind quieted momentarily, but the calm of sleep eroded under a web of questions, memories of lovers’ dishonesty and childhood racism flooding her consciousness.

She put her head back on top of the pillow and pulled out each earplug with her thumb and forefinger. The early morning light swept through her lace curtains, reflecting brazenly from the off-white/white-patterned Oriental rug.

Beyonce’s gaze wandered listlessly to the half-full bottle of Kahlua and the teddy-bear honey bottle lying at the foot of her bed. She’d spent the hours between two and five a.m. slugging alternately from one or the other, while g-chatting and Googling the phrases “beyonce weight loss” and “beyonce hot.”

Beyonce got out of bed and went to the kitchen. Her housekeeper was still mopping the floors, and started with fright at seeing Beyonce out of bed this early. It was Tuesday morning, nine forty three. Beyonce poured herself a cup of coffee and used it to chase down three Excedrin and an Adderall.

At one, Beyonce went to lunch with the people she always went to lunch with. Today the one named Tyrone sat next to her. They made conversation about relationships. Beyonce told him about how she hoped her music would remind people that being in love was a good way to stay out of drama. She told him that she knew it was important to give her man his space. Tyrone told her that he’d recently broken up with his girlfriend of four years.

Why? asked Beyonce.

Well, it’s complicated.

Go on.

So she went to the University of Santa Barbara to study screenwriting.

Uh huh.

And I hadn’t seen her even once in over two months, she’d just been out in California. And ah… so remember that party last month? In the Art Deco district?

Uh huh.

Well, I fucked this girl there.

Who?

I don’t know. We just went in this room and fucked.

Why?

I, ah… Well, yeah, I mean, I was trashed. But my girlfriend, she was real pissed about it when I told her.

Beyonce drank her drink.

She said it was disgusting. She said she was sorry she’d ever touched me.

But that is disgusting, said Beyonce.

Nah, I mean I see the point, said Tyrone. But lots of dudes do that.

No, said Beyonce.

Sure, yeah, said Tyrone. Lots of guys do that. It’s just in their nature.

No! said Beyonce. She finished her drink and left. She got in her limo and started crying.

Beyonce looked down at her body. Her breasts were beautiful and shiny, pushed over the top of her dress by a specially designed bra from New York. Before going out she’d sprayed them with glitter lotion. Her tears were falling down on her breasts, rinsing off the glitter in tiny streams.

Beyonce wondered, what is gender? After reading a great deal of Kristeva, she’d come to believe that it was simply a social construction, generated by the Anglo-Saxon male-identifying narrative of Western civilization, only recently questioned with critical consciousness due to the post-Industrial Revolution era of thought.

But if what Tyrone, a trusted member of her posse, said was true, then there was a fundamental difference which, by its very existence, precluded the possibility of male fidelity.

Beyonce took her iPhone out of her purse and checked her email. She g-chatted one of her friends.

What the fuck is up with this world!

What? her friend g-chatted back.

AaAaaah! g-chatted Beyonce.

Beyonce looked out the limo window. She told her driver to pull over. They were in the financial district. Beyonce got out of the limo. She stood on the sidewalk for a moment, smelling the sun bake the product in her hair. She walked into the office building in front of which the limo was parked. Some security guards moved to stop her, but then she showed them her face and they looked happy and excited instead.

Beyonce didn’t listen to them while they were talking to her. She walked past the elevators and opened the employees-only door and walked down that hall. She passed a closet with cleaning supplies in it, and a room with soda machines and tables. There were people in uniforms sitting at one of the tables. A woman looked up and saw Beyonce and started screaming. Beyonce kept walking. She came to a glowing room at the end of the hall with a plexiglass window. She opened the door and walked into the beautiful yellow room where a security guard was sitting in front of an intercom.

He swiveled towards her in his chair. His eyes were the yellow of the room. He stood up and gestured to the chair for her to sit. Beyonce sat down and pushed the button of the intercom. She began performing an acapella version of her song “Get Me Bodied.”

As she sang, tears rolled down her cheeks. Her chest felt as though someone were dropping hot boulders into it through her skull, like in Vinyasa yoga. These boulders were filling her stomach, and tugging downwards on her blood-filled heart. As Beyonce sang, all the people who worked in this office building leapt up from their desks and began running down the stairs of the building. They rushed en masse through the lobby and into the street, a torrent of bodies and uplifted faces. They shed their sweaters and jackets in the street, some of them kissing or hugging, some of them beginning to run towards the waterfront at top speed.

Beyonce sang,

“Mission one, I’m a put this on. When he see me in the dress I’m a get me some. Mission two, gotta make that call, tell him get the bottles poppin’ when they play my song. Mission three, got my three best friends, Like we do it all the time we gonna do it again. Mission four, got the vintage Rolls, Drop a couple hundreds tell him leave it at the door. I ain’t worried doing me tonight, A little sweat ain’t never hurt nobody. While you all standin’ on the wall, I’m the one tonight. Getting bodied, getting bodied, getting bodied, getting bodied. Want my body, won’t you get me bodied, you want my body Won’t you get me bodied. Can you get me bodied, I wanna be myself tonight. Can you get me bodied I wanna be myself tonight. Don’t you see my body? I want to let it out tonight. Wanna party, wanna dance, wanna be myself tonight, me bodied. Mission five. Skip to the front of the line. Let me fix my hair up ‘fore I go inside. Mission six, gotta check these chicks, ’cause you know they gone block when I take these flicks. Mission seven, gotta make my rounds, givin eyes to the guys now I think I found him. Mission eight, now we conversate, And we can skip small talk, let’s get right to the chase. You should see my body, I gotta know enough to know if you can get me bodied, I’m kinda tight, I’m feeling right enough to see somebody, I wanna let it off tonight, Wanna dance, wanna party wanna be myself tonight!”

Beyonce finished her song and smiled to herself. She turned off the intercom and sat back in her chair, fingering one of her long-stem pink diamond earrings. She shut her eyes and practiced yoga breathing.

Cecilia K Corrigan recently wrote about horses and ponies for the show “Luck.” Now, she has a twitter.

#Chevy is excited to connect through their innovations during #SXSW. Learn more here: bit.ly/z0JoxS

— SXSW (@sxsw) March 9, 2012

• The fun panels?

• The networking?

• The late nights with wacky drinking games?

• The hot viral rain of lab-made death that’s going to wipe out everyone there in approximately 12 minutes? (Sorry, spoilers!)

“Looking to kick the bottle? Taking an acid trip could be one route to giving up alcohol. The idea that you can treat addictions with hallucinogens is undergoing a revival.”

What does your heartbeat say about you? Mine says that I love to smoke, hate to exercise and am unlikely to see 40.

“Wardell ‘Poochie’ Fouse was paid to kill Biggie. At the time, he was a 36-year old member of the Mob Piru Bloods. According to several Death Row insiders and FBI informants, Poochie was a down-for-the-cause, hardcore gang member. Confidential sources from the Death Row entourage, the Mob Pirus, and [Suge’s girlfriend, identified in Kading’s book by the alias “Theresa Swann”], said Poochie had done shootings for Suge in the past. Reggie Wright Jr. — who was the head of Death Row security — said Suge and Poochie’s relationship was different than other members of the gang. They had a very secretive and exclusive relationship. [Suge’s girlfriend] and Poochie agreed to terms. He received two payments, one for $9000 and one for $4000. Poochie lay in wait outside the Petersen Automotive Museum. As soon as he became aware of where Biggie was sitting in his car, he drove up and he shot him.”
 — Wow! On the fifteenth anniversary of the murder of Christopher “The Notorious B.I.G.” Wallace, Former LAPD detective Greg Kading tells Complex’s Rob Kenner that the long-cold case has in fact been solved. (Well: “They’re considered solved internally.”) And that Death Row Records founder Suge Knight was indeed behind it. But that because the killer has himself since been killed, and the only other co-conspirator has been granted immunity for her testimony, the crime will never be prosecuted. This now goes towards to the top of the list of believable theories.

by Jeff Winkler

Zero minutes after incident (a.i.)
Pain. Ow. That’s real pain. I move her off me and roll onto my stomach. Miscalculations have happened before; a few seconds of discomfort and then it’s go time again. I roll back over and look down to see if it’s go time again. I rise up off the bed: “Yeah, this… this isn’t right.” I sit back down. The woman beside me looks so horror-stricken, I try to sound especially calm when talking to 911. I don’t tell the operator it’s so swollen and purple that I’m afraid it’ll burst at any moment. Instead I say, in an even, measured tone, “My penis is the shape, size and color of a baby eggplant.”

10 minutes a.i.
She sits beside me as we wait for the ambulance. I’m holding an ice pack over my crotch. It’s 3 a.m. and the street is empty, so no one else sees me when I stand up and pee, relatively pain-free, on the flowerbed beside her front porch. Instinctively, we both know this is a good sign. We high-five.

20 minutes a.i.
“We see this every so often,” the paramedic tells me. “It happens a lot on the weekends.” His voice is flat. He seems, frankly, a little bored by the quality of this emergency. His attitude angers my companion, Jaci, and she starts to demand an ice pack. I signal that I’m okay. The medic pretends not to hear us. He looks so unhappy that, when I relay all the pertinent details of the event, I leave out the high-five.

40 minutes a.i.
Both Jaci and I love the overnight nurse, who says her name is Angel. I’m lying on a bed, covered by a sheet. Angel laughs at all my jokes. “Yeah, this is the biggest and best it’s ever gonna get.” “Scale of pain from one to ten? Like a four. I’m tough. Cocksure.”

53 minutes a.i.
Nurse Angel tells me I was lucky. It was quiet tonight, and the morning shift is about to arrive. The urologist is on his way. She says his name is Dr. Wang. “Dr. Wang is one of the best,” says Nurse Angel, reassuringly.

2 hours a.i.
For the fourth time, I ask my most immediate emergency contact to turn around. I lift up the covers so Dr. Hwang can examine my eggplant. He’s blasé about the whole thing. “We should probably just fix it. It could cause impotency problems in the future.” Then he shrugs. “Or we could leave it.” Do the surgery. After describing the procedure with graphic clarity, he says, “It’s a good thing you didn’t snap your urethra. This might have been serious.” Standing beside him, my companion is so pale, she looks as if she might faint.

2.5 hours a.i.
When my friend Chris doesn’t answer his phone, I call another number. “Hi, Mom. Sorry I woke you… Don’t be worried… Yeah… I need you to talk with someone just in case something happens during surgery… She’s… she’s my girlfriend.” My mom’s a nurse practitioner at a heart and vascular clinic. She instructs me to ask the doctor about Peyronie’s disease. “Tell your mom you should be completely healed in about five weeks,” says Dr. Hwang. “Your penis won’t look like a candy cane.” At least, that’s the rough translation.

2.75 hours a.i.
I’m scolded by the unpleasant morning nurse for asking my mom to talk to “your girlfriend.” I don’t know why she she objects or even why thinks it’s any of her business, and I’d ask her except the IV she stuck in me is making everything hazy. For example, I can’t even remember if Jaci and I actually told anyone it was our first time. We certainly haven’t had the “girlfriend/boyfriend” talk ourselves. Actually, we’ve only really known each other for about 24 hours.

5 hours a.i.
Jaci is standing over me in the post-op room. She’s trying to smile. (I later asked her what she did during the operation. Apparently, trying to find my room was a bureaucratic and maddeningly labyrinthine ordeal. This, she told me by email, was what happened when they finally let her see me: “Her: [Erupts in tears] Me: Can you not cry? Her: [Shakes head, kisses me] Me: Can you tell me a funny story? Her: No, I have no funny stories right now. You are shit out of luck. Me: Damn. [Passes out again]”)

8 hours a.i.
As we ride back to her house, Jaci rests her head against the taxi window. She looks amazingly fresh in the morning light. I feel coyote ugly with a fluorescent-lightbulb tan. She waits as I haltingly climb her front steps, and not-so-shortly thereafter holds me up as I change into her old Virginia Tech sweatpants. When she leaves to pick up my prescription, I lie in her bed, drifting in and out of consciousness. For whatever reason, nothing about this ordeal has yet been embarrassing, not even my new penis cast. Jaci returns a couple hours later, after hitting nearly ten different pharmacies. The hydrocodine was difficult to get, but the stool looseners were available at every location. I’m instructed to take one every morning. I experience my first wave of embarrassment, shame.

I think I ask if they are suppositories.

2 days a.i.
Jaci and I rehearse the story for any nosy friends. For purely pragmatic reasons, we start to use the words “boyfriend” and “girlfriend.” When my friend Chris finally returns my call, I make up a lie about what the emergency was, smiling at Jaci as I do. Once I get off the phone we kiss. I want to tell her she’s amazing but all that comes out is a grunt. When I get too excited, the pain is searing.

2 days, 12 hours a.i.
I‘ve now been at Jaci’s house for more than 48 hours. She even skipped work on a second day. She won’t let me have caffeinated drinks because “you need to keep hydrated.” While she’s out on an errand, I take a Coke from the fridge. An hour later, I’m being scolded as she has to all but carry me upstairs to the bathroom.

It takes five minutes to climb 15 steps. To pee, I must gently lower myself onto the toilet. The cast hangs like a weight, and the trickling urine soaks into the gauze. The burning is excruciating, and I punch the bathroom door repeatedly. I’m already sore and tired from having to sleep on my back. When the pain doesn’t wake me up in the middle of the night, the narcotic night terrors do. I try not to wake Jaci, but she’s always half a dream away, asking if I need anything.

At the street corner, I run into a colleague who asks if I broke it having sex. My denial is vehement. “Oh,” he says, genuinely apologetic. “I was just curious because it happened to a friend of mine.” I dig for details about his friend. Is he OK now? Did it happen on the weekend?

3 days, 12 hours a.i.
I finally return to my house. It’s an art collective; a converted warehouse harboring seven D.C. punks of varying crustiness. The idea is to make repairs and open the place up as a DIY arts center. We’re all suppose to chip in with the work. I gather my roommates together. Lifting my shirt to show them the scar on my abdomen from a previous operation, I parrot the clinical words Dr. Hwang used, peppered with random phrases from my lengthy and complicated medical history: With my one kidney, the Meckel’s diverticulum was unable to dissipate a blood clot causing aortic arrhythmia, which led to the ruptured penile corpus fracture and Peyronie’s disease. It was a freak accident.

The explanation is so convoluted with half-lies and near-facts that I begin to suspect I may actually have aoritic arrhythmia; I better not have Peyronie’s disease, Dr. Hwang. And while my roommates don’t catch it all, I make clear, with as much regret in my voice as possible, that I can’t do any heavy lifting for six to eight weeks.

3 days, 15 hours a.i.
I’m sipping a Coke when a text from Jaci arrives. “Fluids, Winkler. Fluids. And no caffeine.” She’s amazing.

4 days, 8 hours a.i.
Dr. Hwang and I barely say hello before my pants are down, although one of us does yell “Jesus Christ” when the heavy bandages of the cast are removed. The doctor writes a prescription for weak painkillers as I tell him about this great girl I recently started seeing. You can go back to work and the stitches will dissolve in time, he says. Remember, he adds, no sexual activity for five weeks, but you can go back on the prowl after that. No, no, I explain, no prowling, I’m gonna stick around for awhile. This girl’s something special. Dr. Hwang shrugs. “You could do that, too, I guess.”

4 days, 10 hours a.i.
Hobbling into the place where I work, I announce that while my doctor had said I shouldn’t work for three more days, I came in anyway. I give a rehearsed grimace of dedication. My boss insists I go home for as long as need be. At the street corner, I run into a colleague who asks if I broke it having sex. My denial is vehement. “Oh,” he says, genuinely apologetic. “I was just curious because it happened to a friend of mine.” I dig for details about his friend. Is he OK now? Did it happen on the weekend?

4 days, 12 hours a.i.
Jaci gets a sailor’s tongue when I relay the doctor’s comments. She’s sitting on her bed while I stand with my pants around my ankles. We’re laughing hysterically because my mangled member looks absolutely ridiculous. I love the sound of her rough, cig-worn laugh.

5 days a.i.
“You can-NOT repeat this to anyone else,” I say to my friend Mike, who I work with. It feels great to be sharing the truth with someone. “Ya wanna see it?” We scurry to the office bathroom.

There’s lots of black-and-blue bruising around the base and the balls. Dr. Hwang had used my old circumcision scar as a cut-here guide; dried streaks of blood crust around the ring of thick crude stitching that encircles the shaft and is tied up on the backside like a Christmas bow. Above that, bloated, shiny skin of deep maroon puffs out and up, as if I’d taped a half-deflated balloon to the top of the shaft. The whole thing looks exactly like a mongoose-slaughtered snake stuffed through a mini life-preserver. “Oh … WHOA!” says Mike.

Mike is the first friend I made in town. He loves things like body modification and getting drunk at Chili’s. It’s his last day at the office. I couldn’t find medical-grade weed, so this is his going-away present. Maybe a half-minute after I show him, just as I’ve gotten my penis back in my pants, Mike looks at me with eager, sparkling eyes. “Lemme see it again.”

6 days a.i.
Foreplay with Jaci is painful and sometimes I have to stop, grit my teeth and punch the bed. We know we shouldn’t be fooling around at all, but a week into the relationship we can’t resist, no matter what the circumstances. But the teeth-gritting and mattress-punching is clearly alarming her.

Jaci calls a urologist friend and tells her the whole story. I can hear her asking about other things we might do besides sex. “What about …” she trails off. The friend says to follow doctor’s orders, or risk tearing and permanent damage. After the call, Jaci looks dejected. Even after it does heal, she says, we’ll probably have to be careful. I tell her there’s no way in hell we’re just going to do missionary. Her face brightens.

1 week a.i.
In the mornings, we often walk to her favorite neighborhood restaurant for breakfast. At night, there’s a lot of near-naked pillow talk because we can only fool around for so long before it just becomes too painful.

Somehow the conversation turns to Margaret Thatcher. Somehow Margaret Thatcher becomes a recurring topic. Somehow Margaret Thatcher becomes our go-to sexual depressant. Somehow Margaret Thatcher ends up sitting naked on a suburban fence, legs swinging and twirling a top hat. Occasionally Reagan makes an appearance, too. There’s a lot of glitter involved. I invoke the former Prime Minister whenever I need to cool off. For emergency purposes only.

8 days a.i.
Getting the thing in and out of my pants is a delicate process involving several complicated maneuvers. Because of the swelling, I’m messily off-target, but at least now I can stand up and pee like a man — that is, all over the seat.

9 days a.i.
My friend Aaron calls. I’ve been out of touch with a lot of my friends, but, out of everyone, I should have called Aaron. The last time I saw him was at his birthday party, about an hour before The Incident.

Jaci was a friend-of-friend-of-Aaron’s. We’d first met out at a group-drinks thing a few weeks before the party. I got her number, left a couple voicemails and never heard back. A week later I saw her again. When I asked why she never returned my calls, she said she never got them. “Why didn’t you ever call?” she asked. I must have gotten her number wrong. Later, she dove in for a kiss and we necked until closing time. That was our first date. The next night we met up at Aaron’s party, before sneaking away with a stolen bottle of whiskey.

Aaron asks for an update. I spin out the entire yarn about the blood clot, then admit I’m lying. “Of course you are,” he says. After I tell him the true story, he insists Mike hasn’t breathed a word.

12 days a.i.
I’m off the antibiotics. I wait for Jaci at Bistrot Du Coin and have my first drink in more than a week. This is, weirdly, our first real date-date. We have escargot and foi gras. She says she wants to take me to a fancy beach party in July. There’s also a wedding soon and I could meet her dad at his upcoming birthday dinner. She tells me more about her mother, who’s visiting from Mexico. After all the stories, I agree: your mother is insane, let’s avoid her.

Chris calls as we’re browsing the second-hand book shop beside the restaurant. He’s drinking with an old mentor up the road. Would we care to join them?

Jaci and I knock back drinks like we’re on our tenth anniversary as we tell Chris’ mentor about how we met, about the blood clot, and how now she’s nursing me back to health. Chris thinks it’s a great “us” story. When Chris gets up to show my date the way to the downstairs bathroom, the mentor leans in and says, “Have you thought about making a deposit at the sperm bank? You should, you know. You never know what’s gonna happen.”

11 days a.i.
In complete, flagrant disregard of all the doctors’ advice, we don’t cool off. Jaci gives me a blowjob. The experience is fantastic but afterward I’m filled with regret. Maybe we shouldn’t have done that. I think about the mentor’s advice about the sperm bank. What if he’s right?

12 days a.i.
For most of this office bar-hop party, I’ve been relegated to a seat beside a colleague I’ve always found detestable. He keeps insisting we cheers the company. I’ve taken to calling him “Edgar,” for no apparent reason, sometimes to his face. The nickname makes less sense to him than it does to me.

At Hawk & Dove, I open the door to the bar’s small bathroom. There, at the only urinal, stands Edgar. He seems a little skittish. Then he seems a little angry. Actually, he’s yelling. He’s yelling because I’ve pulled out my purple, still-mangled penis and I’m cradling it in my palms, and turned in his direction, insisting he see how cool it looks. As he bolts out, I’m still pleading.

He doesn’t sit near me the rest of the night.

13 days a.i.
I’m limping again. The incision has opened in one place. It may have happened the day before and I ignored it. I read WebMD’s page on “gangrene.”

I’m limping again. The incision has opened in one place. It may have happened the day before and I ignored it. I read WebMD’s page on “gangrene.”

2 weeks a.i.
The stench emanating from my groin is so terrible that after peeing I have to scrub my hands raw to get out the smell. Yellowish ooze stains my underwear. The phrase “crotch rot” keeps circling my mind. My mom, the nurse, assures me that I’ll be fine until the doctor’s appointment tomorrow. I don’t tell her I may have lost the stitches as a result of fellatio. But I do ask what she knows about gangrene.

2 weeks, 2 days a.i.
“Well, this is all normal,” say Dr. Hwang. with a shrug. “Men get a boost of testosterone before waking up, which is what causes erections in the morning. It’s going to stretch the stitches a little and it may hurt, but you’ll be fine.” I don’t tell him about the blowjob either. Now that I don’t actually need them anymore, he finally writes me a prescription for a stronger painkiller. I’m excited at the prospect of taking them at work.

2 weeks, 3 days a.i.
I’ve only seen Jaci look so horror-stricken one other time. Maybe I shouldn’t have said, “I think I’m falling in love with you.” We’re sitting on her front porch. She says, maybe we’re moving a little too fast, we’ve had an intense two weeks. She just got out of a two-year mess of a relationship and didn’t expect to meet someone new so soon. I like you, she says, but we should be cautious.

2 weeks, 6 days a.i.
She’s been talking about this cookout for weeks. It’s a reunion of some of her college friends, and she says she can’t wait to introduce me to all of them.

We’re out on her patio, the nine of us seated around the picnic table. They’re a congenial bunch. As the sun sets, the conversation turns to awful first dates. One friend tells a story about a blind date with a guy who “forgot his wallet.” Another friend tells about one with an actor who practiced his monologues all through dinner at a crowded restaurant. Yet another said she’d been out with a colleague who, after a few polite drinks, said, quite professionally, “I’d like to take you to home and eat your asshole out. If we can’t do that, let me know.” Shortly thereafter, he cordially bid her adieu.

While the others laugh, the two of us quietly debate. “Baby, we own this one,” I say under my breath.

“Should I?”

“They’re your friends.” I give a shrug like Dr. Hwang.

“Okay, okay.” She yells, “So here’s what happened on our first date.”

We tell the group to beat that one. Then we high-five.

3 weeks, 5 days a.i.
Since I can’t do much, we get creative. I’ve never given “the shocker” before, but it seems to be working great, for both of us. “I really like you,” she says afterward.

“Good to hear, Mrs. Thatcher.”

4 weeks, 6 days a.i.
An editor in New York wants me to come up for an interview. I tell Jaci the great news, then send an email off to work that contains words like “procedure,” “big needle,” “drained,” and “rest.”

5 weeks
On the train to New York, I read my bosses’ emails of unconditional condolence. The office once had an intern who, after missing several days of work, said she was having “woman issues.” No one believed her. She should have said she was having “man issues.”

5 weeks, 4 days a.i.
We’re on the rooftop bar again of where we first kissed. I’m beaming about the follow-up interview scheduled for tomorrow. Jaci’s congratulations sound hollow. I’ve seen that look before. Look, I say, New York’s not that far away, we’ll figure it out.

“Yeah, about that …”

Shit.

Chris calls as I leave the bar. I meet him up the road at the Royal Palace, a strip club. He buys me a drink and I pour my heart out, telling him what really happened almost five weeks ago. On the stage, a dancer spins around a pole. Strip clubs are a lot more fun in the movies.

5 weeks, 5 days a.i.
I am officially cleared to fornicate, not that it matters much. Staying at a friend’s place in New York, we watch the last 30 minutes of No Strings Attached, then go to bed.

6 weeks, 5 days a.i.
I meet up with Mike and tell him how, last night, I used two fingers, gingerly, and didn’t flex much at all. Apart from the brief, intimate interactions with Jaci, my junk has been mostly just that for the past six weeks: an awkward thing attached to my hips. But now I’m starting to think about sex more often, and all I can do is drink a few beers and make a solo effort.

“That’s great. Ya gotta learn how to do it different ways,” exclaims Mike. “I love doing it like that at the base, real quiet. I do it in the Chili’s bathroom. It’s one of my favorite places to masturbate like that.”

I miss Mike at the office.

7 weeks, 3 days a.i.
I get several emails a woman I dated for a couple weeks the year before. In the emails she calls me a “disgustingly selfish jackass.” Also, “weird.”

7 weeks, 4 days a.i.
I want to shank somebody. Anybody. Edgar.

7 weeks, 5 days a.i.
I’ve apologized profusely to the angry ex and again to my mom for not returning phone messages. Tomorrow, I’ll call and apologize to Jaci for the drunk, vulgar, petulant text I sent the other night. It’s embarrassing to read. There are so many typos.

I’ve been saying “I’m sorry” a lot lately, and I’m not even having sex. In bed, I give it the first proper tug in a long while. I hadn’t really raised it completely in about seven weeks, so when I do and happen to look down mid-stroke, I’m convinced Dr. Hwang chopped off a couple inches. I’m also worried about straining too much. I picture it snapping every stitch and spewing out like a rusty, kinked-up hose.

I feel a little guilty about going through with the whole pathetic ordeal and try to get it over with as quickly. I throw the rag beside some dirty dishes accumulating in the corner.

Everything is almost back to normal.

7 weeks, 6 days a.i.
Jaci sounds peeved. “Would it have been better if I waited to break up until after we had sex again?”

Once, after explaining how Dr. Hwang cut along the shaft, peeled it back like a lollipop wrapper, crocheted the broken blood vessels, then yanked the foreskin back in place and sewed it all back up, a male friend actually fainted. I was pretty proud of that.

“Well, no. Yeah. No.” I hesitate, not sure which answer is most likely to get me back in her bed. My pride is that far gone. “Yeah, it would have been better.”

That’s when she tells me she recently “met up” with that old boyfriend of hers.

8 weeks
I snoop through Jaci’s Facebook profile. The boyfriend’s gotta be in his early 30s. He’s kinda balding. And ugly. He has a great position at the IMF. They have entire photo albums on Facebook.

8 weeks, 1 day a.i.
I’m just about to take a shower when my mom checks in. No, we broke up. … No, I still haven’t heard back about the job in New York… Yeah, the swelling’s gone. But now, where it was once plump around the top, the skin sags.

Gently, she suggests cosmetic surgery if the sagging continues to be a problem. Her sweetly clinical recommendation suddenly makes me feel ashamed and embarrassed. I’m staring into the mirror, completely naked. “It’s … I don’t know, Mom. It’s just … weird.”

Now
I’m fully operational again, although there have been two directional miscalculations during sex. While barely noticeable as pain, the accidents trigger a panic, like some form of sexual PTSD.

I realize how lucky I was that I was with Jaci when this happened, how much worse the whole ordeal would have been without her. After all, she could have just pulled out a twenty and wished me luck with the hospital taxi ride. I still have her Virginia Tech sweatpants, now permanently stained, which I never did replace. Every time I wear them, I feel like a dick.

Related: A Treasury Of The World’s Worst Online Dating Stories

Jeff Winkler prefers self-medicating as well as writing about subjects other than himself or his man-bits. Photo by r.classen, via Shutterstock.

John Yoo is an enemy of American values, an advocate for torture and for wiretapping U.S. citizens without their consent. His guidance in matters of U.S. law has been reprehensible. John Bolton is an bizarre variety of jingoist and a bully and amazingly obnoxious. He is long-time embarrassment to America diplomatically. Together, they are an OUT OF THEIR MINDS BARMY LOONY BIZARRE POLITICAL OPERATIVE WEIRDO MENACE on the Times op-ed page.

Want to see a reporter walk into a pole 5 times in a row? Yeah, I guess you probably do.