I Can't Stop Thinking About Penis Enlargement Surgery

I read an article that Brad won't talk about with me so you get to hear all about it.

If you’re like my friend Adam (hi Adam!), who famously (to me) said, with the confidence of a pre-Revolution French king, that “no one ever finishes a New Yorker article,” then you have not yet read the penis enlargement surgery cover story from last week. Well, Reader Drafter (and Adam), let me tell you – I did finish it and I cannot stop thinking about it.

Like many things I can’t stop thinking about, I turn to Decaf Drafts, because Brad won’t let me discuss it with him. I was also at my parents’ house for the Fourth of July and when I brought up the article at the dinner table it was delicately ignored for another conversation over birthday cake for my dad. (When I mentioned the other story I needed to discuss was the OceanGate submersible, that also was efficiently swept aside.) So anyway, you get the benefit of it now since I cannot tell you how badly I NEED to discuss this penis augmentation piece with someone.

Here’s the full article by Ava Kofman. If you have 3 minutes instead of 3 hours (hi Adam!), here are the highlights that haunt me every time I go to the bathroom and whip my dick out at the urinal, running through the facts in my head for the 30 seconds or so I’m standing there.

Honestly had no idea what to use for images so here’s the Mona Lisa

1)    How It Works

I’ll start with the basics. There’s a silicone tube that looks kind of like those Styrofoam things you wrap around wires to hold them together? Or maybe a rubber hose cut vertically and splayed out? (Part of why I know this is because I went to the site after reading the article, which I’ll get to later.) You get them in length and width, and the sizing starts at Large because of course it does. You go and see this doctor who gives you a consultation that is supposed to be an hour but usually lasts less than 5 minutes before you find yourself having already signed papers and ready for a rod.

I keep thinking about this silicone tube and what it must feel like in your pants all the time.

Actually, if I keep writing I’m going to ruin the rest of the article so let’s just end it here with what you need to know on the basics: it’s a silicone tube that is inserted and stretches your skin so you look bigger when soft and it’s either Large, XL, or XXL (which omg your skin – anyway. Just wait.)

2)    Only 6 of the 57 men interviewed are named – the rest asked to stay anonymous

This blows my mind. So many of the men interviewed were selected because it was just a disaster for them – losing sensation in your penis, nerve endings and skin growing over mesh placed in the head of your penis (!!!), asking for it to be removed and ultimately losing size in your penis … which, I get that you don’t really want to go on the record about your junk in the New Yorker, even though no one will finish the article. (Hi, Adam!)

But still. The sense of shame these men have, even when they love the surgery, is palpable. You get the sense it was there before they walked in the door and it’s still there when they’re waddling out.

Also, one of the six men who agreed to go on the record and LOVES his bigger penis is a 74-year-old Baptist preacher from Niagara Falls which – I just – there’s so much here. (He said it on the record it made him feel like “a wild stallion.”) There’s got to be a whole other Decaf Draft on religion and penis size at some other point, I can’t go deeper into this right now there’s too much to cover.

A beautiful painting by another dude who mutilated himself

3)    The Surgery

Y’all. OK. So I know I’ve been joking about no one finishing an article, but I will say I had to read this in a couple of sittings because when I started this section that starts “Every surgical revolution is bloody by definition” I thought – ok, that’s enough for now.

I picked it back up in bed the next night and Brad came running in to check on me because he heard me screaming. (This is, in fact, the part of the article that Brad specifically and vehemently tells me not to share at home so Honey Butter, if you’re still reading, please skip to number 4 now.)

Anyway, I won’t go too deep into the details, but basically the author was invited to observe a surgery, which begins with a knife being inserted at the bottom of the penis shaft where the balls start, splitting it like a “ripe fruit.” (Which, A+ description – another thing I keep thinking about at the urinal.)

She continues to discuss the full surgery, where a couple of times the victim patient, heavily sedated behind a curtain, moans, groans, and gasps. I blacked a lot of it out, but I specifically remember one part where the doctor handles the incision and flips the penis inside out to insert the silicone and test the sizing. (This is where I screamed.) Lord above.

I can’t picture it, and I can, and I want to know more, but I don’t. I think if I were going under I’d just be like, don’t tell me how it’s done, just do it. Which is probably how these guys end up on the table in the first place after rushed 5 minute consultations and signed paperwork without reading it. So I guess I get it? Anyway. Chills. I can’t not think of this section without feeling a sharp jolt in my hips and needing a deep breath.

4)    Many guys have the silicone implants removed.

So many of these dudes get the enlargement surgery and then have the silicone taken out – either because there are challenges (one guy looked like his dick had a broken bone protruding out which again A+ writing but also omg) or other reasons like the guy whose wife said it felt like getting fucked by a butter knife (which lol but also omg).

Even the 9 men whom the doctor recommended the journalist talk to for glowing reviews – 3 of them had it removed. (One of them was butter knife guy.) Which just seems … odd that they would be recommended?

Also, once you have them removed you have to do all this other shit to bring your penis back to functioning. There’s a doctor who has built a whole business on removing these things and became so successful he moved from Pittsburgh to Beverly Hills, right down the block from the doctor who invented this thing. His treatments include spending the next 6 months wearing a condom all day with weights on it. Or some sort of medieval contraption to stretch out your dick, because apparently having it removed your penis will then take up the extra space by shriveling up, or something. Again, chills.

Here, distract yourself with this for a minute

5)    “It’s more of a locker-room thing than a bedroom thing.”

This is such a great quote and I can’t stop thinking about it — that all this pain and suffering isn’t about pleasing women, but pleasing … other men? Or gaining the confidence that you’re the big guy on the floor? It’s so mind-blowing to me that guys want a bigger dick to impress other guys and feel more powerful and yet will be anonymous about it (unless you’re a preacher). There’s just SO MUCH tangled up in this my god I’m actually furious Brad won’t talk about it with me.

I mean, I get it. I want to be the big swinging dick at Equinox too, but the lengths (and widths) people seem to be going to achieve that feeling is getting wild, whether flipping their penises inside out or bolting their bodies inside of a glorified minivan to sink to the bottom of the ocean. Just, my dudes, let’s all calm down.

I was so fascinated by all of this that I ended up going to the site of the doctor to check it out. (This is where I saw the tubes.) There’s an 18+ portion of the before and after photos which, of course, I clicked through. I have to say that I was … underwhelmed. I fully expected to be amazed and think … do I want to go see the Titanic learn more about this surgery? But I fully closed the window thinking, You know what, I’m good. The dicks post-surgery didn’t look all that different to me. Sure, a little bigger, but not so significant that I would think it would be life-changing. Which is all to say, is this really worth it? And are these patients getting what they’re asking for? A larger penis, sure, but a confidence and peace of mind that can’t be achieved in other ways?

The article ends with a description of patients in the waiting area of this surgery place in Beverly Hills. They’re all in grey sweatpants and there’s no space to sit; there’s so many of them that they’re spilling out into the hall. I find it so haunting. I picture pained faces – and this is before they go under the knife.

I also picture silence. None of these men are talking to one another because why would you do that in a doctor’s office? (Or a locker room for that matter.) I wouldn’t. And yet, maybe that’s exactly what these guys need.