How many angels can you fit on the tip of a pin, this age
old question hanging over me, and yet has only one real answer.
How many do you need when one is more than enough?
This idea that everybody has a guardian angel has always
puzzled me, as if God mass produced them to keep up with all the people popping
out, like a rubber stamp or on an assembly line.
One to one is enough if it is the right angle, whose soul
(do angels have souls like people?) is gentle and kind, unlike the stern nuns
who used to beat me in grammar school in order to bringing me salvation, and
get me back on track.
I keep looking over one shoulder for the angel God assigned
to me, then over my other shoulder for the one the Devil sent, the second
having had much more influence on me than my angel or the nuns, though more
than once I’ve wished for the protection angles are supposed to give, hoping
the good outweighs the bad I’ve done, and while I might blame it all on the
devil (the devil made me do it), I know I got here all on my own.
“I got good news and bad news for you, “ my Urologist said
during my semi annual check up.
The good news was the m PSA levels had gone down, indicating
less chance of cancer.
Two years ago, these levels jumped from one to six, and
while not the deadly level of ten that indicated possible cancer. it was a real concern, prompting painful procedures
that included a snake-like camera pushed up into my penis (with only a local that
only reduced the pain at the tip. Later, I underwent an MRI, pet scan and other
similar procedures, topped off with a very painful series of biopsies.
The surgery that I got later was a scraping that allowed me
to pee, but had screwed up my ability to cum. While I could still have sex, the
cum tended to remain in the plumbing long afterwards, oozing out into my
underwear at most inconvenient times.
All that said, the bad news is that my prostate – almost the
size of a baseball – was showing no sign of reduction, and as a result, my
growing prostate began the inevitable shrinking of my cock.
As a teenager, I had accepted the myth said claimed a man with
a nose as big as mine had a large cock as well.
But now with my prostate growing, my cock had gone from a
barely adequate six inches to slightly more than three with every indication I
might watch it vanish entirely. This, of course, affected erections
I consulted my gay friend, Max, who knew as much as prostates
as my urologist, and I asked him what could be done.
He gravely told me not a lot, but with hopeful news, I might
find ways to compensate for my inadequate sex life, and might enjoy a revival
of the pleasures I had when I was still a teen.
It took me a moment to get his meaning, and when I did, I
said, “no way!”
When I consulted my urologist on the matter, he reluctantly
confirmed my gay friend’s analysis, though added I would need to do much more
if I intended to go that way, estrogen shots and testosterone blockers – which would
shrink my penis more and might require the removing on my testicles entirely.
But what I lost down below, I would gain upstairs. Max said this often resulted
in development of breasts – but the process could help me shift my source of sexual
gratification to my mouth and to my ass, which Max called my boi pussy.
I asked Max if I could still masturbate. He shook his head.
“You could rub what’s left, but you’d get more pleasure by
sticking your fingers up your ass,” he said, noting that if I went the drug
route the urologist suggested, I would find my pleasure center shifted to that
part of my body anyway.
I did not consult my urologist about Max’s suggestions for
oral and anal sex. Frankly, I did not want to know anything about it, even
though Max said he would help dress me up so I was in a more receptive mood, by
which he meant wearing women’s clothing 44/7, making me fit the role that my enlarged
prostate appeared to be seeking me to play.
“So, you’re saying you want to turn me into a woman?” I asked.
“As close as you can get without getting extensive surgery,”
Max said. “You’ll never be able to use your winky the way you used to, so why
not go all the way?”
I won’t say I wasn’t tempted. I ached to feel the way I once
did. But I was still attached to my winky, having lived with its up and down
moods my entire life. I would miss it if it wasn’t there.
Max was clearly disappointed when I told him that I didn’t
want to go that way and I would just have to live with the shrinkage.
He proposed a compromise. If I didn’t want men fucking me in
the ass, I could still derive pleasure from sucking their cocks.
“I’m sure you’d make a great cock sucker,” Max said.
If I look carefully, I can still catch sight of the bits of
snow which only a short time ago buried us, just a smattering here in those
places where someone had piled it high on curb or lawn for lack of a better
place to put it all, storm after storm, bringing us more and more snow, after a
number of years of no or little snow at all.
I’m not sure if this bodes ill, the returning to what I knew
as a kid, or that there is still hope for the world which is its own mistress,
and perhaps suspects the fantasy wishes of fools who inform us we are so potent
a force we can defy mother nature.
Maybe now, this slow fade out of winter and coming of spring
will tell us we ought to live with what is, rather than making up what we think
we believe, this said, I’m not yet putting the snow shovels away, and will wait
and see.
We all want to go back to get to a point on the meter where
me might do over what we did before, not always because we made mistakes (as we
inevitably did), but because we might do what we did back then better, and preserve
who we were, are or intended to be, each choice we’ve made changes us, steers
us in a new direction, to a place we may not have wanted to go, but went to
anywhere, then left us to wonder what might have happened, who we might have become,
if we had turned right instead of left, or three times, picked ourselves up off
the floor, dusted ourselves off, and staggered on, not to look back until it
was impossible to go back.
Who might we have become if we had not pushed on, would we
be better or worse, or merely different? Would we really want to change
anything if we could, not knowing who we might become if we did, better or
worse, not the person we are today, knowing now how we ended up, good or bad or
different.
I can’t blame her for how I feel. I let my guard down,
knowing what I could have had back then, but blew it, knowing now I would never
have become “the one,” her insatiable need never able to be fulfilled by
someone like me, always a temporary arrangement, my back just another rung on a
ladder to someone else, a stepping stone; a man like me needs to learn his
place in her world or have no place.
I still see her face when I close my eyes, as vivid now as
when she sat across from me, forbidden fruit, dangerous but tempting, yet
always just out of reach.
I can’t blame her for stoking up this fire in me, when I
laid the kindling there first, desperate for the right match to set me ablaze,
as she ultimately did, she more than just another face in the crowd, someone
filled with a potency I could not resist, but should have, and even now, thinking
if I had kept to that high road, I might have retained my place, if not as
lover, then maybe a friend, and now, thinking, it might have been enough
They say you only know who your friends are in the midst of conflict,
the hand that holds your elbow when you struggle, the word whispered in your
ear when you come near to giving up.
But what do you do when you’ve already won; who do you trust?
What is it that inspires you to this “serge to fight?”
Are these shadows you box against?
You say you’ve gotten used to the smell of dirt, having fallen
so often, exhaustion dragging you down, and still you rise, torn and bleeding
to resume the struggle – instinct telling, you’re not done yet, even though you
keep telling yourself to give up, you never will.
It is not in your nature to surrender without a fight, even
when the odds seem overwhelming and the whole world dead set against you.
The world refuses to understand you, though a few doe, those
true friends you’ve hand picked who pick you up with you call, and treat your
wounds, and feed you words of encouragement, telling you again and again, you’re
quest is right
