From a reader: I was pretty traumatized by the news that I have hemorrhoids. It was like my ass was telling me it had had enough. The ‘rhoids’ healed but they sometimes come back. I’ve bottomed with a few guys since but I’m so worried that my hemorrhoid is going to rear its ugly head that I’m too tense to enjoy it. What do you do when you’re a bottom with a hemorrhoid?
– Dying to get laid
You need to get yourself to a doctor post-haste-red-hot-QUICK. If you don’t you’re going to end up needing ass surgery. Like me.
I waited too long to see a doctor after I developed hemorrhoids. Listen to my story and I promise you’re going to skip the phone call to the doc and teleport yourself into his office: The doctor points to the “head down, buttocks up” table and asks me to assume the position. When I heard the urethane glove snap on his hands I thought to myself, “Why couldn’t I have Attention Deficit Disorder like everyone else?”
My ‘rrhoids’ were so bad I had to go to a specialist. I almost fainted in his examination room when I saw what looked to be a 2-foot dildo with a gun-like trigger and an open vial of KY jelly. It was a sigmoidoscope. It’s inserted into your anus all the way up to your colon. Air is introduced into the scope to aid in viewing. This is the only field of work where pumping air up your ass isn’t considered a public relations ploy.
Mercifully, the doctor didn’t use the contraption, saving it presumably, for the patients who complained too much about the long wait in the lobby. As I bent over the “bottoms up” table, the doctor spread my cheeks apart as far as he could, giving his lovely blonde assistant an unobstructed view of what I used to think of as a private part. I longed for a shot of dignity the way a diabetic longs for a shot of insulin.
The upshot: Surgery. I had waited too long to get it treated. Three days after the operation, I sneezed. I thought my sphincter had flown out of my ass. The good thing about a hemorrhoidectomy is that you don’t really need pain killers after the surgery—the mortification masks most of it.
Just to set the record straight, hemorrhoids are NOT caused by anal sex. In fact, my hetero surgeon laughed at the thought. Seventy five percent of all men will get it at some point in their life. Call me skeptical but I doubt all those straight guys with hemorrhoids are getting ass-hammered at home.
Hemorrhoids are caused by pushing too hard when you’re on the toilet. My surgeon doesn’t blame anal sex for hemorrhoids; he blames magazines. “The bathroom isn’t a library,” he said. “Go in, if nothing comes out, get out.”
Words to live by.
If you want to avoid my fate—and believe me, you do—then master the secrets of the toilet arts. Never hold your breath when you’re on the bowl. It means you’re trying too hard. Breathe. Don’t effort. Don’t strain. Be at one with the bowl. There is no place for struggle in the art of the Zen dump.
Finally, take the magazine rack out of bathroom, drink a gallon of water a day and eat enough fiber to cement the government’s food pyramid to the floor.