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October 17, 2005
My Imaginary Testicles
Note: I started this entry last week, or maybe even the week before. In any case, I started it before the Bad Things happened. It is somewhat less timely now, as the New Yorker story is likely no longer available online. Oh well.
I highly, highly recommend the Jeffrey Eugenides shorty story, Early Music that ran in this last week's New Yorker. It is a beautiful, moving story. I love Eugenides.
The last time I read a story by Eugenides in the New Yorker must have been in 2001 or 2002 because it was before the publication of Middlesex. The story was, in fact, an excerpt from Middlesex, the episode involving Cal and the Object. Cal, who is in secret teenage love with the Object, has sex with the Object's brother and is hit by a tractor, the result of which is the discovery of hidden testicles.
After putting the story down, I started imagining what it would be like to suddenly discover a secret testicle. I started to imagine myself in Cal's position (such are my identifying-with-the-protagonist ways). What would I do if I had an undescended testicle? Would I, like Cal, change my identity and live out my life as a man? Would I have surgery? Wouldn't surgery send the wrong message, politically? How would I explain this to dates? Would I have to tell my friends? Would it help me with a book deal?
Now, I had no reason to suspect I might actually have hidden testicles. Unlike Cal, I had had sex without searing pain. I had been examined by a gynecologist. And I had never noticed any, um, lumps on my own. But I'm crazy and live too much inside my own head. I became totally preoccupied with my imaginary testicles. I made all sorts of plans for how to live my life in the aftermath of their inevitable enterance. I mean, I was convinced that I had secret testicles. Sure, there'd been no sign-- yet. It was only a matter of time.
I confessed my fears to my roommate a few days before a bad fall off my bike that left me with stitches in my bottom lip and evil bruises. One bruise in particular, on the inner side of my knee, took on a life of its own. A lump the size of a , yes, of a tesiticle congealed under the purple skin. The lump had a density and consistency unnervingily like those of, yes, a testicle. I made my roommate touch it. "Doesn't it feel like a testicle is growing out of my leg?" She totally agreed.
"Your undescended testicle totally descended," she said. "To your knee."
"I told you so."
Hence, her nickname for me:
Testicle "Knees" Undisclosed-Surname
Posted by hissycat at October 17, 2005 03:54 PM
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Comments
I read the last line of this post first (for the sole purpose of causing you to ask why). Without the explanation for the nickname, I thought it refered to physical assault. Such is the effect of living in a world where seeing a guy hit in the balls is deemed endlessly entertaining.
I also thought fleetingly that you might have decided to claim to be male instead of female.
Thankfully the story itself was a lot better than my tired cliches!
Posted by: Kyle Hasselbacher at October 17, 2005 06:33 PM
An ass in a lion's skin. Noe.
Posted by: Noe at October 27, 2006 02:04 PM
To love somebody (something) as the devil loves holy water... Anchor
Posted by: Anchor at November 24, 2006 02:10 PM