I've been waking up suddenly in the inky dark before dawn. Engulfed by memories. All the events from those many years ago. I stare at the cracks and spiderwebs on the ceiling as car headlights sweep the room; I listen to the growling songs of garbage trucks and the percussion of newspaper deliveries. Jeannine stirs and asks in a sleepy voice, “What is it, honey?” But I can’t explain, I can't even explain it to myself, so I tell her, “Go back to sleep, dumpling, my prostate’s acting up again and it feels like I’ve got a two-by-four jammed up my ass.”
Then I watch the movie flicker one more time upon the weathered screen of memory.
Regardless of political or theological beliefs, the Christine Jorgensen sex-change operation was a seminal, world-changing event. For most males, it was one that conjured up a helpless, primordial horror. In retrospect, I honor her enormous courage and strength and, indeed, there have been times that I myself, after a few drinks or a couple snorts of this or that, wanted to explore lesbianism more authentically than the glossy pages of pornographic magazines allowed. And found that door cruelly locked by arbitrary social and biological strictures. But at the time of the operation, we were like terrified children, and in locker rooms and offices, cigar stores and racing tracks, we stared wildly at one another, dumbstruck and flabbergasted, moaning like bulls on bad feed, howling like beagles deserted after the Rapture.
In cities around the world – Moscow, Paris, Dhaka, Addis Ababa, Milpitas – people hugged strangers and spontaneously formed gigantic circles to dance the slow, grief-laden steps of the hokey pokey. The earth was off its axis; gravity itself could no longer be trusted. Frightened bureaucrats, businessmen, baseball players and rodeo riders crawled under desks and curled up in shower rooms and bomb shelters. They squeezed and, if flexible enough, kissed their procreative organs (which were trying to retreat back inside the abdominal cavity, like prairie dogs scenting weasels). And sang lullabies and nursery rhymes in voices cracked and quavering with emotion.
It was a time of confusion in the world, and a terribly difficult ordeal for the amazing Ms. Jorgensen.
Now imagine how the penis-formerly-known-as-Christopher-Jorgensen's-little-Prince felt when it first woke up after the operation, still groggy from the anesthesia: “Wha' happen? Where's Chris! I can’t feel my fuckin' feet!” When explanations were gently proffered, it grew hysterical, thrashing and squeaking; it refused to look under the sheets; it covered its ears and yodeled, "This is just a very bad, Kafka-esque dream and I'd like to wake up now!"
Cut off from everything it knew and loved.
Itches that could no longer be scratched.
The excruciating weeks of recovery passed slowly; it had to re-learn everything: how to stand up, walk, feed itself; how to lace up its shoes and tie a necktie; how to wear a beret without looking pretentious. All under a leaden blanket of despair.
Nobody visited. No one sent flowers or get-well-soon balloons or wacky Far Side cards. The world was too embarrassed and ashamed -- except for the paparazzi, who burst in one afternoon, laughing, snapping pictures, shouting their rude questions. “Get out!” it shouted, trying to cover itself, “I am not the Elephant Man!” Hospital security hustled them out, but months of fragile psychological recovery were lost. Around this time too, a young, foolish nurse inadvertently let drop that the Jorgensen testicles had not survived the operation – had died under the knife despite the greatest efforts of specialists – and this fell like one hammer blow too many. Penis and testicles had been inseparable, gone everywhere together, completed each others’ sentences. In the lingo of the time, they had “swung together.”
(It would later adopt fuzzy-pom-pom-ball slippers as its fashion trademark -- kind of like Tom Wolfe's silly white suits -- calling them an "hommage to the memory of an old friend lost in the wars.")
After that, the morose penis didn’t speak for a long time, wouldn’t touch its fish sticks or apple sauce, barely glanced at the TV Guide, even the big issue on the new fall season. As the days passed and it visibly shriveled, the doctors feared that it too would die, like an old, wrinkled grandfather abandoned by the tribe on the harsh trail of the winter buffalo. Tumefaction, of course, that touchstone of self-identity, now seemed an impossible dream, a cracked fairy-tale spun of unscrupulous faith healers and sellers of magic pills and potions.
Just when all hope seemed lost, a kindly intern gave the listless convalescent a well-thumbed copy of Walking Tall: the Sheriff Buford Passer Story. And as he read this triumph-against-all-odds story, a small, bright-feathered hummingbird of crazy life force quickened within its wounded heart. It sat up in bed for the first time in months. Its mouth opened, almost as if in surprise, and then the penis shrieked "Yes I can! Yes I can!" Over and over again, in ever higher registers, until only the bats in the hospital's attic could understand, and be inspired by, the fervent squeak being emitted. (This really freaked out the hernia patient in the adjacent bed, who, holding stitches together with one hand, quickly crab-crawled all the way outside and hailed a taxi home.)
I’m not going to recount the whole astounding chronicle. I couldn't tell it half as well as it did itself in the bestselling autobiography, Nobody's Penis. Ripped howling from its very bowels -- and later made into the film trilogy which won Mr. Day Lewis his third, fourth and fifth Oscars -- it detailed, with eviscerating honesty, the penis's terrible struggle to rise again. The sad, seedy reality behind the drinking, drugs and skirt-chasing of the Rat Pack, that terrified clutch of aging adolescents. The unexpected magic of the Christmas albums with Elvis and Willie Nelson. Its brief stint as the new James Bond (after Roger Moore, before Timothy Dalton). The tumultuous celebrity marriages to Marilyn, Mia, Demi, Angelina and two or three of the Jennifers -- and the heartbreak of never being able to have children of its own. (Very technical medical issues described ad nauseum.)
But as it grew older, Mr. P achieved an almost incandescent inner peace. It started giving slideshows to enormous crowds all over the world, and went on to become a beloved talk-show host. Then came the intimate dinners with presidents, prime ministers, Bono and the Dalai Lama; the shuttle diplomacy to end the violent jihad waged by the Religious-Right against humankind's mute, defenseless genitalia; and finally, of course, the Nobel Prize, the Olympic Gold Medals, and the award-winning Toyota Tundra ad campaign. No one who saw it will ever forget its look of utter glee sitting behind the wheel of the Tundra XL on the rocky top of Big Bottom Butte in Utah's fabulous Monument Valley.
I was with the Mahatma in its last hours on this mortal plane. (An adoring world came to call the elderly penis "Mahatma" -- primarily because of its uncanny resemblance to Ben Kingsley in "Gandhi.") It blessed me and asked me to continue the Work so earnestly begun. It had already slumped over into its final coma when the eyes fluttered open. A beatific smile lit its wizened face -- as if already looking beyond the Jordan to Paradise -- and, seeing its lips move, I leaned down to catch the ecstatic whisper:
"I'm coming Chris!"
It's light now; the garbage trucks are gone. Time to get up, brush my teeth, stare at the gray, dewlapped face in the mirror. I'll mix a bowl of mush, climb into my Hyundai and go sell crap to strangers. That's the life I chose. But I shall never forget one inconvenient penis, who stood tall in a world of midgets, and lit up a dark time -- as Sir Elton put it so beautifully at the service in Westminster Cathedral -- "like a candle-like penis in a stiff breeze."
Henry E. Panky
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