Yet Another Journal

[NYCGay]

Good luck NY, we will be rooting for you, I suspect you are Way tougher then you let on and you have one of the best Dr. out there. Put in one quick month post op, you will be Geeees what was I worried about!?
Good hard days ahead
Hugs cb

Thank you! I appreciate it.

[NYCGay]

Mostly though I just let it hang however it does throughout the day. We are at beach now and it just hangs straight down my leg. No way to hide it and i wear board shorts. Someone probably thinks I have a rolled up sock stuck in my bathing suit.

Somehow the thought of having a large and full flaccid doesn't bother me at all. (I realize I may live to regret saying that. One guy wrote in his journal that his flaccid initially pointed at 2:30. You call that flaccid? That's about two hours higher than my current hardons.)

[OregonStrong]

Good luck, I'm sure you'll pull through with flying colors. As another gay man that has had an implant, if you have any questions about what other partners have thought, and most I haven't told, let me know. Feel free to PM me as well if you'd like.

[NYCGay]

Thank you, OregonStrong!
Would love to hear more about your experiences. I will PM you.

[NYCGay]

Five days before surgery.

My partner picked up all the prescriptions from the pharmacy for me: a bag full of medications. I need to read through the post-op instructions again to remind me what all of them are and which ones I’m allowed to take together, and which ones must not be mixed. I’m glad to have strong pain killers at hand if I need them.

After my final pre-op visit with Dr. Eid in the city on Monday, I had dinner with a guy that I had a single sexual encounter with two or three years ago: a handsome rugby player in his late twenties, friendly and vivacious. Now he’s in a non-open relationship, so sex was never on the table for Monday night. But feeling relaxed with him, I told him of the reason for my doctor’s visit and my upcoming surgery, and I showed him the pump, attached to a ring, like a key fob, that I had been given to familiarize myself with. He had never hard of penile implants before, but was curious and asked questions: will I be pumping up my dick with air? (No, saline solution, from a reservoir in my abdomen.) Will the pump replace one of my testicles. (No, it will be hidden between and behind them, if the surgeon does his job well.)

I don’t even have my implant yet, and yet, it felt easier to tell him about it now than it would have felt telling him about my injections that time when we had sex. I remember the night well. I injected a small dose right before he arrived at our house, so I would be engorged as we started by having a beer in the hot tub, and then, as we got up to go to the bedroom, I excused myself, went to the bathroom, and injected a larger dose. It was an great night, in large part because it had been made clear beforehand that he would do all the topping, so there was no pressure on me to be rock hard; being large and hardish was enough; it gave him plenty to hold on to during his athletic pounding. And yet I remember feeling a tinge of disappointment at the end that I was already more softish than hardish, just tumescent, really; the effect of the injections is never very long-lasting for me.

This is all of course subject to change, but as of now, I don’t think I’ll be overly secretive about the implant with sex partners. If someone asks me about that thing in my ballsack, I think I’ll probably say: It’s my pump; I have an implant. If the guy is bothered by that, then I’ll break it off, without apology, but also without reproach. I’ll tell him that I understand, and that I perhaps would have reacted the same way myself in his situation (though really, I don’t think I would). If, on the other hand, he’s fine with it, or even, like the handsome rugby player, curious about it, then we can have a great time and I can give him my undivided attention, without wasting part of it on worrying about whether I’m still hard enough or how many minutes I still have at my disposal.

I’ve had three show-and-tells with guys here from FrankTalk, two over video calls, and one in person. They were all valuable experiences, and I’m grateful to these three men. I don’t think I would have dared take this decision so quickly without those experiences. The guy I met with in person let me touch his dick, first when flaccid. I could feel the cylinders and the tips in the glans, and while it felt different than a non-implanted dick, it didn’t really feel weird. I could imagine it just being some cartilage or something that he happens to have and I don’t. He showed me how to pump and he let me try it, and it was easy enough. When his cock was hard, it felt like any hard cock: warm and pliable skin covering a hard core. It was great to conclude that this was a cock that I could have related to sexually.

Lately, I’ve found myself revisiting some previous sexual encounters in my mind, meetings that meant something to me, with guys I really liked, but that were all, to some degree, marred by having to be planned around the injections and the decision of whether to hide them or be open about them. I’ve replayed the scenes in my head and imagined how they could have played out if I had had the implant instead of the injections (I could have pumped myself up right there in the hot tub, hidden under the streams of air bubbles). I've thought about how much more fun and rewarding they could have been if so much of my attention hadn’t been spent on obsessing about the state of my erection (and, of course, obsessing about it never made it better). What if I could have just have focused on the pleasure, the thrill, and the connection?

What I hope to get from the implant is not just the ability to get and stay hard, but also, equally important, the freedom of not having to think about it.

[boots1959]

What I hope to get from the implant is not just the ability to get and stay hard, but also, equally important, the freedom of not having to think about it.

Thats what you will get. It has taken me a while to lose that nagging doubt I had pre implant as to wether I would stay hard long enough to finish, so many times I did not. After implant it comes down to both my and my partners ability to last the distance, not the hardness of my penis.

The implant in our situation has highlighted a couple of things.
1- we are not teenagers anymore; sure my erection lasts forever (literally) but shagging like teenagers requires a lot of effort and physical fitness. I thought I was incapable of that these days. It turns out I'm not, I just have to use the right position to allow me to do that.
2- My wife has bursitis in her hips, putting her legs in certain positions is painful and sometimes impossible, to her credit she persists. So you or your partners fitness or physical problems/limitations can limit what you can do.

Good luck with your surgery.
Cheers boots.

[subhash]

followed with great interest thispost and responses
I am in Mumbai and wana travel to New Delhi for an implant once this covid recedes.
wish we had the likes of dr Eid dr Kramer etc here. so am even more scared
3 piece implant surgery is rarely done in india and drs do nt have much expertise.
just hope all turns out well--my heart tells me after living wigth ED since 25 yrs, nothg could get worse than the torcher i have been thru.

[NYCGay]

The implant in our situation has highlighted a couple of things.
1- we are not teenagers anymore; sure my erection lasts forever (literally) but shagging like teenagers requires a lot of effort and physical fitness. I thought I was incapable of that these days. It turns out I'm not, I just have to use the right position to allow me to do that.
2- My wife has bursitis in her hips, putting her legs in certain positions is painful and sometimes impossible, to her credit she persists. So you or your partners fitness or physical problems/limitations can limit what you can do.

Good luck with your surgery.
Cheers boots.

Thank you for your input, boots1959! I do realize that the implant won't make me any younger, but, as you say, it might just be an issue of choosing the right position. I'm pretty fit, and my erections certainly tend to flag long before the rest of me does. And also, for me sex doesn't have to be full-throttle from start to finish. I like being able to speed it up and slow it down: play and explore, taking my time. But with the injections, I always feel like I'm on a timer from the moment I inject; taking a break is not an option, because the effect will wear off. I love the thought that with the implant, there is no time limit. That doesn't mean that the act will have to be a strenuous marathon; it just means that we can play it as we feel. Or at least that's how I hope it will be.

[NYCGay]

followed with great interest thispost and responses
I am in Mumbai and wana travel to New Delhi for an implant once this covid recedes.

Hi subhash, and thank you for your kind words! I hope this horrible wave of the pandemic in India will subside soon, and that you will be able to go to New Delhi and get an implant. Let me know how things work out for you.

[NYCGay]

Three days before surgery

Yesterday, my partner and I came to the place we’re renting in Manhattan for a week. We normally live part time in New York, but our place is currently rented out for a few months. I want to be close to the hospital for the surgery on Tuesday, and to Dr. Eid’s office for the first couple of days afterwards, so we got this place up in Harlem, a short Lyft ride from the hospital and the doctor’s office.

It’s a four-story brownstone, with the owners occupying the fourth flour, and my partner and I having the first three plus the garden to ourselves. But the stairs are shared. How that’s going to work out when I walk between the first-floor kitchen and the third-floor bedroom sporting the permanent semi-hardon you’re supposed to have for the first few weeks with a Titan, I don’t quite know. I realize now what a bizarre choice of an AirBnB place this was for this particular stay. This could get awkward.

But the older couple welcoming us were so irresistibly charming: started by telling us the story of the house: meeting place during the Harlem Renaissance, jazz joint in the fifties, brothel in the sixties (but an upscale one; the mirrors are original, and none of them got broken). Their son had fallen in love with Harlem during his time at Columbia and had bought the house together with his husband. The first floor holds, along with the kitchen, “The Political Room,” full of memorabilia from the man’s time as a Representative in Congress. He mentioned his party affiliation, the same party that me and my partner vote for. His wife said that she would rent out to people from the other party, “but I would give them a talk.” The Political Room has a bed, it’s own separate entrance, and an in-suite bathroom. I suspect that this might be where I’ll end up sleeping after the surgery.

My partner had told them that we’re coming to Manhattan for a surgical procedure, to explain why we had to know for sure that there is a functioning bathtub (Dr. Eid recommends hot baths two to three times a day, starting on the third day, which will be Friday, and we’ll be here till Sunday.) My partner said to me: “I don’t think they are going to ask you what kind of surgery.” “Of course they won’t,” I replied -- but that’s exactly what the woman did ask, with a concerned face. I gave them the lie I’ve prepared for work: an inguinal hernia repair that’s complicated by the fact that I already had one when I was two years old. But I felt I could just as well have told them the truth. How would they have reacted? With tactful indifference? Amused curiosity? Certainly not with shock; they were much too worldly for that. I guess it’s the fear that they might not have known what I was talking about and I would have to start explaining that made me opt for the ease of the lie.

New area of worry: I’ve seen online that the Titan, unlike the AMS, is dependent on a healthy tunica albuginea to produce a hard erection, and Dr. Eid did mention something about possible issues with my tunica. I think he said it might be weak, and that this could explain my girth. With a weak tunica, the implant can lead to a cock that pumps very thick, but without full rigidity. That’s pretty much what I already have (Dr. Eid measured my circumference to 17 cm, or 6.9”, but scoffed when I referred to what I got from his injection as an erection). What if I end up with what I already have and am so unhappy with: a cock large enough to draw attention and compliments, but not much to fuck with? What if the only difference will be that I can keep it at that turgid, semi-hardish, unsatisfactory state for longer, but not that I can get it any harder?

But Dr. Eid also said that the Titan was the only option for me, precisely because of my size; the AMS, which has more narrow cylinders, wouldn’t fill up the space completely, and that would also lead to a sub-standard erection.

At this point, I’m not going to research the issue any further. I choose Dr. Eid for his extensive experience and for his reputation of being one of the top surgeons in the field. I know he will give me the best result he can, and I have no reason to think that any other doctor can give me better. I did ask him if the erection I will get from the implant will be better than the one I got from the injection in his office, and that’s when he scoffed: “Yeah, you can’t really do anything with an erection like that.” I will just put my trust in him and hope that my dick is not so fucked-up that it’s beyond repair.