Ross Asdourian - Broken Bananah: Life, Love, and Sex ... Without a Penis

I t can always be worse. Remember that. It can always be worse .

Its still attached. It can always be worse .

It could always be worse? It can always be worse .

That was the phrase that repeated in my head, staring down at what can only be described as a pulsing eggplant between my legs. Love is a battlefield, and the blanket laying over my lap hid the world from the true horror of my broken penis .

The clock ticked. Nikki had run out of places to stare at in the emergency room .

I cant believe this is happening, she said with that sort of wide-eyed, one-huff mini laugh .

Ill marry you, I really will. I swear. A knock at the door interrupted this matter-of-fact proposal. Pretty much every time a doctor knocks on the door, I immediately act like I wasnt doing whatever I was doing. As though the doctor would give me better care if I wasnt on my phone or staring at the weird anatomy posters that are somehow in every doctors office. Ill admit it. I usually do fantasize about stashing a bunch of medical supplies from the blue drawers. This would, of course, save money when Id need a handful of alcohol wipes or sterile gloves .

Hi Ross, how are you feeling? he asked .

Never been better! I answered with an ironic amount of zest. Dr. Casey held the test results with the fate of my children and my childrens children close to his chest. He took a peek under the hood and marvelled over the size of my swelling johnson. All things aside, this was something I could get used to .

The doctor took a quick glance at Nikki and then back at me. I gave him the universal nod of approval and smiled at Nikki right after. She was still there and, in an odd way, her presence meant something. I wanted her there despite the fact that we didnt really know each other. Our last encounter dated back seven years to a party in Gainesville, Florida. We were just as much intimate strangers then as we were now. She scooted her chair closer as Dr. Casey shuffled a thin pile of papers and, with a discernible amount of trained empathy, began his speech .

In situations like this, he explained, its difficult to know exactly whats happening without having a look inside. My smile grew larger to mask the acceptance of bad news I felt coming. Then I made a request. A request that anyone in a traumatic hospital situation cant help but ask .

Whats the best case and worst case scenario ?

A rhetorical question really. Best case is that everythings back to normal. Worst case is that nothing ever works again. Right? Except that when Dr. Casey delivered the bad news, he gave it that little extra detail that psychologists may, years later, deem wildly unnecessary .

Youll lose functionality and sensitivity. Given that you arent able to urinate on your own, there is a possibility that the damage to your urethra will require a tube which we would surgically implant to relieve your bladder. This is, of course, worst case, but do want you to be aware .

So there I was, foreseeably castrated. I looked at Nikki, silently hysterical, as she imagined a future with a dickless husband while I lay there thinking about the worst part. How am I going to tell Parker -- the girl who I was thinking about, but not the girl who Id just had sex with .

I have a love/hate relationship with Facebook. The love comes from all the friends and family it allows me to keep in touch with, which can be tough even with those who were closest with. The hate comes from all the ex-girlfriends that wont go away. The part that Im indifferent to is how Facebook keeps past, current, and prospective sexual partners one message away. This is important for people who, like me, live in the Big Apple, a city where most people are either visiting soon or want to .

New York City alienates even the most popular, and like many of us, Im alone more than I care to be. That sounds depressing as shit, but for now lets blame that for what happened next. I do what everyone does when theres nothing to do, open and close the same website window within minutes hoping for a new notification. I do it on my phone too by checking for messages even though there hasnt even been a notification. Parker calls those phantom vibrations, but Im clearly not thinking about her right now. Im fixated on the red bubble over the Facebook Messenger tab .

Nikki

10:52am: yo !

10:53am: im in new york. i hear youre living here now :) maybe we should catch up .

All lower case is an odd anti-establishment thing some people do. I dont get it, but sometimes i do it too. The key part of her message was right in the middle. She stuck that smiley face in, and I knew it was on. Some people would argue its just a smiley face and nothing more than cordial. I would agree, but the last time we talked was in college seven years ago while hooking up, which I define as sex. The ambiguous hi after a long drought of communication is the universal indicator that theres still gas in the tank .

Me

11:14am: heyo! im offended you didnt tell me earlier :)

Note the mimicry of lower case type to signify we are both so dumb that were smart because were above the idea that capital letters and proper grammar including run on sentences without commas are necessary to convey intelligence. Its a subtle way of saying that we get each other. The illiteracy in me respects the illiteracy in you .

Me

11:14am: of course lets catch up. where are you staying ?

In journalism, thats called fact gathering. I hate myself for playing this game. Its a reflexive response. Flirting online is something our generation has 15 years of practice with. My earlier days on AOL Instant Messenger, the first mainstream chatroom, were rough because some things didnt digitally translate. My sarcasm has been strong since I was a young Padiwan, and it often made me sound like an asshole when I was trying to flirt. Sometimes it probably still does. Damnit .

Nikki

11:15am: im staying on a friends couch somewhere in brooklyn. where are you

Nothing good comes over easy. Except sex. And eggs. Nikki and I met in college through Tree, a mutual friend whose name should double as an ancestry app. Tree was having a farm-themed party where he asked everyone to dress for a night of keg stands and line dancing. Keg stands are the thing where you do a handstand upside down on a keg while friends hold your feet up while you chug beer for as many seconds as you can. Line dancing is that thing where each song has a dance that all the women mysteriously know, and all the men try and act like they know because chicks love cowboys (despite being historically oppressive to women). By the end of the night, Nikki and I had danced with each other in both the Tim McGraw sense as well as the R. Kelly one. The line it is on went through my head multiple times that night .