Ring of Truth

I harp on about the women and esthetics, beauty, treatments, therapies, what have you, but I think men are spending an inordinate amount of time on this shit too. Like just when did we become so interested in our bodies?

Recently a male friend of mine felt he needed to undergo colonic irrigation. Lord knows why. People can be convinced of anything - even lettting, no paying for a stranger to stick a tube up your ass. I asked him why he was having it done and he tells me:
"Did you know the human bowels carry 7-10 pounds of fecal matter!!"

So I say "You're full of shit!". Sorry - no more shit jokes. No actually I said "Um, isn't that what they're supposed to do?"

And then he tells me "Yeah and the therapist," (or Shit Technician as I like to refer to them) "told me I have piles."

Now being Canadian, this wasn't a term I'm familiar with. So I say "Piles of what? Shit?"

I mean piles. PILES. That word kills me. It's so blatantly disgusting, and, well un-British. Surely Haemorroids is the way to name it.

But back to my friends' piles. I'm thinking, how do you even know if you have piles? How does one self-diagnose this? The thought of poking your finger around there is just nasty. The whole assal region is just not an area I'm comfortable with. My nipples I'm fairly cool with. I salute them every morning. My hoo-ha I'm on fairly good terms with. Put it this way, when I see it, I'm very, very nice to it.

Come to think of it, I don't even think I've ever seen a human butt hole. I guess for most of my life I've always liked to think of that part of my body as an anatomically smooth, non-descript part, like a Barbie or Ken doll. You know how Barbie as the nice, smooth, round mounds for breasts, and Ken's package is just a bump in his built-in skin coloured pants? I guess I've pictured it as a plug hole or something. Maybe it's even plastic in my head.

So I feel guilty and think maybe butt-hole health is something I should be concerned with. I summon up the courage in the shower one day to do a little primary exploration. And since I've never felt it before I'm not sure what it's supposed to feel like, but let me tell you, it's fucking disgusting. It has like, sinews and shit. SINEWS. It was like going to a Halloween party when you're a kid and the parents make you go blindfolded through a tactile house of horrors and make you feel peeled grapes and tell you they're eyeballs? Okay well this was nothing like feeling eyeballs, but I was like a blind person down there, and it was horrifying.

I'm not sure if I'm naive, or if everybody is on top of this, well, shit. Their bodies. I thought I knew anatomy. So I convince myself I have piles and head to the chemist for the fantastically named remedy....

Vagisil.