Penises were big in 1994. In news terms that is. Unfortunately, for todger enthusiasts everywhere, it was virtually all bad news. This was the year when the mighty male organ was breezily demoted to the ranks of the tortilla chip, the satellite dish and the hand-carved chess set. The once potent and thrusting trouser truncheon is now, it seems, nothing more than another optional luxury which consumers can cut back on in times of recession.
It was Lorena Bobbitt who first set the balls rolling. As even cave dwellers and subscribers to Aertel are aware, Lorena is the woman from a small town in Virginia who sliced off her husband’s phallus with a kitchen knife in June 1993 because, she claimed, he had repeatedly raped and abused her. To add insult to grievous injury, Lorena then sped away from the scene of the crime and tossed the severed organ from her car window.
This, however, was a tale with a happy ending. John Wayne Bobbitt, who lost one third of the blood in his body in the attack, subsequently had his dick reconnected in a eight hour operation which doctors declared “a reasonable success.” With the customary American knack for ripping the silver lining from even the most noxious cloud, Mr. Bobbitt now earns $3000 a night as a stripper. He has also starred in a hardcore porn flick entitled John Wayne Bobbitt Uncut. And, rumour has it that for a small consideration, he attends private parties and allows selected guests (Doubting John Thomases, I suppose) to touch his scar.
Having doctored her husband, meanwhile, Lorena Bobbitt has herself been spin-doctored into a sort of feminist icon. Lauded by some of the more twisted sisters for her “act of empowerment,” she has become a chat-show regular and earns a tasty income through personal appearances and speaking engagements. There has even been talk of an endorsement contract with a kitchen knife manufacturer. At her trial in January of this year, Lorena mounted a defence of temporary insanity which was accepted by the jury. Cleared of the charge of malicious wounding, she was sentenced to a mere 45 days in a mental institution.
The flipside to this heartwarming success story, however, is that throughout 1994 the World News columns of our newspapers have been littered with dismembered members. From all over the globe have come disturbing accounts of copycat Bobbitt assaults, each one providing irrefutable proof that the penis is not mightier than the sword.
lacerated cock
n In February, in the Taiwan city of Taichung, a 51-year-old woman called Chien Liua-ling castrated her husband with a pair of scissors after learning of his affairs with other women. She then flushed Mr. Liua-ling’s ding-a-ling down the toilet and allowed him to bleed to death before alerting the authorities. She was eventually sentenced to two years imprisonment.
n In the same month, the Turkish newspaper, Hurriyet, reported the case of Abdullah Kemal Konak, a garage security guard from Istanbul. During a hefty evening’s drinking with his lover, Zeynep Atici, Konak threatened to leave her for another woman. Later that night, he was “too drunk to resist” when Ms. Atici bound his hands and feet and proceeded to emasculate him with “a kitchen implement.” Secure in the knowledge that any new relationship entered into by Konak would be strictly platonic, Atici then went on the run.
n Booze was also a feature in the tragedy which befell 42-year-old South Korean, Lee Chu-pom. In April, according to The Sunday Times, Chu-pom was found bleeding to death, sans beefy bayonet, behind a seedy motel in Seoul. Having downed a bottle of soju, a lethal local spirit, before he was set upon, however, Chu-pom was unable to help police with their enquiries into precisely who it was that had released his closest personal friend into the community. His wife was questioned but was not said to be under suspicion.
By profession, Mr. Chu-pom is a welder. The doctors who operated on him had no such skills. Their attempts to sew back on his estranged flute, which had been belatedly located in a motel skip, were a disaster. The willie repeatedly detached itself after surgery. Thus far, Seoul detectives have had similar trouble in pinning the mutilation on any one of up to a dozen suspects, all of them female friends of Mr. Chu-pom. The national South Korean newspaper, Choun IIbo, has described the incident as “the dawn of the age of reckoning for men in this male-dominated society.”
n During the Summer, a 36-year-old Los Angeles woman hit the local headlines when she unburdened her husband of his testicles. Mrs. Aurelia Macias became enraged when she attended a party with Mr. Matt Macias at which he flirted with other women. When he later fell asleep in a drunken stupor, Aurelia used a pair of scissors to perform the amateur orchidectomy.
During her trial, she claimed that she was raped by her husband and had had to endure years of abuse. After three days of jury deliberations, Aurelia Macias was cleared of all charges. Her case was considerably bolstered by Matt’s public declaration of forgiveness towards her, and by the fact that they were also reconciled as a couple. They are now said to be living happily together.
n Nearer home, in Germany, one Heide-Marie Siebke (51) was charged last September with anatomically abbreviating her boyfriend, Hans Kampioni (56). Having neutered Herr Kampioini with the by now traditional kitchen knife, Frau Siebke hit him over the head with a wicker chair and then set fire to his apartment.
At the trial, Siebke pleaded memory loss and said that she had been drinking heavily throughout the day of the incident. Kampioni’s lacerated cock was exhibited in court as prosecution evidence. A verdict in the case is expected in the early ’95.
drastic surgery
Throughout the past year, there have been countless other examples in the press of this growing phenomenon of manhood-slashing. The cuttings are simply brimming over with, well, cuttings. Indeed, by June, the frequency of these reports was such that The Guardian could declare that the word penis had already been used in more of its news stories in the first half of 1994 than in all of the previous five years.
“In 1984, (penis) appeared in a mere 18 articles, while in 1993 it appeared in an astonishing 489 pieces,” wrote Media Guardian editor, Georgina Henry. “Thanks to the Bobbitt trial, it featured in 89 articles in the first three weeks of 1994 alone.” Henry went on to calculate the average rate of p-word use in British broadsheets between January and June ’94. The Guardian and The Observer topped the chart with a joint 170 penises per month, ahead of The Independent (146), The Times (97) and Telegraph (70). Bringing up the rear, The Financial Times only managed a paltry average of 5, but then that particular paper tends to concentrate on writing about the fortunes of a totally different breed of prick.
And it wasn’t only women scorned who were hitting below the belt in 1994. While the actions of Bobbitt wannabees accounted for the vast majority of raids beneath the global jock strap, the arrival in London recently of the Men’s Institute for Cosmetic Surgery also ensured that all would not be quiet on the Western Y-front.
The MICS is the brainchild of Dr. Melvyn Rosenstein, a Los Angeles based urologist who now offers British men the penis lengthening and thickening operations which he claims to have carried out on more than 2000 U.S. patients. For those who would rather be hung like a stallion than a scallion, the millionaire surgeon claims to be able to add approximately 2 to 3in to every penis and to increase the girth by half. Overnight, a schsmall can become a schlong.
Or at least that’s the promise. The so-called enhancement operation is a complex and intricate procedure requiring the use of much specialist surgical equipment, and a very large bucket. An incision is made just above the penis to facilitate the severing of the suspensory ligament which attaches it to the pubic bone. This exposes the penis root, which is then covered by skin from the front of the pubic bone. Fat harvested by liposuction is then injected into the penis. If you’ll excuse me, it is at this point that the bucket is needed. Spluerrrrrgh!
The British medical establishment has already branded Dr. Rosenstein a fake and a charlatan. They insist that his operation is a “con-trick” and that any enlargement would be temporary as the fat injected into the organ would quickly be reabsorbed. Other experts argue (and let’s hear it for them) that tinkering with one’s wedding tackle in this way is fraught with hazards, not least the headache that I get just thinking about it. Dr. Roger Kirby, a consultant urologist at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital in London, told the media that he would only countenance such drastic surgery in cases of micropenis, a condition in which the penis is the size of the first joint of the little finger. Mrs. Kirby’s opinion, however, would presumably be a little nearer to the knuckle.
Despite the controversy, Dr. Rosenstein claims that his clinic already has a waiting list of several hundred men willing and eager to expand their horizons. And, in the light of recent events, that doesn’t surprise me in the least. As I write, I learn that the American Webster’s Dictionary have announced that they will be including the verb “to bobbitt” in their next edition. It will be defined as “a colloquial term for a woman’s violent and vengeful removal of her partner’s penis.” Other lexicons intend following suit, and the strong implication is that it’s an activity of which we haven’t heard the last.
1994 will be remembered as a bleak moment in priapic history. It simply hasn’t been a good year for the hoses.