<\/p>\n
I am a paragon of heterosexuality, or so my fraternity tells me. I\u2019ve ogled girls since the third grade, and once\u2014surpassing many a UChicago male\u2014ventured to speak to one. Whenever I\u2019m inclined to listen to A Chorus Line<\/i> and similar musicals, I do so while lifting heavy weights. I have a non-negligible body of photographic evidence strongly suggesting that I can grow a beard. \u00a0I sing in a choir that is not the Women\u2019s Ensemble. In my omnivorous past, I have eaten steak. Both of my grandfathers have served me beer, independently. I am a skilled amateur at foosball. On several occasions, I have been spotted eating chives. All of this is to say that I am a very manly man.<\/p>\n
\tThis makes it difficult for me to make the following pronouncement. I will try to get it off of my chest as quickly as possible, like the proverbial ripping off of chest-wax.<\/p>\n
\tIn a Men\u2019s Room stall on the A-Level of the Regenstein Library during my freshman fall, as I was flushing away my last parcels of gastronomic residue, the swirling eddy beneath me leapt out of the toilet bowl like a specter, and, thief-like, stripped me of my cherished prostate virginity.<\/p>\n
\tWhat\u2019s more, I seem to have enjoyed it.<\/p>\n
\tAt first, this alarmed me beyond any consolation. In a very taboo sense, it was for me love at first flush. What does this mean for the unflinching image of machismo I have carved for myself since crawling, bristly-face-first, out of the womb? Am I gay, just because an automated toilet bowl\u2019s lonely whisper says I am? Or will this be the extent of my college \u201cexperimenting\u201d\u2014my coy, brief, unspoken flush with death\u2014of all places, in the Reg?<\/p>\n
\tPerhaps this is a normal bodily response to refreshing stimuli. I like to think that my great-great-grandfather Avi, a twice-married, thrice-bearded Orthodox rabbi from Lithuania–and his anus–would have had the same reaction. He was surely as manly a man as ever descended from Adam\u2019s bulbous balls. I imagine Rabbi Avi studying at Chicago. In between reading Mishnaic commentaries on the second floor, he would occasionally come downstairs to relieve himself, flushing twice: once for business, and once for pleasure. In the evenings, he would come home to make love to his first or second wife, as instructed by the Torah; she would never know.<\/p>\n
\tToday I feel better about the whole situation. Sure, I am not quite the same man I once was in magnitude; my scrotum doesn\u2019t hang quite as low, what with the cold water regularly forcing its way up my asshole nowadays. And I can be honest with myself: I don\u2019t play much poker, but even I know that was no straight flush. Still, I feel enriched as a person. I am not just manly. I can be many things. It\u2019s no longer necessary to be an avid heterosexual, the way one can be an avid birdwatcher. It\u2019s possible to be simply heterosexual, with some A-level action on the side.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Cyrus Pacht April 20, 2018 I am a paragon of heterosexuality, or so my fraternity tells me. I\u2019ve ogled girls since the third grade, and once\u2014surpassing many a UChicago male\u2014ventured to speak to one. Whenever I\u2019m inclined to listen to A Chorus Line and similar musicals, I do so while lifting heavy weights. I have a non-negligible body of photographic evidence strongly suggesting that I can grow a beard. \u00a0I sing in a choir that is not the Women\u2019s Ensemble. In my omnivorous past, I have eaten steak. Both of my grandfathers have served me beer, independently. I am a skilled amateur at foosball. On several occasions, I have been spotted eating chives. All of this is to say that I am a very manly man. This makes it difficult for me to make the following pronouncement. I will try to get it off of my chest as quickly as possible, like the proverbial ripping off of chest-wax. In a Men\u2019s Room stall on the A-Level of the Regenstein Library during my freshman fall, as I was flushing away my last parcels of gastronomic residue, the swirling eddy beneath me leapt out of the toilet bowl like a specter, and, thief-like, stripped me of my cherished prostate virginity. What\u2019s more, I seem to have enjoyed it. At first, this alarmed me beyond any consolation. In a very taboo sense, it was for me love at first flush. What does this mean for the unflinching image of machismo I have carved for myself since crawling, bristly-face-first, out of the womb? Am I gay, just because an automated toilet bowl\u2019s lonely whisper says I am? Or will this be the extent of my college \u201cexperimenting\u201d\u2014my coy, brief, unspoken flush with death\u2014of all places, in the Reg? Perhaps this is a normal bodily response to refreshing stimuli. I like to think that my great-great-grandfather Avi, a twice-married, thrice-bearded Orthodox rabbi from Lithuania–and his anus–would have had the same reaction. He was surely as manly a man as ever descended from Adam\u2019s bulbous balls. I imagine Rabbi Avi studying at Chicago. In between reading Mishnaic commentaries on the second floor, he would occasionally come downstairs to relieve himself, flushing twice: once for business, and once for pleasure. In the evenings, he would come home to make love to his first or second wife, as instructed by the Torah; she would never know. Today I feel better about the whole situation. Sure, I am not quite the same man I once was in magnitude; my scrotum doesn\u2019t hang quite as low, what with the cold water regularly forcing its way up my asshole nowadays. And I can be honest with myself: I don\u2019t play much poker, but even I know that was no straight flush. Still, I feel enriched as a person. I am not just manly. I can be many things. It\u2019s no longer necessary to be an avid heterosexual, the way one can be an avid birdwatcher. It\u2019s possible to be simply heterosexual, with some A-level action on the side.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1486","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-komono"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chicagoshadydealer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1486","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chicagoshadydealer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chicagoshadydealer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chicagoshadydealer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chicagoshadydealer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1486"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/chicagoshadydealer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1486\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2519,"href":"https:\/\/chicagoshadydealer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1486\/revisions\/2519"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chicagoshadydealer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chicagoshadydealer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chicagoshadydealer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}