My one-hundredth post is going to be a FAQ. I've been getting a lot of questions from people from online as I've been holed up for the past week. Tomorrow I make it back to work and to some semblance of a normal life, so this is my chance to share some of the frequently asked questions that I've received, along with their answers.

Q: When did you decide you wanted to be a eunuch?

A: All my life. There was some other identity stuff which I had to sort out first, but I finally just kind of knew that it was the right time.

Q: Where was it done, by whom?

A: By a doctor, here in town. I made it a point to avoid a cutter but this was a difficult process.

Q: How did you do that?

A: I took a taxi to the clinic and then...oh wait, I mean, how did I convince the doctor to remove them? Well this was pretty rough. I had to destroy them last year and say that it was an accident. Pretty sneaky and not what I like to do. And I had to go to two separate doctors because the first one was a quack, and even then. All in all it took a lot of effort.

Q: How did you pull off destroying them?

A: Through methods not-quite-approved by the local management here, but it was effective and it kicked in pretty quickly.

Q: Hot.

A: You spend too much time in the chatroom.

Q: My mommy just walked in, I have to leave.

A: Maybe she'll bake you some cookies. Can you send some over to me?

Q: Did it hurt?

A: I'll give you one guess.

Q: I guess, "Yes".

A: Bingo. Castration isn't fun and it isn't a joke. I'll say that destroying them hurt more than the aftereffects of the surgery, though the surgery reduced my mobility by quite a bit for a few days too.

Q: (This one's always in German) I'm searching for a eunuch slave.

A: (Backs away from the keyboard and changes the locks to his doors)

Q: Do you hate being a guy?

A: No, I like being a eunuch. I take some testosterone because once one goes through puberty it becomes kind of addictive. It's the equipment I don't like. I guess you can think of me as guy-lite, for those who are allergic to nuts.

Q: What does your boyfriend think of this?

A: He's really supportive without trying to be overly encouraging and thereby creepy. He's fantastic. (smooch)

Q: Can you send me some photos?

A: I can but I won't.

Q: Why not, that's so meeeeeeeeeeeeean.

A: I don't have a problem with wankers; wanking is healthy; but go to Malebodymods.com or to Bodymod.org where you can see these things. Leave me alone because you're not the only one.

Q: Why wouldn't they remove the sack?

A: My bf has a theory about urologists. "Look at pricks all day, and you become one." More seriously, I think that they just can't wrap their minds around the idea; he's having troubles with his own urologist. This might necessitate a trip to Thailand, which will also be fun...the trip, not the surgery.

Q: (Also usually in German) Don't you know that this makes you sterile?

A: So THAT's why my bf and I have had trouble getting pregnant!

Q: Send me pictures, pleeeeeeeeeeeeease.

A: (delete)

Q: Do your friends and family know?

A: My friends, yes. (used the same accident story on them as with the doctors). My family is bound to find out and I'll stick with that story. My coworkers, they just know that I had a surgery. They respect my sense of privacy.

Q: I think I'm gay and don't want to deal with it; did low testosterone make you any less gay?

A: No, it made me more gay in some ways and less in others. I was less energetic and not dancing around the grocery store when disco music came on, but I was a little bit more of a bottom...still not submissive actually.

Q: Wait, you're a bit dominant...and you're a eunuch and a bottom?

A: Yes.

Q: Is that an oxymoron?

A: How forceful do you think I had to be to get this done on my own terms?

Q: (sits down meekly)

A: My point exactly.

Q: Any other modification plans?

A: I'm aiming for full nullo.

Q: So tell me, does a 'gay eunuch' like other eunuchs or what?

A: I guess; that would be true in my case. Any language people here?

Q: Was there any self-hatred involved?

A: No, I had to deal with a lot of it growing up. My parents are exceptionally wonderful loving people, but there's the social pressure growing up about the whole gay thing. I can make a few posts just about that. I had to deal with that first before I even thought of getting castrated. That way I knew I was getting snipped in order to be the man I wanted to be, not to not be the man I didn't want to be.

That's all for now. Catch y'all later.

Hi GrayLayer! And thank you for sharing some wonderfully written and insightful posts!*

I hope your week goes well as you get back into routine. Remember to take it easy! You may feel fine, but your poor body is still recovering. Most importantly, avoid lifting anything too heavy!*

Many of the feelings you describe I can identify with. For some reason it is important for me that my friends know too. Perhaps it comes from the desire to be recognised and accepted for who you truly are? *

You mentioned school - I remember once asking my school sports teacher if i could play netball with the girls, instead of football with boys on days we had P.E. To this day I've never felt comfortable standing to go to the toilet.

Please do keep adding to your blog here, I would love to hear any more of your thoughts about early childhood.

graylayer,

So glad to hear that you are healing well. Saw your pics posted, and you seem to have little swelling left. That is quite fortunate.

A word of caution, do not fall into a false sense of wellness, and rush to do too much. You can easily rip a new incision, or cause one of the cord stumps to leak.

I truly enjoyed your FAQ post. You have quite a sense of humor. It was a fun pick me up on this cold and snow covered morning.

Raymar

Thanks everyone for all of your support. It's been a week now, and the lampshade thingie finally comes off my neck.

Work was pretty uneventful by design. The highlight of my day was lunch, and there's almost no pain. My worst source of pain? The bandages I still keep on to keep lint out of the incisions and to keep my underwear from rubbing right up against them; they stick to hair and themselves but not skin. They're closing up nicely in a discontinuous fashion, at the edges and again in the middle, and working in/out from there. It's a bit less Frankenstein-ish by the day.

@TheFraj: That's interesting. I was usually good at kind of playing along to fit in; thirteen years of Catholic schooling is pretty effective at that. ("Now we kneel, now we sit, now we get on our phones and make brunch reservations since the priest is talking about going jogging in the cemetery like he does every year.")

For me the being 'out' thing is a bit strange. In my profession I wouldn't want to be known as THAT guy, but I'm just glad that my friends know, even if I had to fib a little bit about why. My parents are still dealing with the gay thing; now I'm really officially not giving them grandkids; but they'll find out in the course of conversation sort of like how I came out as gay.

"Mom and Dad, I have something to tell you."

"What, son?"

"I like Merlot no matter what that Sideways movie says."

"Why did you tell us, son?"

"Because that's my boyfriend's favorite too."

(I took liberties and dramatized a bit. Actually in my family, I've always been out about my love of right-bank Bordeaux. They're a great value even with a weak dollar.)

(Yeah, it didn't really happen like this. But I wish it did.)

But yeah, the girls where I grew were TOUGH and kind of mean; the boys I could at least figure out and, later on, admire when they weren't looking. So I stuck with the boys.

Next up on my agenda: The Gay Thing.

I want to join in and say I am also enjoying your posts. One of the greatest helps for me after becoming a eunuch and finding the EA was to share similar feelings with others. I am still learning about myself when I read others experiences that mirror mine. Oh and I love how you told your parents.

October (I'm making a month up, don't hold me to this) 1985.

I'm walking to school with a friend of mine and casually mention that I'd like to marry a great guy when I grew up. He looked at me as if I had started speaking Klingon. He told me that men married women, and that was that. I scratched my head and said, "OK." (Notice a common theme here?) I shut up about it thereafter but always thought that this one-man-one-woman thing was kind of arbitrary.

The gay thing is something that many here have had to deal with, but for me it was especially difficult. Based on where I grew up and the community I was in, mostly working class Irish Catholic, "fitting in" was everything. All the Cool Kids were fans of the right baseball team; they played baseball, later football; and they liked girls and did incomprehensible things with them. When I found out what heterosexual sex was, it seemed so random. Why not stick a watermelon next to a radiator? It made as much sense as a penis with a vagina.

By this time I had figured out how to just totally ignore my feelings and get on with life. Great as a survival skill, bad as a general life skill. At a young age I got beaten up by other boys for not walking the right way, talking with a slight lisp, and not being all that athletic. I wanted nothing more than to keep a low profile and be left alone...and I definitely hated those boys I went to school with. The girls were just more generally annoying, though some of them were pretty mean too. Yeah, I got beaten up by girls.

So when puberty came around (which I HATED, that's another post) I was getting as far from the boys as possible, for my own safety. I also had learned how to fight back, so over time we started to ignore each other. The confusing thing was, I had a fascination with girls. I didn't want to stick anything into them or really see them naked. I had just stopped disliking them.

This is what confused me the most about my sexuality. I would chase girls the way that a dog would chase a car. But then the dog would catch a car and wonder, "What do I do now?" In high school, college, and early adult life, these really good looking women would throw themselves at me and I'd have no idea what to do with them. Actually the way my best friends knew that I was gay was that I had TURNED DOWN a booty call from a very good-looking woman. I needed my beauty sleep.

Anyhow, through high school this intense pressure to be the guy that others wanted me to be continued. I was the high school valedictorian (totally by accident, really); there was prom; and there was the usual pressure to find a girlfriend and settle down and crank 'em out. But here's the thing; it was an all-guys school...with NO obvious gays.

I remember a guy I would stare at every day for all of English class...and another guy I'd look forward to passing in the hallway with beautiful blond hair...I always knew I had this side to me...but in high school I didn't know any girls so I had nothing to compare them against. The teasing and beating up went down dramatically when I 1) had my braces removed and 2) grew six inches and gained 70 lbs. After that I could be relatively boring and in peace, so long as I ignored everyone and they ignored me.

College? I was miserable. I didn't know any gays there and continued to try to force being straight. Really. I was that out of the loop. Plus, where I was from (late '80s early '90s blue collar neighborhood), gays were these icky guys with mustaches who lived in San Francisco and had AIDS. And I didn't want a mustache or AIDS! I was never really into theatre so those guys weren't really my type. That left a lot of web-surfing time and ogling those hot nipple piercings on BME...but boy those guys over at Eunuch.org are a bit weird (clicking through with intense curiosity).

The first time I seriously considered that I was gay, and that gays weren't necessarily weird, was in 2001. At age 21 I met my first gays, and while I didn't have much in common with them, they seemed like nice fun guys. By this time there was a gay coworker I'd fantasize about, and a GORGEOUS guy on my rowing team was somewhat into me. He had this queeny boyfriend but I was in the bow seat; he was #2; and he had the most beautiful...mmmmm. Bike messenger too, sweet shaved legs. Manic depressive too, so I was a bit worried about having to take care of him should we form a relationship.

We never did anything. I moved away at age 25 to grad school away from all of the social pressure. I came out fairly quickly thereafter in about the middle of grad school. November 9, 2006. At about 11:30 in the morning, on a bus. I had a long-distance girlfriend at the time but I was kicking myself about my lackluster performance in the bedroom with her, like not being able to get it into her and not really caring. This had set off an identity crisis where the eunuch thing, the gay thing, and my whole identity came crashing down onto my head; that's about the time I joined here as graylayer02 and had to ask for help to deal with my self-hatred, which cleared up in an instant on that foggy day.

So after a bike ride with this straight guy I kind of liked, I showered and took the bus to campus. A cute boy and I had locked eyes from across the bus. It moved. I had a light bulb moment. "I'm just a homo; I'm not asexual or anything like that. That's all it is. Now I understand." From then on it was all right.

Kissed my first guy on November 15, 2007 on a street corner for a half hour. I'm the type not only to be out, but out and proud. I still remember him fondly.

I had set a deadline to come out to my parents for the end of 2007. At about 4pm on Dec 31, I was in the back seat of a car. My mother said something about me getting a job somewhere in the south and meeting a nice southern lady and having a lot of kids. I told her that this wasn't going to happen because I was pretty sure I was gay. Silence. A minute later. "So you're gay, huh? Why didn't you tell us sooner?" Honestly they're still struggling with it, but my parents are very civilized people. I was kidding with the wine joke above; my actual coming out was much more forced and awkward like most people's surely are.

And I JUST came out as a eunuch to them right now, with my bike crash story, which my dad said was 'bizarre'. "Do you have anything else to spring on us?" Can't outdo this one I think.

But the point of this post was that I spent 20 or so years hiding myself from myself, to be the man that others wanted me to be.

OK, the healing continues apace, and walking to/from work is no big deal anymore.

Pathology results came in. They were 100% dead. The urologist had never seen anything like this before. As I left the building I smiled and whispered to myself, "Yeah, I've always been an overachiever."

The sack feels like there are two balls in it, which upon closer inspection are made of fluid and not painful; they're less painful than what was there before.

Not much to report on for today in general.

graylayer02 (imported) wrote: Thu Feb 11, 2010 2:22 pm OK, the healing continues apace, and walking to/from work is no big deal anymore.

Pathology results came in. They were 100% dead. The urologist had never seen anything like this before. As I left the building I smiled and whispered to myself, "Yeah, I've always been an overachiever."

The sack feels like there are two balls in it, which upon closer inspection are made of fluid and not painful; they're less painful than what was there before.

Not much to report on for today in general.

Fluid tends to fill the void. As the fluid is absorbed your scrotum will appear empty. I remember how worried I was that my testicles, by the appearance of my scrotum, were still there. I had watched them drop into the jars so I really had no worries. I just wanted the look to match my new reality.

Glad everything is going well.

Graylayer02,

Have you noticed yet that you walk with your legs a little closer together now? That was something I noticed after my orchi and it took a little getting used to.

I have a pair of shoes that were purchased after the orchi and the wear on the outer heel is definately less than shoes I had before the deed was done.

When I walk my feet used to roll from the corner rear to the front. Now with an empty sack my shoes hit more directly and make a "sure footed" noise. Or is it an "empty sack noise?"

graylayer02 (imported) wrote: Tue Feb 09, 2010 3:09 pm October (I'm making a month up, don't hold me to this) 1985.

I'm walking to school with a friend of mine and casually mention that I'd like to marry a great guy when I grew up. He looked at me as if I had started speaking Klingon. He told me that men married women, and that was that. I scratched my head and said, "OK." (Notice a common theme here?) I shut up about it thereafter but always thought that this one-man-one-woman thing was kind of arbitrary.

.........................

If it is marriage (definition deleted per request), I agree. If it is a civil union then it can be whatrver you want it to be.