Go Ask Alex: I don't like my penis after an implant. What do I do?

Got a question that would scandalize your group chat? That’s what this column is for. Go Ask Alex is an anonymous space for queer readers to ask the questions they’re afraid to ask anyone else — about sex, love, life, and everything in between. It’s judgment-free and completely anonymous.

I'm a long-term diabetic, now approaching 60. My sexual awakening didn't come until I was 40, and it became a fire in me. Then, due to disease complications, I had to get a penile implant. Ever since, I've had genital dysmorphia. I'm convinced my dick is like two inches, even though the tape measure confirms I'm 6.5x6 inches. Its a good dick, nice and thick, but I feel totally disconnected from that fact. How can I get back to feeling confident about it? - P

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Hey P,

In a kind world, our bodies would let all of us grow and develop purely on the whim of our desires. Want to be a power bottom? Fine, nature would say, go ahead.

But in the real world, power bottoms sometimes get rectal cancer, or end up in wheelchairs, and in these painful experiences, they can either give up on sex — some do — or work to discover themselves anew. The harder, more vital path is the latter, and it's the one laid at your feet.

As anyone who's ever had a severe infection, cancer, or traumatic injury knows, unfair and unpredictable things happen in life. A monster suddenly enters from stage left, and then we have to contend with new bodies, new abilities. I think when things happen that fall outside the expected terrain of aging, they are particularly hard. We know conceptually that the body ages, but to have something happen to it, something beyond our control, feels especially brutal.

It isn't fair, but it is the human state: Change. You spend a lifetime learning your dick just to have something come in and alter it, and then you must learn to see it differently. You may never see it as you did before, but that's probably true of much of the body: We are constantly forced, rudely and unfairly, to see it as a thing in flux, shaped by stress and trauma. There were more lines in my face in the mirror this morning than I remember from a year or two ago, and is my ass getting smaller?

You have a new dick. But in a more philosophic sense, you always do. Every day you wake up, the body is a little different, a little older, a bit changed. When you wake up now, the change is bigger. I know that's jarring, but try to see it as another weird turn on the flux of life, proof that we live in impermanence. Impermanence is life.

I'd set aside the goal for now of learning to see and use your dick as you saw and used it before. I encourage you to take this time to explore all of your body as a new pleasure thing, something to enjoy and push and examine. What can this new penis do? How does it feel? What feels good? What feels less good? Do any new sensations feel good that you didn't have access to before? What makes you cum now? Does anything new turn you on?

And trust me on this: Explore your butthole. Trust me. See what capacity it has, if any, for pleasure. If you've never had an anal orgasm, my friend, you are in for one of the best roller-coaster journeys into physical pleasure a person can feel.

Is there a toy you've never tried, but want to? Is there a kink you've had a half-hearted interest in but have never fully mined? Are there any fetishes you'd like to learn more about and maybe sample?

Everything now is new, so try — as hackneyed and saccharine as this may sound — to see the changed body as an adventure. It may attract different kinds of people. You may have better sex than you had before. Sure, it may turn people away, but that is true of all of us. Anyone can fail at attracting the people they want; what matters is having the confidence to take home the ones we think are cute who give us a "hell yes" at every stage. Trust that those guys will like your new dick, and if they don't, they don't get to play with it. Send 'em home.

I'm sorry that a core part of your identity — a core part of many men's identities — has changed, but if you approach this new penis era as one of discovery and reconnection with your body and your turn-ons, you might be surprised what you find in yourself.

What you're describing — knowing your measurements are fine (and, might I say, statistically above average) while feeling viscerally that something is damaged or diminished — is a known psychological experience.

LGBT HERO, a U.K.-based national health and wellbeing charity for LGBTQ+ people, found that “40 percent of gay men have anxiety issues when it comes to their relationship with their own penis.” EIQmen, a men's sexual health resource, addresses the specific psychological aftermath of penile implants, noting that while implants restore function, some men "struggle with thoughts that they are less natural, which can impact self-acceptance and how they view their bodies post-surgery." What you're experiencing is not unusual. It is documented.

Gay men are particularly vulnerable to this kind of disconnect. Dr. Israel Martinez, a therapist specializing in gay men's sexual and mental health, writes: "Body image struggles among gay men rarely come out of nowhere — they're woven into years of messages about what it means to be attractive, desirable, or even worthy in a culture that prizes a very narrow version of masculinity."

The research on body and genital dysmorphia is consistent on one point: The path forward is psychological, not anatomical. More measurement and reassurance from the tape measure will not help. Put it away. I suggest working with a therapist who understands sexual health and ideally has experience with gay men and chronic illness.

In the shorter term, try to heed what I wrote above and fix your attention on what your body can do and feel rather than what it can't or how it looks, in the mirror or in your mind. You came to sex at 40, and it became "a fire" for you. That fire is still there. Not everyone is born with a ready and eager sex drive. Indeed, many spend their lives chronically in fear of sex. So the fact that you have that natural engine is a boon. Lean into it. Let it be the little wounded ghost in your head that guides you through this time, and do what you can to feed its horniness.

Hire a hooker! Try fisting! Be a cumdump! Go to a sex club! Do something wild. Be a slut. That little ghost, your native fire, is itching to prove it won't be deterred by a new tool. Let it do so.

My hardest advice: Look to connect with one steady, regular person with whom you feel comfortable sharing your dick. You don't have to become a nun-like, monogamous person, but try to find a regular fuck buddy or sex friend, someone you can ask to suck you off just to see how it feels. It might not be easy or fast to find someone like that. A good man is (always, forever) hard to find. But a fun, casual regular is out there, and I think you might find that a naked buddy is the best life raft.

Explore your dicks together. See how they get along. See and talk about how they're different. In time, you might even feel comfortable sharing your thoughts about your penile implant with him. I hope so.

Sex-phobic, prudish people never like to acknowledge this side of sex, this ape-like, loving, tender side of human sexuality, where we play and fuck just to heal a little faster. But we do. All the time, we do. This is why people need people they can happily get naked with.

Hey there! I’m Alexander Cheves. I’m a sex writer and former sex worker—I worked in the business for over 12 years. You can read my sex-and-culture column Last Call in Out and my book My Love Is a Beast: Confessions, from Unbound Edition Press. But be warned: Kirkus Reviews says the book is "not for squeamish readers.”

Here, I’m offering sex and relationship advice to Out’s readers. Send your question to askbeastly@gmail.com