[The New Yorker] The Perils and Promises of Penis-Enlargement Surgery

be careful out there fellas

The Perils and Promises of Penis-Enlargement Surgery
One doctor’s Promethean quest to grow the male member is leaving some men desperate and disfigured.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/07/03/the-cutthroat-world-of-penis-enlargement

excerpt:

They wanted it because they’d just gone through a bad breakup and needed an edge in the volatile dating market; because p*rn had warped their sense of scale; because they’d been in a car accident, or were looking to fix a curve, or were hoping for a little “software upgrade”; because they were not having a midlife crisis; because they were, “and it was cheaper than a Bugatti Veyron”; because, after five kids, their wife couldn’t feel them anymore; because they’d been molested as a child and still remembered the laughter of the adults in the room; because they couldn’t forget a passing comment their spouse made in 1975; because, despite the objections of their couples therapist, they believed it would bring them closer to their “sex-obsessed” husband (who then had an affair that precipitated their divorce); because they’d stopped changing in locker rooms, stopped peeing in urinals, stopped having sex; because who wouldn’t want it?

Mick (his middle name) wanted a bigger penis because he believed it would allow him to look in the mirror and feel satisfied. He had trouble imagining what shape the satisfaction would take, since it was something he’d never actually experienced. Small and dark-haired, he’d found his adolescence to be a gantlet of humiliating comparisons: to classmates who were blond and blue-eyed; to his half brothers, who were older and taller and heterosexual; to the hirsute men in his stepfather’s Hasidic community, who wore big beards and billowing frock coats. After he reached puberty—late, in his estimation—he grew an impressive beard of his own, and his feelings of inadequacy concentrated on his genitals.

None of Mick’s romantic partners ever commented on his size, but his preoccupation had a way of short-circuiting the mood. He tried several kinds of self-acceptance therapy, without success; whenever he went to the bathroom, there it was, mocking him. “Like an evil root,” he said of the fixation. “It gets in there and grows like a tree. But I think everybody has that on some level about something.”

This article is a collaboration between The New Yorker and ProPublica.

After high school, Mick decided to study art and moved to Berkeley, California, where his mother had spent her hippie years. Eventually landing in Seattle, he supported his life as an artist by working in the hospitality industry. His paintings often depicted a human body glowing, as if transfigured, in a geometric landscape.

Over the years, Mick kept up with advances in male augmentation but wasn’t thrilled by the options. The gains from a vacuum pump were fleeting; hanging weights from the end of his shaft seemed like a painful investment for an uncertain result; and having a surgeon snip his suspensory ligament, which promised an additional inch or so, could lead to wobblier erections. It wasn’t until the spring of 2019, when he was thirty-six, that he came across something appealing: a silicone implant shaped like a hot-dog bun which could be inserted just under the skin of the penis to increase its girth and flaccid length.

The device, called the Penuma, had been invented by James Elist—a silver-haired urologist who has been described on TMZ as “the Thomas Edison of penis surgery.” Elist’s procedure was touted as reversible, and, according to a rapturous article in GQ, more than a thousand men had already undergone it. It was also, as far as Mick could tell, the only genital enhancement on the market to have received the blessing of the Food and Drug Administration.

The basic operation would cost fifteen thousand dollars—roughly half of Mick’s life savings—though he added in a pair of discounted testicular implants, at seven grand more. He put down a deposit, told his long-distance boyfriend that he was taking a work trip, and, on a sunny morning in September, arrived at Elist’s office, in Beverly Hills. A framed copy of the GQ story—cover line: “We Have Huge News About Your Manhood”—hung on the wall of the exam room. Elist strode in, directed Mick to drop his pants, and rolled Mick’s scrotal sac appraisingly between his fingers, as though it were a piece of fruit at a market stall.

Elist’s hands seemed reassuringly delicate, but Mick wanted to see the implant before it was put inside him. The surgeon clicked open a briefcase containing three translucent sheaths: Large, Extra Large, and Extra Extra Large. The device felt stiff to Mick’s touch, but Elist told him that over time it would soften to the consistency of a gummy bear.

The consultation lasted about five minutes, Mick recalled. He signed a stack of consent forms and releases, including one that said his consultation had lasted more than an hour, and another promising “not to disclose, under any circumstance,” his “relationship with Dr. James J. Elist.” The operation took place the same morning in an outpatient clinic up the street. In the pre-op room, awaiting his turn, he watched “Rush Hour” in its entirety on a flat-screen TV.

When the surgery was over, Mick, still groggy from the general anesthesia, took an Uber to a Motel 6 near the airport, where he spent the next five days alone on his back, his penis mummy-wrapped in gauze. Morning erections were excruciating. Sharp jolts seized his crotch whenever he peed, which he could do only by leaning over the bathtub. He’d anticipated some discomfort, but when he changed his gauze, he was startled to see the corners of the implant protruding under the skin, like a misplaced bone.

Back in Seattle, the Penuma’s edges continued to jut out, particularly on the right side, although the testicular implants looked fine. He decided not to tell his boyfriend about the operation: talking to him would only make it seem more real, and he wasn’t yet prepared to entertain the possibility that he’d made a terrible mistake. When he e-mailed Elist’s clinic, the staff urged patience, counselling him that he was “continuing to heal as we expect.” Then he began to lose sensation.

“I know it’s been just three weeks and I’m following by the letter all the instructions but I’m a bit concerned about the look of it as you have seen in the pictures,” he wrote Elist.

“It’s been 70 days since surgery and yet it feels like a shrimp,” he wrote in November.

“I’m so sorry for another email,” he wrote in December, “but I am freaking out about the fact I have zero sensitivity in my penis!”

“Being totally numb is normal as mention[ed] in the past correct?” he asked later that month. “It will pass correct?”
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