The Nub by Sam Elkin
Content Warning: This piece discusses transphobia, sexual assault and abusive relationships.
The Nub
I hold it between my fingertips like a cigarette hidden inside my legs. I squeeze my fingers together to apply pressure, and then squeeze and release, squeeze and release. I add lube to my fingertips to stroke it up and down. I start gently, and then pull it faster and faster until I reach climax. Release and rest. Then I lie in bed for a few minutes, blissfully relaxed, waiting for my pulse to slow. Then I get on with my day.
The technical term for my ‘condition’ is clitoromegaly, or in simple terms, an enlarged clitoris. Some women naturally develop clitoromegaly due to polycystic ovary syndrome and other disorders that increase the presence of so-called ‘male’ androgens in the body. In a woman’s body, too much testosterone and androstenedione can result in “virilizing effects” including acne, increased facial hair and male pattern hair growth. In the definitive Atlas of Human Sex Anatomy, the typical clitoris is defined as being 3 to 4 mm in width of and a lengthwise width 4 to 5 mm in length. If your clitoris is double that size, then surprise! You’ve got clitoromegaly.
I myself have gone down the unnatural route to clitoromegaly by wilfully applying a topical testosterone cream to my abdomen for the last three years. This cream wasn’t easy to come by, of course. There were many confused, angst-filled years leading up me putting my name on the gender clinic wait list. Then there was the not inconsiderable wait for my first appointment. Finally, getting the nod from a GP, a psychologist and an endocrinologist, it was determined that I had ‘gender dysphoria’. This diagnosis was the ticket to my first testosterone prescription. From there, it was just a daunting trip to the pharmacist followed by a three day wait to pick up my cream. The customer service assistant looked completely bemused as to why woman had a script for testosterone, but she handed it over.
Then, all I had to do was carefully draw out 2mL of the white, opaque cream from the tube with a measuring applicator and rub it into my torso. It would seep through my skin and into my blood stream. This was the little tube that could, super-sizing my clitoral erectile tissue until it resembled the tip of my thumb.
No one would mistake this little nub for a penis. It’s more like an outie belly button attached to an inner cord that leads to god knows where in there. It’s a wonder of modern pharmacology.
I was scared when I first read about this side effect of testosterone usage. Despite having met many trans men over the years, I had no idea that this was one of the effects of testosterone use. I didn’t know the human body could grow a new part.
Some call it their ‘dick’, their ‘growth’ or their ‘junk’. Of those, I like junk the best, like a beat-up old jalopy. Junk is fun, cheap and cheerful, the kind of miscellany you might find in the discount bin of a country op shop. The trans men and non-binary folk on reddit and Facebook are always talking about their junk. Some crow about their 2 to 3-inch growth, while others asking what they can do to get to these great lengths. Solutions are offered, including clitoral pumps and ointments, though there’s little proof that they work.
I was surprised to find that trans men seemed to engage in as much size talk as other men. Because I don’t think in inches, it took me awhile to realize what they meant. 5 to 7 centimetres! Mine was nowhere near that. I realized then that even my trans man standards, I am on the small side. Trying to take this news in my stride, I took to calling it my nub.
Depending on the shape of your vulva, you might have discomfort when your nub starts rubbing up against your underwear. I didn’t have this problem. My little nub is safely stored away behind the folds of my labia majora.
There’s no official ritual that comes after growing a nub. No bar mitzvah or Rumspringa, not even an awkward trip to the supermarket with a parent to get pads.
There’s just me and my nub. Perhaps it’s time that we made one up. Many of my trans masculine and non-binary assigned female at birth brethren consider theirs to be a penis. And I’m fine with that. I know just enough about post-structuralism to understand that there’s no reality outside language, and that words can signify anything you want them to. But despite my love of Eva Luna and One Hundred Years of Solitude, I’ve never been a magical thinker.
I’m always trying to get to the nub of the issue. What am I now? Am I a male with a vagina? Or am I a mannish woman with a big clitoris and an extremely hairy tummy? Or, could it be that I have crossed over into the land of the third sex like Hermaphroditus, a male and female cojoined? Have I become, through hormonal intervention, physically intersex?
This is dangerous talk, you understand. My quest to understand what I am is at odds with the defensive campaign to defend my people’s right to live as we wish, to access these potions to make our bodies easier for us to live in. I know it would be better for me to be silent. But my mind won’t stop wondering.
It’s hard way to live in the world. Say, for example, I settle on the idea that I am a man without a penis now. In an instant my mind conjures up the spectre of John and Lorena Bobbitt and the international media frenzy stemming from a collective horror at the very thought of a man without a penis. Why did this penis, temporarily removed from its undistinguished American owner, end up being so very famous? So famous that I, at 9 years old, heard all about it in Perth, Western Australia? What was so very funny about a man without a penis?
The real story wasn’t very funny at all. She said that she’d done it after he raped her, which he’d done repeatedly throughout their marriage. He was so drunk that he didn’t know what she’d done, and fell back asleep. She drove off, threw his penis into a field, but soon called the Police to confess to what she’d done. The Police collected his penis and packed it in ice, and it was successfully re-attached by a urologist. The urologist James Sehn, who also shot to fame as a result of the case, said in a 2019 interview, that when he saw John without his penis, “It was a kind of an out-of-body experience… It really takes your breath away to see this kind of disfigurement."
Would my body take his breath away too?
The year that Lorena cut of her husband’s penis was also the year my parents split up, and my Dad forced my Mum to leave the house. My brother and I spent nights at home alone watching late night TV with David Letterman. He’d tell jokes like “You guys hear that Lorena Bobbitt got into a car accident yesterday? Some dick cut her off” and the crowd would erupt into laughter. He then followed it up with “Why was Lorena Bobbitt found not guilty? Because the evidence wouldn't stand up in court.” I needed my brother to explain that one to me. Later that year, scientists named a deep-sea worm that lies in ambush in the seafloor and attacks unsuspecting prey the ‘Bobbit Worm’.
Funny.
In 1993 the avant-garde rock band King Missile had a surprise hit with Detachable Penis, which made it to number 17 in the Australian charts in 1993. It’s a deadpan monologue about a guy who awakens to find his penis is missing after a night of heavy drinking. “I don’t really like being without my penis for too long. It makes me feel like less of a man, and I really hate having to sit down every time I take a leak.” It’s one of those songs that knocks around my head that I truly wish I could forget.
Another track called Short Dick Man by dance group 20 Fingers made it to number 4 in the charts the following year. This song is a true ear worm, and I am sorry for bringing it up. Most of the song features a woman who sounds bored and irritated, who repeats the line “Don't want no short dick man” over and over again. Occasionally she busts out and says “What in the world is that fucking thing? Do you need some fucking tweezers to put that little thing away?” and then laughs and says “Isn't that cute - an extra belly button!”
I’ve since read that this track was meant to be a feminist take down of sexist rap lyrics. But I didn’t get that. I don’t know why this track affected me so much as I didn’t have a dick, small or otherwise. But it made me ice cold with shame.
They say that the Ancient Greeks preferred a small penis, as they believed it made a man rational, intellectual and authoritative. That’s why Michelangelo’s idealised David has a small one. Ancient Greek statues of Satyrs; the lustful, ugly half man-half donkey attendants of Dionysus have huge, comically large penises, pointy equine ears and wild manes.
I wonder what the Ancient Greeks would have thought of a man with a vagina? They probably would’ve seen me as an omen of the downfall of their empire.
Am I a bad omen?
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