Which makes you realize that penis envy and actually wanting a reconstructed penis are very different things

Or, now for something completely different.

You really have to want to be a man if you're willing to go through that whole sex change operation. Do you have any idea how much there is to it?

I said as much to Nick when I got in the car yesterday.

And instead of saying he had no idea how much was involved, he was all, "I guess we're done with rabies?"

This I can't promise. But here's how this started. So the other day, Betty learned that one of her neighbors, an older, married man, had passed away. She simultaneously learned that he had been a cross dresser.

This, on their street, in Virginia? Big news. They knew a cross-dresser! She told me immediately.

How, she had asked the neighbor who told her, did she know this?

Turns out she used to see him get into the car dressed as a woman, off to the grocery store. Apparently, she added, sotto voce, it was quite hard on his wife.

So I Googled, which led me to Wikipedia, and sexual reassignment surgery. I looked at female-to-male, which seemed somehow more compelling.

I knew about the hormones. And the mastectomy. But I hadn't really given any thought to how you might wind up with man bits.

Although, if pressed, I'd have assumed that even if gave you a new penis, they left the vagina to pee with. Wouldn't you need it as a pee hole?

No! Because it turns out "...the urethra can be rerouted through the phallus to allow urination through the reconstructed penis."

Yes. They can either enlarge the clitoris through hormones (how much, one wonders, but truthfully, one hasn't yet investigated) or create one through skin grafts. And then, they can reroute the urethra. They can also implant an erectile prosthetic.

They build you a whole new penis out of your own skin. And then they put something in that allows you to have an erection. And they redo your plumbing so you can pee through it.

It's really quite amazing, isn't it?

By comparison, the balls, they seem relatively easy. They form a scrotum out of the lips and then stick in prosthetic testicles.

And that's really all I've got there. Anything else you'd like to know about anything?

And yes, this is the kind of post that makes Nick worry that you will think there's something very wrong with me.

So hi! Hope your holidays were great! Happy Monday!