PERSONAL ESSAYS

Reader Feedback on "To Have and Have Not"

please forward to Michael Moore. Please call Andrew Susman at 212 213 2332 regarding an important matter.
--as
10/17

I had my left testicle removed when I was 18 for an Epidermoid Cyst. I was the 125th person to ever be known to have it. It was pre cancerous and completely removed so no extra post operative care was required. I had just started having sex and was blown away by it. I felt no change in my sex drive. The brothers on a friend who visited while I was in the hospital started calling me 'Uno'. Over the years I did not worry about being 'deformed', but more about reproduction. Now 18 years later I have two sons, 3 years and 10 months. I do not worry about any of it. I still can get laid and give a good lay. Lossing my penis is a whole different story though ;-)
--ajm
06/15

adsasdasdasdasd
--name
11/30

It was gettin good there man!!!!! What happened to the rest of it? Is this supposed to be like a saga or a series or somethin? Let a female know!!!!
--AJ
11/29

Most interesting article. May I be so bold and ask the author (or anyone else) if he can put me in touch with a doctor who is prepared to talk about casrtation and its effects. I am a long-term researcher into the Forbidden City in Beijing China, and am in the final stages of writing a book on the people who lived and worked there.The subject of Eunuchs is a major chapter in the history of this palace, but information about how castration affected eunuchs, and to wha extent they could achieve an erection after the testicles were removed, and to what extent their interest in women was reduced, is very hard to come by in an unbiassed form. If anyone wants to get some info about me then this is available from my website at http://www.forbiddencity.freeservers.com Many thanks in anticipation, Roy Bates, Beijing China.
--CRB
11/25

Amirable this writer's ability to get beyond Ahab tearing himself and the world apart searching for something he's lost and over into the affirming, comic world of Ishmeal. That's not an easy move, and this writer shows us he's done it, and done it, in a pleasurable style. Thanks to him.
--DQ
11/23

I am having such a hard time with life right now but reading "To have and have not" just made me feel so much better for no other reason than the fact that it was so beautifully written. It hurt my heart.
--esd
11/22

Michael, thanks for conveying your experience. It has me thinking about my own. I stepped out of the shower on a Friday night in the middle of a long, lonely and miserably hot summer in Tucsom last year, to discover a hard lump in my right testicle. Ironically, I had a part-time job teaching second-year medical students how to perform male genital-rectal exams, so I knew immediately what it was. (Like you, the first doctor I spoke with assured me it was probably an infection. My ass.) A week later I had surgery. Reflecting later, I realized I never once had feelings of loss about that testicle, never had the conversations a woman might have with a soon-to-be-aborted fetus, thanking it for 37 years of service, explaining why it needed to leave my body. As far as I was concerned, it violated an essential trust I have in my body, and my reaction was "zero tolerance." "Sorry. You broke the rules. You're out." A few days later, sore and stoned, I stood in a parking lot, stood still, feeling this new imbalance, and wondered whether I ought to do some movement work to integrate this lopsidedness. A month later, I started nine weeks of chemo. The standard protocol. Certainly chemo was a more transformative ordeal than losing the testicle. Joining the ranks of those struggling with a life-threatening disease...not joining, but suddenly counting oneself among them. But I considered myself tremendously fortunate, and tried to bring as much life and health into the Cancer Center as I could...dressing wildly, writing limmericks for the nurses, and feeling a deep care and connection to the others in the room hooked up to their hoses. I'm sorry...it seems to me you missed this part of the experience...in a way, the opportunity to deepen your relationship with yourself and the people around you. I saw and felt incredible courage and strength. The elderly gal with the inebriating smile wearing a baseball cap her daughter'd given her with the words "No Hair Day" across the front. She loved the hat. And there were others...you look at them, steal a glance, and know they've given up...and there's deep sadness in you, watching a woman as frail and beyond her limit, who could be your mother, walking with her husband, slowly, to the bathroom, wheeling the IV stand along with her. In the aftermath, I felt it would be a long time until I was ready to have sex, and I felt very protective of myself. But on the last day of the nine-week ordeal, four or five days since my last treatment, and feeling the faintest signs of life returning to my flesh, I went for a long walk in the late autumn woods with a Halloween acquaintance from the night before. I remember lying next to her in the grass staring up at the naked branches, drinking in life, and the feeling of her warmth alongside me. She rocked gently astride my sallow and defeathered body that night, holding my cock with such tenderness inside her, I felt she was an angel sent to welcome me back to the world. After that, with the same indifference I had felt at the loss of the testicle, I found no traces of shame at my new conformation. I nursed and cared and comforted myself through that whole experience so devotedly, and attended to the minutia of my own needs with such love, that no one could make me feel like a freak for it. I'm glad you're well now, and it sounds as though life has surged ahead into an embrace of joy and heart-fullness. I too will be teaching soon, and will sense the ocean breezes from further off. Peace, Jim. 11/20/99
--JL
11/20

Hmmm... an interesting story, to be sure. In some ways, I can relate to this article and in others I just can't. I was born with one testicle so I guess I never really got to experience the sense of loss that Michael did. Sure, there was some adjustment at critical points in my growing up. The first time I had to take a shower with the rest of the guys. My first physical, in front of the rest of the boy's junior high basketball team. Boy, did that ever suck! The first time I ever had to have 'the conversation'. Ha, that's the first time I've ever written or referred to 'the conversation's' existance. It was with my first girlfriend. I have scars, but they are not mental. I had two exploritory surgeries, one at about 2? and one at 12 looking for the lost teste in case it could turn cancerous or something. From my point of view, it's much harder to go through adolecence with that condition than as an adult. Perhaps I've had much longer to get used to the idea, but I can say that it's never hampered me or made me think twice about being with a girl. I've had somewhere between 30-40 lovers, never really counted after that hazy time between 20 and 25 years and never once has a woman been turned off or made a disparaging comment. Perhaps I'm just lucky, but I don't think so. Some women I told, some I didn't even bother. The ones I didn't never did notice and I always wondered about that. Do I have a point here? To the best of my knowledge, my condition has served to make me stronger. I learned at a young age to have thicker skin than normal. I learned that in adulthood, it simply didn't matter. Just wasn't an issue, at least not one that ever affected my relationship with anyone. I thought that being a better lover and boyfriend would give me an edge. Now I know that I never needed that edge in the first place, but I'm glad I took the steps to learn! haha. My advice to men like Michael? Life goes on guys, I've yet to meet a woman who cares. I'm sure there are some out there, but in my 31 years I've yet to meet one. You should thank god that he took something that you didn't really need, like that kidney-lung-eye. -peace
--sh
11/19

Brav(e)o!
--Jeff
11/18

I believe I was the last woman Michael Moore dated in New York. Though I know I have been fictionalized, I hope, I would like to say for the record that I did see his testicle and touched it and I distinctly remember thinking how normal it was. It was totally normal. The whole thing just sort of hung as one. It was a nice testicle and a nice penis and if I had been older or had a better sense of intuition or been a better person I would have/should have held him and experienced his loss with him better. In any case, as big a deal as it was for him to have a testicle removed, aeshetically speaking, from a woman's point of view, it was no big deal and looked great. Having two testicles is extraneous anyway. Best to mike.
--me
11/17

Absolutely brilliant. Shocking, honest, human. I want to run my fingers through his hair.
--SLS
11/16

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