The Selfie in Me

Jim Reese

Some people might find it perfectly natural to take pictures of their business. I don’t… but I did. There I was with my pants down, one foot up on the toilet, with my iPhone between my legs trying to focus the camera on the area of interest. In each picture you can see my head in the background—my facial expressions curiously bizarre. Think perspective from down below—part film noir and gothic horror. What I needed to make certain was that the perineum area was in focus.

It was the beginning of 2021, and the COVID pandemic had been with us for almost a year. Physical fitness has been a thing for me for the past five years since I took some hard looks at the lifestyle I was living. To quote Pulitzer Prize–winner Ted Kooser, “I quit drinking when it turned into a part-time job.” I spent many deluded years living the lifestyle of the renegade writer who had to suffer and run the edge to be creative. What I discovered was it didn’t make me a better writer or person. I wasn’t running, either. I had a hitch in my get-along and was out of focus.

As thousands continued to die because of the novel coronavirus, I had begun trying new regimens and pushing myself. A year into the pandemic, over 550,000 Americans had died. The thought of what COVID could do to me, my family, and my friends changed my approach. Two people very close to me died this past year, and I wonder if they would still be alive had they taken the same serious inventory of their lifestyles. So, I run. Three miles at a time. In January. In South Dakota. I’m that guy—the crazy one running in a blizzard, slogging through and over snow drifts. I seemed healthy, but never judge a book by its cover. No one knew I was taking close-up selfies and that I might be on the verge of death.
 

No Pain, No Game

Lump on your balls, call the doctor. I get it. I really get it. After spending the last summer racking up hundreds of miles on my bike and now running, I found a bump on my taint. That’s what I get for taking care of myself. Part of my brain began to freak out while the sane side of me said it’s a zit or an ingrown hair. For the first week I just checked the area—a lot. A few times a day. The second week I tried to examine the area with my own two eyes; I’m flexible, but this was a no-go. Obsession led to perineum selfies—the first time I’d ever taken a picture of my undercarriage or had a phone near my Netherlands. Then I figured if I sat my ass in the tub, lifted said business, I might be able to see and attack the area. I wondered where I had put the X-Acto knife in the garage. And then when my own self-evisceration with some very sharp tweezers didn’t work and the bump became infected, I became a complete mess after reading too many comments in a WebMD article. I knew then it was time to ask my wife her opinion.

I felt a bit relieved I wouldn’t have to do multiple high kicks or the splits with my ass in the air for visual reference; I had pictures. I suppose there are lots of couples who enjoy exchanging visual images. This would not be one of those occasions. I believed the close-ups were a necessity if I had to call my doctor. I propped my leg up on the toilet to get the best lighting. I wasn’t sure my bump warranted an in-person visit to the clinic during a worldwide pandemic—so the pictures might be crucial during a telehealth visit. I thought taking the self-portraits with my iPhone would be better than placing the phone between my legs and screaming during the telehealth visit, “Can you see it?”

My wife works in healthcare and was overwhelmed with taking care of critically ill patients during a pandemic. We someday will be the black and white photos in history books—and what an unwelcome reference that will acknowledge. I shouldn’t have been surprised when she gave me a look of disgust when I tried to show her the twenty-three pictures I had taken.

“I’m eating here,” she said, stabbing her fork into a mixture of superfood she’d concocted—salmon, spinach, avocado, and almonds.

“It’s not cancer, is it?”

“No, it’s not cancer. Take a bath. Put some tea tree oil on it. If it was on your balls, then I’d worry.”

Are Runners Weird or Is It Everyone?

I am learning that runners are a peculiar bunch. One in five runners has a story about defecating while running—usually about themselves or someone very close to them. It’s as if they’ve already crossed the finish line—are used to pushing their bodies to extremes and could care less what out-of-shape non-athletes think. As humorous and vain as some titles of articles are, I found myself engrossed in a fairly small Men’s Health piece titled “5 Ways Running Affects Your Penis and Balls—this ubiquitous exercise can both help and hurt your junk.” As a guy, I don't know why my balls do what they do. They didn't teach us that during sex ed week in 5th grade nor did anyone ask why these things happen in the anonymous “question box” that the teacher tried desperately to address while keeping a straight face. As a man you understand that water and cold weather make your testicles constrict. I’m in my late forties, and I’m finally understanding why.

Markham Heid writes, “Your testicles’ ability to draw up toward your body is called cremasteric reflex.” It’s how a man’s “junk” adapts to essentially go incognito. Shrinkage—man’s biggest fear. The article goes on to answer questions like, What if I feel pain? What if there’s a lump on my balls? It states, “Some guys also experience pain that defies explanation. Men who worry their pain could be cancer and doesn’t have an identifiable cause.”

As humans, we have incentives and goals. And there’s the constant obsession that I am competing with myself—a nuanced version of a better me, egging me on. Aside from living until I am 107, I really just want to cut the fat. Lose the belly completely. Too many people in South Dakota look like potatoes. I won’t be one of them.

I remember two things about the last half-marathon a friend of mine ran. One was an enormous table of bananas. Running burns a lot of potassium. The other thing was, while I was watching the runners finish outside of the Denny Sanford Arena in Sioux Falls, a woman asked my friend to take her picture. They were both sweaty and exhilarated because they had just realized an enormous goal. Everyone was smiling and happy. She took the stranger’s picture and then the woman critiqued the image on her cell phone and asked her to retake it because, she said, her camel toe was showing.

Oh, this commerce of taking pictures of your body. I know grown adults who take damn near nude selfies—I see them on Facebook. And I see people at the gym filming themselves and setting timers, taking and retaking photos of themselves, posing next to a squat rack. The times we live in and our insane vanity—forever young. According to one new divorcé I know, some people demanded a photo of his equipment before agreeing to a first date. That’s interesting on so many levels. Before a first date, before any encounter, do you go through with it? And if you do, what does that say about you as a person? Or the people asking for the dick pic? Where does the photo of your genitalia go after?

Self-Diagnosis

My running had likely caused the bump on my taint. Or it had given me cancer. This was the dilemma. I wouldn’t advise reading comment sections on the web until four in the morning, trying to diagnose yourself. Not unless you want to get totally freaked out until you man up and visit the doctor for a zit, ingrown hair, or bump between your legs. I couldn’t stop myself and continued to search Healthline. My research found lumps could lead to cysts. Cysts could lead to abscesses or to a cancerous tumor. “A cancerous tumor can grow on the skin of the perineum or in the tissues underneath, resulting in a lump. It may get bigger and more painful or tender over time. Both benign and cancerous tumors are more common in your 30s and 40s.”

I’m forty-eight. Thanks, Healthline. The smart side of my brain told me, stop worrying. The crazy side of my brain said, keep reading. If I was unkempt, I might not have been able to notice said bump. A few years ago I might feel the need to defend my self-grooming. But now, Facebook and TikTok showcase brands like The Lawn Mower, Manscaped, and the Ballber Groin Trimmer by Happy Nuts! The products have gone viral. Also, I’m writing this to help my fellow runners—perhaps self-evisceration is not the answer.

Interlude

In college a good friend of mine said he had a roommate in the army who acquired crabs from a one-night stand. Upon discovering the bugs in his pubic hair, he looked around the barracks for something to fumigate himself with. A can of Raid was discovered and utilized.

If I Can Feel You, I Can Heal You

Between the soaking and self-surgery, I had made matters worse and found myself in the aisle of the pharmacy looking for a triple-action antibiotic. Then, when that didn’t work, I finally went to the doctor. I briefly explained my situation to my doctor’s nurse, who I have partied with and who happens to be friends with my wife. I made sure to use the clinical word: perineum. We had some small talk and then she left. In retrospect, maybe I should have said—it’s a man thing.

When the doctor arrived, I got straight to the point and reached for my iPhone before he could tell me to drop my pants and said, “I thought this might be a tele-health visit due to COVID.” I showed him the pictures, swiping through them rather quickly after the first few.

“Did your girlfriend take these?”

I smiled.

“It’s not cancer, is it?” I asked a little too loudly.

He looked at me very professionally, maybe because I played along with his joke, and said very matter-of-factly, “It’s not cancer. It’s folliculitis.” I’m sure I looked even more troubled than I appeared when I continued showing him my selfies. “An ingrown hair.”

“I do not have cancer?” I always seem to have to hear these things two or three times.

“It’s not cancer. It’s an ingrown hair.”

We think we can fix our bodies like doctors think they can take a few months off of work and write the next great novel. Something I’ve heard a doctor say in this very clinic. Either rarely ever happens. This doctor prescribed Cephalexin. It quieted the voices.

Men and fears. They might not be what you think. Death, of course. Public speaking is probably another. I was surprised to see prison didn’t make the list. I googled the inquiry:

1: Inadequacy.

2: Inadequate size of penis.

3: Freedom.

4: Being broke.

5. Being perceived as gay.

6. Dying alone.

7. Ending up with the wrong person.

8. Keeping the spark alive.

When you find out the bump between your legs isn’t cancer and the doctor is not concerned, and he’s not going to perform instant surgery or even make you drop trou, walking through Walmart can be pleasurable. That’s where I found myself as I filled my Rx. I walked the aisles a bit slower, listening to the Bee Gees pumping through the radio: Well you can tell by the way I use my walk I’m a woman’s man, no time to talk… Ah, ha, ha, ha, stayin' alive, stayin' alive, Ah, ha, ha, ha, stayin' alive.

Upon checkout, a man who had refused to wear his COVID mask in a self-checkout kiosk near me started screaming, “This damn place! This goddamn place! Not one goddamn checker in here! Next thing you know we’re gonna have to be cooking the food ourselves!” I continued to scan my items—all smiles under my COVID mask. I wondered, who was cooking food for him at other stores?

I rode the high of knowing I wasn’t going to die for about five days and realized the bump hadn’t gotten any better. My wife said if I called my doctor again I’d get a PERMANENT RED FLAG in my file. I called. He called me back within a couple of hours—a perk of living somewhere with a population of less than twenty thousand. I said, “I don’t mean to sound crazy, but...” and he laughed and then said, “Oh, no. It’s okay.” He prescribed another week of antibiotics and said the healing would take time. Once again, he said it was not cancer, but a cyst or ingrown hair. Said if it was there for a long time a surgeon could remove it. “I think it will go away,” he said.

I was talking to a good friend of mine who is twenty-nine and who is also a worrier. I said, “That’s not how you want your obituary to read—Man dies of self-evisceration in bathtub. The deceased was trying to remove ingrown hair with tweezers when he took things a little too far and removed a vein which bled profusely, and which he could not contain.”

“I worry all the time,” my friend said. “My wife reminds me I was never this way when we were dating. I have a spot on my lip.” He pulls his lip towards me.

“That’s a freckle,” I say.

“That’s what my doctor said. But I used to chew in high school so I started googling lip cancer and then, you know how it goes. It was a nightmare. Comment sections made me batshit. I got over it. Partly because my doctor, well, I think he’s going to give me the boot. I have to back off for a few months. So I’m doing a lot of deep breathing. In fact, I haven’t thought of anything to worry about yet today.”

Runners can be weird, and I feel like I just might fit in. The other night I had a dream about superfoods. I was outside running down a carless street. There was no wind, no snow, picture perfect, and it began to sprinkle avocados. There were two rainbows in the distance. What was odd was the avocados were already pitted. I wasn’t getting particularly dirty or bruised from the falling fruit and, happily, they already tasted like guacamole. I continued to grab them from the sky and off my shoulder at my leisure.

It's a bizarre dream, but so is much of what I was doing to myself. It was just a hair. It wasn’t cancer. It was just liquid controlling my life. Liquid.

Part of being a runner—and a living human being (for me anyway) —is I have these voices and ideas galloping through my mind. As this marvelous world continues to surprise me in my own moving motion picture—I am Muybridge—I am all four hooves off the ground.

And now, I'm also dreaming about running, healthy food falling from the sky. For a year I never ran with headphones, and some days I still don't—there's too much to take in. These voices, thoughts, and literal screams of encouragement and disdain from drivers. With the death of people who were way too young, I consider it a wake-up call, one I am grateful didn’t go to voice mail. There's nothing more disheartening than people in their forties and fifties complaining about getting old. Most of those people have made a conscious effort to give up—all of this during a worldwide pandemic. I get it. I really get it. We all fear. Maybe that’s why I haven’t deleted all my selfies—there’s a few hidden just in case I need a second opinion.

Jim Reese is Associate Professor of English and director of the Great Plains Writers’ Tour at Mount Marty University in Yankton, South Dakota. Reese’s poetry and prose have been widely published, and he has presented at venues throughout the country, including the Library of Congress and San Quentin Prison. Reese’s awards include a 2022 Distinguished Teaching Award from Mount Marty University, First Place Allen Ginsberg Poetry Award, a Distinguished Achievement Award from Mount Marty University, and a Distinguished Public Service Award in recognition of his exemplary dedication and contributions to the Education Department at Federal Prison Camp Yankton. His books include These Trespasses, ghost on 3rd, and Really Happy! A fourth collection, Dancing Room Only, is forthcoming by New York Quarterly Books. His first book of nonfiction, Bone Chalk, was published by Stephen F. Austin State University Press in 2019; paperback released in 2021. More at www.jimreese.org.