This is your last chance to check the trigger warning list in the story description. Please do not continue past this point if you think it will trigger or disturb you. This is the last chapter that will be censored for language or content.

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October 22, 2014

Mitch:

Oh, fuck. That burns. I shift a few inches to the right so I can put my feet a little further back on the coffee table and the burning finally stops. I give an involuntary sigh of relief before wincing in pain as the catheter rolls again. It looks like I might have found a comfortable position for more than thirty seconds, but I don't want to curse it. Now if I just never had to move from this spot again, life would be great.

It isn't until I untangle my ear buds and pull my laptop up on the rickity little TV tray holding it up over my lap that I realize how awful this whole setup is. It's obscene, like something out of a horror-kink porn movie on RedTube. I don't think I have ever been this happy to live alone, forty-five minutes away from Mat and even further from anyone else. I'm sprawled out on the downstairs couch in my rental house wearing nothing but a red checkered bathrobe with my legs spread like three feet apart to keep my stitches from rubbing together or against the catheter. One of the few things worse than the feeling of stitches is the feeling of raw stitches. The whole situation fucking sucks and there's no way to keep it from hurting because of where it is, but I'll take a dull ache over the hellfire burning any day of the week. As long as no one walks in and sees this, every little thing is gonna be alright. Eventually.

You never realize how many nerves are down there or how sensitive it all is until you go to the chop shop and ask them to start hacking away at it. Surprisingly, I can't feel much in the back part, where they disconnected my urethra and dissected part of the spare smooth, mucosal tissue to lengthen it. No, the part that fucking throbs is where they sliced through the tissue anchoring the midsection of my dick in place, then cut down through the middle of the whole thing to hook the extended urethra through it. I can't imagine what it would feel like if I had done a complete phallo and had everything removed. All in time, I guess. Every movement, every thought sends a jolt of sharp pain through the ultra-sensitive, extra-thick tissue and it just makes me want to hibernate through the next three weeks until the stitches dissolve and I can have the catheter removed.

I know the final product will be worth all of the shit I've gone through; I'll have something that actually resembles a dick instead of just the abstract idea that I should have one. Not only that, but now my bottom half is more or less anatomically correct location-wise and I don't have to use the awkward, invasive stand-to-pee packers anymore. Having to dig around for gold and reposition everything in the depths at the urinal every time I have to go to the bathroom defeats the purpose of having an STP in the first place. It's supposed to help you pass, not make you the conversation piece at the other dinner tables. At least after my meto heals, I won't have to worry about getting yeast infections from the funnel every few months, or about not pushing it back far enough and accidentally pissing myself in public. Vanity aside, it was worth the surgery to not have to deal with that anymore.

Even though it isn't the same thing as a phalloplasty, not by a long shot, I don't feel as distant and disgusted by my body as I did just a few days ago when I checked into the hospital. I still don't feel right or secure or complete or confident, but for the first time in a very long time, I'm okay with myself. For better or for worse, I can ignore a significant source of my insecurity, something I haven't been able to do since puberty. I'm not ecstatic with the surgery results but until the plastic surgeons of the world pull their heads out of each other's asses long enough to come up with a design for a functioning neophallus that doesn't look like shit, I will have to be content. On the bright side, it looks like it's going to be a while before I have to turn into Frankenstein's monster again. After this past year, I feel like a professional pin cushion.

Until then, I'll be playing the Hunger Games to feed myself and so I can slowly pay back my surgery loans. Until then, I'm not going to worry about planning out the next step of my transition. Until then, I'll be chilling here with a carton of freshly squeezed orange juice and the cold air from the ceiling fan blowing on my burning crotch while I edit the first part of Episode 300 and wait for Jerome to get his lazy ass out of bed so we can finish recording. It would be nice to sleep for more than two hours without waking up in agony, but I guess I'm not meant to have such a posh life.

Jerome and the other guys don't realize how good they have it – I would like to see them go through this without getting 'bitchy.'

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October 23, 2014

Jerome:

"The way you're always murderin' me, some people might think you don't like me, Mitch." He smirks in the Skype window at the bottom of my screen and he directs his Minecraft character to run over and punch me off the side of the spawn lobby while two dozen people either watch the abuse or run after us. And the fans all say how nice he is. They've obviously never lived with this man. Even with his nerd glasses on he looks like an evil little fucker.

"Come on, Biggums. You know how much I love you. I love you to bits."

"Yeah, bits and pieces all over your living room wall. Why you gotta be so rude to a poor Bac?"

"Why you gotta be so da-rude?"

"Don't cha know I'm human, t-oooo. Well, not really." It's the usual meaningless banter YouTubers do when they're only half paying attention and trying to save and back-up footage they just spent an hour or two recording. It makes no sense and we both sound like absolute fucking idiots, even more than usual. We're just so used to saying something that the verbal diarrhea just kinda happens. Someone's always gotta be sayin' something, even if it means making cow noises.

"Why you gotta be so da-ruuude? I'm gonna murder you, anyway," he sing-songs while he frowns at something on his screen and looks too serious for a second. I thought maybe something corrupted and I start to ask him when he just raises an eyebrow and leans out of the frame to grab a cardboard thing of orange juice. We've been sitting here for three hours and he hasn't moved from that spot. How long has that been out of the fridge...? Dammit, Mitch. You and your fucking iron gut. I almost wish he'd get food poisoning one time so he'd learn how to use a fridge for something other than Cheetos and cereal. He settles back in with an ugly ass face and spends the next minute or two squirming around like a first grader who just snorted a pack of pixie sticks.

"Whatcha doin' over there? You keep making a face like there's a sandstorm up your ass." He glares at me and slow blinks into the camera with that snotty ass look he always gets when he doesn't wanna talk about something. Touchy, touchy.

"Why are you so concerned with my ass, dood?"

"Because it's bootylicious, Benj. Just wanna... ugh... give it a good ol' sluuuurrrppp." I slowly lean down towards the camera and he tries to keep a straight face. He really tries. But no one can resist a Bacca slurp at three in the morning. Why does he even try anymore?

"Oh, god. If you're going to make a face like that..."

"You know what they say, Mitch: if you've got a face only a mother could love, you'll never be a mother."

"But you'd make a great mother, Jerome." Now that's a scary thought. It'd be like a scene outta that lame ass Body Snatchers series on the Sci-Fi channel, me and him trading a churro for a chalupa. Might be a fun ride. I can't even imagine what the kids'd look like. Imagine a herd of little smirking big-nosed Mitches running around, setting shit on fire and tricking people into thinking Exlax is Hershey's chocolate. We could do our own version of that 'Forty-Two Kids and Counting' show where we show America what happens when you raise a pack of screaming trolls on Cheetos, Monsters, chicken nuggets, and Cinna Stix. I don't think there's a place on Earth we wouldn't get evicted from, but we'd definitely make it to the YouTube Choice Awards within a year. Maybe two years, tops.

"You really think so?"

"Of course. You already have a nest and everything." I see him staring at my desk in his Skype window, his eyes taking in the hoard of empty Monster cans and the sea of white styrofoam plates on the table behind me. I just adjust my penguin hat in fake indignation and pout at him.

"You makin' fun of my beak again?"

"What? You could be a mother bird like Mat and chew up everybody's food before trying to feed it back to them."

"Are you fucking kidding? Does he actually do that?"

"Yeah. Of course he does. Why do you think I refuse to do food challenges when he's around? This is The Jag Master General we're talking about."

"Goddammit, Nooch. Sick motherfucker."

"He probably does that, too. Where do you think he gets all of that chocolate milk from?"

"Now that's just nasty. We're not gonna sit here and talk about Nooch and his sweetened mom boob juice."

"Sweet-ness! That's all you?" He makes a kissy face with his face all scrunched up and I facepalm at the image of a grinning, ponytailed Nooch drizzling chocolate syrup over some middle-aged woman's tits and slurping it off. If this's what Awesome Sauce Films is about now, I'm fucking glad I got outta there in time. Mat and his goddamn bags of milk.

"You have a kid's song about that, too? To go with the one about the teacher's panties?" He just laughs and checks something on his phone while he fidgets some more. Now he's making me suspicious. "What's up with the dance party, Mitch? You got ants again?"

"No, I've just been sitting here for too long." We look at each other for a minute and he sighs and runs his fingers through his messy, curly, gel-less hair. And here I thought he was just bein' lazy and rolled outta bed to record like I did. Something's up. I can smell it all the way down here.

"I call bullshit. What'd you get stuck up your ass this time?" Now that, ladies and gentlemen, is a Level Four Bitch Face. If looks could kill, I'd be twenty different kinds of dead right now. I should screencap this and put it as my wallpaper on my laptop and my phone. What a beaut.

"I'm not the one who 'sat' on the Xbox 360 controller and whined about it for six hours afterward." He's screwing around with another program on his computer and I wait him out. He finally looks back over at Skype and rolls his eyes. He somehow doesn't get that being nosey is my job here, otherwise he'd never talk to anyone about any of this shit. Half the time, I don't even think his parents know what he's up to. "It just hurts, okay? You know what stitches do to me, dood."

"You had surgery? Again?! But you just-"

"I had to do it while I had the chance. With us heading to Florida in a couple of months, I didn't want to try to move or deal with Lachlan's antics while my dick is on fire and I have to walk like a fucking cowboy." Oh. Now that's a mental image I'll never be able to unsee: Mitch holding an ice pack against his bloody, stitched up cock and a shit ton of thick black stitches holding everything together where his pussy used to be. It's almost poetic, after all the issues he's had with his body. I know it's none of my business but I've been wondering if he was gonna do it someday. All the credit to him for growing the balls to do it. Literally.

So that's what he's been doing this week. That's why he hasn't been around to record with the guys and why he roped me into churning out like thirty hours of content last week. But why the hell would he go in and have surgery without telling anyone about it or letting anyone fly up to help him? The evil little distrustful, bull-headed, self-centered, secretive bastard.

"Why didn't you tell me, Mitch? I coulda caught a plane and helped you take care of the fast food runs and appointments and driving and shit. Do you like being in pain?"

"It isn't that bad, not like with the top surgery. I'm fine, Biggums. Can we just drop it now?"

"Are you building a cow farm? 'Cause you're full of bullshit today." He laughs nervously at that and he looks uncomfortable talking about this. Can't really blame him for not wanting to talk with a guy about his girl parts, but what am I gonna do? Tell him it's okay to sneak around and not tell anybody he's gonna go cut parts of his body off so no one can see if he's taking it too far? This's the guy who got pissed off when he was twelve and said he wished he was brave enough to cut his own organs out so he wouldn't have periods anymore. Any halfway sane person'd be worried about him suddenly signing up to have surgery and trying to hide it. "Look, I'm not tryin' to tell you what you can and can't do with your body. Your body, your life, your choice. But you're scaring me with all this surgery. I just... I don't want you to get hurt."

"I'm fine, Jerome. Seriously, I'm fine. I won't have to go in for another autopsy for at least a year, so there's no reason for you to sit there and lecture me about cutting myself up. Trust me when I say that I wish I could go the rest of my life without needing to do this again." He seems to be telling the truth but who knows with this guy. Any day now he could get another one of these brilliant ideas of his. Ryan talking us into moving down to Florida is turning out to be the best plan I think any of us have ever had, business-wise and otherwise. At least then I'll be able to babysit him and make sure he doesn't do anything too stupid. And everyone thinks he's the responsible one.

"So... How's that goin' with the skinny jeans?"

"It's not. It's fucking cold down here," he laughs as he pulls his robe back up on his chest and starts clicking away at the editing program so he can get the video out on time. Leave it to Mitch to be more worried about an episode of the Hunger Games than about his own health. He drives me crazy.

"I volunteer as tribute!" I yell a little too loud for the wee hours of the morning as I strip my pajamas and my M&M boxers off and twirl 'em around next to my head and shoot 'em off into the corner by the door. Fuck. That is cold. And he's further north than I am. At least that got a good laugh out of him.

"I can't wait until your dad walks in on you and sees you screaming and doing a strip tease on camera."

"What can I say, Mitch? It's a breath of fresh air."