"There are some eunuchs which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake. He that is able to receive IT, let him receive IT" Matthew 19:12

Ricki Lee King is a self-made eunuch looking for correspondance with like minded parties and may be reached via email at [email protected] or via his webpage. Occasionally you will find Ricki on EFnet IRC groups like #bodyart.

In the spring of 1957, a cigarette smoking alcoholic pregnant woman was prescribed a drug called diethylstilbestrol (DES), intended to reduce her chances of miscarriage. Instead, it etched strange and perverse changes into the character of her unborn son. On the ninth of August 1957 Ricki was born, a breach birth that nearly killed both him and his mother. The delivering Jewish doctor was ethically opposed to Cesarian section, and in the process of literally prying him out, Ricki's hip was dislocated and one ear was almost entirely torn off. The doctor predicted that Ricki was going to be mentally retarded since he'd been without oxygen for so long, but Ricki's brain damage manifested itself in another way. While his IQ was tested at a slightly above average 121, he was, as he puts it, "wacko from birth". Or, to use his psychiatrist's words, Ricki suffers from "bizarre masochistic sexual behavior".

I recall trying to put objects in my rectum and penis while still in the play pen which puts me at one year old or less. I also took the safety pins from my diapers and pricked my skin all over my body to see how different parts felt. I was playing with fire and intentionally burning my genitals by age four. From age five to eighteen I just did more of the same probing and pricking, but nothing dramatic. I was very anti-social growing up and had no friends.

To this day my mother won't admit I had problems. She pretty much just ignored my behavior, although she used to call me "shithooks" in front of people to hurt my feelings. Of course, I did constantly have my fingers up my butt!

When I was 13 I read the story of "O", and have wanted to be "O" ever since. I find that most folks into S&M are really just into role playing and head games -- I'm not like that. I hate head games and role playing and I am serious about mixing sex and genital pain, and making permanent expressions of my inner feelings on my outer body.

Ricki suffers from a rare subclass of his personality type that has an odd psychological desire to cut and mark his body lengthwise. Using a salvaged razor blade held in a pair of old pliers, Ricki began subincising his penis, cutting the bottom half open like an over-cooked hot dog, resulting in a strange male/female appearance -- even since childhood he'd had a great deal of gender confusion and dysphoria. He had originally intended to remove his penis altogether but was drawn somehow to the idea of splitting the urethra instead and thus the subincision was born.

After high school I got more and more bold with my sex play. Putting objects all the way into my bladder and a lot of play piercing. Once I even had to go to the emergency room to get a rubber band removed from my bladder. When I was twenty I tried to castrate myself but when I started to cut into the cords the pain stopped me. I had to get stitches at the ER. A few months later I started the subincision.

I was a total sex addict from age twelve until I started on hormones in my twenties. When I was twenty-two I stabbed a police officer who came to break up a fight, and had to do eight months in prison, followed by eight more months in a state mental institution. While waiting to be sentenced to prison I completed my subincision but went to the ER to get the edges stitched and the bleeding stopped.

A fresh subincision is nearly impossible to totally repair unless they get a specialist to do microsurgery, and even then there is no guarantee that it will heal properly. So when I did mine they decided to sew the edges and give me time to think about whether I wanted it repaired later. Getting it repaired would require at least three operations where they make a new urethra from a tube of skin. But of course I didn't want that. The other reason they did not sew it up was because I simply said no. I refused to sign the surgery consent form at that time, but a few days later in the psyche ward they talked me into getting it repaired. When they wheeled me into surgery, it hit me that they were going to make me look like everyone else, so I hopped off the gurney and walked back to the psyche ward.

Whenever I would cut myself, they would automatically put me in the psyche ward, but in the last four or five years if I go to the ER to get stitches, they call up the psyche ward and the shrink says, "oh him, he has problems that we can't help him with."

The subincision was me making the statement that I did not respect or care about society's sexual rules or roles. I was trying to set myself apart from the herd in a very fundamental way. But I could still blend in when need be because it is usually hidden. To me genital modification is the ultimate way to say "fuck you society!"

After Ricki's assault on the police officer, he was put into a prison within a prison for the most violent offenders. He'd never experienced even normal prison, and thought he'd "died and went to hell". The one thing that prison did teach him was that he needed to totally disable his ability to be violent. To facilitate that the prison put him on psychiatric drugs and he has been taking them ever since.

After finishing his subincision, Ricki had to sit due to a messy flow. He decided that he liked to "pee like a woman", and attempted a urethral reroute, opening the urethra behind the scrotum.

I attempted this about 5 years ago -- I figured my roommate wouldn't notice. It was very hard to do by myself. I put a quarter inch diameter stainless steel rod that I bought at a hardware store (and filed off the sharp edges) in my urethra so I could feel where to cut. Using a mirror so I could see what I was doing, I cut into my urethra from the outside using a razor knife. I did not sew the edges, and hoped it would heal.

It became infected almost right away and I had to go get antibiotics and let it heal over. Right after that my urologist switched me to DES, the same drug my mother took when pregnant with me. It totally calmed me down and let me experience what it was like to be castrated. While I was on the DES, it eliminated my sex drive altogether -- I wonder if my mother taking DES while I was in the womb formed the unusual nature of my sexuality? I suspect that at the very least it caused my homosexuality and transsexuality.

I don't feel I fit in as either male or female. My nature is a little of both. The hormones help me with my sex addiction, pacify my desire to hurt myself, get rid of my bad temper, and make my body look more feminine -- I've even started lactating. I am thrilled when referred to as female, when people call me "ma'am", "miss", "she", or "her". My goal is to be physically and mentally genderless but express myself mostly as female. My desire to be an it is as serious as death.

When I was talking to Ricki at the time, he stayed at home all day playing with his computer. He had no will power, no friends, and no motivation, rarely even getting into the mood to play with his dildo. Even when he did, he rarely orgasmed. While he admitted that the drug-induced life as a head of lettuce was happy and content, there was something missing -- he wasn't able to concentrate enough to ignore pain. The only time that Ricki was shocked out of that was several years before when he severely burned twenty percent of his body in a gasoline flash fire.

That woke me up. It made me feel angry. It felt wonderful to be alive for the hour or so that the pain was at its worse. I only feel alive when I am in immediate pain. My drugs give me a dry censored view of reality. They mute my emotions. Pain gets through though, and stirs my emotions. With the drugs, I am unable to do self injury, but I think I can hold still for someone else to do it. I feel I really don't need pain as much as I used to. Surprise injuries make me angry at myself for being careless, but at the same time make me feel more alert in a way. On the other hand, pain makes it hard to pay attention to the world around me even more than the drugs do. Without the drugs, I lose contact with reality totally, so it is better to put up with the drugs. However, drugs have never reduced my desire to get my body altered.

Shortly after the first part of our interview was completed, Ricki, who felt that he was still in the "finding himself" phase of the bod-mod journey, and feeling justified by learning he wasn't alone, ordered himself an elastrator. An elastrator is essentially an elastic band that is placed around the top of the scrotum, slowly and painfully choking it off. Ricki got his from Nasco, a farm and veterinary supply company, for less than fifteen dollars, including tax and shipping. This was far cheaper than the unaffordable $750 Dr. F.S. in Philadelphia had quoted him for a bilateral orchiectomy or surgical castration. Dr. F.S. is one of a handful of underground doctors making a living performing castrations on the pre-op transsexual and eunuch fetishist communities. He sees it as an essential need, and justifies it with the knowledge that if he doesn't do it, they will risk their lives doing it themselves, and has spent time in jail defending these beliefs.

Ricki's elastrator arrived, and several weeks later I heard from him again, receiving sporadic email bursts updating me on his progress.

I've had the elastrator on for 22 hours. The first six hours were hell, but I'm not experiencing much pain now -- although I certainly don't feel my best! I guess it is more taxing on my body than I had expected. Hopefully my balls are dead beyond recovering in case my roommate tries to get me to get treatment. It will be 32 hours into it when he gets home from work tonight. He hopefully won't know for at least a few more days, and then he will probably try to get me committed.

The first three days were very rough because of periodic severe pain and his whole bottom became inflamed. At four days, Ricki's scrotum was dry and stiff but began to inflate from gasses generated by the rotting tissue. He inserted a thick hypodermic needle to let the noxious gasses escape, leaving a totally numb, black and withered scrotum. Since he had no sharp shears he cut off the scrotum about 3/4" below the elastrator using a serrated ginsu knife for the rough chopping and used nail clippers to clean up the cut.

A week later Ricki went to a walk-in clinic to get checked and when he told the doctor he'd cut it off with a serrated meat carving knife, the doctor buried his face in his hands for a moment then told Ricki he was the toughest person he ever saw, and ran out of the room. Luckily there was no mention of psychiatrists or hospitals which was a big relief to Ricki. He had prepared himself by taking three different kinds of tranquilizers two hours before he got there -- and thus had a composed, bored, but alert appearance. They cleaned him up a little, prescribed him antibiotics for the lightly pussing stump of a scrotum, and sent him home.

So now Ricki is smoothly healed and has become the "happy little it" that he's always wanted to be. He joins the thousands of other self-made eunuchs in North America and the half million or so worldwide -- his story is far from unique. His roommate and occasional lover has taken the attitude that what's done is done and as Ricki sits at home playing with his computer bought with psychiatric social assistance, he plans his next step; the total removal of his penis, using the same technique.

I am very glad I cut my balls off; I've wanted it my whole life. It feels good to have a huge empty area between my legs. I'll be happy if I never have another orgasm.

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