Will 1998 be remembered as the year that penectomy came of age? Hedwig and The Angry Inch--the off-off-Broadway musical comedy about a victim of botched sex-change surgery--rang in the New Year at Radio City Music Hall with a gala December 31 performance. And in a related act of mainstreaming, the movie rights to Hedwig have reportedly been purchased by Danny DeVito's production company--meaning that Angry Inch could become the most talked-about penile injury since John Wayne Bobbitt's.
Elsewhere in the world of genital nullification, Joe Christ told Philadelphia City Paper:
"At this point, I think the whole body modification thing is passe."
Noted the nihilistic nullo: "I filmed a woman having her vagina pierced shut. I filmed another woman cutting her genitalia with a razor. And then I thought, this is old news."
Doth Joe Christ protest too loudly?
His own severed penis was but a drop in the bucket when compared to the veritable cascade of body parts that came across The Soft Toy Department's sensors in 1998.
In 1998, America's sex-change capital celebrated its 3800th penectomy. For three decades, male gender-benders desiring penis removal have converged on the small town of Trinidad, Colorado, seeking the surgical services of Stanley H. Becker, MD. A combat veteran who served in a MASH unit during the Korean War--Becker has performed more penectomies in 1998 than anyone working in the field.
There was also last May's "India Holds 10 in Plot to Steal Kidneys", a ghoulish tale in which doctors paid agents to troll India's shantyowns seeking victims from whom the precious organs were harvested.
And then there was the equally illuminating "Man Cuts Off Feet to Collect Insurance Money". To paraphrase the item, datelined Korea, December 12: A cunning criminal mastermind cut off both his feet soon after purchasing 24 insurance policies totalling $1.65 million dollars.
Elective surgery, especially of the breast-augmentation kind, boomed in 1998. The introduction of saline-filled implants reportedly reversed the dramatic falloff in breast- augmentation that resulted when silicone-gel implants, and silcone leakage, were earlier linked to cancer. Texas, Florida, and California were 1998's nation's leading breast-implant zones. Over 100,000 procedures were performed nationally--at $5000 to $6000 a pop. Women in Texas requested the largest implants.
October was "National Healthy Skin Week". And at the American Academy of Dermatology, body jewelry was a hot topic. The consensus? For reasons not fully clear to medical science, metal sensitivities are on the rise. Lecturer David Cohen, M.D., discussed the widespread problems of contact dermatitis and metals sensitivities--and described some of the ways in which medical science rose in 1998 to meet the challenges of civilization's latest lifestyle-related malady.
Do-it-your-selfism's most radical exponents colluded with BME in '98 in laying the cornerstone of MODCON '99.
Among the self-sculptors anxiously awaiting MODCON '99's subdermal demolition derby was Roger Kaufman--longtime earlobe stretcher and a recognized foot sculptor with a resume of nine full or partial toe amputations--who in '98 offered up a finger joint to the documentary eye of Shannon Larratt's camcorder.
"Shannon was the first person to view my ritual", Kaufman told The Soft Toy Department. "He was also surprised at how little blood there actually was."
In an interview, Kaufman likened the medical intricacies of his "thimbling rite"--so described by Kaufman because he wears thimbles on his finger stumps--to a form of "performance art":
"When I am going to amputate, I must have all my equipment ready and as sterile as possible. That includes pre- cut gauze bandages so that I can apply direct pressure for 30 minutes to one hour. The big toes and thumbs have larger blood vessels than the other toes and fingers. These are smaller arteries, and one does not staunch the flow of blood with just gauze bandages. The further back to the foot you go, the more the blood you get.
"When I did amputate a big toe, I used small rubber tourniquettes and I found that the blood flow was controlled with the combination of tourniquettes and direct pressure. If one goes too far back, one could be unable to staunch the flow and end up in the ER."
Does it hurt?
"My answer would be no--except when you amputate right up against the body of the foot; not when you do the actual amputation, but only as it heals."
Kaufman hinted that he may be modifying "the nail portion of my last remaining big toe" in '99.
For those seeking to get a head in '98, BME was the place to be--specifically the BME subsidiary enterprise "Human Skulls for Sale".
And what was it like to be a severed head in '98?
Theorized Robert J. White, M.D., professor of neurosurgery, at Cleveland's Case Western Reseve School of Medicine: "I happen to believe that what you and I are is basically within the three-and-a-half pounds of tissue between our ears."
"I think the mind and the soul are within the brain".
Dr. White, an advocate of the "whole body transplant", demonstrated his hypothesis by grafting the trunk of one monkey to the head of another.
These researches proved conclusively in 1998 that transplanted monkey heads will bite the fingers of careless human experimenters.
In '98, there were the winners--like pioneering modern
primitivist, techno-shaman and pop personality Genesis P-Orridge,
who was awarded $1.8 million in a personal-injury
suit against Rick Rubin, a founder of Def Jam Records.
Genesis P-Orridge's Crash-like chronicle--part Ballardian, part-Crowleyian--took its profitable, and nearly lethal turn, when he defenestrated from the second floor of a Los Angeles house owned by indie recording mogul Rubin. P-Orridge owed his presence on the Laurel Canyon property to the band Love & Rockets, which was using the on-premises recording studio, and whose guest P-Orridge was. When the studio's wiring caught fire, the Love & Rockets crew was able to get out--but P-Orridge, who was trapped upstairs, bailed from a second floor window. Among the injuries P-Orridge covered by his megabucks award was a shattered guitar arm and a pulmonary embolism.
There were losers, too, in '98, like longtime Screw editor Manuel "Manny" Neuhaus--summarily fired by porcine porn potentate Al Goldstein after 20 years at the helm of the X-rated weekly, which in '98 celebrated its 35th year of commercial carnality. Unemployed pornocrat Neuhaus lives on in Dickless in Babylon: The Joe Christ Story.
There were also martyrs in '98--especially legendary body sculptor Dr. John Brown, who was arrested last spring by San Diego police for murder, practicing medicine without a license, and a variety of other charges. Allegedly found in a May, '98 raid on the 75- year-old Brown's apartment were bloody towels, trails of blood, videotapes of purportedly illegal procedures, and records of hundreds of these procedures.
What brought the law to Dr. Brown's doorstep was the a leg amputation he had performed on an 80-year-old man--who subequently died of gangrene in a hotel on the outskirts of San Diego.
"The fact that it was a voluntary major limb amputation," wrote Shannon Larratt in BME," makes it very difficult for Dr. Brown, as this is one of the most difficult procedures to medically justify."
On May 22nd, Dr. Brown pled innocent to the charges against him.
Until the next foot falls in this landmark case, the defendant remains incarcerated in San Diego without bond.
And that, gentle readers, was The Year in Body Modification, 1998. Sort of.
Hell's Kitchen / New Years Eve, 1998