Category Archives: Men’s Health

Letter to Someone Considering Suicide

10 Thursday Mar 2022

Posted by in Addiction, Alcohol, Alcoholics Anonymous, Alcoholism, Depression, Health, Men's Health, Mental Health, Poetic Blog, Recovery, Suicide, Women's Health

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Suicidal2

by Bill Watkins, formerly suicidal
3/10/2022

Dedicated to the memory of Robin Williams

***

I would have told Robin just to sleep.  Stop trying to breathe.  Stop doing stuff and thinking you have to do stuff.

What suicidal people sometimes forget is the glory of the “mini-deaths” cleverly built into this life: sleep.  The complete cessation of activity.  The suicidal want to stop, want all thinking to stop, so… STOP!

Complications arise with drug and alcohol addiction.  Next to that, or maybe the same thing, is a bedevilment of negative thinking, insane thoughts—which any human being is capable of thinking from time to time.

There is a snowball forming, and suicidal people might start to believe the lies they are telling themselves that all would be better, if they were dead.  If they took an action to stop the heart and stop breathing… for good.

I was a victim of a suicidal depression that lasted about three or four years.  Parts of it are cloudy still, but I can now sum it all up as:  Alcoholism.

I started drinking Dad’s last sip of bourbon when I was five.  I started drinking the flammable, volatile, toxic liquid on my own with friends by the age of twelve.  I was blacking out on the substance by thirteen.

The above facts were not of interest to the multiple doctors I saw for depression at the end of the last millennium.  They saw and heard some symptoms, started to prescribe me drugs.  One of those doctors is now a recovering alcoholic, but because they missed my obvious alcoholism I sometimes think all of them were either alcoholic, drug addicted or just plain incompetent in the field of mental health.

I forgive them.  Alcoholism is “cunning, baffling and powerful,” to quote Alcoholics Anonymous—a powerful, tough, formidable foe.  I don’t blame anyone for my alcoholism and subsequent suicidal depression, but have come out of it to celebrate twenty years of consecutive sober days to distrust Western medicine in some areas.

They and all of us are fallible!

To the person who is at the time of reading this letter considering suicide, I say: “I love you. Thinking of suicide is a normal response to pain, when the pain builds and builds and sustains over a long time.  Love and accept yourself in this moment, but if you have a place to sleep that is warm and sheltered, be grateful for it and ‘die’ the mini-death that is sleep.  Stop trying so hard to breathe.  Slow down.  Do nothing.

“Do nothing for as long as it takes, with no time limit.  Based on my experience, the good rest and permission to stop will after time become a meditation or dream that makes you want to ‘go’ again.  You might get a vision that is positive.

“As far as managing life through a suicidal depression, stop doing that. Get out a piece of paper after your rest, and write down one or two things you want to do.  Eventually a bucket list (since you’ve been craving death anyway) of passions and activities.  Today, of course, you can only manage one or two of those things.

“Do them.  Love yourself for this one day.  That’s the only day that matters and exists.  If something makes you smile (that is not harmful to anyone, drugs or alcohol), note that and do it.   Repeat it, and follow that bliss throughout your day.  Your day is now your life!

“Note stuff in life we can’t control, like results or the future.  Let them go.  Maybe even consider prayer to a power greater than yourself.  Call it whatever you want to call it.  Just know you’re not in control of everything, and if you let yourself go… if you stop trying so hard and just rest… you’ll find the world continues to spin, and I do believe based on my own experience that positive thoughts and dreams are within us all…

If we wait for them.”

Circumcised

01 Tuesday Mar 2022

Posted by in Circumcision, Health, Men's Health, Poem, Poetic Blog, Poetry

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baby crying1

I’m glad they had me—
it’s been nice…
But why did they cut me—
Why am I circumcised?

In the first weeks of life:
Sexually abused. Molested—
Strapped to a table,
masturbated and sliced—

Despite my cries…
Despite my cries…
All because of a bible verse that lies—
Masturbated and sliced—

Newborn and hardly alive.

“Then what?” says I, from the
haze that dissipates with every sober hour…
I learned some sports
(while my damaged penis tried to heal).

I learned to drink a flammable
liquid on stolen land.
(“what’s the deal?”)

How could I learn to love?
Shyness when it mattered,
hurt I avoided life’s realities,
even good ones.

I imagined and abused myself,
found my way to pornography
seeking comfort for lost foreskin.

Unprotected, un-lubricated,
Seeking manual stimulation at
the point a normal, intact man
would come, satisfied.

All because the bible lied.

Infant Circumcision is Child Abuse

09 Wednesday Sep 2020

Posted by in Circumcision, Health, Intactivism, Men's Health, Poetic Blog

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Mad1

-by Bill Watkins 9/9/2020

***

I was reading Jay J. Jackson’s new book, Circumcision Scar (Hookona Books 2020), and it occurred to me I related to the author in ways I wish I did not.  In Chapter Two, Jay discusses his “Circumcision Awakening” at age twenty, when with his first intimate partner he realized what had happened to him against his will as a baby…

“My boyfriend said that he’d run into this issue before…”

They were talking about Jay’s apparent erectile dysfunction, coming to the fore at the same time he was learning for once the reason his penis was different than his uncircumcised father’s and his uncircumcised boyfriend’s.  That boyfriend attributed Jay’s “inability to perform” to “having no foreskin,”  then went on to explain, according to Jay, that his “glans [penis head] had been desensitized over time through the day to day friction it was exposed to…”

All of which ringing a sad, loud bell within myself as a victim and survivor of unconsenting genital mutilation when I was a baby.  I was reminded of a girlfriend telling me once that I was the first circumcised man she had been with, and also that I was the first man she had made love to who didn’t hold an erection for the entirety of love-making from first arousal to orgasm.

Like Jay I was an athlete growing up and exposed to much movement and friction “down there.”  And unfortunately, like Jay, I had trouble with sex, love, and found my way into a dark, unmanageable depression including prevalent suicidal thoughts—and eventually two drug overdoses.  Throw in drinking alcohol on Dad’s lap young, then with friends by twelve years old, blacking out on the substance by thirteen, and you have a good picture. 

The start of recovery at Betty Ford Center, four years of Al-Anon twelve step work, then admission of my alcoholism and my last conscious drink of that substance on March 6th, 2002—and you have a better picture.  Recovery didn’t give me instant success at love, and I was a virgin until thirty-three years of age, seven shy of that Steve Carell comedy on the subject!  A total mess, for me starting with the first abuse:

The violent removal of a body part obviously and firmly attached to my penis, obviously and firmly for a reason—whether you lean toward Darwin or God’s evolution of our species.  The penis foreskin isn’t falling off, barely there, or needing detachment from Mom like the umbilical chord.  It’s there to protect, lubricate, cover and help the penis do its job over our lifespans, praise God (or Darwin) for the miracle of our natural advantages!

But not for me.  Not for Jay.  Not for about forty percent of the world’s men, according to the National Center for Biotechnology (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4772313/).  Who or what is leading this mass, bloody exodus of protective penis skin?  Jews?  Muslims?  Christian doctors with Jewish/Old Testament bible sympathies?  Confusion itself?  The Devil?  I’m laughing now, which is better than crying in my girlfriend’s lap.  The world’s women might wonder why their man can’t keep it hard for them…

The world’s women and inquiring men too, might wonder:  Why is Viagra so popular?  Why all the surging erectile dysfunction and medication to supposedly handle the issue?  Well, I’m for logic and for simplest solutions…  Perhaps it’s time to point out the very obvious problem rolled up at the end of our noses, in front of all our often shy faces:  God or Evolution put a protective covering over the sensitive tip of male genitalia – with the female stuff our great baby-maker, and even a really fun time if used properly!

Maybe we should leave the foreskin where it is until a boy becomes a man of consenting age.  If that young man wants to join a religion and carving off part of the penis is part of the joining—so be it.  Until then, join me in denouncing unconsenting genital mutilation as a human rights violation.  Join me in questioning an ancient but questionable practice that has circumcised men with the courage to speak speaking.  Regretting.  Hoping for change, if not for us, for the next generation!

(Circumcision and Erectile Dysfunction Survey: https://es.surveymonkey.com/r/353NNX9)

We Can Rise

14 Friday Dec 2018

Posted by in God, Health, Men's Health, Poem, Poems, Poesia, Poetic Blog, Poetry, Spiritual

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The seed wars to become a flower.
Democracy lies—calls people power.

Songs rhyme, the words nothing compared
to truth itself.  You pause, pray,

Give strength clean away, turn it over
We can rise.  With a god of your own
understanding, we can rise, the mystic
reason for the four seasons calling
in the night, dreams the funeral of
ignorance, chopping off parts of a penis

while our infants cry; listening to the
devil, the easy way, “What did the white
coat say?”

***

Great native spirit, aboriginal ESP, a poem
scribbled into sand by Vikings or Celtic
sages, Romeo and Juliet giving English
reasons like seeds to sprout and spread
like a wildfire of color across a northern
California coastal hill.

“God” is the name itself for some, the
goal heaven, and for it we rise.

We can overcome the worst, from ashes
bloom again, seven deadly sins trying to
burrow into holes made before we make
first decisions.

The cliff upon which we walk is forged
to challenge, the echoes of forefathers
and foreskins causing blood to pour out
in lines, the prayer a call of the realistic,

the humble are true when they admit they
cannot without divine help reach the
golden crest that is Peace of Mind.

We can rise.

But we must first admit we fell, ring the
bell that we’ve been to hell.

God, forgive us, let’s mobilize with every
breath to make amends for friends like
wind forgotten with circumcised sips
of flammable liquid passed down from
generation to generation,

Friends in armor, friends who gave
us warmth and farming techniques,
helped us survive winters before
we cast them out at gunpoint, claimed
to found a nation already here.

I’m a white man living on stolen land,
littered concrete and asphalt, helicopters
screaming war while anyone standing
high enough for peace is shot down from
Gandhi to Jack to Martin to Bobby to Oscar
to John of the Beatles, the evil wind
soaring never changed.

We can rise, the minority report flourishing
at times, enough to give us hope
like a birdie between double bogies,

We can rise.

With an ounce of truth told into the
hurricane of lies, we can turn the evil
ship around, apologize.

Admit we raped, pillaged and stole,
see the humanity we are—naked
and part of the earth.

Don’t ever snip earth worn naturally
by children, mutilate a baby against
God’s will.

The baby’s cry is God’s protest; stop
cutting, start listening.  Get out of your
car, join me on the walk to Heaven.

Men Abused from Birth; Any Surprise We Abuse Women?

16 Thursday Nov 2017

Posted by in Blog, Circumcision, Health, Intactivism, Men's Health, Sex, Sexuality, Womanizing

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Tools of Abuse -- Circumcision

-by Bill Watkins 11/16/2017

***

It’s tempting to throw stones at all the men being called out for inappropriate sexual behavior toward women, and even young girls.  I wanted to illuminate why that may not be a wise course of action; in fact, a blind judgment of male-perpetrated sexual harassment fails to look at and solve some of the root problems that lead to bad behavior by men.

1. Circumcision – Our First Abuse

We men are born with a cover on our penis.  God, if you use that concept, our “Creator” (evolution if you want) put a safety hood on our members to protect the most sensitive part of our body, the reproductive unit, the great human populator.  Certain religionists and other ancients thought it was a good idea to SNIP THIS COVER OFF OUR MALE INFANTS.

Shock1

2. Alcoholism and Lack of Talk – The Second Abuse

We are not honest.  We “protect” children from sex talk, avoid the topic—then expect them to get it from school or TV.  What boys often get from school and TV is porn and “sex as competition,” where groping and “scoring” with females is touted over such a wonderful biblical tradition as:

Rejoicing with the Wife of Our Youth.

Solomon through Proverbs 5:18 and Malachi 2:15 emphasize the glory of monogamy, loyalty and commitment to the first girl God gives a boy to love.  The first love is blessed and special.  And yet in our American society we scoff at first crushes, avoid talks with boys that “love is good,” and show them a poor example by divorcing and philandering around from flower to flower.

Little boys confirm the competition aspect of sex bragged about on the playground, think that scoring “chicks” is preferable to loving one woman forever.  Alcoholism plays into this, as it is a disease that plagues our abilities to be honest and communicate love.  (Freud)

3. So off you go, Little Man!!!

“Enjoy your unprotected, hood-stripped, extra-sensitive penis, go out without advice and with our example of divorce and womanizing, alcoholism—AND TREAT WOMEN RIGHT!!!”

***

Not happening.  And no wonder.

LET’S STOP ABUSING OUR BOYS, STRIPPING THEM OF PENIS PROTECTION, TALK TO THEM ABOUT SEX, BUT FIRST GO BACK TO GODLY, GOOD PRINCIPLES LIKE BEING LOYAL AND TRUE TO THE “WIFE OF OUR YOUTHS.”  The first step to end abuse is to do what we are doing:  out the truth, talk about the problem.

But then:  Throw a stone?

No.  Let us recover together, go back, pick up the pieces, apologize to our wives, re-think drinking flammable liquids that divert us from God’s will—and teach our children, first by example—that love is precious and sacred, that sex is great with the right partner in the right way.  Then speak to them…

“Your mother and I love you, son, and show that first by loving each other.  Second, we want to be available to your every question or concern.  What?  You are in love with Anne in third grade?… Son, that is so wonderful.  Consider telling her in some way.  Write her a card.  Give her a flower.  We are so proud of you.  And thank God for our instincts to love!”

My Crooked Johnson

14 Tuesday Nov 2017

Posted by in Circumcision, Health, Men's Health, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Sexuality

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I was born premature.  They stuck
tubes into my lungs, helped me to breathe.

I ran naked all over my third birthday party
to my mom’s chagrin.  She could not stop me.

Dad gave me his last sip of bourbon and water
when I was five.  I started drinking fire with

“friends” at the age of twelve, was blacking out
by the age of thirteen.

I never talked about sex or love.  I drank
alcohol and played sports.  I loved the girl,

but never told her.

I jacked off thinking about her.  So much
with the right hand that my johnson

went crooked to the left by college.

***

They took the time and effort to snip off
my foreskin, but never told me step by step

what to do with the whole member.

We have celebrity sex abuse scandals gone
wild, “powerful men” wagging their cocks

under lock and key, intimidating witnesses and
victims with threats and displays of temper.

Wrath is God’s, honesty a key to the lock,
but when the stones appear to throw at the sick

my prayer is we don’t throw them, unless you
can claim to be without sin, which I doubt

if you be human.

***

Crooked is the way out of Eden; Adam and Eve,
their forbidden consumption, Cain killing Abel
and lying about it—Samuel asking for a king
to be like other nations—

putting men in charge of other men, reaping
God’s curse.

We put religion before truth and earth, conquered
native people, littered the ground with metal
and ground up stones to make concrete.

We built temples to ourselves, had slaves
build them, then killed our king in 1963,
lied about it like Cain.

***

My crooked Johnson is a perfect response
to Eve, Adam, Cain, Samuel, and the CIA.

Alcoholism from an inability to express love,
Freud once said, crushing grapes—letting them
spoil. Eating them to get a buzz and forget God.

My crooked Johnson is exposed to help the next
generation straighten his.

Don’t touch it.  Marry and rejoice with the Wife
of Your Youth, and never let her go—choose one!

We choose One God. Choose that first gal the LORD
gives you, for she is a blessing.  And to do her wrong

a grave sin.  Ask Malachi!

God help us.  The ten commandments are fine, the
native ones good, too.  Each religion has a code,
each culture a set of rules, so study them!

Ancient wisdom inspires Truth.  Truth sets us
free, and for the sexual abuse to end, we must
come out.

Forgive us God.  Help us find the straight path
under You, away from the crooked asphalt of lies

Eve, Adam, Cain and Samuel supplies!

The snip of baby boys’ SKIN on his PENIS without
consent; the sip of Ethyl Alcohol given on laps
and loose bar-b-ques; the lack of sex and love talks,
the neglect of Reason stemming from turning our
back on Creation.

Its Creator.  Waiting for us to return every moment.

Great spirit, the Tao of Life, God above referring
to all we don’t know that brought us and our
cocks here:

Thank you.

And we are sorry when we put ourselves and our
perversions before Nature, love, essence and truth.

Essence and You!

Confessions of a Teenage Masturbator

12 Sunday Nov 2017

Posted by in Health, Men's Health, Poem, Poems, Poetry

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Harvey Weinstein and Roy Moore made
me do it, I had to cum clean!

I used to do it, too—you know what
I mean???

I never broke the law, but I almost broke
my johnson!

At least I thought I did, that first time alone
in my lonely bed,

Underneath the sheets and my lonely
bun huggers.

I was way older than you should be to start;
fourteen years old

Maybe it’s good for your heart?

No one told me what the hell was going
on in the sex arena;

I had to pretend to listen in sex ed to unemotional
monotoned “ejaculation” remarks.

I had no idea it was more like lightning unbottled,
a jizzing spark in the dark!

Wow!  A light seemed to flash, the heat a fire in
the tip—“It’s gonna blow!!!”

The first time, I stopped before completion, sure
the bottle would break.

Nights later, I went at it again, this time with
“success,” the fire lit,

milky white residue, what the hell? Oh yeah, they
called that something in class,

Something to do with the ocean—sea men
overboard, the sticky stuff was weird.

Thing is, it all seemed so abnormally normal,
no one talking to me, scared to ask,

I started drinking alcohol on Dad’s lap, we
never had “the talk,” only a divorce

from he and Mom—but did you know that
when you lie detector the divorced,

they lie when they say they’re divorced?

Back to the “issue” in my hands, over the years
I switched from right to left,

After the right hand in teenage years warped
the product which now leans left!

Yikes, not the end of the world, but still no
one talked to me!!

Isn’t that the problem with the whole of
this big “sexual assault” sea?

We don’t talk to our young, we don’t teach
stuff like, “Honey, you might fall in love,

and love is good, here’s what the body does,
we love you, honey—support you and your
love, your body and what it does.

It’s nothing to be ashamed of—love and this
body.  When you love someone,

Tell them with all your heart, let it out.

You are safe to ask us anything, fire away,
we love you, your body, and what it does!”

Hmm.  Would have been great!  I probably
would have married the Wife of my Youth
like Malachi and Solomon advised.

But I did not, became alcoholic and a thirty-
three year old virgin

with a warped cock.

(It never did right itself when I switched to
the left hand after college…)

I dabbled at quitting, as I did alcohol consumption
near sixteen years ago—

would stay hands-off for up to twenty days, but
in the end it had worked its

way into my reward system in a given day—
felt I “deserved” it…

Until it led me to loose sexual behavior;
we’ve all seen examples lately on TV.

I called a married woman with a cute kid,
was intent on getting down with her

even after I “prayed” about it!!

We sometimes need to pray harder, but that
was the end of the masturbation line,

the loose sexual practice disguised as divine.

I could not hurt a child—be a “home wrecker,”
as I had been hurt by such parental actions!!!

I outed myself on the phone with that wife,
a real Christian, and devoted to her husband.

She chuckled, and said: “I would never do
that…” And I chuckled,

Then she (rudely—lol) accused me of being
a porn man!!

“Porn,” dear??  How dare thee accuse us, the
royal we of such improprietous malconduct?!?!

I was caught and have been off my johnson and
the porn for two and half months.

Anyone can “do” it, Harvey and Roy!

And by the way, reader: Pray for us ignorant
jackers-off to heal,

and find a child to properly teach rather than
throwing stones deep into

the sunny breach.

The Twitter speech, the OMG “he’s a pig” easy way
to displace from all your own sins—

Teach.

“Preach, Master! Preach!!!”

I am a former master of the bait, the sexual
trap of not knowing what else to do,

so we threaten our prey into the warped penis
of our less than ideal past doodoo.

Pray for us all, mind our hands, and love one
god and one mate for life—

“Enough as good as a feast,” Mary Poppins
good to Michael and Jane.

But who was it who told them all?

All about the Game…?

Tag.  You’re it!!  God help us.  Give…

Forget your shame.

My Sagging Rocks

10 Friday Nov 2017

Posted by in Graphic, Health, Honest, Men's Health, Poem, Poems, Poetry

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I used to play unafraid.  There was
a Winter under the free step of Spring
but I ignored it as long as I could, was not
aware that life and bodies would change
as early as I had flown with the earth
thirty times around the sun.

Around my thirtieth birthday my balls
began to sag.

I choose truthful words over the poetic
to be blunt with a loving audience like
you, who has little time to dilly dally.

“Anything more than the truth would
have seemed to weak” said Robert Frost
while depicting another day of bad
farming in the northeast of native land
cultivated by the White.

The paint of snow is another thing;

Something there is that loves walls,
the devil a rake in orange hair pretending
at thrones “to be like other nations,”
the prophet Samuel’s request like a snake
in grass, a forbidden fruit to look
at your ass—

I should have married and stayed true
to the Wife of my Youth!!

But no.  They laughed at me when I said
I kissed her.

They laughed at all the children who
wanted to report their first crush, but
had a sibling unchecked by drunk
parents who abused and scoffed at love.

I turned to alcohol and sports over love;

Pretending I did not love Anne, JJ, Melanie
and Amy.  Megan, Barbara, Beatrice and
Kristin—the list is so long, the eighth step
amends of men who were wrong.

And in all that delay, that time of dysfunction—
the body kept growing, aging, never a girlfriend,
intimacy for me not there.

I woke up near my thirtieth birthday with
beautiful pubic hair.

But something had changed.  They dropped.

My balls.  Sagging like an old man.

I was a virgin in the sand.  No kids.  No love.

And I was slowly dying, evidenced in the
extended sack between my legs!

Dying!  Dying before I had lived, I would
journey three more years before landing
a girl willing to have me inside her; I had
to shave my homeless beard before she
did it, but she did it, and we did it, and
I forgot my sagging rocks that night!

But sometimes, when all alone in my
beweeped state, in a lonely forty-five year
old single bed I reach down, then down some
more to feel at near-lifeless tissue—

sagging sinew, a scrotal reminder of time
flown, aging and reasons to write a poem
a young boy might read to help him change
his ways immediately.

Tell her you love her.  Now and forever;
against the hum of haters and potential regret,
laugh at them with four kids on your lap,

instead of a thought of sagging naps.

God is with me, don’t get me wrong, my sagging
rocks a reason to pray the harder, help
the more, get out of self—youth on the other
side of service’s open door…