Penis Plastination - An Afterlife For Your Appendage

6 March 2006
Penis Plastination - An Afterlife For Your Appendage
by Paul A.

Over the last few weeks I�ve explored the various means by which penises, some famous, some not, have been preserved. The vast majority of these have been penis castings, but a few have been the real article. Rasputin�s member has reputedly spent the better part of a century in a jar of formaldehyde. Napoleon�s (which I�ll discuss in coming weeks) is a dried up little thing in the possession of an American urologist. No doubt lesser known penises, in various states of preservation (or decomposition) are sitting in jars or drawers all around the world for reasons we can only guess at. Now, you may well ask why anybody would go to any effort to preserve some guy�s dick. It�s obviously ghoulish, possibly illegal and serves no discernable purpose. But then, value is a subjective thing. What purpose do jewels serve? You can chatter all you like about how diamonds are breathtaking, but most people can�t tell them from cut glass. So if jewels have value, why not the family jewels?

Conquering armies have been known to cut the penises off their dead enemies as trophies. In Liberia, Charlie Taylor�s rebels didn�t even bother to kill their enemies before removing theirs. One of Chuck�s men was promoted and given the nickname 52 pick-up after delivering fifty two penises to his superior officer in a plastic bag. Rasputin�s penis was removed presumably because it was such a magnificent piece. Napoleon�s was removed as a deliberate act of post-mortem humiliation. Transsexuals have been known to hang on to theirs as a keepsake in the same manner that some people keep their gallstones. Throughout history dicks have been hacked off and preserved for reasons as varied as numerous as the incidents themselves. Heartbroken widows are probably the biggest preservers. In fact, a company called Intimate Mementos specializes in the preservation of dear hubby�s dick. Now this may seem macabre, but really, it�s no more so than having hubby�s ashes sitting in a plastic urn on the mantle. And you may wonder what said widow intends to do with said piece, but hey buddy, it�s none of your business.

So let�s say you�re in the end stage of some awful disease, or you�ve got a ticker that�s held together with gum and an elastic band and it breaks your heart that you�re headed for the existential abyss but you want very much to give your soon to be widowed wife the best part of yourself. She�s always had a sentimental attachment to it and what the hell, you won�t need it where you�re going. How do you go about it?

Well, assuming you can find a funeral home willing to hack off your dick upon your demise, the cheapest option is the old dick in formaldehyde trick. There�s nothing to it really. You can buy formaldehyde reasonably cheaply. Get a jar, fill it with formaldehyde, drop in the dick; job done. You could pickle the thing in vinegar I suppose, but considering the minimal difference in cost, best to do it right. But one of the downsides of using formaldehyde is that flesh loses its fleshtone after awhile, turning a sickly gray. You don�t want your wife�s memory of your great pink wand of pleasure sullied by this gray limp sausage sitting in a jar. And what if she wants to hold it and touch it, as she used to do with such delicacy and love? It�d take a special sort of woman to want to handle a pickled wiener.

If you want to give you wife something she can hold and handle, your next cheapest option is freeze drying. Now I suppose you could just freeze the damn thing but what�s the use of that. It�d be a hunk of cold hard meat and given enough time it would eventually develop freezer burn and look as bad as the dick in formaldehyde. Besides, if it�s kept in the freezer there is the very real chance it will be mistaken for a piece of pork tenderloin, and you definitely don�t want that.

But freeze drying is definitely an option. There are several businesses that specialize in freeze drying pets so it�s possible that one of them would be willing to put your penis through the process. Freeze drying removes the water from an organism without destroying the internal structure like heat evaporation (cooking) does. With freeze drying, the water is removed (without water there�s no biological activity, so rotting can�t take place) by a process called sublimation. Water is converted from a solid directly into vapor, without going through a liquid phase. This allows the article to dry slowly and completely. When all the water has been removed, you�re left with a dried hunk of penis that can actually be rehydrated at some future date should your widow choose (instant beefstick, just add water!). In the meantime it must be kept sealed in an airtight bag or stored with desiccants to prevent moisture in the air from hydrating the penis and allowing bacterial action to resume.

The biggest problem with freeze drying your dick is that as water is lost, so are the various pressures that keep your dick inflated, so to speak. Even a flaccid penis is made up mostly of fluid. That fluid fills the spongy corpora cavernosa that makes up the bulk of your dick. Remove the fluid and your dick will contract (this is why your dick shrinks when you come out of a cold pool). Take away ALL the water and your dick will most likely shrivel up like a dried apricot. Hardly the thing you want your wife displaying on the mantle.

Which brings us to plastination. Invented a couple of decades ago by a German scientist named Gunther von Hagens, plastination is the process by which all bodily fluids are drawn out and replaced by plastic. What remains is a plastic version of flesh. All internal details remain intact right down to the cellular level. But because the details are rendered in plastic, the body (or body part, in this case) is permanent. Leave it in the sun and solar radiation will eventually breakdown the surface features, but apart from that, your dick will outlast the pyramids and then some. Hagans currently has a traveling exhibit called Body Worlds that has proved enormously popular.

Plastination is also the technique employed by the aforementioned Intimate Mementos. For around US$2400, Intimate Mementos will plastinate your dick, root, balls and all. They even provide shipping instructions. The organ should be harvested immediately following death, drained of blood and rinsed. The organ should than be placed into a heavy-gauge plastic bag. A safe preservative called �Formalin� is injected and/or poured over the genitals. The bag is then sealed, placed in a heavy Rubbermaid container, then in a heavy cardboard container, along with dry ice and then Fedexed. Upon arrival, the penis is engorged with Formalin to make it as erect (assuming this is what you want) and put through the plastination process (it�s a fairly complicated procedure so I won�t explain it in detail here). The dick is then mounted on a stone or hardwood base, and posed for shelf or wall display in either a vertical (like game trophy heads) or horizontal (like Billy Bigmouth Bass) orientation.

Now this may strike you as hilarious but Intimate Mementos is no joke. This is, or was, a legitimate business that supposedly hoped to corner the market in dead guys� dicks. Unfortunately, it seems that Intimate Mementos may have been ahead of its time. When I tried to log onto their website it no longer existed. But I did receive a message from one of the people involved who goes by the moniker �Salami.� And no, I don�t think the name suggests an Italian heritage. According to Salami, their offer to plastinate penises has generated an enormous amount of interest, but no dicks in dry ice... yet. Seems Salami has already bequeathed his member to the Penis Museum in Iceland. Actually, I got the impression that he intends to bequeath it while he�s still alive, which strike me as a touch... well... extreme, but hey... it�s his dick I guess. I did get the sense that they are anxious to plastinate some dicks pronto. So if you�re willing, and popping your clogs anytime soon, organize to send yours along.

I�m guessing penis plastination may be an idea slightly ahead of its time. Still, for those who can�t bear the thought of their wonderful dick rotting in the ground, plastination remains by far the best means of preservation. And $2400 doesn�t seem unreasonable. You�ll be dead after all and think about it, which would you rather have, a flat panel television for your ungrateful grandkids, or your bed-flute mounted majestically above the mantle for future generations to admire.